Originally Posted by ACU:
“I never understood this, "McLaren chose to waste millions" argument. Of course when they signed Alonso they thought things were going to turn out different. However when the situation reached the level it did, Ron chose to back his boy. We are taking about Ron Dennis here, not some normal rational thinking bloke. He runs that team like a dictator, his word is final.”
Yep, that's Ron for you.
He goes, Lewis stays. Then Lewis goes, Ron comes back and, apparently, invites Alonso back.
All perfectly clear.
Quote:
“Another way to read that wins stat, is to say Rosberg is more consistent. Like I have said, it depends on which side of the fence you sit on.”
"Another" way?
Not really sure why it needs to depend "which side of the fence you sit on" to see that Rosberg's strong point is that he's consistent whereas Lewis is a stronger racer.
Quote:
“I see what you did there.
Say Rosberg is one of the best drivers around, Lewis is beating Rosberg, therfore Lewis is one of the better drivers. Actually Rosberg is dependable and somewhat robotic. He has never really threatened race wins or a WD title, apart from this year. You can count on him to score regular points. That doesnt make him one of the best drivers around. He is dependable, but not someone you would build a team around.”
Seemed to work for Red Bull with Vettel.
You
must've known that what you wrote about Rosberg, there, could just as easily be applied to Vettel, right?
It's always difficult to compare drivers when they're in different car but, y'know, we've seen Alonso up against Hamilton in the same car and Lewis came out just ahead so the fact that we're now seeing a
fairly tight battle between Hamilton and Rosberg suggests that Rosberg is a fairly strong driver.
He certainly relies on finishes rather than wins but I guess it's only smart that any top sportsman would play to their strengths.
Course, that
does raise another interesting comparison between Hamilton and Alonso compared to others....
They seem to have a talent for getting the best results possible from
whatever car they end up in; good, bad or mediocre.
That's not something Vettel
or Raikkonen have managed to do.
Quote:
“Of course Vettel moved teams because he was getting beaten by his team mate.
Is that why Lewis left Mclaren? Oh sorry no, he left for money.”
Surely you know that's not true?
I think it's fair to say that if Hamilton thought there was half a chance McLaren were going to build a decent car for 2013, he would have been happy to stay.
As it was, he'd watched McLaren go downhill in terms of design
and race-team performance since 2009 and it seems like Brawn and Haug convinced him that Merc' were going to be strong in 2014 so he took the gamble and jumped ship.
To be fair, I think Vettel's found himself in a similar situation to where Schuey was in 2007.
The team had been mighty but the cracks were beginning to show, key personnel were drifting away and Schuey had the foresight to realise that it was the end of an era and he bailed out.
Vettel seems to be in a similar position but his timing isn't
quite as good as Schuey's.
And, of course, there's the question of why go to
Ferrari.
I admit, I
was doubtful about Hamilton going to Merc' and I was completely wrong.
Maybe Ferrari
have convinced Vettel that they'll have a monster car next year.
Then again, maybe they just offered him an irresistible chunk of money.
I guess we'll find out next year.
Quote:
“Of course hes now gone to a team, where his partner will be one of the best drivers on the grid.”
Not sure about that TBH.
Kimi's always struck me as a gutsy driver and, in an era where you had to manhandle the cars, that was a benefit but I've never thought he was
that good.
He scraped one WDC because McLaren tripped over themselves and his results against Alonso speak for themselves.
It's always seemed, to me, that he was more interested in milking as much cash out of Ferrari as possible rather than winning another WDC.
Originally Posted by
ACU:
“Looks like Merc are willing to compromise on engine freeze.
Seems Toto is full of cr@@p, citing costs as the main reason why Merc have been against lifting the engine freeze. Yeah right, letting go of their advantage has nothing to do with it. Would it not have been better to keep quite to to the main reasons? He now looks a bit stupid by saying this.
Seems you have to be ready to talk rubbish like this to be a team boss. As all of them seem to do it. Not sure why Horner gets more stick than most, when they are all essentially the same.”
Dunno about that.
Obviously it
is in Merc's interests to curtail engine advances as much as possible but he's perfectly correct to say that it will, inevitably, increase costs.
Let's face it, if there's a freeze on engine design then every team is forced to run with whatever they invent over the winter.
If that engine freeze is lifted then every team
will end up incorporating whatever clever bits of technology they find from other teams.
For example, the Merc' engine is already very strong but the regulations call for a heavy turbine shield to prevent the possibility of shrapnel from an exploding turbo' from causing damage or injury.
Ferrari seem to have circumvented this rule by fitting their turbo's with a vent valve which ensures they can't overboost destructively and, as a result, while every other team, including Merc', are running with heavy steel shield on their turbo's, Ferrari have a light carbon-fibre shield instead.
Obviously,
every team is going to want to adopt
every innovation from every other team, which is certain to lead to increased costs due to engines being modified as new technology is revealed.
*EDIT*
And, let's face it, if you want to talk about high-ups in F1 talking bollocks, you'd have to try very hard to beat hearing Montezuma prattling on about how modern F1 cars, with their nasty hybrid engines, are like taxicabs.... especially at a time when Ferrari was getting ready to start production of their LaFerrari hypercar... with it's nasty, hybrid, taxicab engine.