The Ferrari/FIA funshow continued this weekend with Ferrari complaining that they didn’t get the email telling them to fit ‘extreme wet’ tyres before Sunday’s race at Fuji in torrential rain, leading to this statement from Luca di Montezemolo:

“Logically I’m not happy about yesterday’s result, but I spoke at length with (Jean) Todt: the choice of tyres was a gamble, but it was taken with the premise that Ferrari weren’t aware of FIA’s decision.

“This is a negative aspect and I expect an apology from the stewards, who acted very badly. Without this order from the FIA, other teams would have started on intermediate tyres.”

Sadly, I’m failing to have any sympathy whatsoever for Ferrari here (and I write this as a Kimi Raikkonen fan). Ferrari (allegedly) employs intelligent people: if I, watching the race on tv in Holland (i.e without a commentary I can understand) can see it’s raining heavily and think intermediates would be a silly idea in those conditions, it’s surely not beyond the wit of man for someone at the circuit to stick their head out of the window and draw the obvious conclusion.

The FIA is not there to spoonfeed the teams. Ferrari gambled, and gambled wrong. Whinging about emails doesn’t lessen their mistake.