Obvious solution

When will Ferrari figure out that they should have kept Kim, and dumped Vettel, especially after last year's showing? They could still have gotten Leclerc and brought up Mick after Kimi retired in a year or two.

 

I don't know. Maybe they don't read advices on F-chat

 

Kimi is yesterday's news man. Why would they keep someone who falls asleep at the start of the race, wake up the last 5 laps, put in a fastest lap and then go to sleep again.

 

They sent Kimi to Alfa to run the "driver training school".
Alas, it seems Vettel needs some refresher schooling as well.

 

Kimi is being given a graceful exit from F1. There are better drivers to put in the Alfa. But Alfa's first priority is to move up the grid with the drivers they've got.

 

Huge contracts like that of Vettel are hard to break. Anyway, I think it's been said many times before that before he died, Marchionne insisted that Kimi be replaced by LeClerc.

 

It's like the high efficiency water heaters.
You use the stuff you're exhausting to transfer some good things to the raw incoming stuff.

The JV teams are often used to let older drivers transfer some accumulated race-craft knowledge to the rookies.

 

If Kimi is running the "driver training school", Ferrari would do well to give him a capable and promising student.

 

Can you imagine Kimi as your coach? “Eh, you need to go faster and get better at turning.” As he takes a swig from a bottle of vodka.

 

Kimi is a midfield runner, no matter what car he is in. Completely uninspiring, unlike his early years. Sad to see such talent amount to nothing.

 

I think Ferrari has run out of choice for this year, and had to keep Vettel 'til the end of his contract.

We don't know yet how good Mick Schumacher will be in F2, so it's a bit premature, IMO, to think he can be given one of the most coveted seats in F1, just on the strength of his name, don't you think?

 

in an extremely tight mid field he's doing rather well...

 

+1. Mick has to prove himself more in F2 before being elevated to the F1. Alonso would have been better than Vettel this year. Would cost Ferrari a lot to get rid of Vettel before his contract is up.

 

Alonso would love to have his hands on the current ferrari with the potential it has, but you are right, the cost of buying out Vettel would be prohibitive - not impossible of course, but I doubt ferrari really want to pay out tens of millions to buy someone off. It’s a time where the argument for three cars could work..... offer a berth to Alonso, but he gets a flat million a race for the first 3. If he proves better than Vettel, that’s the audition over, and they assess the extra value of either keeping Alonso and dumping Vettel, or retaining the monies that would have been used to buy Vettel out and spending it on spaghetti and petrol!

 

After the amount of pointless $$$ already donated to the Kimi ice cream fund, I’m not surprised they let him go. I’m only surprised they took so long. He should have been gone years ago. The world has moved on.

 

I knew there was a case for a 3-car team somewhere, or as the bikers call it"a wild car entry".
The trouble is the teams would resist it, it would upset Liberty' business model and FIA wouldn't even contemplate it.
How do you think the points should be attributed ?

 

Kimi couldn't be that bad: he won a GP for Ferrari last year.

 

True. Vettel won 5 so I guess that makes Kimi 5 times worse than Vettel. Proves my point really...

 

Bearing in mind that Kimi was kept these last few years as tail-gunner for Vettel, him winning a GP wasn't bad really.

How many GP winners did we have last year ?

 

I’m thinking no points nor recorded place finish for the third car to finish of the three..... Liberty would love the spectacle, maybe they might even encourage Mercedes and the bulls to have guest drivers in a third car too..... improve the show, give the regular drivers a wake up call too

 

I am wondering if the idea of having non-scoring cars and drivers capable to infuence the result would be acceptable to the other competitors.
But the idea is attractive, and most tracks would accept a larger grid.
I guess your nightmare would be a Mercedes 1-2-3 ! LOL

 

Kimi was hired to play 2nd fiddle to Vettel. Received the worse strategies and so on.

Still finished 3rd in championship, whilst really he should've finished 4th at best, considering how much better the Mercedes was, how quickly it snatched the championship and by which margin.

 

I think Kimi did very well in view of the circumstances, but now Ferrari has do adopt a different approach with its 2 drivers.
Vettel is not a very efficient leader, as we have seen, and Leclerc has shown promises, so ....

 

will be ''interesting'' to follow, but I fear the worst already.