Arrivabene underpins Ferrari exit threat

The Ferrari team boss underlines his team’s threats to quit. Fiat-Chrysler boss Sergio Marchionne is against changing the regulations too much.

Ferrari team boss Maurizio Arrivabene has underlined the threats of a possible withdrawal of his racing team after the 2020 Formula 1 season.

He could not speak for Fiat-Chrysler boss Sergio Marchionne, but “one should take him seriously”, said Arrivabene on Friday at the Australian Grand Prix.

Marchionne had openly threatened several times in recent months that the oldest and most successful Formula 1 racing team would withdraw from the top class if the regulations changed for the 2021 season to the effect that the engines would become significantly cheaper and the aerodynamics would become less complex.

“If we change the sandbox so much that you don’t recognize it as a sandbox anymore, then I don’t want to play in it anymore,” Marchionne (65) said last winter.

Even Arrivabene, head of four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel, doesn’t think much of levelling the teams to reduce the gap between the factory teams and the private teams: “You can’t say to Cristiano Ronaldo: Stop hitting because Real Madrid is too strong otherwise,” said the 61-year-old in Melbourne.

Headwind received Arrivabene from Red Bull team boss Christian Horner. He complained that the drivers “played too little of a role at the moment” because the highly bred cars set the frame too high.