Simone Resta, a former Ferrari designer, has been announced as the new strategic development director of Mercedes in 2025. Resta, who previously collaborated with James Allison during his time at Ferrari, will play a crucial role in Mercedes’ restructuring efforts as they seek to regain their competitive edge after several years of declining performance due to the resurgence of Red Bull. The official date of his arrival to the team has not yet been provided.
In addition to Resta’s hiring, Enrico Sampo will also make the move from Ferrari to Mercedes, taking on the role of head of performance software applications. The team also filled the position of performance director with an internal appointment, David Nelson, following the departure of Loic Serra, who was hired by Ferrari last year.
Resta’s impressive experience at Ferrari brings hope for Mercedes’ future prospects. He joined Ferrari as chief designer in 2014, under Allison’s leadership, and served as the team’s technical director during that time. Under Resta’s guidance, Ferrari produced highly competitive F1 designs in 2017 and 2018, considered the best designs to come out of Maranello in the last decade. Both cars started the season as the fastest in F1, and Sebastian Vettel led both championships for a significant portion of the season. However, Ferrari’s performance eventually suffered due to reliability issues and errors from both the team and Vettel.
After stints at Sauber and a brief return to Ferrari, Resta joined Haas, a Ferrari-affiliated team, in 2021. He left Haas after the departure of team principal Guenther Steiner last winter.
With Mercedes facing challenges in terms of competitiveness after the introduction of new technical rules in 2022, team boss Toto Wolff hopes that Resta can contribute significantly to closing the ever-increasing gap, especially with more technical regulations on the horizon.
