Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo has blamed himself for re-stoking the fire within Michael Schumacher that prompted the seven-times world champion to defect to Mercedes.
On the day drivers Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa took the wraps off the team’s new car for the forthcoming season, di Montezemolo described Schumacher’s exit from Ferrari as a “misdeed.”
Di Montezemolo remarked: “I like Schumacher, and I’m this misdeed’s author.”
Earlier this week on his official presentation with Mercedes, the 41-year-old Schumacher remarked part of his heart will always be Ferrari red. The Press Association
“Let’s not talk about Schumacher,” Montezemolo told a news conference before being drawn into the differences between glamour team Ferrari and the new Mercedes outfit which bought world champions and former Honda-branded Brawn.
“I have great respect for Mercedes. I have said and I repeat it’s good to see their full involvement in Formula One. But it’s a different involvement to us,” he said in a building on “Piazza Michael Schumacher” in Ferrari’s spiritual home in north Italy. Times of India
“It was me who woke his desire to come back to racing and honestly I never thought I’d see him in a car that wasn’t a Ferrari. A third car could have been useful for Schumacher. I believe had the third car been there, with all respect to Mercedes, Schumacher would have been promoting Ferraris, not Mercedes. He’s a competitor now, an opponent, like many others. I’m not worried about the possibility that he might have taken material from our development.” ESPN
Insisting that he wasn’t ‘worried about the possibility that Schumacher might have taken material from our development’, di Montezemolo added that he had no qualms about not making room for the German in his 2010 squad, having already committed to Massa and Fernando Alonso.
“When Ferrari decided, in 2005, to take Raikkonen, the alternative was Alonso, who now finds himself in a fundamental moment of his life,” he commented, “He’s matured, young and strong - and he has won two world championships, one in 2005 and one in 2006, beating us 100 per cent.
“We don’t have any problem as far as our drivers are concerned. We have Massa, who is back with further enthusiasm, and we have Alonso. Then we have [Giancarlo] Fisichella as the third driver and two very experienced test drivers: Marc Gene and Luca Badoer.” Yahoo! Eurosport
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