Ferrari boss calls Kers an expensive flop

Ferrari team principal Stefano Domenicali says Kers has been an expensive flop. Photograph: Vladimir Rys/Bongarts/Getty Images

Ferrari's team principal, Stefano Domenicali, has labelled Kers a flop, claiming Formula One teams have wasted millions of euros on the project.

Motor sport's world governing body, the FIA, pushed through the introduction of the kinetic energy recovery system for this year, a unit that provides a short burst of speed from stored brake energy.

At a time when the FIA president, Max Mosley, is involved in a war with the teams over a budget cap for next season, they appear to have wasted huge sums of money on Kers.

Aside from development, it is understood running costs for a team during the course of a grand prix weekend amount to £295,000.

Of the four teams who have used Kers this year – McLaren, Renault, BMW Sauber and Ferrari – only Ferrari ran the system during the British grand prix. BMW, who last year angered their rivals by refusing to sign a veto over Kers for this season, have now abandoned it altogether.

Asked if it was a flop, Domenicali said: "Yes. It is too simple to say yes, but that is a fact."

He refused to provide details of the total cost, but said it was "too heavy for me to say. But I know if that amount of money had gone into the development of the car, we would have been fast like Red Bull. It was millions of euros."

The FIA had hoped Kers in Formula One would pioneer the way for the use of a system on ordinary road cars. But Domenicali said it was introduced at the wrong time for the sport.

"We have to learn from it," he said. "It was clear the FIA wanted to introduce it because the potential for marketing reasons was very important for the future of the road-car side. On one side, at the beginning, we thought it was a good idea and we can't hide behind that.

"But the more we went ahead with it, the more we understood it was not really the right choice. We are dealing in an environment that is totally different [from the road car].

"We are in a racing environment where there are a lot of compromises we have to take to ensure new technology is beneficial to the performance of the car. At the end of the day, this is what it is all about and the facts show Kers, in the way it is now, is not ready to be performing in this set of regulations. So, for the future, before making certain choices we have to think carefully because we must not make another mistake."

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