15.01.2010 DOMENICALI CONFIDENT ABOUT FUTURE CHANGES IN F1

STEFANO DOMENCALI

Formula 1 is going through a phase of great structural changes. There are new challenges ahead and Ferrari is laying the foundation to tackle them in the best possible way, as Stefano Domenicali underlined during a press conference in Madonna di Campiglio. "First of all I would like to remember that in 2009 managing the Formula 1 engagement wasn’t a cost in the company’s balance sheet,” the Scuderia’s Team Principal said. "We’re here in Madonna di Campiglio for the 20th edition of the event organised by our title sponsor Philip Morris, whom we want to thank for the fundamental support, they have given us over so many years. We’ve got historical partners such as Shell, crucial not only from a technical point of view, but also under a commercial aspect, and new ones such as Banco Santander, which for the first time this year will appear on our cars and our overalls. It is thanks to them and other partners and our efficiency in terms of team management that we gained the result I told you about before.

"Now we have to deal with a new set of rules, reducing the economical resources available, completely changing what we’re referring to: this is a great challenge, because at the same time we have to keep the competitive level at our standard. I think that we’ve got everything set up to make it happen.”

Domenicali also spoke about Formula 1’s future from a technical point of view: "We have to make this sport ‘greener’, because that’s the direction the automotive industry is heading. Therefore we have to study the rules regarding the rear axle, which will be applied as of 2013: accelerating here is useless, because we might risk taking the wrong decisions. As far as the KERS is concerned all the teams decided that it won’t be used in 2010, but we’re working on an energy recovery system with decisively lower costs than those we had last year for the year 2011. We as Ferrari really believed in this solution and we would like to see it again in our single-seaters, because we think that it will influence road car production in a positive way: naturally it has to be reintroduced with rules equal for all the teams.”
 

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