Max Mosley readies, fires and aims at Ferrari boss Luca di Montezemolo and all of Maranello in an interview coming out today in F1 Racing magazine.
The summary is at Autosport; really, the post is a grand tease for the magazine, but can you blame them for wanting to build interest? Check out what we get:
On Luca:
“Luca is very, very good with people and he’s certainly a very personable, pleasant person, but, in my opinion, he’s also a very weak character so he’s easily led.”
On whether his FIA ever favored Ferrari:
“We never did favour Ferrari, although there was this perception that we did. You could go to Ferrari and they would be completely honest and open with you; most of the other teams wouldn’t do that.”
On the FIA’s mishandling of the Malaysian GP in 1999, which really turns into Max announcing that Ferrari had cheated in regards to its barge boards (but got away with it):
“They were legal if they were at a slight angle to the chassis and illegal if they were vertical,” Mosley said. “I think that they were probably vertical, but we took them off to look at them, and then Ferrari [said], ‘No, they were at a slight angle’, and they got off on that basis.
“We should have impounded the entire car, but you live and learn and we would never make that mistake again.
On the proposed cost cap:
“Between January and May in 2008, we had a series of meetings and everyone was agreed on the cost-cap and the methodology – but Ferrari were always against it. I think it’s because they know that if they had the same amount of money to spend as the other teams, they would fail.”
And, finally, on how all of us fans are stupid and don’t understand what he was trying to do and how he truly is our knight in shiny armor:
“If the fans really understood the issues, I don’t think they would be against me, because everything I’ve ever done has always been done with a view to keeping Formula 1 going and stopping it collapsing. It’s a much more fragile structure than people realise.”
We can only imagine what else the full magazine interview will include; there should be two, maybe three more highlights, if Autosport follows time-honored journalistic practices when it comes to teases like this. The post does tease he’ll talk about “his relationship with Ron.” Maybe something on Flavio? Jean Todt? There’s zero mention of Spankgate. Or Bernie.
For now, we can discuss what we do have. I suppose we all will hone in on two points: whether anyone believes the FIA didn’t have a “Red Rule” and whether he might be right that F1 is “much more fragile” than we know. The Luca comments strike me as just 100% mean-spirited.
