Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

Ferrari explains power unit cost cap veto

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Ferrari team principal Maurizio Arrivabene has explained the reasons behind the Scuderia exercising a veto regarding the cost of power units.

The FIA released a remarkable statement on Monday outlining its intention to push on with plans to introduce am alternative, cheaper power unit in 2017. In the statement, the FIA said Ferrari had vetoed cost cutting measures which had been agreed upon by the teams, the FIA and Bernie Ecclestone to impose a maximum cost on the power units for customers.

Asked about the reasons for the veto, Arrivabene says Ferrari is simply protecting its commercial interests.

“Concerning the veto it is quite easy,” Wolff said. “We exercised our veto in compliance with our legitimate commercial right to do business as a powertrain manufacturer. There’s nothing to add.”

Pushed on the topic, Arrivabene replied: “Why do we have to justify it more?

“Here we are talking about commercial right. We are not talking about budget, we are not talking about anything else. If somebody, they are asking you, they give you a specification to produce apple, OK you produce apple in line with the specification. That somebody, they’re asking you, OK, we want to impose you the price of the apple’, what are you going to do? This is the principle. It has nothing to do with the rest.”

And Arrivabene insists the veto is not exercised for any reason other than to protect Ferrari rather than impact on one of its rivals.

“For the rest I totally agree with veto. It is not a position against the other team. It is a decision that is defending a commercial principle. For the rest we are open to finding any other solution … You have in a public company, as we are now, but also in a company as Mercedes is, you have research and development costs that somehow you have to recover. I don’t find any commercial entity all around the world that is giving their product out to the market for free – or at cost. So this is the principle.”

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.