Ferrari president reluctant to continue spending on F1 team, keen on Formula E

Ferrari president Sergio Marchionne is reluctant to pour more money into the Italian manufacturer's Formula One team.

Marchionne has made a number of changes to the team since his arrival in 2014, but world titles have remained elusive.

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Now the Fiat Chrysler boss has ruled out allocating more funds to the record championship-winning team.

"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," Marchionne said in a teleconference. "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 organised. That structure is now changed," he revealed.

"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."

After insisting that Ferrari would be championship challengers in 2016, Marchionne is now less keen to give the team such high targets for 2017.

"I don't want to make projections about how well we will do in 2017," he admitted. "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."

Ferrari to Formula E?

The news that Marchionne isn't willing to spend on F1 comes at the same time he outlined plans for a Ferrari Formula E entry.

The revelation is a huge shock considering The prancing horse has insisted it would never develop an all electric car for the road.

"We would not follow to develop a fully electric car," Ferrari's technology head Michael Leiters, has been quoted by Car and Driver in the past. "We are convinced that it’s right to have a hybrid car because, for us, the sound is a very crucially important characteristic of a Ferrari, and our customers want to have this."

But Marchionne is keen on the all-electric series.

"The answer is yes," he said. "I have agonized over with this with my colleagues here in Ferrari for quite a while."

"I'm going to give you two answers to the problem. If Formula E requires people to change cars during a race because we exhaust the power available within a given car, that is not something that Ferrari would naturally gravitate to," he insisted. "Secondly, the standardization associated with the electric car is something which runs against the grain of Ferrari because otherwise it will prevent [Ferrari] from playing whatever it is that it does technically on a vehicle."

Although Marchionne distinctly discusses a 'Ferrari' Formula E entry, the possibility remains that any Fiat Chrysler entry into Formula E could carry the brand name of one of the group's other manufacturers.