Ecclestone has to take responsibility - Marchionne
- Published on 15 Dec 2015 09:38
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- By: Rob Veenstra
Sergio Marchionne pulled no punches when asked about an apparent 'war' with Bernie Ecclestone and the FIA. Recently, the F1 supremo as well as Jean Todt questioned Ferrari's historic 'veto'. And the latest exchange is that the Marchionne-led Ferrari is now challenging a "mandate" given to the FIA president and Ecclestone to fix aspects of the sport.
"Jean Todt and Bernie Ecclestone have no right to put our right of veto up for discussion," Marchionne, the Ferrari president, insisted. The main issue at stake is 'power units', with the authorities concerned that carmakers like Ferrari and Mercedes wield too much power at the moment. But Marchionne said: "They wanted these power units. It was (Max) Mosley's idea and he was right -- the future of the auto industry is hybrid."
Having rejected the 'parallel' rules proposal, the manufacturers have now been tasked with coming up with a new, cheaper and more competitive engine formula. But Marchionne said: "It is simply not true that this is not possible with the current engines. We need to find compromises. If formula one becomes a kind of single seater version of Nascar, then Ferrari is not interested. At the same time, I do not think there is anyone at all who wants us to leave grand prix racing," he added.
"I understand the problem of the smaller teams, but this is a problem that FOM has to bear, not Ferrari. Ecclestone will have to take the responsibility to make an engine equivalent to ours available to other teams. It is an investment that I think he should do in the interest of the sport," said Marchionne. (GMM)
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Replies (6)
Login to replyJames Raven
Posts: 2,295
Time for some long term planning with all parties involved gentlemen!
f1dave
Posts: 782
No team in any sport should be allowed to dictate what the rules should be.
Pompey
Posts: 84
That would be like Vampires being in charge of blood donors.
James Raven
Posts: 2,295
Dictate no, but they should be heard.
khasmir
Posts: 893
It's clear some big changes will need to be made to save F1 for the long term. But not sure Bernie and Todt can come up with the right answers.
And tbh, the real long term future is not hybrid but fully electric ;)
calle.itw
Posts: 8,527
I actually dont know that. Electrics are incredibly inefficient, and the batteries are expensive, not nice for the enviroment and are not very longlasting (they need to be replaced about every 5th year). You get better efficiency and energy consumption from a normal car, but the problem is that they today use regular petrol. If Audi is fully truthfull, they've managed to make synthetic petrol in a factory, and this could mean that we'd not use up our oil as fast or even at all. The obvious choice then is to continue using hybrids or normal cars.