Luca di Montezemolo says he expected Ferrari to make a bigger step forward in 2016.<\/p>\n
Towards the end of 2014, Ferrari’s long-time president was stepped down and replaced by Sergio Marchionne, before the new regime got a lot of credit for the performance boost of 2015.<\/p>\n
But the 68-year-old Italian insists: “I know what we made in 2014 to improve.\u00a0 The progress of last year was a product of the work the year before.”<\/p>\n
Ferrari has made yet another step forward for 2016, but Montezemolo says the level of that step has been a surprise.<\/p>\n
“To be honest I expected a bigger step this year from last year with, after five races, not winning even one,” he told The Australian newspaper.\u00a0 “But it is a long way to go.”<\/p>\n
In another interview, with CNN, Montezemolo also responded to those who play down Mercedes’ current level of dominance on the basis that teams like Ferrari also dominated in the past.<\/p>\n
“Ferrari was very strong (previously),” he said, “but Renault was very strong too.\u00a0 McLaren was strong.\u00a0 Williams was strong.<\/p>\n
“Today, between Mercedes and Ferrari there is a gap, and between Ferrari and the other teams there is another gap,” added Montezemolo.\u00a0 “So despite a fantastic job from Mercedes, there is now less potential competition.”<\/p>\n
Finally, amid rumours Ferrari may be in talks with Nico Rosberg, Montezemolo urged the Maranello marque to in fact sign up Australian Daniel Ricciardo.<\/p>\n
“First of all he is a nice guy,” he said.\u00a0 “He is very quick — Sebastian Vettel can tell you how quick he is.\u00a0 He is also half Italian!<\/p>\n
“If I was still with Ferrari, he would be my first choice,” Montezemolo added.<\/p>\n
\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Luca di Montezemolo says he expected Ferrari to make a bigger step forward in 2016. Towards the end of 2014, Ferrari’s long-time president was stepped down and replaced by Sergio Marchionne, before the new regime got a lot of credit for the performance boost of 2015. But the 68-year-old Italian insists: “I know what we …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32598,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[1096,5262,93,5340,148,164,1408],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33549"}],"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=33549"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33550,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33549\/revisions\/33550"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}