A couple of weeks prior to the Alonso/Mattiacci meeting, Briatore had been angrily demanding that Mattiacci honour the agreement made between Alonso and Montezemelo that Fernando could be released at the end of this season if he so wished. Mattiacci was saying that the contract ran until the end of 2016 and was watertight, with no options on Alonso’s side. When he had signed this contract a couple of years earlier, Alonso had the choice of a very lucrative contract with get-out clauses on his side or an even more lucrative one that offered him no such choices. He’d opted for the latter. Briatore insisted this had now been rendered obsolete by Montezemelo’s verbal and handshake agreement that Fernando could walk at the end of ’14, if he chose to. Even though Montezemelo was no longer there, the agreement had been reached when he represented Ferrari.
That’s where things stood as Alonso and Mattiacci had their showdown meeting. Fernando suggested he would be prepared to continue on his current contract that ran until the end of ’16 – but with a few amendments: 1) Exit clauses that gave him certain windows – like Vettel’s Red Bull contract – to leave at the end of each season if he was below third in the championship at the cut-off date. 2) A veto over the choice of the other driver. 3) An option to choose technical staff.
Mattiacci – a man used to having control over his employees, not forming partnerships with them or being dictated to by them – did not find any of these demands acceptable. Rather than giving yourself get-out clauses, he suggested, I’d like to see more commitment, not less. By this he meant extending beyond ’16. Fernando – who has given incredible commitment to a less than fully competitive Ferrari for five years – did not like the suggestion of him being less than fully committed. He reacted angrily. Mattiacci said that if he did not wish to continue either on his current contract or an extension of it, Ferrari would now honour the agreement made by Montezemelo, i.e. Fernando was free to leave, without either side owing the other. Briatore suggested Alonso sign the memorandum of understanding for the release, believing Mattiacci would then back down. He didn’t.
Instead Mattiacci contacted Vettel and told him that if he was ready to sign, so was Ferrari. Red Bull announced at Suzuka that Vettel was leaving and Red Bull’s Christian Horner revealed that “Ferrari had made Sebastian a very generous offer”. It was only at this point that Alonso finally had all the pieces of the jigsaw – and further words were exchanged between him and the team boss.
There have since been suggestions that there was an overlooked clause in the Ferrari/Alonso contract that did not allow the team to be in negotiations with other drivers before the end of the season without informing Alonso first – and that therefore Ferrari was in breach and this might be used as leverage by Briatore/Alonso to have him do one more year at Ferrari, after all. But if that was so, it’s no longer an option being pursued.
It’s easy to understand the positions of both sides in this whole dispute. But against the bigger backdrop of the coming floatation and the strategic choices of the Fiat board, it was a minor issue. It is not believed that Mattiacci’s departure had anything to do with his Alonso negotiations. Whatever it was that caused him not to be even given another position within the Fiat empire was unrelated to how he performed his brief role as Ferrari chief.
Originally Posted by wisepie
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