Ferrari team chief Maurizio Arrivabene made clear yesterday he has little sympathy with Red Bull Racing owner Dietrich Mateschitz’s threats to quit Formula One if his team remains uncompetitive.
The swarthy Italian, a long-serving part of Ferrari who are the only team to have remained a constant in the championship since 1950, dismissed the Austrian’s comments with a withering response.
“F1 is like this,” he said. “It is easy to be happy when you are winning four championships or easy to complain when you are not winning any more.
“You could have a couple of years when you are winning and a couple when you are losing and this is the beauty because if everything is predictable it is not a race, it is something different.
“You have to accept when something is gone wrong and happy when something is going right.”
Ferrari entered F1 in 1950 and have experienced highs and lows including six successive constructors’ titles from 1999 to 2004, but have been without a constructors’ trophy for six years and have won only once in the past two years.
Red Bull entered in 2005 and won four successive titles from 2010 to 2013 as well as drivers’ championships with Sebastian Vettel, who is now at Ferrari.
It was not all smiles at Ferrari yesterday, though, as Kimi Raikkonen hit out at the team for a strategy error that left him down in 18th place in qualifying.
The 35-year-old Finn said Ferrari changed their plan on how to approach the damp conditions at the Red Bull Ring and said he had been given “wrong” information.
“I was doing the same thing that I had been told when we went out and I never got the information that the first plan was not even possible and we missed one lap completely,” the 2007 world champion said.
“I was basically doing the normal thing and I was not told that the plan had changed. The point is – they sent me out too late and we missed one lap and it cost us a lot.”
Raikkonen, whose best previous result in Austria was second in 2003, had looked strong during practice on Friday and yesterday morning and was a likely contender for a podium finish.
He said starting near the back of the field was a setback.
“We’ll try to do our best. It’s a long straight, but also there are two very tricky corners,” he said.
“So, to be in the middle of the pack, the chances of something happening are much bigger.”
