Marchionne: « Ferrari ignored quality control »
For Ferrari's president, Sergio Marchionne, the team paid the price in the last two races for ignoring quality control, but all hope for the title has not yet disappeared.
In an interview given to Italian television, the president of the FIAT Chrysler group spoke about the recent disappointments experienced by the Ferrari team.
While Sebastian Vettel was leading the championship at the start of the Asian tour, the situation took a turn for the worse after the first-lap crash in Singapore and engine problems in Malaysia and Japan. As a result, Lewis Hamilton came away from this series of three Grand Prix with a 59-point lead in the championship.
The German’s troubles should not overshadow the fact that reliability issues also severely affected Kimi Räikkönen, who couldn’t even start the Malaysian Grand Prix and started further back on the grid in Japan due to engine penalties, admittedly due to an accident in free practice 3.
Although Marchionne expressed some frustration at seeing such an insignificant element as a spark plug have catastrophic consequences, the Italian wants Ferrari to renew its commitment to better control the quality of components: It was a technical nonsense that had an impact on a car that costs millions of euros. It’s a problem that we probably ignored over time because it never mattered that much. before adding: But now, we’ve had at least three occasions where we really saw the devastating impact (it could have) on performance.
This streak of bad luck not only jeopardized the chances of a driver title but also resulted in Mercedes overtaking Ferrari in the constructors’ standings with a 145-point lead, even though Ferrari had 39 more points than the German team before the summer break.
On the other hand, Marchionne is certain that the pace shown by the red cars can put pressure on Mercedes in hopes of getting back into the championship: Without being arrogant, I think it (the pace) is at the same level if not better than Mercedes today. I’m sure that if we hadn’t had problems like in the last three races, we would have had a different discussion.
Finally, the Italian boss concludes his speech on a hopeful note: “The season is not lost, there is still everything to play for. I will not speak of bad luck, I don’t believe in it. The important thing is not to lose the confidence that has allowed us to perform well so far. I am delighted with what the team has done and I am convinced that in the next four races, we will be able to make up the majority of the gap with Mercedes.”
