04/01/2011
NEWS STORY
Ferrari team boss Stefano Domenicali has revealed that he considered quitting the role after the disastrous race in Abu Dhabi which saw Fernando Alonso lose out on an almost certain title.
Following an amazing revival in the latter half of the season, Ferrari and Fernando Alonso went into the final round with an 8 point lead over Mark Webber and a 15 point advantage over his Red Bull teammate, Sebastian Vettel.
However, the combination of a disastrous pit strategy, which saw Alonso copy Webber, and the Spaniard's failure to get to grips with Vitaly Petrov, Vettel took the race win and the title.
In the aftermath, the Italian media turned on Ferrari, indeed, there were calls from politicians for company President Luca di Montezemolo to fall on his sword, while the prancing horse crawled into the shadows to licks its wounds.
Now, speaking to La Repubblica, Domenicali has revealed that in the wake of the race and the subsequent backlash, he came close to quitting.
"After Abu Dhabi I raised the issue," he admits, "I wondered if it was right or not that I stayed.
"I think pondering that was something I had to do, the responsible thing," he continued. "I take it as a duty, I am not attached to the chair. But I came to the conclusion that quitting would be a mistake.
"I know the team and I think I'm the right person to build on all that we have sown in recent months. From a methodological point of view, in Maranello we have changed almost everything and I am sure we will soon see the results of all the hard work."
Referring to the backlash, Domenicali says it was the significance of the race that caused it. "The mistake was, in terms of magnitude, huge and it had a devastating effect. But in a normal race it would have been a normal error.
"So you must not jettison everything, even the good things, because of that one mistake. We will change things and officially announce things in the coming hours and we will make sure that those who make such delicate decisions have all the tools they need not to be wrong again. I will personally try to help the team from a psychological point of view as well, because the hardest penalty in a shoot-out is the one after you just missed one."
Looking ahead to the new car, which will be launched at the end of the month, he said: "The 2010 we had to start from scratch. Now we have a good starting point and a regulation change, so we have to make maximum use of our imagination for extreme solutions."