Ferrari chairman Sergio Marchionne has offered a more positive tone on whether an agreement can be reached on rule changes for 2021 that keeps the Italian team in Formula 1.
Late last year, the putting forward of proposed engine changes in three years time led Marchionne to put Ferrari’s future participation in F1 into question by threatening to pull out if the company didn’t agree with the direction taken by owner’s Liberty Media.
In Bahrain last month, the next stage of proposals were revealed in a meeting including all 10 current team bosses and the response from Marchionne has been long awaited to see if his position has changed.
“I’m encouraged by the change in the attitude that we are seeing from Liberty in terms of the extent of the changes that they’re forecasting in 2021,” he said this week, addressing the topic.
“The biggest indication has been the recognition of the fact that the engine regulations need to reflect sort of the nature of the sport and we can’t really dumb down engine development just to accommodate new entries, right?
“So the stuff that’s on the table now is potentially workable as a system. The economics are not. I think that’s something that we need to go back to Liberty with.”
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Marchionne has also given the first indication of a deadline by which he anticipates the decisions both on the 2021 regulations and what that then means for Ferrari’s future in F1 to be made.
“I think we now have enough of a basis to try to start having meaningful discussions and hopefully, we’ll get it all resolved by the end of this year one way or the other,” he claimed.
“The important thing for us… is that we don’t touch the nature of the technical development of the powertrains because that is at the heart of what Ferrari does for a living.
“I think we need to continue to work with Liberty with the commercial rights holders and with the FIA to try and bring about a sensible equilibrium.”
A deadline is expected sooner on the important engine rules, as Ferrari themselves revealed last month, but it is the financial future in terms of a budget cap and the distribution of revenue which is next on the list.
Should an agreement on any of those areas not be forthcoming though…
“As I said before, we’ll just pull out,” Marchionne added. “But we’re not there today.
“I think we owe the sport a phenomenal effort to try and bring about closure of these items. We’ll try and get that done before the end of this year.”