Maranello, 29 November

At midday today, everyone was in the pavilion behind Ferrari’s Centro Sviluppo Prodotti (Product Development Centre.) All the men and women of the Scuderia had gathered to hear the words of President Luca di Montezemolo, who wanted to address the team at the end of a long and closely contested season. Having to comment on two second places – Fernando Alonso in the Drivers’ championship and the team in the one for Constructors – is never easy, especially when winning is in one’s DNA, a fact underlined by Montezemolo. “You should be proud of what you have done,” he said, “because you managed to be contenders right to the very end, even if we did not have the quickest car. There were at least two cars, the McLaren and the Red Bull, that were better than ours. Therefore having managed to get ahead of at least one of them in the Constructors’ and keeping Fernando in the fight right to the end, was very significant and I wish to thank you for that. We managed it mainly because of our incredible reliability, the work from the pit wall and during the pit stops and in the way we reacted after a very difficult start.”

“However, now is the time to look ahead to next year,” continued Montezemolo. “I want us to start with a car that is immediately capable of fighting for the win and it has to be our first task. In order to achieve that, each one of us must improve in our own roles by at least a millimeter. We must revamp our organization and our working methods to try and be at the same level as the best, right from the first race, which for too many years now we have failed to do.”