Monday October 18th, 1999

Ferrari team chief, Jean Todt, went back to Italy today, to prepare for the appeal's hearing, which will be held this coming Friday. Todt told reporters he accepts the blame but does not accept the harsh punishment for the team. "I have a great pain in my heart, but also the desire to react," Todt said. "I feel responsible because I am the director of sporting management. I'm the chief and therefore I'm always going to be the one responsible, but clearly this is a technical problem.

"Now we must build up a very clear and precise dossier. That small difference in design does not justify the decision to disqualify the two cars. The punishment is disproportionate. We still don't know why the part didn't conform, but anyway it didn't give us any advantage from the performance point of view. We have 10 of them in total and we honestly can't understand what has happened.

"There are no words to describe the sudden transition from great joy to profound disappointment. This is a tremendously difficult time for us, it all seems incredible. It's a very bitter blow to us and one we really didn't expect after such a great race, which had given us fantastic results. I repeat, we were disqualified for a problem which gave us no performance advantage."