Talkative Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo believes that the team's lead driver Fernando Alonso is still the best driver on the Formula One grid, despite the dominant 2011 season enjoyed by Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel.
Vettel took a comfortable second world championship in 2011, winning 11 of the 19 races on his way to becoming the youngest ever double world champion.
The German took that particular record away from Alonso himself, who had previously enjoyed that set of bragging rights for his back-to-back titles for Renault in 2005 and 2006.
But despite Vettel's time in the limelight, and Alonso's difficult 2011 campaign where he scored just a single victory for the Ferrari team, di Montezemolo has insisted that he wouldn't consider replacing Alonso.
"[Vettel is] a smart lad," di Montezemolo grinned to the Gazzetta dello Sport, "I like how he behaves, and if I have to choose between drivers with equal skill I'll always take the one with the better head."
But he added: "However, today I wouldn't trade Alonso for anyone, because in a race he's the strongest driver around."
He also reserved some compliments for McLaren's Jenson Button, saying that he and team mate Lewis Hamilton had been the "strongest partnership" of the 2011 season.
"[Button] had an exceptional season and with Hamilton was part of the strongest partnership of the season," he smiled.
Di Montezemolo's comments came in the latest in a series of soundbite-heavy interviews given by the Ferrari chief during the month of December.
In a separate discussion, he also talked about F1's recent prediliction for races outside of their traditional European base, after Bernie Ecclestone recently suggested that future F1 calendars could feature as little as five European races.
"Maintaining the importance of Europe in Formula 1 is very important," he bellowed regarding future F1 schedules.
"It's good to see F1 in India, in Russia, in Korea, in the Middle East and of course in the United States, but we must not lose our tradition and history in Europe, particularly when we see that some of the new circuits are not as good as Spa, for example."
He added: "We have to be careful not to dilute the image of Formula 1."
The F1 calendar has expanded to 20 races for the 2012 season, including a brand new race in the United States, but recent additions to the calendar have tended to be at the expense of European races.
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