Will the Ferrari F1 challenge now crumble?

It's an evolution, not a revolution. It's not like the internal revolutions of 1973 or 1990; Ferrari aren't having a great upheaval so the effects shouldn't be too drastic (in 1973 the revolution had a positive effect, in 1990 it was disasterous...both times it was a major change).

All the great teams have had to evolve over time in order to survive - it's how they handle the evolution that determines their short and medium term prospects of success. Ferrari have proved capable of winning the world championship without Schumi and Brawn already, so the process of evolution is well underway. Todt has provided a year of stability at management level for new people to take the place of Brawn and Schumi, now the "new" people in those positions will provide the continuity while Todt's successor gets used to things.

Business as usual next year.

A little.

Ferrari has it its success over recent times by bucking its traditional Italian base. This has meant importing the best quality people to design, manufacturer and implement the best for the brand. This started in 1996 when Ferrari brought in Michael Schumacher (Germany) to drive, Rory Byrne (South Africa) to design the car, Ross Brawn (Britain) and Jean Todt (France) to run things. This was hugely successful compared to the shambles of what they inherited (2 wins from 91-95).

The decisions made just didn't make sense. The prime example of this was running the heavy V-12 when every other team was running a V-10. They actually had the FIA to change the ruled to allow themselves to run an engine that made them uncompetitive.

Times have changed and the Italians coming in are not the same as the ones that made the errors before. Hopefully errors made in the past are not forgotten. It seems Luca di Montezemolo and Jean Todt will keep the team running, but to what extent we are yet to see.

Yes I think it can survive without Ferrari... It's whether Ferrari can find a suitably big stage to play on that isn't Formula 1... Luca is mentioning Le Mans, but aside from the big event itself, there isn't the huge following and big marketing opportunities in the LMS that F1 gives Ferrari as much as it takes from them. He only doesn't want a budget cap because Ferrari are a financial powerhouse in F1 nowadays, not an engineering one, and the budget cap is looking towards shifting that focus back onto engineering (ala Brawn, RBR, Williams and even Toyota in the last 2 years) rather than just throwing money at things and making that work. It's going to be about finding the one best solution, not paying for a hundred ones and picking the inevitable best. Max is playing everything just right here (for once)... I see the technical freedoms being adjusted, but the unlimited testing will stay and be a big draw for many teams... If Ferrari can't do the same as these other guys then they can dig their own grave and lie in it...

No. After all Brawn was gone for 2007 and what did they do? Won the championship. They've moved on and put some quality people in place that will do just as good, or a better job than Brawn did.

Not really. Brawn, Todt and Byrne were with the team long enough to have established it and give their successors time to learn from them and see what works and what doesn't. I'm not sure about todt's position within the organization now, but him and schumi will probably still be contributing behind the scenes...

I think it will.

Let us not forget they had the most productive group of engineers, tactitians and a pretty special driver for the best part of a decade making it the uber team it is today.

Unless Kimi and Felipe pull their fingers out and develop the technical side of their game then its a slippery slope and we could be back to the days of Ferrari sacking their Italian bosses and replacing them with Enzo's sons

Either that or they will campaign for Schumi for team boss!

Just wait and see

but great that the British Grand Prix will be being staged

I hope so but lets just see what Schuey is up to that dirty German has always got something up his sleeve.

I Hope so.

But they will always find a way to win, with the help of MAD MAX (Mosley)

Of course not!