Luca di Montezemolo has received the prestigious Marca Leyenda award. Here he is handed the honour by Marca director Edoardo Inda.

Luca di Montezemolo has received the prestigious Marca Leyenda award, that the Spanish daily sports newspaper presents to leading athletes and personalities from the world of sport, from Marca director Edoardo Inda during a ceremony that took place in Madrid.

Montezemolo becomes the 44th laureate to receive the award (a bronze sculpture by José Maria Onieva) which has been presented since 1997 to sportsmen like Usain Bolt and the Italians Alberto Tomba (1998) and Valentino Rossi (2008). Former Ferrari driver Michael Schumacher collected the award in 2001.

Before the prize giving the Ferrari President replied to some of the numerous questions the readers of the famous Spanish sports daily newspaper Marca had sent to the paper's website over the last days. The Ferrari President answered all the questions that were offered about Scuderia Ferrari: “the most important thing at the moment is to be sure that Felipe Massa will come back to racing and that he will be in a Ferrari single-seater in the next year. Felipe,” Montezemolo continued, “merits it as a driver and as a member of the team. As far as the other decisions are concerned, we'll see.” He also wanted to underline the “Kimi Raikkonen is doing very well. He's a great driver and very correct and we won't forget that he was the first driver winning the Championship with Ferrari in his first year.”

To the question if Michael Schumacher will race again he said “I hope so. It depends how his health is.” But there were also questions from outside of the world of motorsport for Luca di Montezemolo, such as what Ferrari does for the environment. “We're planning cars which consume less and less with lower CO2 emissions. I remind you that the 458 Italia, presented these days at the IAA in Frankfurt, as far as CO2 emissions are concerned, is the best car in its category.”

The prize giving ceremony was held at the spectacular Torre Espacio in northern Madrid. At the end of the evening Montezemolo wanted to present a prize to Marca's director and so he handed over a Ferrari overall signed by Massa, Raikkonen, Fisichella and Stefano Domenicali.