“If he tried to mean I was unmotivated then he arrived too late at Ferrari," Spaniard says. "He has only a few months here."
Monday 24 November 2014 15:28, UK
Ahead of his final race for Ferrari, Fernando Alonso has aimed a parting shot at team boss Marco Mattiacci after comments he made suggesting that new arrival Sebastian Vettel is more committed than the Spaniard.
Speaking after confirmation earlier this week that Vettel will replace Alonso in 2015, Mattiacci said that Ferrari should look to the future with “the utmost motivation and commitment”.
He added: “With Sebastian we get one of the youngest world champions ever, four championships. I met him personally in the last few months. He is an extremely hard-working guy, humble, disciplined.”
“I read the comments and I don’t think they were very good,” was Alonso’s retort. “If he tried to mean I was unmotivated then he arrived too late at Ferrari. He has only a few months here and he didn’t probably see all the five years I spent here and I fought every single race and World Championship.”
The two-time champion was speaking after a difficult qualifying session for Sunday’s Abu Dhabi GP, in which his car struggled to deliver its full power.
Alonso qualified tenth but will line up eighth on the grid after the Red Bulls of Vettel and Daniel Ricciardo were excluded.
The 33-year-old, who is expected to rejoin McLaren next season, added pointedly: “Probably I was too old. He tried to renew me until [the] Monza race and kept pushing and pushing. Then we have a lot of talks; even at the last moment a lot of phone calls, a lot of documents that I still have on my computer.
“Probably at that time, I was not so old. But I took my decision and I guess that he has to find another driver.”
Mattiacci joined the team in April and it’s widely believed that his relationship with Alonso is as much to blame for the latter’s departure as Ferrari’s performance on track.
Speaking on Thursday, Alonso said he’d agreed with former President Luca di Montezemolo that he could leave at the end of the season if he felt Ferrari weren’t competitive enough.
Yet Montezemolo resigned after September’s Italian GP and contract talks with Mattiacci subsequently broke down.
There were also rumours on Saturday that Mattiacci, too, might be gone soon, to be replaced by Maurizio Arrivabene, the Vice-President of Global Communications at Philip Morris International.
Ferrari declined to comment, although speculation that Ross Brawn is on the verge of returning to Maranello did bring a denial - to Sky Sports F1’s Martin Brundle - from the man himself.
Meanwhile, Vettel has spoken of his disappointment at not being allowed to test for his new team at next week’s test in Abu Dhabi.
“It’s a shame, especially because initially I was allowed, then I wasn’t,” the 27-year-old told reporters on Saturday.
“The [Red Bull] technical people were panicking a little bit, being afraid that I would take some secrets. I don’t know.”
