After reading all the contributions and the other thread Tim Murray was kind enough to dig out of the archives, a few thoughts. As Roger Lund underlines, Ferrari was happy to let John drive the Can-Am Lola and willing to allow him to use the insurance policy he had as a Ferrari driver. But curiously enough, Forghieri adds that after the accident it was a different Surtees that came to Ferrari, more introvert and distant ("scorbutico"), with any banal event a cause for distress and controversy. If he passed secrets to Lola or not is irrelevant (and there is no real evidence that could have been the case), what is important is that Ferrari started suspecting so - as Tim Murray judiciously points out. Dragoni might have invented the story, not necessarily because he wanted Bandini as number one driver, here again no strong evidence about it as RStock underlines, but perhaps because his own relationship with Surtees was deteriorating fast? Interesting, though, that Ferrari instructed Gozzi to confirm the version and he didn't seem to counter it to the point where he was instructed to fire the driver at Spa but the victory in the GP postponed the occasion. So, my conclusion is that for one reason or another, Ferrari decided to part company with the driver, let Dragoni take advantage of Surtees temperament to cause a row (and take the blame) and kept himself in the backstage to the point where he even had a friendly conversation or a lunch with John afterwards. Regrets? Who knows, maybe this was the reason why John came back later but here just an educated guess. Again, pity no Italian TNF member decided to join the discussion to possibly shed more light on this story.
Edited by nexfast, 04 October 2013 - 21:12.
