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| Could MS at Mercedes by good for Alonso? | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Dec 23 2009, 02:43 PM (1,319 Views) | |
| Brave_Lee_Flea | Dec 26 2009, 03:59 AM Post #31 |
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Chief Engineer
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Aww, Thanks guys!
It is true that they won 2 WCC and 1 WDC in the next two years and but for a few mistakes would have won 2 WDC but is is equally true that barring a few mistakes they wouldn't have won any WDC's in that time. I don't say that things are irreversible at Ferrari but stranger things have happened than top teams slowly dropping further and further down the pecking order. I know, I say this as a long-standing Williams fan. Somebody pointed out to me recently that Lotus remain the fourth most successful team of all time .... and those tifosi amongst you will know that not even Ferrari are immune from that possibility from past experience. I think that Ferrari's current problems, such as they are, have stemmed from the desire to replace the team's significant decision makers with Italians, rather than opting for the best people available - which was how Ferrari pulled themselves out of the doldrums last time. At the moment I just don't see that they have the right people at the helm. I'm not suggesting that Ferrari will suddenly be utter rubbish, nor even that they won't manage titles, my prediction is over a longer term than that; I think they'll slip further and further off the pace over the next decade in much the same way as Williams did. Mind you, I believe that it is still true that Ferrari have a protection against the loss of revenue that Williams suffered as a result of an increasing lack of performance in that Ferrari get considerably more money from the FIA just by virtue of being Ferrari (this is one of the things I don't like about the team, F1 ought to be a level playing field, rewarded purely on merit) I rate Alonso very highly, indeed he's my favourite of the current drivers and the guy I most want to see lift the 2010 WDC but just as I don't think Schumacher could have turned the Ferrari tide alone nor do I think Alonso will. And unlike Schumacher, if things aren't going his way Alonso has not historically proven to be the kind of guy who shuts up and knuckles down, rather he tends to publicly criticise his team or make very obvious flirtation with any other team who he thinks can offer him more. I don't see that going down to well at Ferrari. That said, it may be that Alonso has matured and/or realise that there really aren't very many top class bridges that he hasn't already burnt. |
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| Red Andy | Dec 26 2009, 10:14 AM Post #32 |
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If the public pronouncements of Luca di Montezemolo are anything to go by, Alonso knows exactly what he's going into at Ferrari. I don't imagine we will see any fireworks of the kind that we saw at McLaren. Criticism of the team is not a trait unique to Alonso, indeed the current world champion was known to have a rant against his employers in the Honda days, but it's true that Ferrari historically haven't stood for that and if Alonso is to succeed there he will need to be driving for the team, not just for himself. However, as I said, he knows this. As for Ferrari, I've seen it said a few times that the influx of Italians to the top positions has affected them detrimentally, but when "detrimentally" still means three titles out of a possible six, it's probably got more to do with a natural redressing of the balance in F1 rather than anything specifically Ferrari are doing wrong. I don't believe Ferrari will slump in the way Williams did; the problem for Williams was their refusal to modernise, including (but not limited to) resisting assistance from manufacturers other than as an engine supplier. You can accuse Ferrari of many things, but living in the past is not one of them. |
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| Steelstallions | Dec 26 2009, 12:55 PM Post #33 |
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I like Petra's posts, but when they talk about Ferrari, they do remind me so much of Ron Dennis talking about Ferrari from 1999 to 2004. It was really getting to Ron that he was being spanked almost every race and he tried and failed miserably to maintain that false aura of moral superiority. What drivel did he used to talk about "unlike some, we strive to maintain the spirit of racing" whilst at the same time favouring one driver over another, ready to use stolen data from their main rival and lie to track officials to obtain a podium position. NOT for an instant am i saying Petra is anything but a good bloke who happens to post on Pitlane, but as I said before its hard to take on board what you say when your true feelings have been expressed. BTW Ferrari was created by Italians, has always been owned by Italians and when they realised they had the wrong personnel, it eventually, in the 90's, was the senior Italian management who changed the staff. Or was Agnelli and Luca German? I assume they are not so stupid to follow the demise they had twenty years ago when it was not so much that they hired Italians, but that they hired people using a system of nepotism that employed the wrong people regardless of where they were born. Who the F is Lauda to say early in the season that there are too many Italians running Ferrari? If they produce the goods it doesn't matter if they are all from the same village let alone country. As for comparing them to Williams, Williams is nothing without F1. They do not make road cars, they do not sell their technology. They would fold in an instant without F1. Once they started sliding into the team they are today, they did nothing to address the demise. They should have took a leaf out of Brawns book and got fully involved with a manufacturer with the means to produce world beaters and given up a share of their company. Ferrari, like I even have to bother mentioning it, make there money away from F1 so should have resources to attract the big names. But back to the original post, I think Alonso will be better off without MS at Ferrari and with MS defecting to a rival team and racing against him, I doubt sentimentality of the "good old days" if it ever played a part will affect them. Alonso is coming as a driver and team leader, if he can beat Massa, he will be top dog with an expert team ready to work hard for him. Alonso will never have a better chance than this to obtain that unique legend status. |
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| sportsman | Dec 26 2009, 01:32 PM Post #34 |
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I like Petra's posts, but when they talk about Ferrari, they do remind me so much of Ron Dennis talking about Ferrari from 1999 to 2004. It was really getting to Ron that he was being spanked almost every race and he tried and failed miserably to maintain that false aura of moral superiority. What drivel did he used to talk about "unlike some, we strive to maintain the spirit of racing" whilst at the same time favouring one driver over another, ready to use stolen data from their main rival and lie to track officials to obtain a podium position. NOT for an instant am i saying Petra is anything but a good bloke who happens to post on Pitlane, but as I said before its hard to take on board what you say when your true feelings have been expressed. BTW Ferrari was created by Italians, has always been owned by Italians and when they realised they had the wrong personnel, it eventually, in the 90's, was the senior Italian management who changed the staff. Or was Agnelli and Luca German? I assume they are not so stupid to follow the demise they had twenty years ago when it was not so much that they hired Italians, but that they hired people using a system of nepotism that employed the wrong people regardless of where they were born. Who the F is Lauda to say early in the season that there are too many Italians running Ferrari? If they produce the goods it doesn't matter if they are all from the same village let alone country. As for comparing them to Williams, Williams is nothing without F1. They do not make road cars, they do not sell their technology. They would fold in an instant without F1. Once they started sliding into the team they are today, they did nothing to address the demise. They should have took a leaf out of Brawns book and got fully involved with a manufacturer with the means to produce world beaters and given up a share of their company. Ferrari, like I even have to bother mentioning it, make there money away from F1 so should have resources to attract the big names. But back to the original post, I think Alonso will be better off without MS at Ferrari and with MS defecting to a rival team and racing against him, I doubt sentimentality of the "good old days" if it ever played a part will affect them. Alonso is coming as a driver and team leader, if he can beat Massa, he will be top dog with an expert team ready to work hard for him. Alonso will never have a better chance than this to obtain that unique legend status. [/QUOTE] Excellent post SS.And the part I found extremely interestring was this sentence. "Alonso is coming as a driver and team leader, if he can beat Massa, he will be top dog with an expert team ready to work hard for him. Alonso will never have a better chance than this to obtain that unique legend status" Yours is one of the few posts that acknowledge that Alonso needs to beat Massa to establish himself as team leader. Massa is no pushover.He could well prove to be a very hard nut for Alonso to crack. Regarding Petra, for gods sake he will be unbearable now.
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| Pasta | Dec 26 2009, 01:42 PM Post #35 |
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Let's not forget something very important in the 2005 and 2006 years. The three teams on Bridgestone (of which Ferrari was one) were at a massive disadvantage to the Michelin shod teams. The effects were dramatic, particularly in 2005 and I think later that year some aspects of the Michelins were deemed illegal. The Ferrari car itself, particularly at the end of 2006 was (other than engine reliability issues) the bomb to beat. That car quality continued into 2007 and Kimi benefited greatly. A lot of the 2007 car had contributions from the Brawn/Schumacher era. Anyway, I do think that Alonso will be a material contributor to the 2010 car, as he appears to be maybe the most dedicated of all drivers (except Michael himself) respecting car development. |
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| Brave_Lee_Flea | Dec 26 2009, 02:25 PM Post #36 |
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Hey, that's fair enough, I always find it difficult to accept when people say things I don't like about Williams or about any of my favoured drivers. However that doesn't always mean that there isn't some truth in what has been posted. This forum is all about opinions and I can only post things as I see them. What I have done is nail my colours to the mast so that they are there for all to see. FWIW I can't stand McLaren either which gave me the ability to be quite objective when considering the battles between those two teams over the past decade, especially since Williams relative demise was well under way and so often-times I had no conflict of preference to cloud my judgement; I dislike both teams equally.
I see it rather like all women short-lists for MP's; you may well end up with a perfectly capable candidate but you have to question, truly, whether they were the *best* candidate. "Capable" is not nearly good enough to succeed in F1. My observation is based on the fact that I see Ferrari making what are now uncharacteristic mistakes. Not only strategically in races (where they have not only lost the ability to manufacture a win through clever strategy but sometimes even to bring the car home where it's performance warrants) but also with the car design. It's not only that Ferrari designed a dog last year - although heaven knows it is unusual for Ferrari to build something quite so poor - more that they were out-thought by lesser teams in how to interpret the rule book. I'm sorry but Ferrari were at the forefront of micro-interpreting the rules and they missed a trick that at least three other teams spotted (including Williams, a team with only 25% of Ferrari's budget). This is very, very un-Ferrari-like and suggests that perhaps they now don't have the creativity in their engineering core that they once had.... and if that should prove to be true it would greatly increase the chances of my prophecy becoming fulfilled.
Of course there is some truth in what you say here. However at the start of Williams decline they were a huge "name" in F1 (though I admit not as big as Ferrari) and they probably even now get sponsorship that other teams with the same level of performance but without the "name" couldn't leverage. Of course Ferrari have much more money than Williams now ... but they didn't back then and I don't think even Ferrari's name would protect them for more than a decade, as it didn't with Williams. And while it is true that Ferrari do make money away from F1 it has often been stated by their fans that the F1 team is expected to self finance itself as the parent company, FIAT, is not in any position to throw large sums of cash at the F1 team. I'm sure that you would have been one of the people arguing that very point not so very long ago. You can argue that Williams should have gotten in to bed with BMW but equally looking at the exodus of this season you could argue that it was just as well that they didn't. BMW under Dr Mario were not the easiest of bed-fellows, I think the "fit" with BMW wasn't working out very well which probably made Williams a bit more coy about accepting their advances. Had the relationship been less strained I think Williams may have been more inclined to consider marriage. As it turned out BMW didn't achieve any more without Williams than they did with them and ran away with their tail between their legs at the first sign of trouble (though I'm quite sure John would view this in an entirely different light!). As things stand Williams Grand Prix Engineering are still in business, BMW F1 are not. Williams did not refuse to modernise, nor did they "do nothing"; they built a second wind tunnel which is still among the best in F1 (but had problems calibrating it which caused them problems for several seasons and which ironically actually ended up contributing to their decline .... walrus anyone?). They also have acquired one of the most powerful CFD computers in the pit-lane so one cannot fairly argue that they did nothing! I believe that they built a bloody good chassis last year but that neither their engines nor their drivers managed to get the most out of it, which is kind of ironic given that Williams only gave Nakajima a seat in return for Toyota engines ... and each was probably the weakest on the grid in it's respective field. I'm hoping for good things from Cosworth and hoping for a stronger showing next season, although again they are going to be dependant on both engines and drivers over both of which there must be question marks.
Agreed. I like Alonso and I sincerely hope that he has matured. I still suspect he might find Massa more troublesome than he imagines though. |
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| Alien_SAP_Fiend | Dec 27 2009, 05:24 PM Post #37 |
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and why would that be? |
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| Rob | Dec 27 2009, 07:50 PM Post #38 |
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One less distraction for one. Also it helps refute the appearance that Massa is the favored one. |
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| Alien_SAP_Fiend | Dec 28 2009, 03:14 PM Post #39 |
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Indeed. So if Alonso blows Massa into the weeds next year, it means that Massa was the "favoured one" when MS was in the team? |
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| Brave_Lee_Flea | Dec 28 2009, 06:45 PM Post #40 |
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What an odd comment..... I'm not sure if you're joking, being deliberately obtuse or have genuinely misinterpreted Rob's comment. |
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| RJHSaints | Jan 4 2010, 04:14 PM Post #41 |
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I'm not entirely certain what point Alien_SAP_Fiend is trying to make here. I really don't get how he could link what happens next season with the events of 2006. Maybe if he explained his reasoning he could enlighten us. |
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| Rob | Jan 4 2010, 05:00 PM Post #42 |
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I think we all know better than that. Look at the trail though, Ferrari favored Shumi, against Alonso Shumi would probably favor Massa, therefore the leap that Ferrari were favoring Massa wouldn't be a bug one. With Shumi gone from Ferrari it is just one less point those who would argue Ferrari were favoring Massa would have. |
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| Alien_SAP_Fiend | Jan 6 2010, 07:59 PM Post #43 |
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To clarify my deliberately obtuse comment: Alonso will be better off at Ferrari with MS out of the picture because it's pretty obvious to all who don't look at the world through scarlet spectacles that somebody was pulling strings to ensure that one of the Ferrari drivers wasn't getting the support that his predecessor did. |
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| John | Jan 6 2010, 08:19 PM Post #44 |
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LOL.... only a Kimi supporter could say that and keep a straight face... Of course Kimi's unprofessional approach to his job had no baring on his treatment
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| P1 | Jan 6 2010, 09:33 PM Post #45 |
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MS's presence on the Red's pitwall did not bring Kimi much good. Difficult to say for certain what impact MS further had in the garage and other nifty places up and down, but as Kimi supporter I remain healthy sceptical. But no matter what, clearly understand Alonso's motives to get MS out of mind and sight for everybody, incl away from his teammate Massa... |
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