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Former FIA president Max Mosley says he is happy that Ferrari did not win the championship in 2010.
It was Mosley who banned team orders after the Italian team's rigged Austrian Grand Prix result in 2002 and a similar situation occurred at the German Grand Prix this year when Felipe Massa pulled over to allow team-mate Fernando Alonso past.
"It would have given the world another unpleasant discussion about team orders," Mosley told German newspaper Die Welt. "I doubt whether that would have been good for Formula One. So thank god we are instead talking about the strategy mistake of the last race and not whether Ferrari really deserved the title. That is one less problem for Formula One."
Despite his sentiments over the destination of the title, Mosley did praise Ferrari for their fightback in the second half of the season and Sebastian Vettel for winning the drivers' title.
"Ferrari did an excellent job from the middle of the season to the end. They were almost out of the hunt and they managed to bring themselves back.
"Sebastian [Vettel] deserved to win and in every respect is an excellent world champion. He is a likeable, relaxed and natural personality so for formula one it's a win as well."
Source: ESPNF1
Ferrari is reportedly prepared to launch civil action against the FIA if further sanctions are imposed by the World Motor Sport Council next month.
The governing body’s long-time former president Max Mosley said on Sunday that "both cars and both drivers" should lose their points after swapping places at the hand of alleged illegal team orders during July’s German grand prix.
Italy’s authoritative La Gazzetta dello Sport reports that if this happens, Ferrari is prepared to tackle the FIA in a civil court, in much the same way that Flavio Briatore successfully railed against his lifetime motor racing ban.
But for now, the Maranello based team is not commenting on the possible outcome of the September 8 hearing.
"In this sort of situation, the best policy is to respect and to trust in the highest level of the sport’s governing body," said Ferrari.
La Gazzetta dello Sport said Ferrari’s likely defence will be based on the fact that the alleged "team order" was in fact just an explanation of the situation to Massa by his race engineer Rob Smedley.
Ferrari will reportedly also argue that team orders should be permitted, so long as they do not impact the races of rival teams.
"Most teams are calling for the withdrawal of team orders, which I can understand, because it’s in their interests," said Mosley on Sunday.
"But if we are to meet the needs of the public, who are in their millions, watching races all around the world and ultimately funding the sport, then we need to keep the ban," he told Germany’s Welt am Sonntag newspaper.
Source: Nextgen
In the latest salvo in the ongoing war of words between former FIA President Max Mosley and Ferrari, the Englishman sensationally claims that the Scuderia believed it had the power within F1 to 'fix' the governing body's decisions.
FIA President he might no longer be, but Max Mosley's ongoing spat with Ferrari shows no signs of abating just yet, it seems, with the Englishman damningly accusing the famous Scuderia of believing it has the right to be favoured within the sport – and of trying to 'fix' the governing body's decisions.
Mosley, of course, is the man who once so famously and controversially described Ferrari as the most important team in F1, but that reverence has somewhat dissipated of late, with the two parties very publicly crossing swords last year over the budget cap row, as the Prancing Horse scathingly argued that the then FIA President was conducting 'a holy war' against the sport's manufacturers in an effort to recruit entrants who belonged rather in GP2 or even GP3.
Now, on the eve of Ferrari's 800th grand prix around Turkey's demanding Istanbul Park Circuit – a race for which Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso have qualified a disappointing eighth and twelfth respectively [see separate story – click here] – Mosley has sensationally claimed that F1's most famous competitor tried to pressurise the governing body early last year into abusing its own power by outlawing Brawn GP, Toyota and Williams' contentious double-diffuser innovation in order to boost the scarlet machines' chances.
“Luca [di Montezemolo – Ferrari President] does have this silly idea that if it is Ferrari then it is okay,” he told British newspaper the Daily Mail. “When we had all this stuff about the double-diffuser he was on the 'phone every day saying, 'You have got to sort out the Court of Appeal and make sure we win'. He didn't put it as baldly as that, but that is what he said.
“I said, 'Luca, I'm sorry but first of all they wouldn't take any notice and secondly I am not going to do it'. I couldn't. He took that quite personally – he honestly thought I would.”
Another example of Ferrari expecting preferential treatment and even favours as the only team to have competed in every season of the F1 World Championship since its official inception back in 1950, Mosley said, was the 1999 Malaysian Grand Prix barge board episode, when Michael Schumacher and team-mate Eddie Irvine were initially disqualified from the top two positions in Sepang and subsequently re-instated by the FIA Court of Appeal.
“Ferrari won that appeal quite rightly on the technicality,” the 70-year-old explained. “Two years later I was at the Turin Motor Show and I was invited into a little area where Gianni Agnelli [the head of Ferrari's parent company FIAT] came up to me and said, 'Thank you so much for what you did over the barge boards'. He honestly thought it had been fixed.”
Ferrari refused to comment on Mosley's remarks, conceding only that 'it's better to look ahead and not waste time talking about what is – luckily – old and gone', whilst in Istanbul, the man referred to as 'Mad Max' in some corners of the paddock did at least find one supporting voice.
“Whatever you say about Max, the only possibility of an independent Formula 1 team existing is because of what he did,” Williams' Adam Parr told The Times, alluding to Mosley's cost-cutting zeal that was pivotal in enabling the likes of the former multiple world championship-winning Grove-based outfit to survive and successfully weather the current global economic storm.
Source: Crash
Former FIA boss Max Mosley is threatening to open old wounds after claiming Ferrari President Luca di Montezemolo is a "very weak character". Mosley and di Montezemolo's frosty relationship turned nasty last year when Ferrari threatened to quit the sport over the FIA's decision to introduce budget caps. Motor sports governing body eventually changed their decision after long discussions with the Scuderia and other FOTA teams, but that didn't stop Di Montezemolo from referring to the then outgoing FIA president as a "dictator". It appears it's now Mosley's turn to get in the insults and the 70-year-old didn't disappoint in the May edition of F1 Racing's 'You Ask The Questions' section. "Luca is very, very good with people and he's certainly a very personable, pleasant person, but, in my opinion, he's also a very weak character so he's easily led," Mosley said. The former FIA president also believes Ferrari would not be able to be as competitive as some of the other teams if they were forced to use the same budget. "Between January and May in 2008, we had a series of meetings and everyone was agreed on the cost-cap and the methodology - but Ferrari were always against it," he said. "I think it's because they know that if they had the same amount of money to spend as the other teams, they would fail."Source: Planet-F1
