F1: Marchionne won't 'throw money' at Ferrari

Ferrari president Sergio Marchionne has vowed he will no longer throw money at the firm's Formula 1 project, instead calling on the team to spend its budget more wisely.

The Italian team is rumored to have the largest budget of anyone on the F1 grid, in the region of $450 million per year. Since his arrival in 2014, Marchionne has orchestrated changes behind the scenes at Ferrari in preparation for a title challenge in '17, but he does not believe the project needs more cash.

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Speaking in a teleconference after Ferrari revealed its Q3 earnings on the New York Stock Exchange, Marchionne said: "I'm going to tell you something honestly – I've thrown all the money I'd like to throw at that [the F1 team]. And we've done this in the past. But what has never been an object in terms of the development of F1, we need to use that funding better.

"Most of it was due to the way we organized. That structure is now changed. We need to wait, to be modest in our expectations, and when the car starts racing in March 2017, whatever it is this team has been doing as a result of the new configuration will be visible."

Marchionne, however, is wary of making bold claims about what Ferrari can achieve in 2017 after over-playing how the team would perform on track in the past.

"I don't want to make projections about how well we will do in 2017," he added. "I paid for it on the nose when I relied on internal estimations on an improvement of the car from 2015 to 2016, so I'm not going to repeat that. On the 2017 car, we'll just have to see it on the track."

With Ferrari on the brink of its second winless season in the past three years after previously avoiding the feat for 21 consecutive campaigns, Marchionne is hoping for a positive end to 2016.

"We're continuing on our path of recovery," he said. "Obviously we're not pleased with the results to date.

"We have brought about some organizational changes to the Scuderia in the third quarter of this year. We have a reconstituted team that is handling the technical side, and we have fundamentally two objectives – one is to conclude this less-than-glorious season in 2016 in as good a shape as we can. More importantly, it is to set the right parameters for the conclusion of the 2017 car, which is crucial to our ambitions to return to competitiveness on track next season.

"Again, I am not going to make any comments about 2017 – although we have a pretty good idea of how that year is going to shape up."

Originally on Autosport.com