Montezemolo channels Enzo to say it’s all about winning
July 28, 2010 by SJ Skid
Filed under People & Events
The Ferrari folks have their messaging down tight this week. Here’s Luca di Montezemolo, as part of a post at Ferrari’s official site:
“With all the comments made recently, most of them misguided, there is only clear and concrete truth: Ferrari is strong and winning again. That is what I, everyone in the company and our fans wanted.”
Could Mr. Enzo Ferrari have said it better, himself?
That’s actually the beginning of a post that I just finished reading and just finished laughing about. Maybe it’s me, but this stuff is priceless:
Everyone at Ferrari was naturally delighted with the fantastic one-two finish in the German Grand Prix last Sunday, which proved assertions that the car had improved considerably over the past few races, even if the results had been lacking. While the quickest car outright in qualifying was still a blue Red Bull, the next two cars on the grid were both red and, in race conditions, it seemed that the Cavallino was quicker than the Bull. It certainly eased the task of packing up the cars and equipment as quickly as possible after the race, as the team transporters headed immediately for Hungary.
OK, so I’m going to wager there were at least two people at Ferrari who weren’t exactly delighted by the race results.
Then there’s the whole waxing poetic “Cavallino was quicker than the Bull” part. I don’t think you would believe us if we made that up. But there it is. In virtual black and white.
Finally, I have this imagine of the team packing its stuff up as fast as possible in a latter-day version of getting the heck out of Dodge. “Quick, Stefano, throw that wing in here and let’s get going before Jean figures out what we did!”
Great stuff. It isn’t quite packaged as the “Horse Whisperer” blog that was so 100% awesome, but it’s close.
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But his team was winning! Our objection is that he does not have the right to picjk the winner before the race even starts. In any other sport his team would have been demoted. But then of course the companies making the product called F1 racing are not teams. They are companies that do not field 11 players, like the company Manchester United does, who have to work as a team against another team with the aim of scoring more goals, but field two cars and two competing drivers whose only concern regarding the good of the team is one of them, the best, to win the race fair and square and take care not to take each other out. Team orders=company orders? Not by a long shot. I think there is a huge difference between the two.
..and the Ferrari fans will lap it up, day after day after day.
I think one of the things I love most about F1 is the completely amoral Machiavellian world it creates for itself – only one thing matters and that’s the winning – so who ever has got away with one this week sees howls of righteous indignation for all the others who behind closed doors are cursing that they didn’t think of doing that or didn’t get into a position to do it (every time I see a moralistic statement from a team I laugh – if they didn’t do it it’s because they weren’t smart enough to!).
But it also drags exceptional things from people as well – in that way it is a little distillation of life itself – not just competition (if you just wanted the best competition, there are any number of sports, F1 included), but all off life, survival. Do you catch my drift (or am I off with the fairies again…)