Ferrari has claimed that a confrontational approach by those running Formula 1, rather than the economic recession, is the main cause of the recent exodus of manufacturer teams.
Toyota became the third carmaker to quit F1 in the space of a year on Wednesday – after Honda and BMW – explaining that competing in the sport no longer made business sense for it in “the current severe economic realities”.
However, Ferrari believes those running F1 bear a heavy responsibility for the departure of some of its biggest names – alluding to the conflict with the FIA that prompted the teams to threaten a breakaway series until a compromise over cost-cutting was eventually reached in the summer.
“In reality the steady trickle of desertion is more the result of a war against the big car manufacturers by those who managed the sport, than the effects of the economic [downturn] that affected Formula 1 over the last years,” Ferrari said in an item published on its website.
The article echoed a previous broadside about the calibre of the independent teams set to join the F1 fray next year by suggesting they were poor substitutes for the departing manufacturers.
It also questioned whether the three new teams that have so far been accepted will actually materialise or see out the 2010 campaign.
“Formula 1 continues losing important parts: Over the last 12 months Honda, BMW, Bridgestone and this morning Toyota announced their retirements,” it said.
“In exchange, if one could call it that, Manor, Lotus (because of the team of Colin Chapman, Jim Clark and Ayrton Senna, to name a few – there is hardly more than the name), USF1 and Campos Meta arrived.
“You might say ‘same-same’, because it is enough if there are participants.
“But that’s not entirely true and then we’ve got to see if next year we’ll be really as many in Bahrain for the first starting grid of the 2010 season and how many will make it to the end of the season.”
The article drew a colourful analogy between the current situation in F1 and a best-selling Agatha Christie mystery in which there are ultimately no characters left – apparently implying that the departure of further teams would be inevitable without a change in F1’s direction.
“It seems like a parody of Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians, published in England for the first time in the year 1939, but the reality is much more serious,” it said.
“In Christie’s detective novel the guilty person is only discovered when everybody else is dead, one after the other.
“Do we want to wait until this happens or should we write Formula 1’s book with a different closing chapter?”