"It's not a position against the other teams, it's a position that's defending a commercial principle," argues team boss Arrivabene
Monday 2 November 2015 11:10, UK
Ferrari exercised their right to veto plans for a cap on the cost of customer engines for "legitimate commercial" reasons, team principal Maurizio Arrivabene has insisted.
The FIA revealed earlier this week that Ferrari had blocked plans to introduce a limit on the price of engines to customer teams from 2016, which would have brought the cost down from around €20m to €12m for same-year units.
In response - a move interpreted as an escalation in a battle for power between the sport's rulemakers and the leading manufacturers - the FIA proposed the launch of a tender for an independent 'budget' engine supplier from 2017 to provide an alternative option.
Ferrari's right of veto is enshrined in their commercial agreements with the sport, in recognition of their status as the oldest and most successful team, with Arrivabene arguing its use on this occasion is justified.
"We exerted our veto in compliance with our legitimate commercial right to do business as a powertrain manufacturer," he said in Friday's FIA press conference. "There's nothing to add.
"It's not a position against the other teams, it's a position that's defending a commercial principle. We are open to find any other solution."
Speaking in a separate interview with Sky Sports News HQ, Arrivabene explained that Ferrari had simply spent on engine development what the V6 turbo engines cost.
"We are an engine manufacturing company and so we are not spending insanity," the Italian said.
"We are spending the right budget to develop an engine. Engines are the core business of Ferrari."
He suggested that Ferrari would be more supportive of devising ways to ensure there was more parity between the existing engine makers.
"A good thing to do is to have a proposal that makes sure the engines are equal to everybody," he added. "That has nothing to do with the cost or the investment. You need to do it at the right time and you need to do it well."
The perceived growing influence of engine manufacturers in F1 - particularly Ferrari and Mercedes, who will supply more than half the grid in 2016 - has proved a topic of debate in the sport in recent weeks.
Speaking in the same press conference as Arrivabene, Mercedes motorsport boss Toto Wolff sympathised with Ferrari's stance given that they too had budgeted for the costs they can recoup from customers.
However, both principals insisted they were keen to see costs come down for F1's smaller teams.
"This is obviously a very controversial topic and as with many things, black and white is not the answer," Wolff said.
"There is a set of rules which were implemented in Formula 1 two years ago and we started developing those engines three, four, five years ago based on those set of rules. And as large corporations we work on long-term planning, it is part of the budget process and the R&D process. From that standpoint, part of it is a business case and you need to calculate how much you can charge for those engines, how much you can recover for those engines.
"Ferrari is a public company now so it is difficult as a commercial entity to just be confronted with a situation where a price is being imposed because it somehow times the commercial ability for refinancing.
"Now you can say, 'well, for a large organisation a couple of million doesn't matter'. But they do."
