Montezemolo: Miracles happen but once.

Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo has admitted to an extreme emotional reaction to Lewis Hamilton snatching the 2008 Formula One world championship from the hands of the Scuderia's Felipe Massa, but says he should not have expected another miraculous turn-around.

Speaking to the media at Ferrari's annual end-of-season get-together at Mugello, di Montezemolo revealed that items of household furniture bore the brunt of his disappointment as he - along with those celebrating prematurely in the Ferrari pit - realised that Massa's dominant performance in the season finale at Interlagos had been marred by Hamilton's last corner pass on Timo Glock.

The Briton had appeared to have let the title slip through his grasp for a second successive season when he dropped to sixth place just four laps from home, but made up a 13-second gap to the tyre-troubled Glock and retook the fifth place he needed to win the title at the final turn.

"I broke the television, I must tell the truth," Montezemolo, who was not at Interlagos, admitted, "When a television breaks, it makes a terrible bang. My daughter in the other room was given an awful fright!"

The president, who has engineered and overseen many Ferrari triumphs in his two stints with the team, believed that he was in the process of watching another epic reversal of fortune to compare with that of 2007, when Kimi Raikkonen overturned a similar seven-point deficit to that facing Massa this year, beating both Hamilton and Fernando Alonso to the title at the final round in Brazil.

"I reckon that in the history of F1, we have never seen a world championship decided on the last bend of the last lap of the last grand prix," Montezemolo reasoned, joining others, including former Ferrari favourite Michael Schumacher in acclaiming possibly the most amazing finale in the 58 years of the competition.

"Miracles, when they happen, usually only happen once - and I say that because last year was a miracle. A repeat is usually impossible [but], in Brazil, with Massa, we were in the process of producing another miracle."

Although Massa was visibly disappointed to have been told that he had missed the title by the smallest margin - Hamilton finishing sixth would have allowed the Brazilian to break a tie by virtue of having more races - but showed commendable, if tearful, dignity on the podium as Ferrari celebrated another constructors title with a 1-3 finish.

"Luckily, we had another television, so I was able to watch the podium ceremony - which I enjoyed," Montezemolo revealed.