Glenn Freeman

Interestingly, from a Benetton perspective, Pat Simmons felt that Byrne was the bigger loss than Braun.

Pat called Byrne irreplaceable and said Benetton didn't have a natural successor to him.

Matt, would you go along with that?

Do you think the significance of the recruitment of Byrne is sometimes overlooked in the story of what Schumacher and Ferrari went on to overachieve?

Because I guess we see Ross and Michael as such a double act, but there's actually this really crucial guy in the background who, let's face it, didn't really chase the limelight.

I think that's it.

Yeah, Burn was irreplaceable, whereas I could do Ross's job.

Yeah.

Yeah, to add a bit more that I didn't include there, I think there was a line from Pat that I've seen where he says Benetton had good specialists in the design department, but no one who could see the overall picture in the way that Byrne did.

So, yeah, I guess those people are maybe hard, hard to build.

But as you said there, Ben, you know, it didn't seem like there was a big plan to write someone.

We've been we've had a guy poached effectively.

I know Byrne retired, but someone's taken our guy.

Can we go and get someone?

from somewhere else but let's stick with Pat Simmons for a moment because of the Schumacher kind of nucleus at Benetton he's obviously the main one who didn't follow him to Ferrari so let's look at why that was because Simmons was Schumacher's race engineer

And he says that Schumacher did ask him to go with him to Ferrari, but Pat chose to stay because Braun was leaving.

And that meant Simmons could step up and take Braun's job as technical director.

I think Pat's even said that Braun kind of told him, look, I'm leaving.

You know, the job's going to be yours.

And Simmons said that was more attractive than just being race engineer to Michael for the rest of my life.