Two Mercedes employees will follow Lewis Hamilton to Ferrari, with the Italian outfit appointing former F1 driver Jerome d’Ambrosio as deputy team boss.
D’Ambrosio, who raced for the Marussia and Lotus teams in 2011 and 2012 respectively, had been working at Mercedes as Driver Development Director since last year.
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The Belgian has been named team boss Fred Vasseur’s deputy, while also being placed in charge of the Ferrari Driver Academy, which includes Oliver Bearman, who debuted at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.
Joining him at the team will be Loic Serra as Head of Chassis Performance Engineering. The Frenchman had been Performance Director at Mercedes since 2018, having joined the team in 2013.
Both will start with the team on Oct. 1.
The new appointments will increase the speculation around Hamilton’s imminent move to the team. The seven-time world champion had so far declined to comment on who might join him next year, with the future of people such as race engineer Peter Bonnington still uncertain.
Ferrari has continued to make changes to the team this year. Ahead of this week’s Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, Ferrari also confirmed Charles Leclerc will change race engineer, with Bryan Bozzi replacing Xavi Marcos.