Ferrari vs Formula 1: Could they really quit?

The economic knock-on of lockdown has triggered an all too real wake-up call to F1. Rights owner Liberty Media has moved quickly to free up financial liquidity and is even offering the most beleaguered teams advance prize money payments in a bid to avoid losing them completely – which is an all too real possibility. The Covid-19 crisis has inadvertently created a new collective focus on how to make what has always been an eye-wateringly expensive sport actually sustainable and more equitable for all its players. Unprecedented times, in more ways than one. But predictably the Prancing Horse is kicking back against it.

A battle to lower the new budget cap

Ferrari vs F1 tension is simmering following discussions to further reduce the already agreed annual budget cap of $175m (£142m), due to be implemented in 2021, to perhaps even $100m (£80m) – still both huge amounts, particularly in contrast to any other form of motorsport, but a long way short of what Ferrari and its main rivals have spent to maintain their long-established status quo. It has prompted Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto to apparently embrace the old ways of his predecessors. He told The Guardian: “If it was to get even lower, we would not want to be put in a position of having to look at other further options for deploying our racing DNA.”

Ferrari subsequently moved to dampen its F1 quit threat (although that’s certainly what Binotto’s words suggested), but even so the response invoked deep-felt frustration in those already fully awake to the realities of what F1 is facing. McLaren chief Zak Brown went as far as to say Ferrari is “living in denial” if it really believes F1 should take its time before making significant decisions on its financial structure.

Now the FIA has escalated what could be a rapid shift towards a more sustainable future by grabbing back power over the F1 decision-making process. In these desperate times, such a move is easy to justify. On Friday, it added a vital clause to its sporting code that states “in exceptional circumstances” only a “majority” verdict for change is required. Previously, the FIA’s pace to implement anything has always been held back by a requirement for nothing less than unanimity among the teams – which is rarely easy. Now the message to Ferrari appears to be: ‘come with us – but if you don’t, we’re moving on anyway.’

Ferrari’s instinct for self-interest

If Ferrari’s stance strikes one as fatuous protectionism, it is perhaps clouded by the company’s natural and acute survival instincts that were woven into its fabric almost from its founding. As early as 1953 Enzo was making threats of a withdrawal from racing in the face of significant social, political and economic pressures in a heavily unionised Italy. Ferrari’s empire was built on pure grit in a tough post-war world, and the Old Man was never averse to leveraging aid from first the state and then Fiat, which would eventually buy 50 per cent of his business in 1969, increasing to 90 per cent in 1988, the year of his death.

But in recent times, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles has embarked on a process of divesting its interests in Ferrari, which has now returned to an independent status arguably closer in spirit to that in which it was founded. But a wider spread of shareholders – the largest percentage of which are ‘public’ – inevitably means self-interest will remain the prime motivation behind its planned growth and perhaps explains the tendency to fall back on Ferrari’s ‘protectionist’ traditions.

Ferrari’s history of quit threats

Surely the most celebrated breakaway threat in Ferrari’s long history was the one that took a real, physical form. In 1986, designer Gustav Brunner was commissioned to conceive what became the 637 IndyCar, which was shown to the press and even tested at Fiorano in the hands of Ferrari F1 driver Michele Alboreto and Bobby Rahal. Truesports, for whom Rahal raced in the US, looked set to run an IndyCar programme set up primarily to rattle F1. The motivation? Future engine rules that didn’t comply with Ferrari’s own belief in what direction grand prix racing should take.

The Indycar never raced – another motorsport ‘what might have been’ – but discord over future engines and increasingly Ferrari’s financial stake in F1 would continue to provoke threats to walk away, and if anything they have increased in regularity during the post-Enzo era. In 2004 chairman Luca di Montezemolo broke tradition by joining forces with rivals DaimlerChrysler (Mercedes), BMW and Renault to form GPWC Holdings, which offered a direct threat to create a breakaway series, in defiance of the throttling control represented by Max Mosley and Bernie Ecclestone. The accord didn’t last, but for a time the GPWC threat was serious.

Mosley’s drive for standardised engines and a budget cap in 2008, just before his fall from grace as FIA president, provoked further quit threats from di Montezemolo. In this regard, Mosley deserves credit for his foresight – but his ousting pushed budget caps back into the peripheries, until the reality of the current two-tier F1 of the ‘haves’ (Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull) and ‘have-nots’ (the rest) revived economic control as entirely necessary and actually inevitable.

Di Montezemolo pulled the old card again when the current hybrid turbo era was ushered in, but his successor was particularly drawn to the tactic. At times, the late Sergio Marchionne seemed solely intent on driving Ferrari away from its defining relationship with F1, even saying a divorce would make him feel “Like a million bucks, because I’d be working on an alternative strategy to try and replace it. A more rational one, too.”

Could Ferrari ever really walk away?

Marchionne’s death in 2018 hasn’t eased the tension between Ferrari and F1, and the coronavirus is now triggering a potentially defining face-off. But when push comes to shove, would Ferrari really walk away from F1? If so, what would it mean for the company? What would it mean for the future of grand prix racing? And do either Ferrari or F1 really need each other in the symbiotic way that history suggests?

Now is not really the time for such existential questions. Of more pressing concern is protecting jobs, companies and, fundamentally, lives around the world. F1, the FIA and most of the teams are doing what’s required to survive the crisis. As for Ferrari, it too will take what action it believes is necessary for its own interests and strictly on its own terms – just as it always has. The Old Man would understand.

Photography courtesy of Motorsport Images.