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Bitter Alonso hits back at Mattiacci comments
Fernando Alonso has hit out at Ferrari team boss Marco Mattiacci for suggesting the team needs fresh motivation from Sebastian Vettel next season.
Alonso will be replaced at Ferrari by the Red Bull driver next year, and on announcing the deal Mattiacci said Vettel will bring "a unique combination of youthfulness and experience and he brings with him that sense of team spirit which will prove invaluable". Alonso believes the comments may have been a dig at his waning enthusiasm at Ferrari, and hit back by saying Mattiacci, who has only been the team's boss since April, had not been around for his whole five-year career at the team.
"I read the comments and don't think that they were very good," Alonso said. "If he tried to mean that I was not motivated, I think that he arrived too late to Ferrari. He didn't see all the five years I spent here and that I fought every single race and for championships."
Alonso added that Mattiacci had tried to get him to stay at the team until the Italian Grand Prix but that he made the decision to leave.
"Surely I was too old when he tried to renew me until the Monza race. He kept pushing and pushing and we had a lot of talks and even the last moment again we had a lot of phone calls and emails, which I still have on my computer. Probably at that time I was not so old, but when I took my decision I guess that he had to find another driver."
However, Alonso said he was still emotional about leaving the team.
"Tomorrow I think it will be a more emotional day, when you approach the start and when you jump in the car on the grid etc. At the same time, it's something that I knew for a long time and I have been through the biggest emotional times."
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