Formula One news

Todt reflects on first year of new era

Ferrari team boss Jeant Todt revealed his satisfaction that the new era at Ferrari had been instantly successful, but also his frustration at the politics that had clouded the 2007 season. In the meantime his future in F1 continues to be surrounded by speculation he may be replaced by Ross Brawn.

"The most important thing is to make sure that we have the overall level," Todt said. "The mentality and the determination. We have been trying to face where we can improve, what did not go well enough over the weekend and it is a big focus. But I always said that we are not genius. We are amongst ourselves, proper people blowing the wind in the right direction and it makes us go quick, even if sometimes we go in the wrong direction."

"It was a transition year," he continued. "There is no point in going back over the reasons why it was different than it was over the last years. We knew it was a different challenge but that is what we like. We knew we had everything to be successful and we have to learn from what we did not do properly out of this year to be better next year."

For the first time, Todt revealed just how he has been affected by the so-called spy scandal. "I could never expect that something like that could happen. I am very bitter about this unnecessary story, where our main competitor did not have the vision to stop when they could have stopped it. So that is why we had to fight against that.

"In a way we are still fighting against it outside the sporting world, but that is something I could not expect. I did not know that it could exist, but sometimes maybe you learn things. Maybe you are a bit naïve on certain things, but we had to move along on the sporting situation. And to move along was to try to win races and possibly to be first and second but we always kept the two things separate." Todt has also taken satisfaction in eventually mathematically winning the Constructors' championship on the track rather than via the FIA's judgement against McLaren. "To be very sincere, I was counting the points. I knew we had won, but I knew that it would always be said that we had won only because of the FIA's decision, not because of the sporting results. So I will say it is better now that it has been done normally."

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