The teams’ new cars have been trading places at the top of the timesheets at the Valencia test, following on from the recent exchange of barbs in the media.
That sparring continued on Wednesday, when the boss of an Italian shoe brand said he decided to sponsor Red Bull rather than Ferrari in 2011.
“We decided to go with a young team that wins,” Geox’s Mario Moretti Polegato is quoted as saying in La Stampa newspaper.
That quote caught the attention of Ferrari’s press department, which occasionally publishes on the internet a stinging column under the ‘Horse Whisperer’ guise.
The columnist revealed that when he heard about Red Bull’s new Geox deal, he recalled “persistent offers” to Ferrari in 2010 “backed up with significant amounts of cash made on numerous occasions by the very same Moretti Polegato”.
The column said Ferrari turned down the deal because of its existing footwear deal with Puma.
“Ferrari deemed the (Geox) proposal to be incompatible with a brand of this level: could this be why Moretti Polegato has fallen back on the energy drink manufacturer’s company?” wrote the unnamed columnist.
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