Max Mosley has fired criticism at Ferrari’s Luca di Montezemolo in this months issue of F1 Racing.
Mosley branded the Ferrari chairman a pleasant but weak character, and said Ferrari wouldn’t be able to compete on a similar budget of it’s rivals.
“Luca is very, very good company 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.
“He allowed himself to get to get into a situation of conflict between Ferrari and the FIA whereas if [Jean] Todt were in charge, it would never have got to that stage.”
According to figures by Formula Money, Ferrari’s 2010 budget is almost £260m, whilst there rivals spend far less. McLaren and Red Bull’s estimated 2010 budget’s are between £134-137m, whilst Mercedes spend is £173m.
Mosley reckons Ferrari wouldn’t be as competitive if their budget was at the same levels as McLaren and Red Bull.
“We had a series of meetings and everyone was agreed on the cost-cap and the methodology – but Ferrari were always against it,” said Mosley. “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.”
Mosley also spoke about the fans feelings toward him, and how their perceptions were based on ‘misinformation’.
“It doesn’t bother me that a lot of fans were hostile, because I believe that hostility was based on misinformation. I mean, a lot of it is just assumption – you read things on blogs that are complete nonsense.”
He added: “You get people saying things like, “Why don’t you just leave the regulations alone? What we want is innovation.” Well yes, of course we all want innovation, but if it’s allowed to go unchecked it puts Formula 1 out of business.”
You can read the full interview in this months F1 Racing magazine.