Malaysia Grand Prix 2012, Kuala Lumpur - Race 2/20

Hell, Alonso's clearly going to win the title, right?

In qualifying, Alonso was over 1s slower than the pole lap.

Alonso's performance is a bad example, because it just so happened that he was in unbelievable form last weekend. I'm not sure if any other driver in F1 could've done what he did.

I don't think I need to say more.

Many teams have had bad luck. Button, for instance had terrible luck in the last race. Vettel was sitting on some good points, before losing out. Merc have also underperformed. How many points do Merc have so far? 1?

What I'm saying is that many teams have bad luck or erroneous results and you cant discount those erroneous results completely.

Maldo's car broke down in the last race. Could we not assume (and I know its early days), that maybe the Williams might lack a bit of reliability?
 
But they never won it in 2007 :) and I don't think they had enough points to win it even if they were not excluded for cheating, so no I don't think they can claim 2007 as anything good in their history ;)

Official Winners: Ferrari: 204 pts
McLaren (Alonso+Hamiilton): 218 pts.

Unofficially, McLaren did win it.
 
All this talk of WDCs it's worth remembering that the WDC is worth nothing to the teams. It's all about the WCC that is what they compete for, that is what they get paid for. The WDC is an overblown side show.

You get publicity for winning the WDC.
Also its a lot easier to sell advertising space to sponsors (or increase prices), if you have just won a WDC and/or have the reigning WDC in your team.

Put it this way, if I was a team owner, I would love to have my car with No.1 on it. ;)
 
Well, you know what they say about making assumptions....they make an "ass" out of "u" and "mptions"....:cool:

Most of the discussions which occur on here, are based on assumption. If we all made no assumptions, these boards would be almost dead.
 
In qualifying, Alonso was over 1s slower than the pole lap.
In qualifying, Maldonado has been far better than last year. Hell, even his retirements have resulted in better finishes than the first two races of last year!

You know I was just using Alonso as an example, right? I'd have thought it was rather obvious that I was making the point that the official standings don't paint the full picture of the season, especially not this early on. You know, what with that sentence I put just before it saying exactly that.

Maldo's car broke down in the last race. Could we not assume (and I know its early days), that maybe the Williams might lack a bit of reliability?
219 race laps completed by both Williams (plus however many qualifying and practice laps), out of a maximum possible of 229, and only one car-related retirement?

No, I'd say we can't.
 
McLaren got no constructors points in Hungary ;)

Again...more politics.

On-track and from a pure racing point of view, Hamilton and Alonso won the WCC for McLaren. Off-track, all their points -not just Hungary - were stripped.

That year, the FIA had some form of vendetta against McLaren.

Whoever heard of a driver being punished for preventing his team-mate from getting into the garage/pit during qualifying? This is something that a team should deal with internally. But the FIA got involved and Alonso was demoted from pole to 6th (I think it was 6th). I believe Alonso is the only driver, in the history of F1, to ever have been punished for this.

Ultimately, when Denis admitted that shenanigans had taken place, the FIA let rip and gave them an unprecedented punishment.

For me though, that was one of the best seasons I've ever seen. It had everything. On track action. Team-mates who were leading the title race and hated eachother. off-track shenanigans (cheating/spying involving more than 1 team). The FIA getting involved at every point, to prevent McLaren winning points. Double standards. The championship leader not being on speaking terms with his bosses. The championship leading driver believing his team were out to prevent him from winning, forcing the FIA to install an observer in his garage. Record breaking fines. One of the closest championships in F1 history (top 3 drivers all finishing within 1 point of eachother).

I mean seriously...2007 had it all.
 
Most of the discussions which occur on here, are based on assumption. If we all made no assumptions, these boards would be almost dead.

*sigh*

I was making a little play on words about another play on words. But now you've raised that point....there's quite a difference between the two ends of the 'assumption spectrum', i.e. educated guesses and wild speculation. For instance, Pérez sliding off last time out. People immediately jumped up and down wildly speculating that Ferrari had ordered Sauber off of Alonso's back, because Sauber use Ferrari engines. No evidence, no real reason to suspect it at all if anti-Ferrari paranoia wasn't such a way of life for so many F1 fans, including about a quarter of this forum. Just some foaming at the mouth and cries of "it's a conspiraceh!!!1111oneoneeleventyone" :) At any rate, Peter Sauber issued a categorical denial. If anyone wants to call him a liar....yeeesh, very brave.
 
Again...more politics.

On-track and from a pure racing point of view, Hamilton and Alonso won the WCC for McLaren. Off-track, all their points -not just Hungary - were stripped.

That year, the FIA had some form of vendetta against McLaren.

Whoever heard of a driver being punished for preventing his team-mate from getting into the garage/pit during qualifying? This is something that a team should deal with internally. But the FIA got involved and Alonso was demoted from pole to 6th (I think it was 6th). I believe Alonso is the only driver, in the history of F1, to ever have been punished for this.

Ultimately, when Denis admitted that shenanigans had taken place, the FIA let rip and gave them an unprecedented punishment.

For me though, that was one of the best seasons I've ever seen. It had everything. On track action. Team-mates who were leading the title race and hated eachother. off-track shenanigans (cheating/spying involving more than 1 team). The FIA getting involved at every point, to prevent McLaren winning points. Double standards. The championship leader not being on speaking terms with his bosses. The championship leading driver believing his team were out to prevent him from winning, forcing the FIA to install an observer in his garage. Record breaking fines. One of the closest championships in F1 history (top 3 drivers all finishing within 1 point of eachother).

I mean seriously...2007 had it all.

Yeah the FIA seriously had it in for McLaren, yet let their drivers still race for the title despite being up to their necks in cheating :D I don't know how you can claim on track and pure racing they won the WCC, when on track they were using stolen data and info from Ferrari, such as when they would stop. Hardly pure racing right? Losing the team points for one year was lenient IMO considering the drivers got to keep points.
 
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Losing the team points for one year was lenient IMO considering the drivers got to keep points.


Alonso told Ron to get rid of Lewis or he was going to the FIA about the data(don't know who first had it)

Ron said no and went to the FIA and told all..BUT Alonso already went to the FIA and done a deal with them!
that's why he got the nickname of "Teflonso" Lewis had nothing to do whith it.
 
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Alonso told Ron to get rid of Lewis or he was going to the FIA about the data(don't know who first had it)

It didnt go down like that.

It all started with Hamilton, playing games, in Hungary, during qualifying.

Basically, there was an agreement in place, that each driver would alternate and get the best period in the qualifying session to leave the pits and post a laptime.

Hamilton went out first (which he should not have...it was Alonso's turn to get prime time).

In response to what Hamilton did (by going out early), Alonso blocked the pit garage (I believe it was for about 30s), preventing Hamilton from getting in, changing tyres, adding fuel and going out again.

At this point Hamilton was in pole.

Alonso then left the garage at a time which prevented Lewis from getting out of the garage to post another time.

Alonso ended up getting pole.

While all this was going on, Lewis was f'ing and blinding at Ron Dennis. Dennis, in return, was also f'ing and blinding at Hamilton, telling him not to swear at him.

After Alonso posted pole position, Denis went to confront Alonso and ask him what he was playing at.

Bear in mind that at this point, Dennis, Hamilton and Alonso were all seething.

During a short exchange of words, Alonso mentioned the cheating/emails...along the lines of: "Do you want me to report you to the FIA?"

This was an empty threat and was said in a fit of anger, as Alonso would not have wanted to harm his own chances of winning the title. Shopping your own F1 team might've been career suicide (Piquet did this and will probably never drive in F1 again).

During this heated period, Dennis then reported his own team to the FIA stating that there is proof of cheating.

At this same time, the FIA began investigating what happened during the qualifying session. It was deemed that Alonso had purposely blocked Hamilton and prevented him from going on and doing another qualifying run. For his efforts, Alonso was given a 5 or 6 place grid drop (I can't remember exactly) and the FIA also decided that they were going to carry out another investigation (bear in mind that McLaren had already been investigated earlier that year, but not enough evidence was found).

Alonso was given immunity, if he would comply with the investigation into McLaren cheating. The immunity was granted because at this stage, Alonso could still have said that there was no cheating and that Denis was making it all up.

In the weeks running up to the hearing, Alonso and Dennis were no longer on speaking terms. Bizarrely, Alonso was still performing well on the track and took over the championship lead from Hamilton.

At the hearing, Alonso and PDLR gave evidence that cheating had taken place. As a result McLaren were fined an unprecedented US$100M. Alonso also stated that he felt the team were now sabotaging his title campaign. The FIA then installed an FIA observer in his garage to ensure that nothing untoward took place, to Alonso or his car.

With regards to Alonso asking for Hamilton to be fired...this never happened. If anything, the events of Hungary were Dennis's fault. As a manager, it is his job to control situations like this and prevent them from becoming a major issue. This is the job of a manager...otherwise there is no point having a manager. Had Denis handled the situation properly, Alonso's grid drop would never have happened, he would've scored an extra 1 or 2 points in that race and won the title. The FIA would never have found out about the cheating and McLaren would've saved themselves US$100M. And McLaren would've won the constructors title in 2007.

That last paragraph is conjecture. ;)

Its easy to see, given the above, how English fans point the finger towards Alonso and Spanish fans point the finger towards Hamilton. In truth, I think British and Spanish fans should point their fingers towards Denis and his poor management. For whatever reason (and I personally believe if it was because he did such a bad job in 2007), Denis stepped down and Whitmarsh took over, about 18 months after the Hungarian debacle.

Have a read of the comments in this report:
http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2007/08/05/hungarian-gp-2007-review-hamilton-edges-out-raikkonen/
 
Agree with what you posted there Sunama, Dennis did not handle it well and Whitmarsh admitted that McLaren let Alonso down that year. I will agree that Max had it in for Dennis and wanted him out, which is why he let Alonso away with it as long as he got to nail Dennis.
 
It didnt go down like that.

With regards to Alonso asking for Hamilton to be fired...this never happened.

The people involved Fernando Alonso, Pedro de la Rosa and Mike Coughlan and Nigel Stepney.

http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2007/09/14/alonso-de-la-rosas-emails-led-to-mclarens-punishment/

I watched a video last week(can't remember where) and Alonso did ask Ron to sack Lewis.

Anyway all old news, FIA have been after Mclaren since the 80s.

The truth and a good read http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2007/09/14/fia-verdict-on-mclaren-full-text/
 
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I cant believe anyone can compare Piquet (jr) to Alonso in ANY regard - Ferrari (and probably Renault, for his 2nd stint there) already knew about Alonso's role in the McLaren fiasco, yet (sensibly) didnt hesitate in hiring him , whether he went through with the threat or not is irrelevant

Just because its "career suicide" for a rookie to do it, has NO baring at all on whether a double world champ does the same thing (especially at the right end of his career as it were, with plenty of years ahead of him)
 
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