ROME, Oct 24, 2007 (AFP) - Newly crowned world champion Kimi Raikkonen and his teammate Felipe Massa are in a league of their own, Ferrari chief Luca di Montezemolo boasted on Wednesday.

"With all the respect that I have for the others I wouldn´t swop my drivers for anyone," the Scuderia boss said at Ferrari headquarters in Maranello.

Di Montezemolo praised the duo´s peformances in what was a dramatic and draining campaign which saw Raikkonen start well, then go through a slump before coming back strongly to claim the title by a point from Lewis Hamilton.

He said: "Raikkonen arrived here (replacing Michael Schumacher), he won the first race and then he captured the world title.

"I don´t know what more I could ask of him.

"As for the younger Massa, he had more pole positions than anyone else, he is strong and loyal and it´s not insignificant that I personally took the decision to renew his contract up to 2010."

Di Montezemolo was distinctly less enthusiastic about Bernie Ecclestone, accusing the F1 boss of seriously downplaying the Ferrari-McLaren spy scandal.

"I´ve read what Bernie Ecclestone had to say about Lewis Hamilton´s skin colour and that it would be even better if he was a muslim.

"Bernie would be better off talking about how the dishonourable decision taken by the FIA was humiliating for everyone, starting with him."

Di Montezemolo was making reference to the July 26 judgment by the FIA not to punish McLaren over ´spygate´, a decision that provoked a furore at Ferrari who claimed it was "incomprehensible" not to punish McLaren.

A second hearing into the affair resulted in McLaren being fined a record one hundred million dollars and stripped of their points in the constructors championship which they were comfortably leading at the time.

"It´s been a poisoned championship. We´ve seen people who have lied, who improved their car´s performance by anti-sporting methods. We´ve had difficult moments, but the hardest was that decision by the (FIA´s) world council.

"It was an absurd sentence which recognised cheating had taken place but never accounted for it in the verdict.

"The sentence was absurd, and risked setting a precedent with a jockey who runs with a drugged horse still going on to win."

"I´ve already thought about competing in the next championship with a 8000cm3 engine - the team would be disqualified, but the driver would still win."