Speaking after the premiere in London on Thursday night of ‘Luca: Seeing Red’, a documentary about his life and career, the 78-year-old had no doubt about Red Bull’s four-times world champion.<\/p>\n
“Today I have to say, for me, Verstappen is by far the number one,” said the Italian.<\/p>\n
“Even in the last race in Baku, difficult conditions, he never lost control. He was always quick. He never makes mistakes.<\/p>\n
“(Carlos) Sainz and (Charles) Leclerc was a very good (Ferrari) couple. But no question, Verstappen is by far the best in my view. By far.”<\/p>\n
HAMILTON, VASSEUR NOT MENTIONED<\/p>\n
Montezemolo did not mention seven-times world champion Lewis Hamilton, Sainz’s replacement alongside Leclerc who is yet to stand on the podium for his new employers — unlike Sainz who was third for Williams in Baku last Sunday while Verstappen won.<\/p>\n
He did not reference current boss Fred Vasseur either.<\/p>\n
“If tomorrow morning I will be obliged to go to work in Ferrari, in one week I have clear in my mind who to put in different positions,” said Montezemolo, stressing the importance of teamwork.<\/p>\n
Montezemolo left Ferrari in 2014 — 40 years after Enzo Ferrari had first appointed the young but well-connected lawyer as sporting director of his Formula One team.<\/p>\n
During his time at Maranello, he presided over a golden period with greats such as Niki Lauda and Michael Schumacher, with Ferrari becoming the most successful team of all time.<\/p>\n
In the film, by Manish Pandey who produced the award-winning 2010 documentary ‘Senna’, he records how Brazilian triple world champion Ayrton Senna visited his home outside Bologna, days before his death at Imola in 1994.<\/p>\n
He said Senna told him he wanted to join Ferrari. Had he done so, Montezemolo added, Ferrari would not have signed Schumacher and Formula One history would have been very different.<\/p>\n
Thursday’s screening was attended by former Ferrari team principals Stefano Domenicali, now in charge of Formula One, Mattia Binotto and Andrea Stella — bosses at Sauber\/Audi and champions McLaren.<\/p>\n
Adrian Newey, Ferrari’s nemesis as a title-winning designer with Williams, McLaren and Verstappen’s Red Bull, was in the audience with Aston Martin owner and current employer Lawrence Stroll as well as former F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone.<\/p>\n
“I am happy now for Binotto… he is investing in the future with a good Brazilian young driver (Gabriel Bortoleto), looking ahead,” said Montezemolo.<\/p>\n
The Italian said he still watched every race, usually alone, and had smashed two televisions in anger over the years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Max Verstappen \u00a9 Getty Images Former Ferrari boss Luca di Montezemolo would hire Max Verstappen without hesitation if…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":161351,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[1687,372,6537,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-161350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-f1","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161350\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}