Rocco reveals all

(30-Oct-98) - Rocco Benetton has revealed why David Richards quit the team
earlier this month.

The youngest son of the Benetton family and new team boss admitted that
Benetton had always intended to see how Richard's first year went.

"It is very simple," said Benetton. "He came on board at the
end of last season and we had a blank paper to prepare our new programme
and he had a year to bring in his plans."

"After a year, we had to draw a line and see if we were happy we were
going in the right direction or not. I personally felt the direction David
Richards was taking was not even parallel to the one we wanted to go
in."

Benetton also revealed that he had spent his first year with the team
formulating his own ideas: "I also came in a year ago myself and saw a
good team so far as human resources are concerned and we had a wind tunnel,
the top one in Formula One, so it was a case of optimising all these
things, being organised and putting it all together."

"Of course, there were a lot of details to put in place and that is
now what we have to do."

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