{"id":18946,"date":"2013-08-05T07:28:55","date_gmt":"2013-08-05T11:28:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/?p=18946"},"modified":"2013-08-05T07:28:55","modified_gmt":"2013-08-05T11:28:55","slug":"ferrari-drivers-come-and-go-montezemolo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/formula-1\/ferrari-drivers-come-and-go-montezemolo\/","title":{"rendered":"Ferrari drivers &#8216;come and go&#8217; &#8211; Montezemolo"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Luca di Montezemolo has fired yet another warning at Fernando Alonso, insisting Ferrari has never had trouble filling its race seats.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"ngg-singlepic ngg-right alignright\" style=\"margin: 5px 10px;\" alt=\"Luca-di-Montezemolo-2\" src=\"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/gallery\/f1-2013-rif-images\/f1-2013-persons\/Luca-di-Montezemolo-2.jpg\" width=\"384\" height=\"256\" \/>&#8220;Even if I have lots of problems,&#8221; the Maranello team&#8217;s president told Corriere della Sera, &#8220;finding drivers for the future is not one of them.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Ferrari had already revealed that Montezemolo &#8220;tweaked&#8221; the Spaniard&#8217;s ear after Hungary, when the number 1 driver dared to criticise the Italian team&#8217;s lack of recent competitiveness.<\/p>\n<p>During the same race weekend, Alonso&#8217;s manager held talks with Red Bull team boss Christian Horner.<\/p>\n<p>Montezemolo, however, has Alonso and sponsor Santander under firm contract for the next few years, and thinks the Spaniard is going nowhere.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Fernando Alonso is a great, I have said it before,&#8221; said the Italian.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He has proved it and he will prove it again.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>At the same time, Montezemolo warned that the most important thing is Ferrari, not its drivers.<\/p>\n<p>And he took issue with Alonso&#8217;s claim that he wants &#8220;someone else&#8217;s car&#8221; as a birthday president.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Please,&#8221; said Montezemolo, &#8220;let&#8217;s not forget that last year for a few laps at the very last race, Alonso was virtually world champion, and he was driving a Ferrari, not another car.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This team knows how to be competitive.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Let me make it clear that it&#8217;s Ferrari I&#8217;m interested in,&#8221; Montezemolo continued to tell the Italian newspaper.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Drivers, we&#8217;ve had a lot: some very good, some great, but drivers come and go while Ferrari remains.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The next driver to &#8216;go&#8217; could be Brazilian Felipe Massa, who after eight years may finally have run out of time at Maranello.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Felipe is a quick driver and a great guy,&#8221; said Montezemolo.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But in the past days, we were very clear with him: both he and us need results and points.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;At some point, we will look one another in the eye and decide what to do.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>At the same time, Montezemolo insisted team boss Stefano Domenicali&#8217;s place at Ferrari should not be similarly in doubt.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When one talks about Domenicali, one truth is king,&#8221; he said.\u00a0 &#8220;Under his management we have one constructors&#8217; title and come very close to three drivers&#8217; titles.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Two of those we could easily have won and then people&#8217;s opinion of Domenicali would be very different.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Finally, Montezemolo took an obvious swipe at F1&#8217;s dominant team, Red Bull.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We do not make drinks, and I say that with all the possible respect for those who do.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are not a sponsor,&#8221; the 65-year-old added, &#8220;we design and manufacture machines of the highest level.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #888888;\"><em>\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Luca di Montezemolo has fired yet another warning at Fernando Alonso, insisting Ferrari has never had trouble filling its race seats. &#8220;Even if I have lots of problems,&#8221; the Maranello team&#8217;s president told Corriere della Sera, &#8220;finding drivers for the future is not one of them.&#8221; Ferrari had already revealed that Montezemolo &#8220;tweaked&#8221; the Spaniard&#8217;s &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[5262,130,149,93,5340,148,150],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18946"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18946"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18947,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18946\/revisions\/18947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}