GPWizard F1 Forum
F1 News & Discussions => General F1 Discussion => Topic started by: TheStig on October 19, 2008, 06:24:01 PM
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Fernando Alonso has admitted he still harbours a dream to race for Ferrari one day.
The Spaniard has been persistently linked with the Italian marque this year, but it is now clear that - while weighing up a big-money offer from Honda - he is likely to stay at Renault for the 2009 season.
But he told Italy's Corriere dello Sport newspaper: "I admit that one day I would very much like to be with Ferrari.
"It's the best team in the history of formula one, and it is clear that those who go with them, are part of history," the former double world champion said.
Ferrari has elected to stick with its current drivers, Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa, for the next couple of years.
Alonso said the last two grands prix, which he won, have not compensated for a difficult season, because his only goal is to "win the title or at least be able to fight for it".
But he said: "I do not consider this a lost year. I have remembered that I love formula one, and how to enjoy it."
The 27-year-old is believed to have been courted by BMW-Sauber for 2009, but Alonso denies that the deal fell through because he would not have fit in at the team.
"I have raced karts since I was three years old. In the last 24 years I have been fine with all of my teams, except for one," Alonso said, expressing frustration that his disastrous year with McLaren in 2007 tarnished his reputation.
"It was the same team that had problems with Senna, Prost, Raikkonen and Montoya. Perhaps the problem is with the team rather than with the driver," he told Germany's Stuttgarter Zeitung.
http://www.paddocktalk.com/news/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=97071&newlang=&topic=8&catid=0 (http://www.paddocktalk.com/news/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=97071&newlang=&topic=8&catid=0)
No doubt with the car he could write history?
TheStig
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If only he'd keep his mouth sut TIGHT, and let his driving do the talking ........ like Kimi.
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Not just McLaren. Senna was difficult, period. Prost I can't really say, I don't know enough about the history with McLaren. Montoya was a spoiled brat long before he made it to F1, and McLaren didn't have a problem with Kimi, just that Kimi had problems with a lousy Merc motor for a couple of seasons. McLaren wouldn't have let Kimi leave if they could have matched Ferrari/Phillip Morris' offer - but that would never happen.
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I think Prost was fine at McLaren, he won several WDCs there, until Senna arrived and soured the relationship. Senna was as demanding as Alonso is now. Prost went on to prove himself capable of winning the WDC in more than one make of car and I believe Alonso wants to be hailed amongst the best for acheiving a similar feat, It would explain why he is always so desperate to leave Renault.
Raikkanon equally had no axe to grind about McLaren they just couldn't give him the reliability & performance he expected with the Merc lump.
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Prost's problem was Senna not McLaren. Senna's problem is that at that time McLaren could build a better car than Newey
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Remember, we're not talking about how thing were in Real World. We're talking about Ferd World, an entirely different reality!
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Perhaps the problem is that McLaren, like every other team, works best with one type of driver and works considerably less well with other types?
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Perhaps the problem is that McLaren, like every other team, works best with one type of driver and works considerably less well with other types?
huh :o
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Prost did have problems with McLaren, but they were the same ones he had with all his teams: He is a perfectionist, and would keep his mechanics jumping to make tiny changes to the car, then have it put back to the original set-up. Senna was more of a "that's close enough, I'll make it work" type, so of course he was more popular within the team.
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That reminds me of Mansell's comments about Prost when they were team mates at Ferrari.
He is not a proper racing driver. He is just a chauffeur. He spends forever altering the car and in the end the car is doing most of the work.
Well yeah but....
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So if Nigel had paid attention to the proffessors lessons he may have won more WDCs himself. :D
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Warning! Long post alert!
Perhaps the problem is that McLaren, like every other team, works best with one type of driver and works considerably less well with other types?
huh :o {dare, quoting Alianora La Canta - 4 comments ago}
dare, what I mean is that every organisation has a particular ambience, a particular culture, a particular way of doing things (or methodology as Ron would call it) generated by those working within it. That ambience/culture/methodology will attact some people and repel others. You need only think of the places and people where each of you have worked in the past to see that you work better in workplaces and with people that fit the way you think, rather than those which work in ways that seem strange to you.
The same principle works in F1 teams. If you have a slightly chaotic team where the technical director is an extremely powerful influence, then you will get more performance from the team if you listen to that technical director and treat him as an equal rather than forever trying to prove a point against him or seeming perpetually scared of him. Isn't that right, Jacques Villenueve and Heinz-Harald Frentzen (at Williams in 1997-8)?
If your team has a team principal that appears to have a clear favourite before you've even started, that favourite isn't you and the principal won't stand still long enough to explain why, you'll probably have a somewhat easier time of it if you don't argue too hard back, don't take it as an intended insult and simply try to do what you think you should be doing as well as you can. Jarno Trulli can attest to this at Renault.
If your team, on the other hand, is a highly disciplined team that expects its drivers to be equally disciplined, that likes to keep a reasonably low profile in the press (and prefers its administration to do the talking when it does speak out) and expects its drivers to at least try to co-operate with each other and with team strategies, you need to be disciplined, low-profile and co-operative, you should try to be those things. Needless to say, the team I refer to in this case is McLaren. Everyone in the list failed at least one of those attributes.
Prost and Senna fell out with each other bigstyle, as you'd perhaps expect the two biggest titans of the age to do when forced to face each other in the same team. Senna demanded the best of his team at the expense of his team-mate, fuelled by years at Lotus where that was the only way any decent results at all were possible. Prost in turn was generally argumentative in the sense lkjohnson referred to (and got even more so in the psuedopolitically-charged Ferrari), which wouldn't have amused Ron any.
Raikkonen was apparently a bit indisciplined with the drink, which wouldn't have helped his cause. Though to be honest, his "problems" were probably no bigger than the problems a driver can expect to have with a team they have slight incompatibilities with. Raikkonen needed a consistently winning car most of all, because as we now know he finds it difficult to motivate himself unless there's something to clearly compete against (though unlike Hakkinen before him, he won't lose heart simply because he's near the back of the grid - it's being left in a lonely position of any type that causes him motivation issues). McLaren couldn't provide the car, so he went to a team that he thought could deliver what he needed. And in the case of 2007 at least, he was right...
Montoya came up with problems that nobody else could see quite often, and was also highly indisciplined. Turning the McLaren Communications Centre into a creche was the biggest symbolic representation of indiscipline I have ever seen an F1 driver commit off-track.
Alonso was too high-profile in his complaints. For a low-key team, that's a major irritant. When the complaints appear to include psuedopolitically incendinary stuff, it's more than an irritant. Some teams take it better than others, but McLaren was always going to take it really, really badly.
This is what I meant by my original comment, dare.
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Unfortunately, I don't seem to fit in well anywhere I work! All those other people are sooo weird. ;)
Lonny
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Perhaps you are cut out for self-employment, then, and would be suited to employing like-minded people yourself? ;)
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Do you really think there are like-minded people out there? Unfortunately, I've run a couple of businesses and I don't seem cut out for that either!! :tease:
Lonny
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In which case maybe you should try an on-line business and rope in some people from GPWizard to be colleagues? There seem to be like-minded people to you here...
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Warning! Long post alert!
Perhaps the problem is that McLaren, like every other team, works best with one type of driver and works considerably less well with other types?
huh :o {dare, quoting Alianora La Canta - 4 comments ago}
dare, what I mean is that every organisation has a particular ambience, a particular culture, a particular way of doing things (or methodology as Ron would call it) generated by those working within it. That ambience/culture/methodology will attact some people and repel others. You need only think of the places and people where each of you have worked in the past to see that you work better in workplaces and with people that fit the way you think, rather than those which work in ways that seem strange to you.
The same principle works in F1 teams. If you have a slightly chaotic team where the technical director is an extremely powerful influence, then you will get more performance from the team if you listen to that technical director and treat him as an equal rather than forever trying to prove a point against him or seeming perpetually scared of him. Isn't that right, Jacques Villenueve and Heinz-Harald Frentzen (at Williams in 1997-8)?
If your team has a team principal that appears to have a clear favourite before you've even started, that favourite isn't you and the principal won't stand still long enough to explain why, you'll probably have a somewhat easier time of it if you don't argue too hard back, don't take it as an intended insult and simply try to do what you think you should be doing as well as you can. Jarno Trulli can attest to this at Renault.
If your team, on the other hand, is a highly disciplined team that expects its drivers to be equally disciplined, that likes to keep a reasonably low profile in the press (and prefers its administration to do the talking when it does speak out) and expects its drivers to at least try to co-operate with each other and with team strategies, you need to be disciplined, low-profile and co-operative, you should try to be those things. Needless to say, the team I refer to in this case is McLaren. Everyone in the list failed at least one of those attributes.
Prost and Senna fell out with each other bigstyle, as you'd perhaps expect the two biggest titans of the age to do when forced to face each other in the same team. Senna demanded the best of his team at the expense of his team-mate, fuelled by years at Lotus where that was the only way any decent results at all were possible. Prost in turn was generally argumentative in the sense lkjohnson referred to (and got even more so in the psuedopolitically-charged Ferrari), which wouldn't have amused Ron any.
Raikkonen was apparently a bit indisciplined with the drink, which wouldn't have helped his cause. Though to be honest, his "problems" were probably no bigger than the problems a driver can expect to have with a team they have slight incompatibilities with. Raikkonen needed a consistently winning car most of all, because as we now know he finds it difficult to motivate himself unless there's something to clearly compete against (though unlike Hakkinen before him, he won't lose heart simply because he's near the back of the grid - it's being left in a lonely position of any type that causes him motivation issues). McLaren couldn't provide the car, so he went to a team that he thought could deliver what he needed. And in the case of 2007 at least, he was right...
Montoya came up with problems that nobody else could see quite often, and was also highly indisciplined. Turning the McLaren Communications Centre into a creche was the biggest symbolic representation of indiscipline I have ever seen an F1 driver commit off-track.
Alonso was too high-profile in his complaints. For a low-key team, that's a major irritant. When the complaints appear to include psuedopolitically incendinary stuff, it's more than an irritant. Some teams take it better than others, but McLaren was always going to take it really, really badly.
This is what I meant by my original comment, dare.
I will agree with Ali here. Its like a top corporate exec changing his job. The change may not fit.
Bottom line, Alonso didn't fit in Mclaren and Hamilton did. Fact ofcourse is some bloddy good drivers like Kimi, Montoyo , prost & Senna were never really embraced.
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I only said,Alonso had a dream to race for Ferrari one day
TheStig
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I will agree with Ali here. Its like a top corporate exec changing his job. The change may not fit.
Bottom line, Alonso didn't fit in Mclaren and Hamilton did. Fact ofcourse is some bloddy good drivers like Kimi, Montoyo , prost & Senna were never really embraced.
I don't see why you think Senna wasn't really embraced by McLaren. The team was built round him until he decided to leave. Ron has frequently said that he made the mistake of spending too much on Senna and effectively neglected spending on the car to keep Senna happy. Berger wasn't kept in the team for as long as he was for any other reason than the fact that he kept Senna happy. It certainly wasn't for his performances in the car.
Right from the start Ron liked Senna even though McLaren was team Prost. During their negotiations for his first contract Ron reached a point where he was not prepared to go any further. Senna dug his heels in and they were sparated by half a million dollars per year. Considering their relative positions at the time Ron could have told him that he was not prepared to move and Senna would have had little choice but accept it. Instead they ended up tossing a coin for it which Senna won. It was only afterwards that Ron realised that he hadn't tossed a coin for half a million dollars because it was a three year contract and the coin toss cost him one and a half million.
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I will agree with Ali here. Its like a top corporate exec changing his job. The change may not fit.
Bottom line, Alonso didn't fit in Mclaren and Hamilton did. Fact ofcourse is some bloddy good drivers like Kimi, Montoyo , prost & Senna were never really embraced.
I have to agree with Steven about Prost, for a few years McLaren was Team Prost, it was not Ron's desire to oust Prost but rather to ensure a succesion of winning seasons that brought Senna and trouble for the harmony of the team. I believe Senna purposely sought to put a wedge between Prost and the team, the professor eventually packed his tent and moved on to success elswhere.
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Talk about opening a can of worms.
TheStig
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Prost was given the option to veto Senna but said he wanted the team to have the best two drivers. In the two years that they were together they won one championship each but really that was because of the scoring system in place at the time. Best 11 from 16 scores counted. In reality Prost scored more points in each season which is a bit different to how people remember it.
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You surely did Stig, nice one, I love it, keep it up old buddy. :good:
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I have very much enjoyed the comments here, especially those from ALC about McLAREN's Team culture and consider she is "right on the button" particularly about not so sweet FA's time with them.
In fact when you consider McLAREN team history we have to conclude it strongly suggests its culture is "difficult".
I consider the responsibility and blame rests with RD as team owner/principal.
May I point out to forum members the real reason for the bad blood between my hero SENNA and PROST the "Professor":
SENNA demanded and got a secret clause in his contact with McLAREN [which he had designed to cobble AP and destroy PROST's very close ties with the team].
It was outrageous but SENNA's car was to always have better performance!
When PROUST found out about it mid-season he was furious particularly when ron DENNIS would not delete the clause!
Just another dark side to AS, the guy I think was the best F1 driver of them all - stirling MOSS was the best all-round racing driver but that is best left to another post.
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Hehe Sennaman, another can of worms. :good:
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Hehe Sennaman, another can of worms. :good:
lol!. yeah Ian, thanks and no worries mate.
i have always been totally fascinated by ayrton SENNA and not just about how could enter an "out-of-body" supreme driving zone almost at will either
he was such a complex fellow with extreme traits at either end of the personality spectrum - sometimes a genius saint and others an ugly smouldering devil
i am quite sure he burned the trail and was the 'model' for the ruthless but superb driving style of michael SCHUMACHER until the excesses he later developed into an art form just had to be squashed by the officials before it really got out of hand
and i have read some reports and articles comparing lewis HAMILTON to MS for some dubious driving tactics too
perhaps ya have to be a bit of a bastard to succeed after all?
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F.A.B, as I said before, it's all about the driver with the biggest hunger for winning, it's a great sport to watch but when your in the seat..........up yours, it's my corner, take a hike
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F.A.B, as I said before, it's all about the driver with the biggest hunger for winning, it's a great sport to watch but when your in the seat..........up yours, it's my corner, take a hike
yeah mate, it is racing after all and cornering is where a driver has to be uncompromising or everyone will be emboldened to have a go at him!
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I didn't really follow F1 when Senna was driving and
from what I've read I missed one of the best.His
lap on Youtube at Monaco shows how hard those
cars were to drive.Looks like he fought the wheel the
whole lap
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I didn't really follow F1 when Senna was driving and
from what I've read I missed one of the best.His
lap on Youtube at Monaco shows how hard those
cars were to drive.Looks like he fought the wheel the
whole lap
yeah Dare, it was a golden era mate of supremely gifted and courageous drivers and i was lucky enough to be around to witness it - yeah i am that old!
mind you, to modern eyes the old F1cars are death traps and I remember MS saying he would not drive one - he could see they were just too dangerous
for example both the driver's feet ended up in front of the front axle and front wheels so you can see how vunerable their legs and hips were even in a medium crash or shunt
the safety and design of the modern F1 car has evolved substantially since then thankfully
sir jackie STEWART and even max MOSLEY had a lot to do with ensuring the safety of F1 drivers from those times
the real drive for advanced standards of driver safety came from the terrible weekend of 1 May 1994 at IMOLA when both roland RATZENBERGER and ayrton SENNA needlessly lost their lives due to a tragic confluence of substandard car design and woeful track safety standards:
"Improved crash barriers, redesigned tracks and tyre barriers, higher crash safety standards, and higher sills on the driver cockpit are changes due to Senna and Ratzenberger's deaths." [from Wikipedia article on ayrton]
yeah, one year when qualifying at MONACO ayrton scared everyone by entering what he later described as an "out-of-body" zone and broke the lap record consecutively each time he lapped - his pace was so fast, seasoned onlookers were certain he was going to crash and kill himself
however, this 2008 season has kept me enthralled as we have had many different faces on the podium but i must confess i am not as passionate about the sport as i once was
after over 50 years of fascination i guess my old age has replaced my rather obsessive interest...........
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I'm near as old as you SennaMan.I followed F1 in the 60 and
the early 70's.When Sir JS retires I kind of strayed from it.
Funny I didn't start following it again until right after Senna
was killed when I finally got with the times and had cable tv
installed.
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I think Mclaren (under RD) have only had a problem when Ron has a 'special' relationship with one of the drivers, Senna, Mika, Kimi and now LH have all been the favoured sons. Alonso's problem was (and is) failing to understand why a team wouldn't love him the most.
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This is a really interesting thread to follow.
I think one thing that is missing is a more general view. Yes McLaren have had problems with many of their drivers. But then, other than Ferrari, they have been the most dominant team in the 30 years which means they have always employed the best of the best (well more or less). And unlike Ferrari they have generally not had a predefined Nr.1.
Lets look at some other teams. Remember Herbert at Benetton with Schumacher? That was a bit of a problem.
Montoya? He had problems at Williams as well.
Mansell and Piquet at Williams? Didn't realise they got on very much. Or Prost and Mansell at Ferrari?
The only reason Ferrari don't seem to have problems so much is because:
a) for the 10 years MS was there, there was only one driver that mattered.
b) before that they were nowhere to be seen for most of the 80s and 90s.
c) and before that Villeneuve and Pironi weren't exactly getting on
The nice, friendly, guys rarely win in F1. Coulthard, Herbert, Berger... (the list goes on I imagine) all exceptional drivers, but not ruthless enough when it mattered.
Conclusion: in a sport like F1 you can't expect to be loved by anyone. You're there to win. End of story.
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We can't really look at Ferrari over the last decade alone.
If you think Ron has had a few fall outs with drivers, then take a look back at the days of Dragoni as Ferrari team manager. I don't know which driver he didn't fall out with.
Ferrari have been full of strife, internal squabbles and controversy from day 1. It is only in the Todt Schumacher era that things were different, simply because the second driver was employed under the express condition that he was just that - a second driver.
Another thing that annoys me is this business - particularly of Italian commentators - of comparing figures between Ferrari and Mc Laren. Ferrari have been around almost twice as long as Mc Laren so they should have more driver titles, and constructor titles, and wins, and points etc.
What if we took something like 1970 as a starting point; how would the figures compare then ? Is Alianora reading this ? ;) ;) ;) Pull your notes out Ali.
In conclusion, I'm sure Ron's a difficult bugger, but I think I'd rather be part of the Mc laren team than the Ferrari one.
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If you look at Ferrari's history most of it is pretty pathetic. In the 50s they did well and in the early 60s they won a couple of titles. But between Surtees in 64 and Schumacher 36 years later they won 3 drivers titles.
If you look at the figures.
Lotus during its existence won more drivers titles than Ferrari
Brabham during its won 4 drivers titles which is probably more than Ferrari.
Tyrrell during its existence as a team rather than a constructor won three titles the same as Ferrari in the same period.
Ferrari is nothing special for most of its existence. In the 50s and early 60s it was successful and then there was 36 years of mainly garbage.
I don't know the figures for McLaren and Williams off hand but both were way more successful during their lifetime than Ferrari until Schumacher went to Ferrari.
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What if we took something like 1970 as a starting point; how would the figures compare then ? Is Alianora reading this ? Wink Wink Wink Pull your notes out Ali. {johnbull - 2 comments ago}
*pulls notes out and barely manages to stop a paper avalanche - must tidy up soon...*
Starting from 1966 (McLaren's founding):
1966-1969 (inclusive): 0-0
1970s: 1-4
1980s: 4-2 (cumalatively 5-6)
1990s: 3-1 (cumalatively 8-7)
2000s: 1-6 (cumalatively 9-13)
Ferrari is unquestionably the most successful taken across McLaren's entire span (unless you hold that McLaren was the real winner in 2007 and 2008), though there is more consistency in McLaren's constructors' titles. You can depend on them winning a few times a decade, but Ferrari goes through some major peaks and troughs.
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Thanks Ali. I knew you'd have the answers. ;)
Won't be on here again till Monday as we're off to Italy racing, in a couple of hours. See "Other Sports".
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Have fun, johnbull!
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What if we took something like 1970 as a starting point; how would the figures compare then ? Is Alianora reading this ? Wink Wink Wink Pull your notes out Ali. {johnbull - 2 comments ago}
*pulls notes out and barely manages to stop a paper avalanche - must tidy up soon...*
Starting from 1966 (McLaren's founding):
1966-1969 (inclusive): 0-0
1970s: 1-4
1980s: 4-2 (cumalatively 5-6)
1990s: 3-1 (cumalatively 8-7)
2000s: 1-6 (cumalatively 9-13)
Ferrari is unquestionably the most successful taken across McLaren's entire span (unless you hold that McLaren was the real winner in 2007 and 2008), though there is more consistency in McLaren's constructors' titles. You can depend on them winning a few times a decade, but Ferrari goes through some major peaks and troughs.
Drivers Titles
70s is 2-3
80s is 5-0 to McLaren
90s is 4-0 to McLaren
00s is 1-6
tot 12-9 in favour of McLaren
Re Brabham v Ferrari don't forget the Brabham team started in 64 when Surtees won for Ferrari making it 4-4 vs Ferrari during the life of the Brabham team (if you regard the Ecclestone mob as real Brabham)
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I thought Brabham had been more successful than Ferrari and it turns out like Tyrrell they were no better than Ferrari.
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I think Lotus had the most success over the shortest time frame. Who knows what they might have accomplished if Clark and Chapman hadn't died so prematurely. How many times did they roll out a car that made everything else instantly obsolete?
Lonny
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I think Lotus had the most success over the shortest time frame. Who knows what they might have accomplished if Clark and Chapman hadn't died so prematurely. How many times did they roll out a car that made everything else instantly obsolete?
Lonny
Get ready for the new Honda to turn heads in Melbourne next year! ;)
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As in turn away to keep from frying eyes? :D
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As in turn away to keep from frying eyes? :D
That's almost poetic. :good:
I just hope it's not prophetic as well, us Honda fans have been waiting too long.
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You can go all the way back to the 60s and Honda has never been able to design a good chassis. I always hope for a breakthrough, but...
Lonny
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I think Lotus had the most success over the shortest time frame. Who knows what they might have accomplished if Clark and Chapman hadn't died so prematurely. How many times did they roll out a car that made everything else instantly obsolete?
Almost every time Chapman produced a new car.