Fernando Alonso has hit out at Ferrari team principal Marco Mattiacci after the Italian said he was hiring Sebastian Vettel for his youthfulness and that they were looking for a driver with “utmost motivation and commitment”.
Alonso, who has been in position to fight for the championship in three of the five years he has spent with Ferrari, was not pleased with Mattiacci’s comments on Friday, which in his eyes implied that the Spaniard was not as hungry for success as the incoming German.
It came on the same day Vettel was confirmed as Alonso’s replacement at the Prancing Horse with the latter believed to be joining McLaren next season. Alonso said that Mattiacci only offered Vettel his seat after failing to convince him to stay at the Italian marque.
“I heard the comments and I don’t think they were very good,” Alonso said, after qualifying eighth for today’s race.
“If he tried to mean that I was old and not motivated I think he arrived too late to Ferrari. He has only a few months here and he probably didn’t see all the five years that I’ve spent here, I fought every single race and for championships.
“Probably I was too old when he tried to renew me until Monza race. He kept pushing and pushing. We had a lot of talks and even in the last moment again we had a lot of phone calls and emails, that I still have on my computer, and probably that time I was not so old. But again when I took my decision I guess that he has to find another driver.”
Alonso was far from pleased with his qualifying session yesterday, where he was beaten by his team-mate Kimi Raikkonen for the third time this season. But the two-time world champion said his main focus today will be to try and enjoy his final race with Ferrari.
“The qualifying wasn’t easy as we expected. It was a little bit more difficult because of the engine change after FP3. So we fit a different engine for qualifying and the race and definitely we missed a little bit of tuning of that engine. We spent all qualifying tuning it and we definitely didn’t achieve what we wanted to do,” explained the 33-year-old.
“Anyway, I don’t think that we can expect positions higher than that. Eighth, seventh, ninth, whatever it is, it’s not the end of the day. It’s going to be a challenging race no doubt. But it will be fun to drive. I’m not expecting any big result or anything like that. It’s just the last race with Ferrari so hopefully I’ll enjoy it and I’ll try to find some battles around that I could enjoy the fight.
“I think it will be a little bit more an emotional race.
“When you approach the start and when you jump in the car on the grid… but at the same time it’s something you’ve known for a long time and you went through the biggest emotional time.”
