Former F1 champion Michael Schumacher is temporarily ending his retirement to help out his old team after Ferrari driver Felipe Massa is hospitalized following a crash in Hungary.
MILAN, Italy — Ferrari is planning to accelerate its cost-cutting plans for 2009 in the wake of Honda's pullout from Formula One.
"This process had already begun over the last few years. But now it's going to have a sharp acceleration," team director Stefano Domenicali said in an interview with Corriere della Sera on Monday without providing further financial details.
Still, Domenicali warned that cuts in F1 spending shouldn't reach the point where it wouldn't allow healthy engineering competition. Ferrari announced in October that it too would leave F1 if the sport's governing body goes ahead with plans to have a sole engine and transmission supplier beginning in 2010.
"We're at the forefront in the process of auto racing renewal, which has to remain a technological and sporting competition," Domenicali said. "Ferrari will continue to be a leader. The fans should stay calm."
Honda quit F1 on Friday, saying that in the current economic downturn it needs to focus on its core business of making and selling cars rather than spending $291 million a year to race them on Grand Prix tracks.
In three seasons, and with such massive investment, Honda managed just one race victory.
Ferrari - the oldest team in F1 - has won more than 200 races.
Ferrari Formula One team plans to accelerate cost-cutting....
Ferrari team boss Stefano Domenicali has played down wild rumours suggesting that the Scuderia was about to swoop for a disgruntled Lewis Hamilton by claiming that current drivers Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen both have 'long-term' deals at Maranello.
Domenicali was asked about the possibility of a revised line-up at Ferrari next season after reports surfaced claiming that Hamilton's father, Anthony, had been seen in deep - and evidently secret - discussions with the new Ferrari team chief at Hockenheim. Respected British newspaper The Times published a picture which it suggested was a clandestine conversation between the pair outside a Mercedes-Benz party at Hockenheim on the eve of this weekend's German Grand Prix, but Domenicali dismissed that it was anything more than a passing greeting.
"What was the story in the English newspaper? I do not know it," he questioned, "I was walking away from Norbert [Haug]'s party because I had other things to do with our sponsor. Anthony just came up behind me and said 'hello' and that's it, very easy. It's nice to see how these things can grow. Everyone has seen it, I think...."
Ferrari F1 boss denies secret Hamilton talks....
When Ferrari wrapped up the front row of the grid for the Monaco Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton’s only real hope of victory seemed to lie in the hands of the weather gods. It duly rained before the start, but after six laps the Englishman walloped the wall hard on the exit to the Swimming Pool, while trailing poleman Felipe Massa’s Ferrari. Into the pits he came, and at that stage the race seemed to belong to the Brazilian.
McLaren, however, brimmed the MP4-23 with fuel, and Hamilton caught his first break when the safety car was deployed on the eighth lap after Red Bull’s David Coulthard and Toro Rosso’s Sebastien Bourdais went off at Massenet.
The racing resumed on the 11th lap, and two laps later Kimi Raikkonen dropped out of second place when he had to serve a drive-through penalty for having his tyres fitted too late in the grid. Now BMW Sauber’s Robert Kubica moved up to push Massa, and was able to snatch the lead when the latter slid momentarily up the escape road at Ste Devote on the 16th lap. Hamilton was chasing hard after them, with Raikkonen now trailing in fourth place.
Kubica stayed ahead until he refuelled on the 26th lap, whereupon Massa went back into the lead until his stop on the 33rd lap. By then Hamilton was up to second, and after moving into the lead… he just kept going.
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