Chapter 1465 - 554: Binotto’s Shock (2)
Qin Miao raised an eyebrow. "Don’t tell me you’d already mentally prepared yourself to be the food tester, ready to eat stuff that might not agree with your stomach before you even came?"
Binotto laughed. "To be honest, I really had prepared myself for that psychologically. But clearly, you’ve given me a huge pleasant surprise."
Qin Miao shook his head with a smile. "If you put it that way, then the surprise I prepared for you today is more than just this."
"Oh?"
"Aside from asking you for advice about a few things over this meal, there’s also someone who asked me to pass an invitation on to you."
Binotto thought for a moment. "Lynk & Co?"
Qin Miao nodded. Faced with a straight-science-and-engineering guy like Binotto, it was better not to play any word games and just get to the point. "Lynk & Co’s general manager, He Qiang, called me a while ago. He wants me to ask you if you’ve thought about looking for a job lately."
"Isn’t Tost doing pretty well at Lynk & Co? Why are they thinking about replacing him?" Binotto picked up another slice of sugar-dipped tomato and popped it into his mouth.
You could tell he really liked the two dishes Qin Miao had made.
Qin Miao shrugged. "I’m just the messenger. How would I know what’s going on inside Lynk & Co Team.
So? Thinking about them at all?"
Binotto didn’t answer right away, but his chopsticks didn’t stop. He basically tasted a bite of everything Qin Miao had cooked today, then even served himself a bowl of egg fried rice.
Just when Qin Miao thought Binotto didn’t want to talk about this topic, Binotto spoke up. "I’ve looked into Lynk & Co. From my point of view, it’s actually a pretty decent destination. But I do have concerns.
Right now I’m still in my garden leave period, and before I left Ferrari they gave me a compensation package I couldn’t refuse. But because of that, my garden leave has been extended until January 2024. Can Lynk & Co afford to wait?
And besides me, I’ve got a team of 29 designers under me. If they want me to go to Lynk & Co, I have to bring these people along as well, because they’re my core team. I can’t abandon them."
Qin Miao nodded. Those were not issues he needed to worry about. All he had to do was faithfully pass Binotto’s conditions on to Lynk & Co; whether Lynk & Co agreed or not was no longer Qin Miao’s concern.
"I’ll relay your conditions to them exactly as you stated." Qin Miao nodded, then couldn’t help asking out of pure curiosity, "Binotto, this is just me asking personally because I’m curious—can I know how much compensation Ferrari gave you?"
"15 million euros." Binotto didn’t hide it. He did trust Qin Miao’s character, and satisfying the curiosity of a two-time world champion wasn’t something Binotto needed to worry about.
Hearing that number, Qin Miao clicked his tongue.
The money Ferrari gave Binotto was almost catching up to his own yearly salary at Mercedes, and this was just hush money. And the key thing is, Ferrari right now isn’t even a top team like Mercedes or Red Bull.
Because of that, the stuff in Binotto’s head might be useful to Mercedes and Red Bull, but you could foresee that its impact wouldn’t be huge. And for the midfield or backmarker teams who would actually be interested in what’s in Binotto’s brain, even if they got all that knowledge, they’d still be nowhere near posing a short-term threat to Ferrari on track.
Qin Miao was a bit puzzled, but he didn’t plan on digging deeper. After all, he’d asked purely out of curiosity.
However, when he looked up to grab another bite and caught sight of the wrinkles on Binotto’s face, Qin Miao suddenly frowned. Another possibility occurred to him.
Damn, this amount really is a bit much compared to a normal hush money package.
Could it be that this isn’t hush money at all—in other words, it’s not technical hush money related to the team?
But rather a "thanks for your hard work" bonus for Binotto?
After all, Binotto resigned of his own accord. On one hand, that saved Ferrari the trouble, and on the other, he helped Ferrari’s higher-ups absorb the entire landmine of Ferrari’s poor performance throughout 2022, and none of the top brass got dragged down because of it.
So the higher-ups gave Binotto this chunk of cash, nominally as an extension fee for six extra months of garden leave, but in reality as a thank-you and a hardship bonus?
...
Damn, when you look at it like that, Ferrari suddenly seems unexpectedly human.
Thinking to this point, Qin Miao suddenly raised his head and looked at Binotto.
He wanted to voice his speculation.
But Binotto simply lifted his cup of tea and clinked it toward Qin Miao.
Qin Miao could only pick up his own glass and clink it with Binotto’s, and thus he lost the chance to ask the question burning in his mind.
But very soon, Binotto switched to another topic.
"You didn’t ask me here just to talk about Lynk & Co, did you? Even though you and Lynk & Co are both from China, I remember your relationship with them isn’t exactly close."
Qin Miao smiled. "You really see through everything, huh. You’re right—besides the Lynk & Co thing, I mainly wanted to talk to you about what’s been going on inside Ferrari recently."
Binotto raised an eyebrow. "How come we’re suddenly talking about Ferrari?"
𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎
"I’m joining Ferrari next season."
Binotto: ?
"What?"
The sudden news really caught Binotto completely off guard.
Staring at Qin Miao, who was just eating with his head down and chopsticks in hand, Binotto’s mind was full of question marks.
Seeing Binotto’s kind of "system crash" expression, Qin Miao had no choice but to repeat himself. "I’m joining Ferrari next season."
Binotto even put his chopsticks down, looked at Qin Miao for a while, then scratched his head.
It was hard to believe such a gesture would appear on Binotto, but it wasn’t hard to see his confusion and shock after hearing the news.
"Hold on, Ferrari internally is a complete mess right now—management chaos, R&D all over the place. Before I left Ferrari, I did an assessment. If Ferrari failed to win the title in 2022, then for the entire ground-effect era that follows, Ferrari would pretty much be unable to really fight Red Bull and Mercedes. Even getting on the podium would depend on luck. What are you thinking? Why would you leave a good situation at Mercedes to go to Ferrari?"
Binotto was genuinely baffled.
Qin Miao spread his hands. "Honestly, before Ferrari approached me, I thought the same as you. Ferrari right now is not a good destination."
Binotto nodded. "Exactly. Did you get your head slammed in a door or something?"
"Until I saw the number Ferrari put on the table."
"How much did they give you? A 100-million-euro salary?"
Qin Miao scratched his head. "The money isn’t quite that high. Right now what we’ve discussed is 50 million US Dollars a year, but according to my management team, the annual salary still has room to go up. At the highest, it should be negotiable up to 70 million US Dollars per year."
Binotto stroked his chin. "That figure does match the level of performance you’ve shown so far. But that’s all it is—you still don’t have a reason to go to Ferrari."
"Don’t rush me, I’m not done yet." Qin Miao thought for a moment, then said, "At the same time, Ferrari is giving me the authority to reshuffle the pit-crew positions within my own car crew. I’ll have the power to hire and fire, though only within my crew. And I’ll also have the right to make decisions on the team’s R&D direction."
The more Qin Miao said, the more shocked and astonished Binotto’s expression became. By the time he heard that last sentence, Binotto completely lost his composure.
"Vassel’s authority is that big? He’s willing to give you all that?"
You have to understand, because of Ferrari’s long tradition of internal power struggles, all real authority inside the team is tightly held in the hands of the Ferrari top brass. Nobody is willing to release even a sliver of it.
But in such a team, Vassel was actually willing to grant Qin Miao that much power. Even though Qin Miao’s authority only extends to his own car crew and the R&D department, strictly speaking, his power is enough to call him Ferrari’s number two.
And note, what Qin Miao talked about were "decisions," not "suggestions."
A "decision" means when I speak, you have to follow. A "suggestion" means after I speak, whether you listen or not is up to you.
The former is mostly used by leadership when giving instructions to subordinates.