Ferrari deny Santander chose Alonso as driver

Comments by Ferrari boss Luca di Montezemolo are making the rounds in which he explains the decision essentially to pursue Fernando Alonso a year ahead of schedule.

The reason? Nothing to do with Santander, everything to do with getting a driver who could work with the engineers to develop the car.

Here’s Luca’s statement, from the Ferrari release:

“We have been watching him since 2007 and Domenicali discussed it with me this summer,” recounted Montezemolo, addressing journalists at the Christmas dinner. “He is an extremely talented driver, quick and good at working with a team, while being totally focussed on winning. I think he is coming to Ferrari at just the right time in his career. We had already reached an agreement for 2011, when both our drivers’ contracts would have expired. Then, we realised that our team needed a driver capable of really getting involved with the engineers, a characteristic that was not part of Kimi’s genetic make-up, even though he is an amazingly talented guy. Then came Felipe’s unexpected accident and, before taking a decision, we needed to know what his prospects were. Once we were certain he was fine, then in light of what was going on at Renault, we decided to try and bring Alonso on board a year ahead of schedule. Let’s make one thing clear, we were very happy with everything Kimi did for Ferrari during his time at Maranello: he won the world championship in his first year and played a vital part in our taking the Constructors’ title in his second year, while in this difficult season he at least managed to secure us one victory.

However, we were aware that something else was needed for the way we operate and therefore, we opted for Alonso. The role of Santander? Certainly, they are happy, but it is not the sponsors that choose the drivers: we have never operated like that and we never will.”

That all fits about into the conventional wisdom that Ferrari has been creating.

I’m going to toss in my two cents, and invite yours. Mine is this: I think Ferrari completely panicked. The team totally flubbed the 2009 regulations and produced an absolutely abysmal car. I suppose this happened for a lot of reasons, but I suspect there was a bunch of hand-wringing about this being a major development done without Michael Schumacher, without Ross Brawn and without Jean Todt.

And that hand-wringing turned into the panic.

As a result, Kimi Raikkonen gets tossed under the WRC bus, Alonso comes in as the savior, Felipe Massa has to be thinking, “Wait, you don’t trust me to develop a car?” and now what connection the team still has with Schumacher is about to be blown out through a Mercedes exhaust.

I’m not sure we should be counting on Ferrari to be back at the top of the grid next year. There are a lot of variables in this scenario that could go wrong.

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