Ferrari President Luca di Montezemolo Trying to be Optimistic for F1 Season

Last week, Ferrari Formula 1 technical boss Pat Fry did an interview where he said that he is pessimistic about the team's chances for getting on the podium this season. Today, Ferrari President Luca di Montezemolo has responded to Fry's statement basically saying that he hopes Fry is wrong. 

“In the hunt for the podium in Melbourne? At the moment I’d say no. We are disappointed with the performance level seen at these tests and I think we have a lot of work ahead of us. Clearly the decision relating to the exhausts that we took last week meant we took a few steps backwards in terms of development," said Fry. 

Montezemolo responded to Fry's statement today. 

“I saw in Domenicali and our engineers a great desire to show what they’re worth and to react to a winter program that didn’t live up to our targets. I must underline these are our words because we will only discover the truth about where we stand compared to the others after Saturday’s qualifying session in Melbourne: today we can only make assumptions. No matter how it goes in Melbourne, I would like to remind everyone that this will be the longest championship in the history of Formula 1 and we certainly won’t be able to draw conclusions after just one race,” said di Montezemolo. 

To be fair, di Montezemolo is in a very difficult situation. While he ran the Ferrari Formula 1 team in the past, he is now the company's CEO and probably does not keep day-to-day watch on the team. If the person that he hired to be the team's technical director is saying that the team does not have a good car, what can di Montezemolo do?