Montezemolo: Massa's Teammate Will Be Finnish or Spanish

Now that the crash-gate is over and everybody involved in it received their penalties accordingly, people in the Formula One paddock can now focus on the other two topics that used to make the headlines: the 2009 title fight and the 2010 lineups. As far as Fernando Alonso goes, it's needless to say that the latter is far more important than the former, as his continuous links to Ferrari were always picked up by the Italian media in recent months.

All the Italian journalists needed was a short comment from Ferrari's CEO Luca di Montezemolo. The Ferrari-an admitted on Wednesday that the Scuderia will soon reveal Felipe Massa's teammate for 2010, despite the fact that Kimi Raikkonen has an ongoing deal with the Maranello based team until the end of next season.

Although insisting, in recent months, that Raikkonen's place at Ferrari will not be subject to change in 2010, Di Montezemolo decided to play a little bit with the media and theatrically revealed that Massa's new teammate will be either Finnish, or Spanish. Figure that!

While Raikkonen himself admitted that his seat with Ferrari is not so certain as until now, Alonso also insisted that he has no doubts about who his next team will be. With the crash-gate and everything, the Spaniard can always evoke a breach of contract by Renault and leave the Enstone based team despite his one year remaining of contract.

“My mind is already made up. Hopefully I will know soon,” Alonso told reporters in Singapore the other day, while insisting that no contract has been signed for 2010.

Earlier this week, it emerged that Raikkonen has already agreed to a contract with McLaren Mercedes (in principle) in case he will be ousted by Ferrari in the upcoming weeks. However, he continuously insisted that he will not leave the Scuderia unless they pay him the entire contract for the 2010 season.