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Ferrari stock falls after new CEO calls Marchionne's goals ‘aspirational’

MILAN — Ferrari's new boss sought to reassure investors that he would execute midterm targets set by his predecessor, Sergio Marchionne, but the stock has fallen by 12.5 percent since Wednesday after he described the goals to 2022 as "aspirational." Louis Camilleri was appointed chief executive of the Italian supercar maker on July 21, succeeding Marchionne, who fell seriously ill and later died after suffering complications following surgery. The sudden change jolted investors who had expected Marchionne, who nearly tripled Ferrari's value since taking it public in 2015, to stay on as CEO and chairman until 2021. It also left Camilleri, 63, to finish scripting a midterm strategy that will be presented in September and is meant to show how the company plans to achieve financial targets unveiled earlier this year, notably a goal to double core earnings to 2 billion euros ($2.33 billion) by 2022. In a post-results conference call with analysts, Camilleri said he and Marchionne, with whom he had interacted for years, shared the same ambitions for the company. The tobacco veteran, chairman and former CEO of Philip Morris International has served on the Ferrari board since 2015, while Marchionne in turn sat on the board of PMI. Asked about how he planned to deliver on the targets set by his predecessor, Camilleri said he would provide details during capital market days to be held on Sept. 17-18 at the company's headquarters in Maranello, Italy. "They are aspirational targets. At the capital markets day, we will tell you how we plan to get there," he said. "We will also have to disclose potential risks to that, but also significant opportunities that we see going forward." Ferrari's Milan-listed shares fell after the comments, and its shares on the New York Stock Exchange fell from a Wednesday high of $134.77 to $117.99 on Thursday morning. Tough act to follow At Ferrari, Camilleri has a tough act to follow. Marchionne orchestrated Ferrari's spinoff from parent Fiat Chrysler, positioned it as a luxury icon rather than a car manufacturer, and managed to do what few thought possible: sail through a self-imposed cap of 7,000 vehicles per year without sacrificing pricing power and exclusive appeal. When its share price hit a record high of 129.90 euros in June, the company that sold just under 8,400 vehicles last year was worth around 24 billion euros, almost as much as Fiat Chrysler, which shipped 4.7 million cars.

F1 title fight gets closer | 2016 US Grand Prix recap

We ran into an old friend at the US Grand Prix: an on-form Lewis Hamilton. Reliability and proper clutch actuation helped the Mercedes-AMG Petronas driver resurrect the kind of performance we haven't seen since July at the German Grand Prix. After demolishing the previous qualifying record around the Circuit of the Americas, he put the field in his mirrors as soon as the lights went out, was never bothered by anyone behind, and crossed the finish line 4.5 seconds ahead of teammate Nico Rosberg. The drive was exactly what Hamilton needed to keep his molecule-thin Championship hopes alive. Rosberg, however, did exactly what he needed to do as well by finishing second. The German had a sketchier path to the checkered flag than Hamilton, getting pushed back to the third at the start by Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo. Worse, Ricciardo appeared to have the pace to keep Hamilton honest ahead and hold Rosberg behind. Red Bull and Mercedes matched one another's pit stops, and it was clear the German would need more help to pass the Aussie. Rosberg didn't have to make his own luck, Ricciardo's teammate Max Verstappen made the luck for him. Ricciardo pitted on Lap 26, ceding second position on track to Rosberg. On Lap 30, Verstappen's gearbox failed while headed down the back straight. The Dutch teenager said the team told him to try to get the car back to the pits, so he dawdled through a few corners before following more team orders to pull over and park. Verstappen's parking spot and bad gearbox meant marshals couldn't push the car off the track, they needed to use a crane. That brought out a Virtual Safety Car, slowing the whole race down and allowing Rosberg to run a longer stint while losing less time on old tires. When the German came in for new tires on Lap 31 he emerged ahead of Ricciardo, and they ran that way to the end of the race, much to Ricciardo's disappointment. Sebastian Vettel claimed fourth for Ferrari, a placing perhaps due only to Verstappen and Kimi Raikkonen retiring from the race. An otherwise anonymous weekend for the scuderia called attention to itself on race day when Raikkonen had to call it a day after a botched pit stop, and Vettel couldn't make any impression on the teams ahead. Fernando Alonso rode home to a brilliant fifth for McLaren. During the first stint while rummaging around outside the top ten, the Spaniard complained about his lack of pace. By Lap 15 Alonso was tenth, on Lap 34 he was eighth.

Race Recap: 2014 Malaysian F1 Grand Prix [spoilers]

The Malaysian Grand Prix is always one of the jokers on the Formula One calendar: you know it's going to rain during the weekend, but you don't know when. This year it began during qualifying, the dammed up clouds over the Sepang track dumping their reservoirs just before Q1 and causing a 50-minute delay.
The conditions helped Infiniti Red Bull Racing close the gap on Mercedes AMG Petronas and split the Silver Arrows cars, Sebastian Vettel lining up in second on the grid behind pole-sitter Lewis Hamilton, ahead of Nico Rosberg. Fernando Alonso recovered from a suspension-damaging incident with Toro Rosso driver Daniil Kyvat to take fourth, followed by the second Red Bull of Daniel Ricciardo in fifth, then the off-form Kimi Räikkönen in sixth in the second Ferrari, Nico Hülkenberg in the Force India, star rookie Kevin Magnussen in the first McLaren ahead of Jean-Eric Vergne in the Toro Rosso, and Jenson Button in the second McLaren finishing up the top ten.
After that, though, the clouds decided they were done with F1. Save a few drop at the final corners during the race, the track stayed completely dry. And except for the beginning and the end, for the most part, so was the race.