Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo has slammed the "hypocrisy" of those who have criticised Fernando Alonso's victory in Sunday's German Grand Prix.
Ferrari have been fined $100,000 for appearing to give Felipe Massa a coded order to allow Alonso through to win and referred to F1's governing body.
But Montezemolo replied: "Enough of the hypocrisy. This has always happened."
"If one races for Ferrari, then the interests of the team come before those of the individual," he added.
The result at Hockenheim put Alonso firmly back in what looks a five-way fight for the drivers' championship, with McLaren pair Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button, and Red Bull duo Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber the others in with a realistic chance of battling for the title.
Alonso is now 34 points behind championship leader Hamilton with eight races remaining, while Massa, who had failed to score a single point in the previous three races, is 38 points adrift of his Spanish team-mate.
The controversial incident occurred when Massa, marking the first anniversary of his near-fatal crash in Hungary, was given a veiled radio message on lap 47 indicating that the Spaniard was the faster of the two drivers and, two laps later, the Brazilian slowed to let Alonso past.
It prompted heavy criticism from outside the Ferrari camp, though, with the likes of Button, Red Bull boss Christian Horner and BBC F1 pundit Eddie Jordan questioning the Italian team's race strategy
Montezemolo remained unrepentant, though, telling the Ferrari website : "The polemics are of no interest to me.
"These things have happened since the days of (Tazio) Nuvolari (a Ferrari driver in the 1930s) and I experienced it myself when I was sporting director, in the days of Niki Lauda.
"Therefore, enough of this hypocrisy, even if I can well believe that some people might well have liked to see our two drivers eliminate one another, but that is definitely not the case for me or indeed for our fans.
"I am very happy for all our fans who finally saw two Ferraris lead from start to finish as they dominated the race.
"The result is down to the efforts of all our people, who never give up.
"Now we have to continue working like this, to improve the car so that is competitive at all the circuits we will encounter.
"Alonso and Massa also did very well, giving their all throughout the weekend."
The next race is at Hungary this weekend.
No comments:
Post a Comment