Marchionne Encouraged by Restructuring but Quit Threat Looms

For a long time, Ferrari has had issues with the rules set for Formula One’s future. In fact, it got to a point where they were even threatening to quit. Now, Ferrari president Sergio Marchionne has admitted that he is “encouraged” by the latest developments in discussions over the future of Formula 1.

On Thursday, he said that he was pleased by a “change in the attitude” from F1 owners Liberty Media.

“The biggest sign is the recognition that engine regulations need to reflect the nature of the sport,” he said.

The Italian was concerned about plans to change the current engines in F1 in favour of a more standard engine.

Liberty Media and the FIA have expressed a desire for simpler, cheaper and noisier engines. They believe that, that solution will make F1 more lucrative for new entrants.

The current turbo hybrid engines have received a lot of flak for being too expensive and complex.

On Thursday, Marchionne said: “We can’t really dumb down engine development just to accommodate new entries, right?”

His remarks were his first public reaction to F1’s future plans ever since Liberty Media’s presentation in Bahrain.

The Ferrari president said: “The stuff that’s on the table now is potentially workable as a system. The economics are not. That’s something we need to go back to Liberty with.”

“I think we now have enough of a basis to try start having meaningful discussions. And hopefully, we’ll get it all resolved by the end of this year one way or the other.”

“The important thing for us… is that we don’t touch the nature of the technical development of the power-trains because that is at the heart of what Ferrari does for a living,”.

“We need to continue to work with Liberty with the commercial rights holders and with the [governing] FIA to try and bring about a sensible equilibrium. If we can’t, as I said before, we’ll just pull out.

“But we’re not there today. We owe the sport a phenomenal effort to try and bring about closure of these items. We’ll try and get that done before the end of this year.”