[Updated] The Italian media today is predicting that Neil Martin, the head of race strategy at Ferrari, is set to follow the list of high profile names out of the door at Maranello.

Yesterday Hirohide Hamashima, the ex Bridgstone tyre expert left and today La Gazzetta dello Sport reports that new team principal Maurizio Arrivabene will dispense with Martin's services.

At the same time it appears that Ferrari has managed to recruit Jock Clear, who was Lewis Hamilton's performance engineer at Mercedes. He is is believed to be on his way to Maranello along with Bob Bell, who resigned from Mercedes earlier this year.

Martin, 42, is an interesting figure, in many ways one of the architects of the model and simulation based race strategy which is commonplace today in F1. Martin's background was in finance. In the 1990s he was studying to move into the City of London and was developing a computer model on risk assessment for the stock market to be used by banks and financial institutions. A keen fan of F1, he realised that it could work for planning race strategy.

He took it to McLaren and Martin Whitmarsh hired him on the spot. Martin stayed with McLaren, woking alongside Pat Fry, until the end of 2005 when he was headhunted by Red Bull.

After the strategy debacle in Abu Dhabi in 2010, which cost Fernando Alonso and Ferrari the world championship, Martin was hired by Pat Fry, who was then technical director at Ferrari, where he has been ever since. With Fry's departure from the team, it appears that Martin's support has diminished. It will be fascinating to see who Ferrari hire.

The leading strategy figure in the sport at present is Mercedes' James Vowles (above), who managed to juggle two cars fighting for wins this season, attempting to give both drivers a chance to win in a highly political and heavily scrutinised environment. Vowles benefitted from many years working under Ross Brawn at Honda, Brawn and Mercedes.

Meanwhile it has been a period of mixed fortunes for Martin and Ferrari; not having a competitive car makes strategy more challenging, but with Alonso they have managed a number of results which have exceeded expectations given the car's performance relative to competitors.

However there have also been some strange decisions this year in a number of races.