Montezemolo's four point plan for F1

Luca di Montezemolo turned up in Madonna di Campiglio yesterday for the end of the Ferrari shindig and had a good long session with Bernie Ecclesto...

Luca di Montezemolo turned up in Madonna di Campiglio yesterday for the end of the Ferrari shindig and had a good long session with Bernie Ecclestone, whom he embraced warmly. The pair have known each other since the 1970s and they will lock antlers many times in the next year or two as Montezemolo seeks to lead the FOTA teams to the promised land of more control and more money.

Afterwards he sat down with the Italian media and I'm grateful to them for details of what he said. The thing which caught my eye was his reminder that the commercial deal binding the teams into F1 is only until 2012, which will be here soon enough, as the London Olympic committee can tell you. Beyond that, he said, F1 needs "an authoritative sporting body" to lead it.

He sees the key to the future as being four 'S's; Stability, "we cannot keep changing the rules every six months or a year"; Seriousness, "because we cannot pretend nothing's happening in a period of great economic difficulty like this"; Spectacle, "I think the new rules will help with this"; Sustainability, "which is finding the right balance between cost and income."

FOTA has done some good work saving money over the last few months, the big one being the engine package agreed before Christmas. Now it is turning its attention to increasing the sport's revenues so that there is a bigger pot to share.

He said that there would 'absolutely not' be another team pulling out of F1, following Honda.

And he even had a word for Kimi Raikkonen. You will recall that in the summer of 2007, the year Raikkonen won the title, he went through a run of poor form, which prompted Montezemolo to say that they must be watching Raikkonen's brother and hoped the real Kimi Raikkonen would turn up soon, the one they hired. Well yesterday he was asked about the continuing problem of 'Raikkonen's brother' and he replied, "Let's hope he's gone back to Finland."

"Let's hope...." that says a lot for me. Taking in conjunction with the news at New Year that Alonso has a Ferrari contract from 2011, with a clause kicking in for 2010 if Kimi underperforms, it hints that Ferrari have fallen out of love with Kimi. When asked about Alonso, Montezemolo said, "We will see. But we have two drivers under contract."

I know there are quite a few of you who doubt the Alonso story, but I can assure you the sourcing of this story, filed in Gazzetta dello Sport, is impeccable. These things don't happen by accident.