Montezemolo: An amazing year all the same

The Finali Mondiali has always been a time to take a first look back at Ferrari’s racing season and that was again the case at Mugello this weekend. President Luca di Montezemolo, Scuderia team principal Stefano Domenicali and the head of Corse Clienti Antonello Coletta were on hand to meet the press covering the event to review the year, even if there are still two Formula 1 Grands Prix to go, as well as the decisive round of the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup on the GT front.

Montezemolo was naturally enough centre stage. “It’s been an amazing year,” he began, “when it comes to the Challenge races and the GT series, both in terms of the number of competitors and the number of wins, like the one that went to the Bruni-Fisichella duo in the Le Mans Series. However, it’s been a difficult year on the Formula 1 front, where maybe we paid for our great fightback in 2010, but above all, we did not have the car that I, the team and all our fans wanted. Nevertheless, we can still delight in our Silverstone result, winning with Fernando Alonso, sixty years on from when, at the same circuit, Froilan Gonzalez took our first ever victory at the highest level of motorsport. That is cause for satisfaction. We can also take pride in the fact that, from 1997 to the present day, with very few exceptions, Ferrari has been a championship contender, either winning or fighting for the title to the very last round, in a period of time during which our main rivals, be it the Williams era, then McLaren, Renault and now Red Bull, have always changed."