Nov 5, 2009, 11:32 GMT
Hamburg - Ferrari has launched a scathing attack on motorsport's ruling body, the FIA, saying that by its actions it has caused the withdrawal of major car manufacturers from Formula One.
The attack comes in the wake of Toyota's announcement Wednesday that it was quitting the sport, following in the footsteps of BMW, which announced its decision to withdraw earlier this season. Honda also left F1 at the end of last year while Renault are considering their future.
Ferrari compared F1 to the Agatha Christie murder mystery novel 'Ten Little Indians' where the perpetrator is not revealed until the other characters have all been killed.
'It could be seen as a parody of 'Ten Little Indians,' the detective novel by Agatha Christie, first published in England back in 1939, but the reality is much more serious,' said the Italian marque in a statement.
'Formula One continues to lose major players: in the past 12 months, Honda, BMW, Bridgestone and Toyota, have announced they are leaving the sport.
'In exchange, so to speak, we will now have, Manor, Lotus (at least in name only, as this incarnation has little to do with the team that gave us Colin Chapman, Jim Clark and Ayrton Senna to name but a few) USF1 and Campos Meta.
'Can we claim that it's a case of like for like, just because the numbers sitting around the table are the same? Hardly and we must also wait and see just how many of them will really be there on the grid for the first race of next season in Bahrain and how many will still be there at the end of 2010.
'The reality is that this gradual defection from the F1 fold has more to do with a war waged against the major car manufacturers by those who managed Formula 1 over the past few years, than the result of any economic crisis.
'In Christie's work of fiction, the guilty party was only uncovered when all the other characters died, one after the other. Do we want to wait for this to happen or do we want to pen a different ending to the book on Formula 1?'
Japanese tyre maker Bridgestone also announced this week that it is quitting the sport from the end of the 2010 season while French carmaker Renault was due to hold an emergency board meeting in Paris on Thursday to discuss its future in the sport.
Team bosses Jean-Francois Caubet and Bob Bell have been invited to the meeting, according to the online version of auto, motor und sport magazine, with Renault considering whether to quit the sport, continue with its own team or to switch to simply being an engine supplier.
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