Brazilian GP***SPOILER****!!!!!

I disagree. At this level, you either have it or you don't. Improvements, if they happen at all, happen on the margin. Massa simply does not have the raw talent that either Kimi, Alonso, or Hamilton have. Who was it that said "you can't learn speed, you either have it or you don't"?

Massa might grab on occasional win by virtue of driving the best car on the grid but he will never be a WDC threat. He is another Barrichello, fast on occasion but simply not at the level of the best drivers in F1.

+1

That is for certain, this was simply the best possible outcome in Brazil to salvage the 2007 season.

 

off topic, but---anyone with a copy of the race? I would like to have it for the hx books. PM me please.
Thanks!
H

 

I'm guessing it wasn't Bob Bondurant.

"Use the force, Luke", only works in the movies.

Running on "instinct" only gets you just so far. Then you need tools in the driver's kit that DNA didn't put there.

Why should driving be an "instinct"? A motor vehicle is an artifact -- a gizmo. The early cars didn't even have the same pedals or in the same arrangement. People rebel at the notion that driving is a skill that you have to *work* at acquiring. But you can't make bricks fly by wishing for it.

Do you expect to hit a home run the first time you pick up a bat? Or split one arrow with another the first time you see a bow? And those are simple tools, compared to a performance car.

You don't "learn" speed. You study precision. Speed comes with practice. (Just like touch typing)

And Phil *is* still improving.

 

Excellent post. Its preposterous to think that one can't improve in F1. Phil has shown drastic improvement just in the last year. Senna3xwc, your opinion of massa is clear, but in your last post you are stating Massa "doesn't have it" as fact. Putting an "i believe" in front of the sentence would be appropriate.

 

So, according to your line of reasoning, the average joe schmoe Car Enthusiast, the average Ferrari owner, can theoretically reach the driving abilities of Kimi or Alonso, given enough track time, enough 'work'? you forgot to add that human beings don't all have the same capacity (be it mental, physiological, whatever, for one reason or another), or have infinite room for improvement, nor do we 'learn' at the same rates. You can 'study' precision and practice however much you want, but in the end it comes down to the mind getting the body to do the driving. the mind/body thing, and their ultimate capabilities vary tremendously amongst the billions of apes living on earth.

 

Given enough time. That's why most F1 level racers start very young.

Can an F1 driver be "made" by training? Answer: Lewis Hamilton.
(Schumacher literally grew up at a karting track.)

You're not talking about physiological limits -- you're talking about trade-offs.

It's like the old George Carlin joke: "Seven day beauty cream: Rub it into your skin for seven days -- taking time out for meals, of course."

If you start at 5 and do nothing but practice driving, then by 20 you'd be an F1 class driver. And not much good for anything else.

How many sports "heros" can't do anything else? How many college football stars, headed for professional sports, have simply snoozed through college classes, and missed out on having a fall-back career?

The "average" car enthusiast has other interests competing for learning time. You make your choices and live with the results.

From the outside, being a professional racer may seem "really neat", but think about all the baggage between events. Ask Alonso if being a racer makes you immune to having "boss troubles". Like living out of a suitcase? How about having a family? Like schmoozing with the "Rust-Eze" guys? (They weren't so bad, as sponsors go.)

(Trust me, I speak from experience on this one. I'm happy enough with my choice -- though I still sometimes miss bashing through the woods.)

The average "ape" uses so little of its total capacity that it's silly to think that limits are imposed by nature.
"The fault, dear Caesar, lies not in our stars, but in our selves."

Look at calculus: That's the hurdle that turns back a large number of students. Some conclude that they "don't have the talent" and give up. Others fight through the barrier and move on. (Non-linear differential equasions were a hurdle for me.)

It's like "trying on" a Ferrari: When you first try to sit in one, it seems cramped and uncomfortable. Then you shift around a little and it just fits. That's what it's like to push past a "limit" and find what lies beyond. A little mental squirming about, and you find a way to make it fit.

I've often said that I have zero talent for languages. But on international chat boards, I'm amazed how much of my high school french I still remember. It's not that I don't have a talent for languages. It's that I don't have passion for it.

Don't dismiss Massa. He has the passion.

 

I can agree with most of your post apart from this:

You have to have a natural born talent to begin with , you can train all you want, you can't make a champion..ie Ralph Schmacher

This is true he has passion no doubt, killer instinct win at all costs no.

 

Prost didn't have a killer instinct, and he did pretty well...

 

I don't think Lauda had a win at all cost mentality either, and he is one of my top 5 favorite drivers....Andretti said he always felt very safe racing wheel to wheel because Niki didn't engage in any stupidity behind the wheel...

 

True maybe wrong choice of words.

A great driver.

 

win at all costs = Over rated archaic BS.

Ditto for LH - what he has clearly demonstrated is an advanced case of lose at all costs mental zig zag.

 

geez, what a rant...but it still comes down to this... lets say 10,000 5 year olds are put into intense racing programs, no preferential treatment to anyone--no 'outside distractions', and all of them eat **** sleep 'learning' 'studying' "speed". by the time they are 20, will all 10,000 be at the same level of ability? highly unlikely. the idea that all of them would become 'world beaters' (or even just be an F1 driver) simply by putting in the 'focused' time, is absurd. a few drivers on the grid this year--sure you could think of them, they started very young, all had the resources to help mold them into F1 drivers. and they are not at the top as driving goes. why is that? it must be because they made too many trade offs? they didn't push through their 'limits'? off in the sand box as a child, instead of Karting like a maniac? spending too much time with the family? while car racing is physical in its own unique way, it is still physical nonetheless. the mind has to coordinate the body to drive the car with precision. "talent" is really a "predisposition", but you argue that humans aren't born with varying such? that you simply have to push hard enough through perceived limits? question, how did Kimi develop his "speed" with so few races under his belt prior to becoming an F1 driver? Err, Lewis Hamilton, so your saying that if every single aspiring child grew up in exactly the same way, with all the same resources, in the end, they would have his ability as well? ok. oh, your example with Calculus is not exactly relevant here.

 

People vary. You'll never replicate one human experience with another. Opportunity does not equal interest. And interest can be fleeting. Attention wanders. Today, they call it "attention deficit disorder" and consider it a handicap. (In the past, it was considered a lack of mental discipline.)

"Talent" is a poorly defined term. It generally can be translated as "beginners' luck" or "easy effort". For some, it's just a question of mental alignment. Can you understand the workings of a transmission without looking at the interior? Some drivers have a "feel" for the car, others have to learn it .... and some have a whole bunch of DNFs because they don't understand the mechanical limits of the hardware.

Machines have built in limitations. People are more versatile.

You keep implying that being a top race driver is purely a mechanical skill, rather than a mental one as well.

What do you consider learning versus "talent" as factors in mechanical skills? Do you insist that if you don't hit a home run in little league, you'll never ever learn to hit a ball?

Do you assert that if it doesn't come easy, it doesn't come at all?

"If at first you don't succeed, give up".

Words to live by.

 

If it were just a matter of practice, then Luca Badeour ought to have driven circles around Michael Schumacher, Ricardo Patrese ought to have been the most successful F1 driver of all time, and Kimi Raikannen ought to have never made it to Sauber in the first place.

This argument is nonsense. Yes, one needs to practice in order to reap the benefits of natural talent but all practice does is bring you to the limits of your maximum potential. You can practice your golf swing until spinal fluid leaks from your ears but you will never be as good as Tiger Williams. Why? Because he has a natural gift that you or I do not. Similarly Massa may improve on his own abilities but he absolutely does not have the natural ability of an Alonso, Hamilton, or Kimi.

You are confusing the discussion. We are not debating whether Massa is a better driver now than he was 5 years ago. He ought to be. However no matter how many miles he puts in, he will never acquire the natural feel for the car's behavior that guys like Alonso or Kim has, let alone a great Like Senna or Shumacher. It simply isn't there and if it were, it would have manifested itself by now.

There are plenty of guys on the grid that we can point to who will never be world champion: Fisi, Trulli, DC, Rubens. Why is that? Because we know what they are capable of and we know what they are not capable of. They are all highly gifted talents, they have to be to make it to that level, but even at this stratospheric level of talent there are differentiations between the truly great and the merely good. Massa is not at the level of the great drivers on the grid, this is pretty evident. Kimi came into F1 with a grand total of 23 auto races to his name. Yet he was immediately and quite clearly a considerable talent, he gave Nick Heidfeld, a former F300 champion and experienced F1 driver, all he could handle. How one can observe Kimi and not come the conclusion that he was born with superior talents well suited for auto racing, be it eye-hand coordination, seat-of-the-pants feel, or some other indefinable quality, is inconceivable. He didn't have the experience of the rest of the grid yet by his second season he was winning GPs. Guys go through their entire career without coming close to a win and here is a guy with less auto races on his resume than me leading the F1 grid. Hamilton, too, is asuperior talent. He came into F1 this year not having done anything other than straightline testing in an F1 car, yet he was on the podium for his first 7 (IIRC) races. This is not learned, this is inherent.

Massa, on the other hand, has enormous experience in F1 yet he has never...NEVER...outperformed his teammate. If this is not evidence of a driver that is never going to become an F1 great, then I don't know what is.

The great drivers in F1 make themselves known right from the start. You learn speed in karts and Formula Ford, you don't learn speed after you get to F1, you either have it or you don't. Massa doesn't. He will be another Rubens, he will get his odd win here and there by virtue of driving a Ferrari, but he will never, ever win a WDC. He doesn't have it in him.

 

Although Massa is apparently not at Kimi's level, I'm not too sure about dismising him for the championship all together. In case he is another Barrichello, that's actually good news too. Massa IS a team player and can help Kimi take more championships in the future.

I'm actually happy with the driver line up at Ferrari. Sometimes it doesn't pay to have two championship contenders that go head to head and take away points from each other (i.e. LH and FA) to eventually loose the championship to someone else (as long as they also take the WCC).

Massa is not the sharpest driver when compared to Kimi, FA and LH in extreme situations but he comes across as a hard worker and wins races. I think LdM was right in signing him for another 2 years.

 

If anyone demonstrates what experience can do, you do.

 

this sounds like the classic discussion of nature vs nurture...

Equal opportunity, but not equal outcome. Newsflash, we are all NOT the same.

None of us would be an Einstein, no matter how much quantum physics we would study. None of us could run as fast as Carl Lewis ever did. And the same is true for racing. There are certain skills/talents/reflexes/cognitive assertions that you either have or you don't.

Massa doesn't...

Kai

 

finally someone gets it!

 

I have no idea what your point is...

 

Whoa...wait a tick...i never implied that driving was all mechanical... do you see how many times i mention the mind/body connection??? 'the mind coordinates the body'... that means, focus, concentration, and physically making the body drive the car with precision (however, it's this 'precision', this 'feel', and the ability to develop it, that has varying levels, thus the differences in driving abilities)....did you miss that? i also said there was a mental and physical capacity difference inherent in all human beings. 'talent' is what i consider at times to be 'predisposition'...you missed that too. and that predisposition is what allow some to excel at certain things while others can't. here's an easy example, even if not 100% applicable to driving... two professional track and field sprinters (lets leave doping out of this), one trains relentlessly, and is a huge student of his line of 'work'. he mentally prepares for every race and gives his all, but he can never run as fast or faster than the second guy, who doesn't train nearly as hard lets say, but was born with a physiological advantage (probably leading to a mental advantage, massive confidence, due to his physical nature). his body is more 'optimized' for running, he was born with more fast twitch muscles, whatever... this 'talent', 'gift', 'predisposition' puts him ahead. it may be 'luck' that he was born with it, but that's not the issue here. no amount of 'nurture' , training, mentally preparing, is going to help the first guy ultimately run as fast or faster than the second guy (given equal effort in that race). and yes, sprinting involves plenty of 'mental' ability (sports psychologists wouldn't be so valuable, if the mind was not that important)...there's plenty of 'thinking' involved prior to the race and during , even in a race that lasts six and a half seconds (60 meters)--one can argue that the mental part is huge in such a short race, because one cannot have a lapse of concentration anywhere and find the time later to 'make up for it'. Anyhow.....i never implied, "if it doesn't come easy, it doesn't come at all"...you are making leaps with your assumptions, obviously not getting my drift. it's not about giving up if you don't succeed at first, it's about realizing that human capacity, mental or physical, are not handed out at birth equally to all humans. yes, machines such as an F1 car have built in limitations, you're correct, but humans although very versatile and highly complex, are ALSO machines with built in limitations.

 

that's what the heck i've been saying...geez louise!

 

Yep, and you obviously don't get it. It's not either or it's AND.
Genes are turned on by the environment and they operate on the environment.

Just because something makes you feel great and clear visioned and provides
you the illusion of control doesn't mean it's real.

 

That is my point.

 

Or in other words, you have nothing to contribute to the discussion (yet again). You simply want to provoke an argument...

 

If you don't understand, don't assume others don't.
It's not a problem, some day you will.

Going back to Massa - you're dead wrong.