Ecclestone hits back at Di Montezemolo

Sunday 5th October 2008

Bernie Ecclestone has hit back at Luca di Montezemolo after the Ferrari president likened the Singapore street circuit to a "circus".

Ferrari's hopes of winning the World Championship with Felipe Massa took a massive blow in Singapore after yet another botched pit stop saw Massa finish in 13th place while his team-mate Kimi Raikkonen once again failed to complete the race.

Di Montezemolo was highly critical of the Singapore track and claims Formula One only becomes interesting once a Safety Car is deployed.

The Italian told Gazzetta dello Sport: "Unfortunately when we race on tracks where staging a circus or something else would be better, anything can happen, because the spectacle is supplied by the Safety Car.

"This is humiliating for F1."

However, F1 supremo Ecclestone wasn't about to let an opportunity to rub Ferrari's nose in it pass him by.

"If the Ferrari president is right about the Singapore Grand Prix being a circus," Ecclestone told The Mail on Sunday, "then we have to be grateful to him for providing the clowns.

"After the weekend Ferrari had, their president should have shut up and kept his head down.

"If Massa loses the World Championship, he will know the team were responsible. He would have destroyed everybody in Singapore if he had kept going."

Ecclestone believes Ferrari would be better off if they returned to the "lollipop man of old".

"If I wanted to be a smart-arse, I'd have devised a system so that the light goes green to release the driver at the same time as the coupling hose comes off the car," he said.

"If it's a matter of turning a switch, which I am led to believe is how it works, then why not stick with the "lollipop" man of old? Why do you want to have some other piece of technology that can go wrong? It's over the top."

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