COOPER: Ferrari Celebrates, Looks Ahead

Formula 1

COOPER: Ferrari Celebrates, Looks Ahead

Father Christmases were handing out presents who looked suspiciously like Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa...

Adam Cooper | http://www.speedtv.com | Posted December 18, 2011 Balen (BEL)

Fernando Alonso, Ferrari F10, 1st position, and Felipe Massa, Ferrari F10, 3rd position, spray the Champagne on the podium at the Autodromo Nazionale di Monza, Monza, Italy, September 2010. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

This has been a weekend of celebration at Maranello – not of course of any great successes achieved by Ferrari in 2011, but of Christmas.

On Saturday the team held its traditional staff party, and apparently over 1000 people were present. I don’t know what that says about the Resource Restriction Agreement, but to be fair we’re told that the total also included key suppliers! On Sunday families of staff were invited along, and there were Father Christmases handing out presents who looked suspiciously like Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa.

I don’t know what the kids were given, but you can be sure that both drivers will have one wish for 2012 – that the team provides them with a decent car, one that allows them to take the fight to Red Bull and McLaren from the start of the season.

Alonso will be in his third year at Ferrari, and possibly to his own surprise, he has yet to win a World Championship – something that the now much maligned Kimi Raikkonen managed in his first year back in 2007, at the expense of Fernando and his then McLaren team mate Lewis Hamilton.

Fernando nearly did it in 2010, losing out by the tiniest of margins after a strategic error in the Abu Dhabi finale saw him stuck behind Vitaly Petrov. That led to a lot of soul searching, and the team changed the way it went racing. But this year Ferrari was way off, because the car simply wasn’t good enough. Alonso managed to secure one win at Silverstone – on the weekend that exhaust blowing was restricted by the FIA – but elsewhere, he was rarely even within a sniff of victory.

And yet for many people he was one of the drivers of the season. He never gave up, and despite demonstrating that he had the third best car by qualifying fifth time after time, he managed to score a remarkable 10 podiums. In contrast, Massa never even bettered fifth place.

In his Christmas speech yesterday, Montezemolo made his feelings clear.

“Fernando has had an amazing season, even though he did not have a competitive car,” said the company president. “And he made us all happy at Silverstone, with an emblematic victory, given it came at the same circuit and in the same month in which, sixty years ago, Ferrari took its first ever Formula 1 win.

“What I like about our drivers is their ability to work with the team. I knew that about Felipe and it was a pleasant surprise to find out the same applied to Fernando. I don’t like drivers who turn up at the track with their briefcase and do not share in the daily life of the team – they are not Ferrari people.”

Fernando Alonso (Left) and teammate Felipe Massa (Right). (Photo: LAT Photographic)

It’s no great surprise that Alonso has so successfully integrated himself with the team. Indeed, I always thought he should have gone to Italy for 2007 instead of Raikkonen, although when I suggested that at the time of Kimi’s announcement, Jean Todt and Ross Brawn said that the Spaniard hadn’t even been on their radar. Instead Ron Dennis pounced.

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Adam Cooper

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