According to Ferrari team boss Stefano Domenicali, the KERS program championed by FIA President Max Mosley was an expensive flop that should never have been introduced to F1. While the KERS helped his team today as they were the only team running the system, he still feels there is little relevance in having the system as it does not lend itself to the road car program as a bi-product of F1. Something F1B has been leveraging since its inception in 2008. Autosport quotes Stefano as saying:
“Yes. It is too simple to say yes, but that is a fact,” Domenicali told reporters at Silverstone. “I think we have to learn from it. One thing is the new technology and the fact that for sure KERS on the one side is the future of the road car side. But we are dealing in an environment that is totally different.
“We are in a racing environment where they are a lot of things, a lot of compromises, that we have to take in order to ensure that this new technology could be beneficial to the performance of the car. At the end of the day, this is what it is all about.
“The reality is that the facts show that KERS in the way that it is now is not ready to be performing in this set of regulations. That is a fact. And, this is something that we need to learn from in the future.
“As we always said, F1 is vital to ensure the technological transfer from the racing division to the road car side, but we need to make sure that this is line with what we have to do to ensure we are winning on the sporting side. So, for the future, before doing certain choices, we have to think carefully because we must not make another mistake.”
When asked how much his team has spent in developing KERS, Domenicali said: “I cannot because it is too heavy for me to say that, to be honest. I know that if you put that amount of money into the development of the car, then you would have been fast like Red Bull today! It was millions of Euros.”
