Tuesday October 8th, 2002

Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo has suggested that the dominant Italian team could block the handicapping proposals which Formula One ringmaster Bernie Ecclestone hopes to introduce next year.

Di Montezemolo has enjoyed the dominance of Ferrari this season, with the Italian team's drivers Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello winning all but two of the year's Grands Prix.

Ecclestone is hoping to improve the show next year by introducing weight penalties for performance advantages to close the field up and stop the kind of dominance that Ferrari have shown this year.

But Ferrari boss di Montezemolo said that such measures would be unfair and claimed that the Formula One rule makers will have difficulty in getting their proposals through.

"This proposal is not thinkable because there is a commission that discusses the change in rules and this has to decide on changes, not other people," said di Montezemolo. "It is not fair to penalise the best with this sort of handicap."

As a technical change, which it is currently understood to be, any introduction of the proposed regulation would require a unanimous decision. But ballast could be seen as a sporting penalty, which would only need a majority vote.

That could mean Ferrari would be unable to prevent the moves when they are discussed at a crucial meeting of the Formula One Commission at the end of October.

But key men from both their closest rivals, Williams and McLaren, have insisted that the weight penalty is not the way to go, and Formula One's technical working group could recommend running the ballast solely in qualifying.

Published at 08:42:13 GMT