Ferrari has decided to cut production of its high-performance road cars by at least 4% this year, despite an increase in sales, as the Italian luxury car manufacturer seeks to preserve the exclusivity of its brand. In 2012, Ferrari sold 7,318 cars but chairman Luca di Montezemolo said the company would look to reduce that figure to below 7,000 vehicles while still aiming to increase profits. Despite the global economic outlook remaining uncertain, Ferrari has seen a growth in revenue of 4% to 551m euros (£433m) in the first quarter of this year. Net profit was 54.7m euros (£46.3m). Ferrari More…

Luca di Montezemolo has used his annual pre-Christmas dinner with journalists to outline his desire to see the team’s designers take off the shackles and be bolder with its 2013 car. A lack of innovation in the Maranello design office has been widely perceived as the root cause of Ferrari’s failure to win a world title in the last four seasons, although a more aggressive approach  in the conception of this year’s F2012 was supposed to have been taken only for some initial design interpretations to backfire come winter testing. But on the day Ferrari announced some changes to its More…

Last Friday, somewhat lost among all the furore over the announcement of the Hamilton-Mercedes transfer, there was an important note made by Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo in a Q&A session at the Paris Motor Show. It was the session where he confirmed that Ferrari would need to shut down its wind tunnel in either December or January for calibration checks, which has had reasonably wide coverage. In the same session, Montezemolo talked about Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa and there were a couple of important lines to note, for better understanding the full picture when the time comes for More…

Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo was in the Monza paddock on Saturday and spoke late in the afternoon on a number of subjects. One of them was the idea of refreshing the format of F1 Grands Prix, so they are shorter and start later in the day. Currently a Grand Prix is 300 kilometres, which can take anything from 75 minutes to almost two hours in the case of Singapore. There have been calls in the past to make F1 races shorter or to split them into two events. Many casual fans who are interested but not hooked, often say More…

Luca di Montezemolo has used his traditional post-victory speech to Ferrari’s F1 employees to stress to the team the need to stay realistic over its competitiveness and respond to the impressive step forward made by Red Bull in Valencia. Fernando Alonso’s latest against-the-odds victory of the season last weekend, and retirements for his main two title rivals, meant the Spaniard opened up nearly the points equivalent of a race victory at the top of the drivers’ championship despite Ferrari still not having the fastest car. The Italian outfit’s president, however, is not losing sight of the bigger picture and admits More…

Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo this week sat down with the CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, for a two-hour meeting during a visit to the world famous Stanford University in California, where he was giving a lecture to students. The heads of two of the world’s most truly global brands came together for a lengthy discussion to chew the fat on their respective company’s ideas and visions, as well as sharing insight on strategy and management styles. Although the industries of racing and car production and consumer electronics and computers might seem far apart in many aspects, Montezemolo – who also More…

Ferrari’s annual Wrooom event is underway at Madonna di Campiglio in Italy. This is a traditional pre season media event at which the team and management give their thoughts and assessments on the sporting and political year ahead. I went last year, but this year had to decline, as I have to be at the Autosports International Show in Birmingham tomorrow for the BBC. Today saw conferences from team boss Stefano Domenicali and a brief appearance by Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo. Montezemolo has been quite vocal over the winter about many things and today reiterated that Ferrari is ready More…

There has been a lot of chatter in the last 24 hours with reference to statements made by Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo yesterday at the Finali Mondiali event at Mugello. Many commentators have read Montezemolo’s line as “Ferrari boss threatens F1 pullout” but it isn’t easy to decode his message here. I’m not sure that he meant to go that far on this occasion and that’s why the notorious Horse Whisperer was deployed on Monday to play down suggestions that Montezemolo was making threats. What is clear is that he was doing something he likes to do from time More…

As if there wasn’t enough going on already in Italy, the Corriere dello Sport is reporting today that Ferrari boss Luca Di Montezemolo is being petitioned by the authorities in Rome to take on the role as head of it’s bid for the 2020 Olympic games. According to the paper, Rome’s mayor and the Italian Olympic federation have already tried once before to get Montezemolo to take the role, but this time he has let it be known that he will decide in the coming days. Montezemolo was head of the organizing committee for the 1990 football World Cup in More…

A small note, but an important one on the status of the two Ferrari drivers going into next season. Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo has made the point today that the two drivers Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa will start next season with equal status, after the team backed Alonso from July onwards last season. And it seems that Massa backed up his team mate in exchange for an agreement that they would hit the reset button at the start of 2011. So it will be up to Massa to beat Alonso or face a similar situation in the second More…

There has been quite a bit of chatter in Italy in the past couple of weeks about Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo considering running for office backed by his “Italia Futura” group of leading Italian industrialists, entrepreneurs and thinkers. But Montezemolo says it’s not the right moment to enter the Italian political scene and that he does not want to leave Ferrari. The members of Italia Futura are urging him to seize the moment and come to the rescue of the country. He however appears to be pushing back on this, saying, that he will not go into politics, at More…

The Italian sporting media is all a flutter today with the news that Flavio Briatore recently visited Ferrari’s Maranello headquarters, toured the Gestione Sportiva with team principal Stefano Domenicali and went across to meet chairman Luca di Montezemolo. Gazzetta dello Sport describes the visit as a “very great surprise” and speculates as to the motive for the visit. It happened four days ago, after the British Grand Prix, when Ferrari and the FIA were in a dispute about the sequence of events which led to Fernando Alonso’s penalty, which ruined his race. Following the Singapore crash scandal last season, Briatore More…

Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo has given a series of interviews lately, as Ferrari celebrates 800 Grand Prix starts and the most recent one is in today’s Gazzetta dello Sport. In the interview he deals with Alonso’s recent mistakes, hints at some possible changes in the team and says that Ferrari wants to go back to using its Fiorano test track. He also reveals that Ferrari has saved 30% this year compared to its budget of two years ago before the teams got serious on cost cutting. On the subject of Alonso he says that he’s delighted with him both More…