MONZA, Italy -- Ferrari president Sergio Marchionne admits the F1 team has "failed" in developing its 2016 car after falling a long way short of pre-season expectations.
Ahead of its home race Ferrari is still yet to win a grand prix in 2016, which was supposed to be a year the Italian team took the fight to Mercedes. Instead the team has been embroiled in a battle for second with Red Bull.
Speaking ahead of qualifying for the Italian Grand Prix, Marchionne said there is no point pretending the season has been a success so far.
"I don't think there's a doubt in my mind, there's no use putting sweeteners on the stuff," Marchionne admitted. "The car isn't there. I think we started well in Australia, I think that we failed in developing the car during the season which is due to a variety of reasons. Post-mortems on this thing have been done ad nauseum now, we're done."
Ferrari has recently undergone a staff reshuffle following the departure of technical chief James Allison before the summer break. Marchionne is convinced the team has all the pieces in place to challenge legitimately in 2017.
"I think we've made changes to the leadership team. I feel quite comfortable this team of 'kids', these people are quite capable of turning the fate of the Scuderia around.
"I think we need... unfortunately we don't have a lot of season left. But already here in terms of the changes we've made to the car I feel a lot more comfortable than I did in the past. Let them finish the season, I think we'll do the best we can for the rest of '16. The fight starts in 2017 at the first race."