Di Montezemolo says he can ‘fix Ferrari’s problems’
Date published:
December 16 2020
Ex-Ferrari chairman, Luca di Montezemolo, has said he can be the person to “fix” the Scuderia’s problems after their worst season in 40 years.
Ferrari finished P6 in the Constructors’ Championship in a campaign that returned zero race wins and just three podium finishes. Charles Leclerc provided two of those in Austria and at Silverstone respectively, while Sebastian Vettel pinched P3 on the last lap of the Turkish Grand Prix.
That paltry return has led to Ferrari’s worst season since Jody Scheckter and Gilles Villeneuve were in the car for the 1980 season and Di Montezemolo thinks he has the answers to ensure another lowly finish does not happen again.
When George Russell received a phone call at 2am on Monday night from Toto Wolff, the Mercedes Team Principal, nobody would have predicted the events that unfolded over the course of the week. The seven-time world champion, Lewis Hamilton, had just tested positive for COVID-19, and Wolff was looking for a replacement driver for the weekend’s Sakhir Grand Prix.
Having won the 2018 Formula 2 Championship for ART, the Norfolk-born 22-year-old was given one of the two seats at Williams for 2019 and is now wrapping up his second season in Formula 1. However, for the last two seasons, Williams has comfortably been the worst team on the grid, leaving Russell without a single point in his F1 career as he has failed to manage a top ten finish. As a member of the Mercedes driver development program, he had been a test and reserve driver for the team during the 2018 season, but until now he never had the opportunity to race as a Mercedes driver. With the team already securing their seventh c