Alonso to leave F1 at the end of 2018

Agree'd. One is a racer to his core. The other plays a #2 role for a paycheck. He needs to go. Kimi is the most over rated WDC on the grid.

 

So Alonso is out of F1; best news of the day for me.

Good driver, but toxic, IMO.

I am wondering if he will alllowed to intrigue in Indy racing.

 

And he knows why !

Christian Horner said it again this week: he creates chaos everywhere he goes.

 

And Christian Horner leaves a trail of ******** everywhere he goes. If he was as good as a team manager as he is running his mouth, RBR would have 10 WCC.
Honestly I am so ****ing tired of hearing that Alonso is toxic, that he creates chaos. What sort of personality type do you think can become a World Championship anything--The Easter Bunny perhaps? Champions are naturally talented, highly skilled professionals with unrelenting drive and a ruthless will to win. All of them. Say what you will about Alonso's disastrous career choices, on the track he has always been fierce but fair. He is respected by every driver in the field. Few others can make that claim.

 

Yes. Christian Horner is the first and only honest and straightforward team boss we've seen going back to the Webber and now Ricci era. Everything he says has no political connotation and he's just about the only person whose word I would take as gospel to just to prove my point.

Give us a break.

Alonso made the worst career moves, but will go down as one of the greats.

Best,
Sammy

 

Agreed. It's like if he would simply shut up and drive. Be a DRIVER only. Leverage his talent. Stop trying to be a mastermind, then a team could use his unargued driving talents to their advantage.

 

Hamilton badmouths his team every other week. Who knows who Vettel has rejected as a team mate but it's always been spoken that he does it. All of the top drivers have their baggage. The difference is the others chose wisely when making their moves. That said, Alonso gave Ferrari a lot of time to produce a winning car and instead they produced cars that he had to wrestle to get within even a chance of being the championship and that's exactly what he did.

Alonso's legacy will be that he was one of the best history has ever seen at driving, and god awful at everything else that mattered in the sport. He should be a perfect fit in Indy where being outspoken is a little more welcomed. lol

 

Alonso sucks.....

 

Alonso will definitely go down as one of the greats. His ability to drive not so good cars to positions it doesn't belong, and still manages to do that to this day is nothing short of incredible. I'll be keenly following his Indy career, presuming he'll go that way.

I think the complete opposite, actually...Horner is a fantastic team manager. He's got some very difficult characters to manage throughout his career. Nevermind the ****show that was jaguar he inherited when they bought it...He was the youngest team manager by an enormous margin, yet put together a great team. In 2009 they (just in their 4th year of F1) they became real challengers, IMO the only reason they didn't win is because they didn't have the Double Diffuser as early as the other 3 teams...Then 4 subsequent titles on the trot. All whilst managing a team and the ego of certain characters in the team, the difficult hybrid years with Renault, again his boss, the FIA and Renault themselves...not an easy job!

Out of all (non drivers) tend to get the straightest answer out of him in the paddock, IMO.

 

Massa put his driving abilities on the same level as Michael Schumacher.

 

I actually think that Horner has done a good job as well, but when his team isn't winning he needs to create a distraction by making comments like this. Remember that RBR threw Renault under the bus after 4 WCCs on the trot(gee is that toxic), and he dissed my favorite driver so **** him.

 

Which driver did he "diss"?

 

Alonso. He inferred that he is a "jag-off" ???

 

I agree with your assesment of Christian Horner.
He is an outstanding team manager and for me the only palatable individual left at Red Bull after Ricciardo's departure.
Sorry, but I cannot stand Mateschitz, Marko or Verstappen.

 

Reflection as to why F1 sucks now. Can’t close gap if you can’t test.

 

I don't think free testing is on the cards at Liberty or the FIA.
I am not certain the teams even ask for it.
Most evaluations are done on simulators now, aren't they?

 

agreed. Kimi ain't going to Sauber.

 

Alonso leaving F1??? Whaddya know - prayer works.

 

I really will miss Alonso but his political intelligence has always rubbed me the wrong way, Me First Team Second. Easy to play Monday Morning QB with this announcement but I've beeb saying this since his move to Renault then onward from there https://www.autosport.com/f1/feature/8407/poor-choices-undermine-alonso-f1-legacy. (Its never Alonso's fault, always McLaren/Hamilton/Stewards/RaceDirectors/Ferrari/Renault/CleaningLady):

And that is going to be Alonso's legacy, one of team changes that failed. When he signed for McLaren, a deal done at the end of 2005 and the season before his Renault contract came to an end, it was an obvious destination.

Like Schumacher a decade earlier, he'd realised that success for the Enstone-based team (previously Benetton) would likely be transient. He was right on that score, as the squad has only won four races since then, and in 2005 McLaren was the team that had produced the fastest car. And at that time it was the Mercedes works team.

But 2007 unravalled because of one unforeseen factor - the performance level of Hamilton. It's not stretching a point to argue that - because had McLaren instead opted to put a safe pair of hands in, for example Pedro de la Rosa, into the second car, then Alonso would have won the that crown.

The heavily-politicised season that did follow, one in which Alonso was a willing and active participant, forced Alonso to return to his old home at Renault. It was an 'any port in a storm' move that did yield a couple of wins in 2008 (one of them the Singapore Grand Prix that was later revealed to be the result of team-mate Nelson Piquet Jr crashing deliberately), but he knew his stock was high and the move he craved - to Ferrari - came to pass for '10.

And it was fine to tread water for a few years. After all, he was still young and there would be plenty more success to come.

There were two near misses during the Ferrari years. First, in 2010, when he lost out thanks to his team's strategic planning being focused entirely on nearest title rival Mark Webber's Red Bull in the title-deciding Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. When Webber, who was struggling in that race, pitted early to try to turn his night around, Alonso covered him.

But Vettel, 15 points behind going into the event, completed a dominant win and took the title, as Alonso spent the remainder of the race stuck behind Vitaly Petrov's Renault. Ferrari had made two errors - watching Webber too closely, and missing the fact that the tyres went through a graining phase during a stint that made it look like the performance was dropping away permanently. Head of race track engineering Chris Dyer ultimately paid the price for the strategic miscalculations...

 

He especially showed that ruthless will to win during Spygate and crashgate. Then when other things didn’t go his way he whined like a toddler. He brought negativity to every team he raced with. Good riddance.

 

Yep, but not the same imho.

 

What about Minardi?

 

5 years from now no on will remember Alonso in F1.

In the age of RB / Vettel and Merc / Hamilton he will be a minor footnote.

 

I think that's a bit of a stretch...

 

Guess he didn’t do anything to help them either given that I don’t see them in the lineup anymore.