Ferrari President Luca di Montezemolo has renewed his attack on the new teams that have arrived in F1 this year, insisting that the sport needs 'competitive teams' rather than 'too many small teams', arguing a surplus of the latter 'means too many compromises'.
Pre-season, the
Scuderia launched an extraordinary scathing tirade against Lotus, Virgin, Hispania (HRT), the unsuccessful Stefan GP effort and the farcical and ultimately abortive USF1 bid on its website, describing Stefan as 'vultures picking the bones of
Toyota on its death-bed' and USF1 as 'missing persons'. Four months on, it appears that stance has barely mellowed.
“There is a need to have competitive teams,” di Montezemolo told
Autocar, deriding the F1 2010 newcomers as 'a joke'. “F1 is like soccer – it needs heroes and it needs big teams. You cannot equalise everything. We need to avoid having too many small teams, because it means too many compromises.”
An advocate of sweeping changes to the sport's make-up, the Italian re-iterated his desire to see teams allowed to run third cars – 'giving this car to a good young driver or Valentino Rossi would be better than a team being four seconds behind,' he asserted – whilst calling for the return of in-season testing, outlawed under the radical new cost-cutting regulations, and shorter races to spice up the show.
“Do we need to race at two in the afternoon when everyone is at the sea?” he mused. “Could we have two races per meeting? Do races need to last so long? F1 is not an endurance race. We need races to be short and tough – and F1 is the only sport in the world where there is no training.”
When asked if
Ferrari would consider a return to endurance racing at a serious level, however, di Montezemolo insisted to try to compete at the pinnacle of both single-seater and sportscar competition would likely stretch resources just
too thin.
“I'm very impressed with Le Mans but we can't do both because of money and know-how and it's only one race," the 62-year-old explained. “Instead, if we can put together an endurance series – either twelve or 24-hours – with other car makers and race around the world, that would be good.”