Ferrari boss says only title will do

Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo has declared that the Italian team has to get back to world title-winning ways in 2011.

The Maranello squad’s long-time figurehead outlined the clear goal at the launch of the team’s new F150 on Friday, with the team saying it has taken a more innovative design approach to its latest creation.

Having missed out on its first drivers’ title in three years in agonising fashion in the final race of the 2010 campaign following a major pit-wall error, di Montezemolo says simply challenging for this year’s championship will not be enough.

“When you look at this car I remember when I was a young assistant to Enzo Ferrari, we used to say 'nice car, beautiful car, but it’s very important that it’s going to function very well and it’s going to win',” he said in a speech at Maranello.

"It’s important that the car wins the races.”

And referring to the team’s consistency of winning, or challenging for, championships over the past 14 years, he added: “We have been the team to beat [since 1997] but this year we have to win, and we will do our best to win.”

Aided by what appears to be a more aggressive car design than recent years, Ferrari has also taken steps to improve its engineering and technical operations at races by appointing ex-McLaren man Pat Fry to the role of head of trackside engineering, while also hiring Red Bull’s Neil Martin to head up a new operations research department at its factory.

While the personnel at the team has largely remained the same, di Montezemolo says a reorganisation was needed to bring some new approaches into key areas where improvement was needed.

“We have updated the team, we call it dynamic stability because the whole team is the same but with some improvements, some new insertions in specific areas where we needed to improve and where the contribution of other people with a different mentality is required to have a fresher [outlook] in our company, in our group,” he explained.

“We race against very strong competitors and we know we have worked very hard and we have actually based this on our skills, on our capabilities, with a great respect for our competitors.”

Ferrari Enzo 2010