Arrivabene: Title not target for 2015

May 23 - Maurizio Arrivabene says heading the fabled F1 team Ferrari is the toughest challenge of his life.

The Italian, who arrived at Maranello from sponsor Marlboro early this year to settle the then chaotic outfit, says being Ferrari boss is "eleven out of ten" on the difficulty scale.

"For example," he told Germany's DPA news agency, "in Barcelona we had to decide who will have the new car and who will have the old one.

"Kimi (Raikkonen) said 'I want the old one', but then I heard in the media that we had tossed a coin to decide. Everything we do is many times greater than it is in reality.

"Once, I went to the bathroom and everyone was asking 'Why is Maurizio in such a hurry?'"

The latest issue for Arrivabene is managing expectations.

Ferrari surprised the entire F1 world early in 2015 with its resurgent form, but then stories of a new 'crisis' emerged in Barcelona when the upgraded package did not work.

"We need to lower expectations," he insists now.

"In Barcelona we were 45 seconds behind, but last season the gap was one minute and 27 seconds.

"After (winning in) Malaysia, I thought to myself 'This is too early'. Because people would expect that now we go for the world championship.

"But this year we have the goal of winning three races, and four would be fantastic. Next year we will set other objectives," Arrivabene added.

He confirmed to Sky Italia: "For this year, we want to have our feet on the ground and our heads down and be there in the races when Mercedes has problems."

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Leopold

Leopold Pleijsier founded F1-Fansite.com in 2001 and has followed Formula 1 since the early 1980s. He writes about daily F1 news, race weekends, drivers and the sport’s history.

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