Rob Smedley does not want to return to F1, even if he has received many offers over the years, even though he left the premier category for several years. The engineer recognizes, however, that if he were to receive an offer from Frédéric Vasseur to return to Ferrari, he would be tempted.
“I like Fred, I have a lot of respect for him and for what he does” Smedley said on the Red Flags podcast. “You know, my barometer in Formula 1, I'm always… I don't know how to say, lucky or unlucky, to receive offers from Formula 1 teams.”
“And my barometer is always 'would I work for them?' When I look at someone and think 'would I work for them?' And actually, there aren't many people I would do it for, but Fred is one of them.”
“Fred is someone I would go to work with because I think, I know Fred socially, but I think we would get along well in a work environment. He's very intelligent, but he's also very disarming, and I think that's a good quality for a top manager in a high-pressure environment like this.”
“It doesn't increase the pressure. You don't need any pressure. The best Formula 1 drivers, the ones who succeed in Formula 1, don't need any extra pressure, thank you very much.”
-The engineer sees Vasseur as one of the directors capable of running an F1 team: “You are already in an environment where the pressure is ridiculous, and if you succeed in Formula 1, there will be no better critic of you and your work than yourself, right?
“So you don't need anyone from the outside to put even more pressure on you – it's just negativity. I think Fred has done a good job of doing that and demonstrating it and taking care of people, because it's not enough to say it, you also have to do it physically.”
“Fred is good at looking after his people, at taking criticism, but he is very intelligent and he knows what it takes to make a Formula 1 team successful, and you would be surprised to find that all the “Team principals don't know what it takes to make a Formula 1 team successful, but Fred is one of them.”
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