Ferrari has slammed the management of F1 over the loss of Toyota, and other manufacturers, to the sport. Describing the departure of major players as “a war waged against the major car manufacturers” the Scuderia are clearly not happy.
Even the arrival of new teams to fill the void left by the likes of Toyota and BMW is not enough to placate the passionate Italians who question the longevity of the new arrivals such as Manor, Lotus, USF1 and Campos Meta by asking “how many of them will really be there on the grid for the first race of next season in Bahrain and how many will still be there at the end of 2010.”
The fiery statement from Ferrari (available in full after the jump), which is not attributed to any staff member, compares Formula One’s management to Agatha Christie’s novel Ten Little Indians, declaring “the guilty party was only uncovered when all the other characters died, one after the other. Do we want to wait for this to happen or do we want to pen a different ending to the book on Formula 1?”
Let’s hope Renault doesn’t pull of F1 too, looks like Ferrari will be apoplectic if that happens!
We want a different ending
Maranello, 4 November 2009 – It could be seen as a parody of “Ten Little Indians,†the detective novel by Agatha Christie, first published in England back in 1939, but the reality is much more serious. Formula 1 continues to lose major players: in the past twelve months, Honda, BMW, Bridgestone and, only this morning, Toyota, have announced they are leaving the sport. In exchange, so to speak, we will now have, Manor, Lotus (at least in name only, as this incarnation has little to do with the team that gave us Colin Chapman, Jim Clark and Ayrton Senna to name but a few,) USF1 and Campos Meta. Can we claim that it’s a case of like for like, just because the numbers sitting around the table are the same? Hardly and we must also wait and see just how many of them will really be there on the grid for the first race of next season in Bahrain and how many will still be there at the end of 2010.
The reality is that this gradual defection from the F1 fold has more to do with a war waged against the major car manufacturers by those who managed Formula 1 over the past few years, than the result of any economic crisis.
In Christie’s work of fiction, the guilty party was only uncovered when all the other characters died, one after the other. Do we want to wait for this to happen or do we want to pen a different ending to the book on Formula 1?