Todt has work cut out rescuing season after Ferrari blow the start

Jean Todt is a cool customer, a man not easily rattled. That's a good attribute to have when you are running an operation as big, and currently as troubled, as Ferrari's Formula One outfit.

I interviewed him recently in his hotel suite. As befits an important man, our crew were in the grandly appointed room long before he and his fiancee, Michelle Yeo, arrived. We were assisted and watched over in equal measure by the small entourage that such men tend to require.

There was one moment of our meeting which encapsulated why Todt is the coolest team principal of them all. After our interview a colleague was asking a few questions. I was watching on a nearby sofa when his phone rang. Without missing a beat he took it out of his shirt pocket, handed it to me and asked, 'can you answer it please?' before turning back and continuing the interview.

Rather stunned, I tiptoed out of the room with his top of the range, titanium phone, pressed the green button and said as confidently as I could muster, 'Jean Todt's phone!'

Message taken, phone returned, I had time to rue the fact that I hadn't searched the memory for Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosley's private numbers. It also crossed my mind that I'd just witnessed the calm thinking that makes the Frenchman a brilliant operator, running strategies that normally leave his rivals trailing.

This only makes Ferrari's current travails all the more puzzling, especially when they appear to have been the architects of their own problems with equal measures of complacency and arrogance.

With rule changes on the horizon for 2005 and last year's championship already in the bag, they stopped developing their old car with several races remaining. They assumed they could just wheel out the old model for the first few races of this season and canter to customary victories, while the new car was fine-tuned.