JULY 28, 2007

FIA clarifies Macaluso remarks

The FIA says that Luigi Macaluso, the president of the FIA-CIK must have been mistaken when he said that he was the only World Council delegate to have been against the decision not to punish McLaren. "We can confirm that the World Motor Sport Council's decision was unanimous," said an FIA spokesman.

The FIA says that Luigi Macaluso, the president of the FIA-CIK must have been mistaken when he said that he was the only World Council delegate to have been against the decision not to punish McLaren.

"We can confirm that the World that the World Motor Sport Council's decision was unanimous," said an FIA spokesman. "We can only imagine that Mr Macaluso's comments were either taken out of context or were not clearly expressed in the media scrum which ensued outside the hearing."

Alternatively, the media may have reported exactly what Macalusa said and may have failed to notice that he was trying to please everybody at the same time and was feeling less than comfortable as the only Italian representative on the World Council.

Macaluso has been friends with Enzo Ferrari's son Piero and Ferrari chairman Luca di Montezemolo since the 1960s and is a self-confessed Ferrari fan. After working for Swatch in the 1970s Macaluso set up his own watch trading business in 1982 and then gradually bought control of the Girard-Perregaux company. He used his Ferrari connections to negotiate a deal to use the prancing horse logo on watch dials, beginning in 1994. Girard-Perregaux has since developed a full line of Ferrari timepieces.