Montezemolo: Vital to make a good start in 2011

Ferrari President Luca di Montezemolo was the guest of honour today at the twenty first edition of “Wrooom.” He arrived at the Fiat Chalet this afternoon, just before one, providing his first opportunity of 2011 to meet the Scuderia Ferrari drivers, starting with Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa, with whom he had a private conversation, before meeting the media who have been taking part in the event.

“We are going through amazing times as a company and shortly we will be declaring our 2010 results, which are extremely positive,” revealed Montezemolo. “In fact today, our Managing Director, Amedeo Felisa is in Shanghai where, at a spectacular event, we celebrated our 999th Ferrari sale in China. In North America, we have beaten our previous sales record and all the signs point to 2011 going very well indeed.”

Naturally, Formula 1 was the main dish of the day in the meeting Luca di Montezemolo had with journalists in the Fiat Chalet. “Believe me, I often still wake up at night thinking of the race in Abu Dhabi, so it goes without saying that we must absolutely look to the future,” said the Ferrari President. “We are working very hard on the new car. As Domenicali and I told you back in December, there has been no revolution within our organisation, just a few adjustments aimed at improving the way the team is run.”

Montezemolo immediately set out an objective: “We must make a good start, both in terms of reliability and, above all, on the performance front. Last year, we lost the championship in a first half that found us failing to live up to our expectations. I think this will be a very interesting championship: there are a few question marks regarding the new rules and therefore we will have to wait and see how competitive are our rivals.”

To those who brought up Alonso’s prediction that Schumacher could potentially be his biggest rival, Montezemolo had this to say: “I think we must wait for the first few races, but these tales are good for the media and the fans. Alonso says Michael, Felipe says Hamilton, maybe Michael will favour Vettel, so there’s nothing new under the sun! But, Michael is still close to my heart and part of Ferrari’s history and I have no doubt he is still a fantastic driver. His team-mate out-paced him last year? So, sure, there’s also Rosberg. In fact, I expect three teams, maybe even four to be fighting it out at the top in 2011. Of the new generation of drivers, he is in there as indeed is Vettel. But the hierarchy will be established on the stopwatch. Having said that, one problem we don’t have is on the driver front: I know who is the best in the world, but I’m not saying !"