ROSSI IN PLACE OF MASSA...THE PLOT THICKENS

USF1 running customer Ferrari's!, now that really would put the cat among the pigeons on here!

 

Australian Team ???
"For Sale" Four bedroom house, beachside suburb, complete with four teens,cats,dogs and a 2Mtr Water dragon. Wife not included.

 

How about if they just park it.
The results would be the same but a lot less costly.

And until he is really truly signed by Ferrari can this be the last Rossi thread ?
Please ?
My belly just cant take it anymore.

 

Another Fisi assessment based on how he got on with a car and a team that he knew nothing about and didn't get any opportunity to acclimatise himself with!.

If we were to apply your assessment principal to then 1994 season, we'd have to conclude that Ayrton Senna had become a rubbish driver!. Lets look at the facts from 1994 for Senna:

1st Race: Brazilian GP
Grid Position: 1st (Pole position)
Race Result: DNF (spun off)
Points: 0

2nd Race: Pacific GP
Grid Position: 1st (Pole Position)
Race Result: DNF (collision)
Points: 0

3rd Race: San Marino GP
Grid position: 1st (pole position)
Race Result: DNF (Fatal Accident)
Points: 0

Final Championship position: 38th

So to summarise:

Three races, three pole positions, no points, 38th in the Championship and he died whilst trying to negotiate the Tamburello curve.

Verdict (based on Lightguys assessment system): Sh*t Driver!

To make matters worse for Senna's defence, it can't really be claimed that the car was a dog (unlike the F60). If you look at Damon Hills record in the sister car:

1st race: Brazilian GP
Grid Position: 4th
Race Result: 2nd
Points: 6

2nd Race: Pacific GP
Grid Position: 3rd
Race Result: DNF (transmission failure)
Points: 0

3rd Race: San Marino GP
Grid Position: 4th
Race Result: 6th
Points: 1

Final Championship Position: 2nd

So to summarise:

16 races, 2 pole positions, 91 points, 2nd in the Championship.

Verdict (based on Lightguys assessment system): one of the greatest drivers on track.

Now anyone with an ounce of intelligence knows that these statistics do not tell anything like the real story. Senna was still a great driver and was still trying to get used to a new car and team, but even he was struggling and people had started to question the wisdom of his move to Williams. At no point did anyone say "Senna's sh*t these days!".

Fisi, in the previous race to him joining Ferrari, had managed Pole Position in a car that was not rated very highly, at a circuit rated as a real drivers circuit (Spa), and managed to finish 2nd in the race, just behind Kimi in the Ferrari and ahead of 18 other drivers, amongst whom were Hamilton, Alonso, Vettel, Massa, Button etc. Nobody gifted him 2nd place, he earn't it, fair and square with an excellent drive (and I for one wouldn't have been too upset if he'd managed to beat Kimi on the day, in all honesty).

Instead of rating Fisi races with Ferrari in the F60 as a sign of how rubbish a driver he his, try to look at it as just how bad the F60 really was and what an amazing amount of talent Kimi and Massa showed in achieving what they did with it.

(Again I apologise for the length of this post but sadly, for some, it requires this amount of information to stand a chance of making a point understood).

 

Great post, Phil.

 

+1000

 

Excellent point, Phil!

+100

 

what Phil said

 

that is "words of wisdom"

 

So your saying Fisi is great but Kimi and Massa were somehow superhuman because they could drive the car.
This was Fisi's fricken JOB.
He failed.
You think the F60 was the first car in history that drivers have had to pull up from the scruff of their neck for it to perform ?
Do you think there was anyone else on the grid this year with underperforming cars ?
Every single one that did not come in first in each race was underperforming. Or else it would have won.



Comparing Fisi with Senna.
Yeah. That's the ticket.

I give up.
You win.

 

Er, have a look at Senna's qualifying positions ... of course nobody would have called Senna ****. So Senna got into a new team, new car and stuck it on pole, while Fisi cr@pped on himself.

Also Senna had proven form which Fisi most definitely does not (never had). Your post just goes to prove how completely useless Fisi really is. Thanks for the stats details (I've known though that he is **** from about 1 year after he first started in F1).
Pete
ps: Oh and I watched '94 and yes Senna was struggling with a poor Williams design but he was performing miracles in between spins ... comparisons to Fisi's completely dismal effort aren't even worth considering.

I totally agree with parking the car if they have to think of using Fisi

 

Oh dear!, Lightguy, PSK, you seem to have missed the point somewhat!.

Allow Me to try again at a lower altitude so it doesn't go so far over your heads.

The point I was making wasn't to make a claim that Fisi is as good as Senna was, lets get that out the way immediately.

The first thing My post highlights is that even one of the greatest drivers of all time can struggle with a new car and a new team. Senna was struggling despite having unlimited testing available and a car that was far from being a dog to drive, unlike the F60. ( I seem to recall saying that before, still, nevermind!).

The second thing I was pointing out is that raw statistics do not show the whole picture of what was going on at the time (I seem to recall pointing that out before as well, stangely enough!). If you want to go down the raw statistic road however, at least Fisi finished all his races for Ferrari.

Okay, now let's look at Lightguys points:

No!, I'm not saying Fisi is great, I'm saying he is a good driver and his time with Ferrari showed that the F60 is a very hard car to master ( As the Ferrari drivers and Ferrari themselves admitted and I suspect they know slightly more about it than a bunch of blokes on the internet who have never even sat in the car, let alone driven it). What I am saying is that both Kimi and Massa did a remarkable job in a bad car, but they both had a big advantage compared to Fisi in having driven it for 1000's of miles to get used to it.

Ah right!, so what your saying is that any F1 driver should be able to climb into any other F1 car at a moments notice, without any testing and win races instantly.

Sadly it doesn't work that way. Fisi (and Ferrari) said that the Ferrari F60 was a much more complex car than the Force India and a lot harder to set up as it didn't react to changes very well due to it's compromised design.

Let's put it this way:

If you have two Military helicopter pilots, one flys Blackhawks, the other flys Apache gunships. If you put the Apache pilot in the Blackhawk, he's not going to have too much trouble operating it fully to the same degee as the regular Blackhawk pilot.

However, if you put the Blackhawk pilot into the Apache, he's going to struggle big time to operate it fully to the same degree as the regular Apache pilot. But howcome?, afterall, they're both helicopters and they're both trained Military pilots!. I'll tell you, it's because the Apache is much more complicated and harder to master fully (like a flying Ferrari F60 really!), what with all it's additional weapons systems to operate.

To the first point: of course not, that's why I loved Gilles, now he was superhuman!.
To the second point: I'm sure there were plenty of other underperforming cars on the grid last year but you're not rating their drivers as sh*t, like you are Fisi, are you?.

I'm afraid this is one of the most erroneous statements I've ever read!. It implys that every single F1 car is capable of being a race winner and yet we know that's not true at all. An F1 car can perform to the maximum of it's performance at every race, but if everybody elses car's maximum performance is superior, then it can't win unless everybody else falls out of the race.

I think I covered this at the start of the post, hopefully the lower altitude has helped (there again, probably not!).

It's the Gilles Villeneuve style of posting that does it for Me!

Okay, Lightguy and PSK, I'll leave you with this question:

If Fisi is as cr*p a driver as you claim him to be, explain Spa 2009! (feel free to confer on your answer if you need to )

 

Think were talking about comparing apples and oranges here.

 

In the most basic terms possible:

Some people are saying Fisi is a rubbish driver based on his Ferrari drive.
I've pointed out that even an all time great driver can struggle with a new car and team which has somehow been mis-read as Me saying Fisi is as good as Senna or vica versa (no idea how they've read it that way though, I guess some people just see what they want to see!), and I've finished by asking a simple question:

If Fisi is so rubbish, what happened at spa 2009 then?.

It seems pretty simple to Me!

 

yes and casting insults at the same time at other posters - not such a good thing on here......

Carol

 

Please explain how I was casting insults.

All I've said is that Lightguy and PSK didn't seem to get the point I was making and instead read it as Me saying that Fisi was as good as Senna (or Senna was worse than Fisi, I'm not sure which way round they hadit).

I have since tried to re-explain My original point in what to Me are simpler terms. I wouldn't go insulting anyone on this site and if that's the way My comments have been taken then I apologise.

 

There are Lies, damned lies, and statistics..

We afterall are arm chair experts.

 

And the only person better qualified is the "bloke in the pub!", but he knows everything about everything!.

 

Certainty and accuracy are often inversely related.

 

I knew that :sigh:, you have missed my point. My point was that Senna WAS fast in that Williams, he just could not finish a race.

Sorry, everybody was aware that the '94 Williams was a DOG to drive. That is why Senna had so much trouble finishing races, ie. he was able to hold it together for qualifying but not for a race distance. Fisi could do neither.

First of all I have to agree, but you seem to ignore Senna's qualifying performance in this difficult car and brand new team ... ALL poles!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Agree, except the point about Fisi being a good driver. He is below average in F1 terms.

No but they should look/be fast. Otherwise we ALL would be F1 drivers ... if we could spend a couple of years getting up to speed.

Agree, but Fisi never even looked fast ... not even for half a lap.

A lot of race driving is natural talent ... Fisi's amount of natural talent is too low for him to still be on the grid. This was proven in his first couple of years of F1 ... I guess he brought sponsors or something to them teams, cause I would not even have considered him.

Glad you bought up Gilles. Gilles would have been fast in that F60. Probably would not have finished a race, but he would have made damn sure he would have found performance in it somewhere ... as he always did.

Because Fisi is sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much lower in talent, he can only nurse a poor car around, just making it through each corner while all watching are just as nervous.

No but that is how I rate drivers. Any driver can be good in a good car, but only the best can make a bad car look good. That is why I rate MS's early years in the Ferrari team as his best because he performed miracles in a below par car.

That is why I rate Gilles as one of the best modern F1 drivers. That is why I rate Prost as the best driver, because no matter what happened in a race he did everything possible to get the most WC points ... and yes most of the cars he drove were good, but cars change during a race and some drivers allow their lap times to fade and get out blaming the car, Prost (like MS, Senna, Stewart, etc.) adapt his driving to get the results he needed.

We only have so much time between work commitments to make our point, and if I wanted to make posts like I was an accountant or something equally as boring, then I would not be who I am.

Race came to him because of luck, car happened to be good that day and must have stayed fairly consistent. Like I said, a good car can make many look good.

And if Fisi was really any good, do you think Ferrari (McLaren, etc.) would have waiting all the years before getting his backside in their seat? His time at Renault was disappointing and they let him go ... That is far more proof than any post you (or anybody) can write that LightGuy and I are right.
Pete

 

There were rookies with ZERO testing time and driving first time ever in an F1 car, coming straight from GP2 (etc) that did impressive jobs right out of the gate. Grosjean, Alguersuarii, and Kobayashi. And no I dont expect them to win races. I actually expected very little from them. But each did comendably. When we compare their performances against the only standard that has any credibility; their team-mate (and only their team-mate) then we can see the stuff they are made of.
Now compare their performances against Fisi's.
Fisi has been actively driving in F1 for how many years now ?
Did he step directly into a seat from a lower formula ?
The gap from GP2 to even a backmark F1 car is huge compared to going from one current F1 team to another in the same year. Compare the times if you will.
Now then. Let us compare Fisi's results TO HIS team-mate. The only true measuring stick that has any credible measure. Not to anyone else.
Now tell me again how he performed.

 

Do not insult me or others.

Dont put words in my mouth.
I will return the courtesy.

Have you ever raced ?
If not have you ever heard racers talk about the performance of their car ?
Next post race interview listen to what the second place guy has to say. Typically he will say the car pushed, had lack of overall grip, lower top end, whatever.
His car did not perform as well as the winners. If it did their spots would be reversed.
IE his car lacked the performance necessary to win. Hence; it was underperforming.
The next place car underperformed his. So on and so on. Yes sometimes bad luck is involved or other circumstances beyond the driver's control but more often it was a lack of performance.
Listen for it.

You do seem to have the insult thing down.

See above

 

To PSK:

Thank you for your reply to My post. It seems we agree with each other to a degree on some points and and then veer off in oposite directions on others, such is life.

I'd like to say that I didn't miss your point about Senna's qualifying speed, (a bit hard to when, as you have rightly pointed out, he had all three pole positions for the first three races), and I wasn't deliberately ignoring it, as may have appeared, afterall, I could have used Senna's pole positions along with Damon Hills '94 qualifying results (along with his final Championship position), as evidence that the Williams was no where near as much a dog of a car as the F60 was.

As for Fisi, I think we'll have to agree to disagree about his level of talent. All I would say is that poor drivers don't tend to survive very long in F1 unless they bring in a massive amount of money with them, and I don't recall Fisi ever having to pay for any of his drives. Don't get Me wrong, I don't rate him as a great driver but I would say he's a good midfield driver.

We're having enough problems between us with Fisi so I'll stay away from any Prost conversations .

The Gilles Villeneuve posting comment was meant as a light hearted response to Lightguys "I give up, you win" comment. For the majority of the week I too face restricted time to be able to post on here due to work commitments, however, at the moment we are on short time with layoff days so that gives Me the time to post.

As for Fisi at Spa being down to luck, I'll have to disagree (no surprise there, I'm sure ). At the end of the day, good car or not, he went faster than everybody else in qualifying (yes, quite possibly down to the fuel load), and then stayed ahead of a lot of superior cars and drivers, running Kimi close all the way to the finish. I struggle to believe that talent played no part at all and that every other driver, bar Kimi, was having an off day.

It's interesting you mention Fisi's time at Renault being dissapointing. He was there from 2005 to 2007 and during this time he finished 5th, 4th and finally 8th in th WDC. I accept that 2007 was poor year, but if you look at the rivals who finished ahead of him in 2005 and 2006, he wasn't exactly in bad company, was he?:
http://www.formula1.com/results/driver/2005/ & http://www.formula1.com/results/driver/2006/.

As for Ferrari, McLaren et al, not picking up Fisi earlier in his career, the exact same is true though of many a good driver for one reason or another, not just Fisi.


To Lightguy:

It appears that there exist a large Chasm between your sense of indignation and humour, to that of My own. I suspect this chasm is most likely insurmountable and that our personalities are in no way compatible.
I'm sorry that the the comments I made were not recieved in the light hearted manner as was intended, but would like to say in My defence, that from where I hail from, the statements made would not be classified as a serious insult and would either be laughed off or ignored. However, it appears from your response that you are more easily offended than the people I normally associate with and that the statement made is rated as much more offensive than it is here.
I will therefore apologise to both yourself, PSK and to anyone else who felt insulted by My statement and will refrain from responding to your posts in future to avert any possible repetition of this unfortunate outcome.

 

First of all no need to apologise to me, I'm a Kiwi so used to a bit of niggling from mates, etc.

Referring to your above comment I think one of my biggest concerns with modern F1 is that existing drivers are often hung on to for IMO too long. I guess the reason is the devil you know is probably better than the devil you don't.

I blame this 'lack of passing' on just that, ie. too many average drivers in F1 who are treating it as a job. We need more young guns that are way over confident. Passing will most definitely return to F1 then.

Closing off, IMO unless you are one of the top 6 drivers in F1, you should be replaced. Of course there are lots of variables but it is pretty easy to spot who is consistently good and who is not. Alonso proved from his first few races in the Minardi that he was somebody special, as did MS. I can't remember Fisi's first season, thus I wonder why he found a seat for the next year.
Pete