Ferrari president gives new warning over performance

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In the round-up: Ferrari president Sergio Marchionne says he won’t tolerate under-performance from anyone at Ferrari.

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Kimi Raikkonen was not impressed with Max Verstappen’s defending at Spa yesterday, but as Patrick points out there’s nothing new under the sun:

To be honest, wasn’t it exactly the same with Schumacher and Hakkinen in 2000?
Patrick (@Paeschli)

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Will Wood
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78 comments on “Ferrari president gives new warning over performance”

  1. Marchionne’s arrogance is partly the reason why Ferrari are not that good at the moment. He needs to stop crying, bring back a good atmosphere into the team, let the people at Ferrari focus and then the results will come through. The pressure won’t help.

    By the way Bernie, the British Grand Prix and other Grands Prix are entirely possible. You just need to stop being a greedy, money-hungry person.

    1. That’s right. Red Bull built up their team over many years to create a championship winning culture. Mercedes carefully built their team since buying Brawn / Honda to create a harmonious championship winning culture. McLaren, despite the setbacks, knew they were making the same arrogant mistakes as Ferrari and decided on the RB/Merc approach of building the team carefully for the long haul. All the new top level appointments have been assigned with this strategy in mind. Boullier recently mentioned building a culture of teamwork, not politics, and that things are running much ‘leaner’ than before (he clarified they are not leaner in finance or resources but in admin and politics).

      The fact that Ferrari is too arrogant to learn this lesson because, despite going in the right direction, they get no immediate results, is going to be to their detriment; having to constantly start from scratch or disrupt the operations with a ‘new’ method all the time, and just when they’re almost there. And I hope they do get it wrong. :)

      1. @selbbin I’m not sure about McLaren having same problems with Ferrari though. I think McLaren problem is they’re bleeding talents and their usual formula of making their own talents is not good enough to replace what was lost. Ron Dennis work culture might not suit everyone too, but as far as politics concerned, I don’t think it’s ever near Ferrari bad.

      2. This… Look at RBR culture.. 4-5 years of continuity.. Then dominance.

        Mercedes 4 years of continuity… Then dominance…

        Ferrari, 4 months of continuity… Then threats that people should leave.

        1. Exactly, also… Ferrari in the late 90’s. The problem – in my opinion at least – is that Marchionne doesn’t understand that F1 is a sport. You can’t just buy everything and expect to win. Innovation and team spirit can’t be “ordered” just by acting like the big boss.

          1. Awesome point… Ferrari 1995-1999 struggling, awesome team in place… Dominance from 2000+. . Team disolved in 2006, struggling ever since 2007 onwards.

    2. It’s not Bernie- it’s CVC.

    3. Marchionne’s an accountant. He shouldn’t be running Ferrari. He can’t run the Ferrari F1 team the way he runs Fiat- results require a different approach and a vision to get results- not constant pressure all the time.

    4. Funny enough, when you actually read the article, Marchionne makes pretty much sense – he mentions that qualifying was ok and that changes made to the structure are slowly coming through so he never mentions about throwing anyone out this time.

      1. Real clickbait title… But still at the end of interview he says those words… Those who cannot perform get out, including himself… Tried and.true mantra…

        I remember not long ago Ron Denis said those words publicly and some people left McLaren..

        When boss starts to drop the.hammer and generalize who should just leave, you know the.team is in trouble.

        You do not see Toto Wolf say those words… And you did not hear him say it in 2013 when Mercedes was about as good as Ferrari is now…

        In high tech high skill industry you cannot bully people in to performing better. Those most skilled can simply pack up snd leave and get a new job at competition in seconds… Once you start bullying them they go…

        Art is in getting people toggether in a team, not kicking them around… Maybe that works in Fiat factories…

        1. @Jureo

          Wolff was still at Williams in 2013…

          1. In January 2013, Wolff left WilliamsF1 to become an executive director of the Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team.

    5. @ultimateuzair

      “Marchionne’s arrogance is partly the reason why Ferrari are not that good at the moment.”
      Any evidence of that?

      “The pressure won’t help.”
      F1 is high pressure environment, pressure belongs there.

      1. ‘F1 is a high pressure environment, pressure belongs there.’
        Any evidence of that?

        If you’re going to push for evidence when arguing against a qualitative observation, you probably shouldn’t turn around and commit the same sin. I guess that’s the problem with believing that you’re ‘right’, huh?

  2. I know what you’re saying with the get out of jail free card but it’s worth considering he was in “jail” through no fault of his own. He lost a lot of points in China 15+, a possible 7 more in Sochi and a possible 10 more in Spa. without the issues he could be nearly 30 points higher and of course taken those from Rosberg making the gap even larger. You can’t really work on “ifs and buts” but today’s good fortune has come on the back of a costly run of misfortune which has still cost Hamilton points.

    1. It must be difficult living with only one eye.

      1. I don’t understand your point. Are you truly saying Hamilton wouldn’t have finished higher than 7th in China had he started from the front ? Are you saying it wouldn’t have been possible for him to challenge for the win in spa and Sochi had his car not had a fault ? Both Hamilton and Rosberg go in to every weekend knowing they have a strong chance to win. I’m saying getting a bit lucky in Spa still comes after massive misfortune and missed points.

        1. No I’m not saying that. You’re the one assuming he’d have won everywhere for these 30 + mythical points.

          Getting incredibly lucky in Spa comes off the back of the massive misfortune of 6 wins in 8 races. Poor lamb.

          1. “he could be” could…. I’m assuming nothing. I’m pointing out he was denied the option to have a fair fight with Rosberg. In those occasions he lost the option to fight for points which has no doubt hurt him this season. How on earth does winning 6 from 8 have anything to do with his poor reliability earlier in the season ? He won those in fair fights and that’s the exact point I’m making…

          2. Ben – don’t bother.

            There really are people that do not realise that despite NR having some freebies and LH some truly debilitating reliability issues over the last three seasons, LH has in general won two or three races to every NR one.

            And thus – will on any given year as we have seen be in front regardless of start position three times more than his team mate.

            Just let the hate flow through them… and don’t bother biting.

    2. ColdFly F1 (@)
      29th August 2016, 8:05

      You can’t really work on “ifs and buts” but ….

  3. *SNAKE ALERT*

    Warning, that British GP article is written by Bernie’s pet journalist. Take it with a pinch of salt.

    /message ends

    1. Thanks for the warning @optimaximal. I was wondering where suddenly the notion that the British GP is in doubt because of a failed deal at Silverstone came from. Now I know that it is just another in a string of attacks from Bernies camp on the British GP (didn’t he try this one a month ago too? Bringing up that Porsche were supposedly blocking it?)

  4. In and amongst the various issues in yesterday’s race, one of the things that gave me the greatest concern (appart from Magnussen’s head rest coming loose mid crash) was the Button and Wehrlein crash. In my view it was a racing incident and a simple misunderstanding…
    But the way Wehrlein submarined under Button and lifted his car was worrying. If he hadn’t been hard on the breaks and relatively low speed (compared to a few yards earlier), I would hate to think what could have happened.

    1. Oh yeah, the other thing that put me on edge was the way Verstappen drove that first lap following the 1st corner damage, running wide left right and centre. Amazed that no one got caught up in that.
      Red Bull were complaining that Max had damage to the floor, which I can only assume was thanks to this driving.
      You can’t win a race on the first lap, but you shure can loose it!

      1. “sure can lose it” FTFY

  5. Re:COTD Nothing new under the sun with Verstappen. His chop on KR was exactly the same as Schumacher did to Hakkinen(made Hakkinen’s brilliant overtake on him the next lap all the sweeter for me)

    That move by MS was universally condemned and deemed unacceptable at the time. The picture of MH taking MS aside after the race and shaking his finger at him is almost as recognizable as the overtake itself

    The difference , and the reason that I think at the moment Verstappen is even worse than Schumacher is that for all his ruthless tactics and disregard of the concept of fair play, Schumacher at least respected (some)authority. He respected Hakkinen for example, so Hakkinen could take him aside and try to talk sense into him. With Verstappen, forget it. The spoiled kid has zero respect for anyone in F1. He thinks he’s the best thing since sliced bread and everyone else is a loser and is out to get him for his unmatched by anyone in the history of F1 brilliance. Such attitude is dangerous and can only be dealt with severe punishment and with it MV’s realization that such tactics will be detrimental to future success. But since no one punishes him he will continue like this until “The Big One” happens

    1. I am starting to wonder if a race suspension might come his way some day soon (similar to Grosjean after that Spa incident).
      If such a thing were to happen, it would be interesting to see how Red Bull deal with it.

    2. I think in the early days Vettel was just as reckless. A few more crashes and lost opportunities and Verstappen will calm down.

      1. Vettel’s never had this attitude though. Neither did Hamilton, Grosjean, or many other “crash kid”s… That’s why they were able to make that adjustment in the end.

    3. @montreal95, what makes Verstappen’s behaviour worse to me is that, in Spa, Verstappen boasted that there was intentional malice in his moves.

      When asked by a Dutch journalist whether he thought that his defending was unfair, he snapped back at him “I don’t care, he ended my race” and chopped across Kimi’s path because he was angry with him, saying that it wasn’t dangerous because “nothing happened”.

      He then went on to say that he would “not just let them past. I’d prefer to run them off the track instead.”. Given that there was a red flag period during the race, and despite the fact that Horner was showing him the pictures of what happened and trying to talk sense into him, Verstappen went into that restart with the intention of driving recklessly and with the intention of running Kimi off the road.

    4. Why are you using Spoilt brat? He is’t Spoilt maybe a brat but spoiled no he is’t.

      1. I think there has been quite a few of these incidents with Verstappwn but no one seems to say or do anything. The team should’ve dealing with this in the first instance but Horner more or less encouraged it. Weak management. The same rules do not seem to be applied to Verstappen as other people. They are all too busy falling over themselves to praise him because they see him as bringing something exciting to the F1 party.

        1. Should be dealing!

      2. Right?

        Love to meet your kids!

        Spoiled? Why? Because he is out of control and getting away with it…

    5. Schumacher at least respected (some)authority. He respected Hakkinen for example, so Hakkinen could take him aside and try to talk sense into him.

      In what way did Hakkinen represent any sort of authority to Schumacher? Shumacher was the clear leader of that generation of drivers before Hakkinen even won his first race. It’s like suggesting Max would respect the authority of someone like Kvyat.

      1. Hakkinen was the rival Schumacher respected the most.

      2. Lol… Kvyat aint no Hakkinen…

        Also Schumacher exact words… “only driver I ever feared was Hakkinen.”

        I guess that shows some respect. For a few years.Hakkinen was the only guy able to hold a candle to Schumacher…

        1. Agree, Hakkinen was a great driver and sportsman, but I think it was more the 1998 and 1999 McLarens that put MSchumacher to “shame”. I was a MSchumacher fan back in the day and I remember getting tired of so many Qualies finished with 1-2 for McLaren. I mean, even a tier2 driver like Coulthard could beat MSchumacher most times… that good were those McLarens. In 2000, when Ferrari caught McLaren in performance, MSchumacher beat Hakkinen without much problem. No matter what MSchumacher said about Hakkinen… I never seen Hakkinen as a true opponent to MS.

    6. A race ban would teach Verstappen how to drive and would also teach him to maybe show some respect for other drivers. It worked for Romain Grosjean (sort of), and it should be applied to Verstappen for driving like a fool and being a spoilt brat in the post race interviews.

      1. The difference between Verstappen and Grosjean (and to the even more extreme Maldonado – good riddance) is that Verstappen has a combination of unique talents in both car control, speed, courage and mental toughness. He will stand his ground and not buckle even if he might be wrong. He isn’t afraid of anyone, neither drivers, nor stewards, nor Christian Horner.
        He still needs to mature both mentally and technically, but as almost all of the great names in this sport he starts out with testing the limits of the box, testing the rules, testing the competition, testing the authorities, testing the audience and by condemning him too fast, You failed, not Verstappen.
        He will become the next great champion of this sport, while You will have a hard time working Your arguments back into liking this young racer.
        Verstappen is truly inspirational in the fact that he demonstrates what disruption means, and how You should have a vision, believe in it, stand Your ground and don’t buckle even if You have failed, made mistakes and lots of people hate You. Come back, keep pushing, do it right and succeed. Same with Senna, Schumacher, Alonso etc. Use this inspiration in Your life and at work and You will succeed!

        1. Hear hear. Nothing illegal happened. If ‘people’ want changes, then alter the rules. But be careful what you wish for as boredom will enter..

  6. German GP: Rosberg overtakes Max by running him off the road, however he makes the corner and there is no contact. Stewards decide to penalise Rosberg.

    Belgian GP: Max overtakes Kimi by running him off the road, making contact with his car and doesn’t make the corner. Stewards decide this is fine.

    Can some explain this to me, where is the consistency? I’m not saying Rosberg is 100% in the right but how is what he did perceived as deserving of a penalty but bundling someone else and yourself off the circuit ok?

    1. Max actually attempted to make the corner on a normal racing line which caused his car to gradually move towards the outside like normal & push kimi off

      Rosberg purposely avoided the apex & kept his wheels straight to push max off the road

      1. Verstappen purposely avoided the apex to push Kimi off the track, who was ahead when this happened. Since Verstappen cut the corner when he did this, he should have given Kimi the position back. Same applies when he pushed Perez off. Rosberg was penalised and rightly so for his dirty driving, but Verstappen should have also been penalised for doing the same thing. Rosberg still made the corner despite missing the apex, but Verstappen cut the corner. @s2g-unit

        1. I am surprised how little people know the actual rules… Read them please..

      2. You are kidding, right?

        1. Why would I be kidding? It’s pretty clear cut that if Rosberg does a move like this but gets a penalty but Verstappen doesn’t even though he also cut the corner to keep the position, then there is something wrong.

        2. Apologies, I thought you were replying to me!

    2. I don’t think there was anything wrong with what Verstappen did (he had, and attempted to take, the proper racing line), but Raikkonen should have been allowed to keep the position.

      1. Duncan Idaho (@)
        29th August 2016, 4:17

        That move’s been acceptable practice since it was invented in world war II. Nice of Verstappen to pay homage to the divine pilots that took the practice to its logical extreme. Even nicer to allocate blame, where it was due, to uninspired people driving normally.

      2. Exactly. Verstappen didn’t purposely run him off, he made a mistake and couldn’t make the corner himself. For this reason Kimi should have been able to keep the position, they both went off.

    3. I guess it’s about who the stewards are (especially the ex driver). IMO that penalty for Rosberg was not entirely warranted and after this race it nicely shows the inconsistence in FIA rule keeping @davef1.

  7. For some reason, Marchionne doesn’t strike me as the sort of chap who’d admit he was doing anything other than a magnificent job…

  8. Then I’m surprised why Marchionne is still talking. LdM was achieving the same results anyway, so whats all the noise about.

  9. Good to see Magnussen is OK after the accident. Aside from all the halo/canopy discussion, it truly is a testament to the safety of modern F1 cars and driver fitness that its possible to walk away from a full speed accident at the top of eau rouge.

    Also well done to his Dad, who put in a stellar drive to win the GTLM class in the IMSA race at VIR

  10. Frankly I think the “big boss” that Ferrari always has is nothing but a handicap. They are always trying to be Enzo 2.0 and it’s not helpful.

  11. it’s clear Ferrari are losing ground to RBR with respect to their power train. But I don’t think you can fault the drivers terribly much.

  12. Shouldn’t broken Power Units and gearboxes be a team problem rather than a Driver problem, unless of course the Driver makes an error and destroys the components.

    Therefore I propose that the teams should take negative championship points for extra engines and gearboxes.

    If the failure happens in qualifying or the race the Driver has already been punished.

    1. @w-k unfortunately, the driver is also part of the team, so by penalising the driver, you are penalising the team in some fashion and vice-versa.

    2. @w-k This doesn’t work because it completely defeats the purpose of the exercise – which is to limit the ability of the big teams to be spend their way to success. Why should one driver get the benefit of extra new engines without penalty just because their team can afford the extra cost/points.

      The current system penalizes the driver and team for the benefit of extra new engines which both benefit from. The only fault I can see is the loophole which Mercedes used to get several new power units in a single weekend. I think this loophole could be easily closed by stating that once you take a new engine above the limit of five you have to keep using it until a seventh is needed (so units 1-5 become unusable). As soon as the seventh engine is taken the sixth becomes off limits and so on so that only one PU (and components) can be in-use at any time. This would reduce the effect of the spending power of manufacturers and ability to tactically take new engines at specific tracks/circumstances.

      1. That’s an interesting concept, although it should be noted that the “engines” aren’t counted as single units – the different components that make up the complete Power Unit are counted separately. So it might be hard to police – unless of course you also dictate that the PU can only be changed as a whole (which would help immensely with keeping track of which driver has what parts available).

        Anyway, this loophole only came about because there was so much complaining about the grid penalties being carried over to the next race, so it was decided that once you’ve gone to the back, that’s it. And then – predictably – someone decided to take advantage of that rule :) How about this for an idea? If you take on PU components above the allocation, you can do that once per weekend under the current rules (once the penalties have put you last on the grid, no more penalties are served for that change). But if you take another of that same component during the same weekend, the grid penalty for that change is served at the next race. And yes, if you take a third of that same component, that penalty is shifted yet another race forward. That would stop people stockpiling engines, while still allowing for a second change, if someone is unlucky enough to blow the fresh new engine they installed during the weekend. It would cost you to do so, but you will at least be able to race.

    3. So we need 20 W07s then? Reliability is a part of car perfomance, just like downforce.

  13. Looking at Spa result, I think if Ferrari can manage to have two cars running without any damage in the position they started, they could have a dream result.

    The engine is the trump card here and Ferrari should go for an ‘win or bust’ approach. After all, they aren’t in either of the championship races.

    1. Is the dream result a 2-3 finish for Ferrari now?

  14. I am getting the impression that Max should be learning these lessons about sensible racing in the lower categories. He is undeniably very talented, but F1 is for grown-ups and I think he got thrown in too early for his own good and for the good of his fellow-drivers. It’s almost as if he is driving in a video game (where such lunges and driving someone off the track indeed happen without real harm). And let’s not forget: at his age, his brain is still developing & maturing and acting responsibly is usually one of the things still being mastered at that stage. Not to be age-ist, just pointing out medical facts.

  15. ColdFly F1 (@)
    29th August 2016, 8:18

    I know this is not a popular view here, but I actually admired Verstappen’s defending against Kimi on Kemmel straight.
    He was calm enough to wait until Kimi made his move, and then with the quickest of reactions closed that gap.
    Kimi is showing that he’s getting old (oops another unpopular view); any F1 driver knows by now that the only way to overtake Verstappen is by making a dummy move first and overtake him on the other side; Kemmel is wide and long enough to do that.

    1. This is an correct view also the other drivers are just how do you call it? used to this kind of racing so something different is wrong…

    2. I’d totally agree in karting and would do the same moves in a heartbeat but F1’s a different game. Making a defensive move is still ok but he’s making a move to cover one line then when the car behind makes a move to the other he’s flashing across that too which is dangerous with the speed delta. We saw I think at the previous race that even with the dummy and switchback Max was moving to cover every move costing kimi part of his front wing so it’s consistent, I wonder if the other drivers will just play him at the same games if the stewards aren’t interested in penalising Max.

    3. Cold fly – go do some long circuit gearbox racing and see why such moves have long since been seen as absolutely grounds for license bans.

      The issue is simple – he missed the classes that teach you that this stunt ends your race and sometimes your year.

      In long circuit kart racing at Brands Hatch in the late 90s it ended two peoples lives.

      But yep – keep applauding.

  16. In 2000, Schumacher moved first, decisively and predictably. Yesterday, Verstappen simply cut across after Raikkonen was clearly going for the inside. Schumacher also allowed a car’s width (barely – http://imgur.com/E3MNmni), while Verstappen moved all the way to the right.
    Besides, Schumacher’s move was berated then as well.

  17. I’d sooner see the British GP cancelled than end up being subsidised with public money because of the greed of the people in charge. If the people in charge of F1 want to stick their fingers up at the fans of the best attended race on the calendar, at the home of motorsport then they can go to hell.

    The race is already too expensive as far as I’m concerned, and that’s before I consider contending with the traffic in and out of Silverstone.

  18. Regarding COTD, The difference between what Schumacher did at Spa in 2000 & what Max Verstappen did yesterday is that things have changed since then in terms of not only the regulations but also agreements & understandings between the drivers.

    Back in the early 2000’s there were no penalty’s for that sort of driving standards, There were no penalty’s for things like blocking or avoidable contact & thats why you saw things like Schumacher (And others) getting away with things that would almost certainly result in a penalty today.
    Coming back to today, There are rules & agreements regarding how you race with other cars & Max has been ignoring a lot of those agreements which is why he’s been getting so much criticism from other drivers.

    Looking at yesterday one of the things that Max did was make a defensive move in response to Kimi which is something that the drivers agree not to do just like back in Hungary he was moving around in the braking zones which is again something the drivers agreed not to do because these are the sorts of things that can lead to big accidents as there the things that are most likely to catch out a driver behind who isn’t expecting you to do it.

    And as I said after Hungary the reason you see the longer term, more experienced drivers like Button, Alonso & Kimi be most vocal in there criticism is that they were around when many of these things were been pushed for among the drivers back when driving standards were really becoming something it was felt needed to be policed (Mainly because of some of what Schumacher was doing at the time with his defensive driving).

    1. T last – someone that sees the issues.

      This is not the early 90s

    2. YEah, Schumacher taking that kind of driving to (and over) the limit – weaving back and forth, pushing, not leaving room etc, was a large part of the forming of many of those rules and it played a large role in the consensus between drivers over how to behave on track too.

  19. WilliamB (@william-brierty)
    29th August 2016, 18:34

    This is simply the wrong attitude from Marchionne; he is beginning to look ridiculous. His approach to F1 reminds me of Marco Mattiacci’s ignorance of the Grand Prix bubble. How has every single episode of F1 dominance come about? Polemic shouting? Threats? Pressure? No. Investment, development, encouragement and patience is the only magic formula there is. Granted, Ferrari has lost momentum versus 2015, but has an excellent opportunity to regain it if the Scuderia can properly apply itself to the challenges of 2017. No shouting required.

    It’s like Marchionne has watched the bit in the Senna movie where Ron Dennis is boasting about his ability to reduce racing drivers to tears, and thinks that is the correct way to manage a Grand Prix team…

    1. @william-brierty, in the case of Mattiacci, the choice of using somebody who was outside of the world of motorsport was thought to have been a deliberate ploy by Marchionne. With Marchionne wanting to get Alonso out of the team so he could open up that seat for Vettel, Mattiacci seems to have been chosen to intentionally provoke a conflict with Alonso and to antagonise him until he left (given it meant they didn’t have to pay him the remainder of his salary for breach of contract).

    2. Actually i liked this Mattiacci, he had short stint but could be the man for the job.

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