Arrivabene receives vote of confidence

Ferrari team principal Maurizio Arrivabene has been handed a vote of confidence from Ferrari president Sergio Marchionne.

In football, this is often seen as a last resort for a manager, often his time has come and his future is known if not yet official.

Only time will tell if this is the case at Ferrari, who have been left disappointed in 2016.

This was suppose to be the year that Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen could take the race to Mercedes.

But even before Mercedes had crashed out of the Spanish Grand Prix, it was clear that Ferrari were not only a considerable distance behind Mercedes, but they could well have lost their tag of best of the rest, to Red Bull Racing.

Ahead of the Spanish Grand Prix Sky Sports asked Marchionne if he still ‘retained his confidence’ in Arrivabene.

‘Totally. Beyond question.’ he said.

He also did not think that the driver line-up had to be changed: ‘I still think we still have two of the world’s best pilots, I shouldn’t be saying this with four drivers who are not ours in front of us [on the Barcelona grid], but I think we have the best pilots.

‘I think the team is in the best shape I’ve seen it in a long, long time. They need to continue to work diligently on facing these issues.

One has to wonder what he thought after the race when despite Mercedes crashing out, Ferrari still couldn’t pick up a race win and instead Kimi Raikkonen had no answer to an 18-year-old kid making his debut for Red Bull Racing?