Great lap by Michael to take provisional pole. It was clear to me that his "brake failure" was very delibrate. A driver of Michael's calibre doesn't make such mistakes. He wasn't going that fast into the corner anyway to justify him going wide. He seemed to slow down well before the corner and then speed up just when he hit the corner along with a fake brake lock-up. Amateur stuff. His voice in the post race interview was a clear giveaway. He was visibly nervous and voice sounded a bit strangled. Hopefully a pissed off Alonso will not try to nerf him off into Ste. Devote on Lap 1. Hopefully there are no penalties.... AFAIK both Alonso and Schumi are on similar fuel strategies - so it might be a good dice tomorrow. Idiot Massa - he killed it on his out lap The stewards are investigating incidents involving cars 2, 5 and 14 - Fisichella, Schumacher and Red Bulls David Coulthard - so these positions remain provisional.
IMO it's ridiculous to think it was on purpose. First, do you think all the team would go along with such a plan? Surely at least SOME of them are sportsmen and would refuse to participate. Also, to believe it was planned, you have to think Luca, Michael, Ross, Jean and at least a couple of others are low down dirty players. Second, Michael had very little to gain. At most, he was dicing with losing P1 and taking P2 instead. Its a BIG risk to take just to get one higher position. Third, you are all forgetting all the HUGE risk that is involved with such a move. He could have misjudged and clipped the wall, putting him at the back of the pack. He could have been "found out" by the FIA and penalized. He could very well have been hit by another driver pushing hard to get the good position on such an important track. There were lots of drivers pushing hard and the session was almost over. The chances of a collision were huge. He could have gotten killed by doing such a move. There were TONS of risks to doing this move intentionally and the risks are so much higher than the potential reward that no team would ever plan something like this. Fourth, it's not an easy move to pull off. Look at the in-car camera. He was fighting with the car right through the turn. I don't think any driver is good enought to purposely lose control of their car and regain control just in time to avoid a crash and do it all while blocking the road and avoiding having it look like a pre-planned event. IMO what really happened is Michael knew Fernando was closing in and likely to take P1, so he was pushing very hard. He locked the brakes, couldn't correct in time and slid to a stop near the wall. He wasn't going to risk clipping the wall by keeping his foot in it and trying to save it, so he did the safe thing. Once that happened, he probably realized two things very quickly. First that it would be very dangerous to try to back up on a blind corner, and second that he had no reason to go to great lengths to try to do that, considering he had just inadvertently secured his pole position. It makes for some good whining to think MS did this on purpose, but it's just not reality and even a cursory unbiased review of the situation will show that. Any other supposition by folks is just sour grapes and IMO ignorant.
Well the stewards are investigating the incident. After watching the onboards and replays ... it looks definitely fishy to me for sure. I am not whining ... I am telling it like I see it. Michael may have done it all on his own .. why do you assume the whole team was consulted? Anyway we will know by tomorrow the decision from the stewards.
people tend to forget that he's just human, at that speed, mistakes happen, and of all place, it's monaco. don;t forget what happened to massa. that would be clearly in schumi's mind.
No way this would have happened if he wasn't P1. It almost looked like he turned a little left just to make sure he couldn't make the corner.
No risk whatsoever: He is allowed to have the front wing changed before the race without loosing his pole. And no real risk either to do it in Rascasse. The reaction of the crew told it all: They didn't know about it. It was a MS decision alone and a deliberate one at that.
The last I checked, it's the FIA who writes the rules. And in any sport the winners exploit the rules to win. Down to minimum weight? CC's? Tire width? It doesn't matter which rule, if you can, use it to your advantage. The winners always do. He has 7 for a reason!
Bob Varsha said the rule involved here is that any guilty of delibrately causing a red flag will have his qualification time taken away.
In the game of tennis, the chair umpires sometimes make mistakes on whether a ball was on the line or not. When they're wrong and don't change the call, the player who got the point normally gives up the next point to make it fair as it should. It's called sportsmanship. Something which MS lacked today.
http://users.pandora.be/gheeraert/mon_2006_q3_schumacher_incar_LQ.avi Though I am a Ferrari supporter, I'd like to see Alonso win, because Schumi's antics look very staged. I'm disappointed with MS
talking about Suzuka 1990? Senna never denied anything, and exactly one year later, after finishing the Japanese GP in 1991 (and not years after. Funny you make this mistake, since the 1991 post-race pressconference was about as dramatical as the 1990-incident itself, because of Senna's confession), letting the win to Berger, thanking him for his services, he commented that during the 1990 GP he was pissed at Balestre for deciding out of the blue that pole position were to change from the clean line to the dirty line. Prost was in second, obviously not minding this decision. Senna said he had vowed to himself that if Prost was to go into the first corner before him, the both wouldn't finish. The rest is history. Was his image damaged? Senna clinched his third (and final) title that day and most of us still percieve him as one of the best driver history has ever known. That's because drivers like Senna, and certainly Schumacher, aren't judged upon disputable incidents, but on the overall merits of their career. Both Senna and Schumacher have had their controversial moments, partly due to the fact they are high profile drivers, but it would be downright silly to judge their entire careers upon these moments. So we, well, most of us, don't do that.
Your hatred of MS makes you blind to the reality of this situation. There was a ton of risk. He could have clipped more than the wing, it could have f-ed up the suspension arms. There was also LOTS of risk of being hit by another driver, ending his whole race. And on top of that, there's the risk the FIA would have noticed his obvious cheating and penalized him. I mean, it's so obvious to you that he cheated, so one of four things has to be true. Either A) You are smarter than the FIA, the stewards, and all of us and you caught MS's cheating when we all just were too dumb to figure it out or B) He really didn't cheat, or C) the FIA is in MS's pocket and he did cheat but they let it slide (see my other post for more on this), or D) You don't like MS and in your mind the fact that this could have been an accident never was a possibility. Its gotta be one of the four!
I loved Alonso's face during the interview, He showed alot of control, He truly is a champion. If it was JPM he would have jumped over the table and tried to choke MS
To determine if he cheated, they probably used one of the general rules US common law uses. Clear and convincing evidence to prove that he cheated in this case. The FIA would probably let him go free rather than punish if there was was that chance if it really was an accident. I don't think the FIA would want to punish people without being pretty much 100% sure. The mere fact that we're all questioning this shows that the FIA would lean towards not punishing based on the rule above. It still doesn't mean he's innocent, just not guilty.
Its funny, whenever you are at the top, everyone belwo always cries foul. Is he not allowed to make an error ????? Why is it that he did it on purpose ???? Because he is the best driver in the world and it was a silly mistake.....yes your right. But if I recall a few years back it was the exact track btw when JPM hit Schumi from behind in the tunnel during a the pace car and went into the wall. Nobody penilized JPM for that, everyone was blaming MS for hammering the brakes to piss of Montoya. How soon we always forget. I find it highly unlikely MS did it on purpose.....why ruin your name, and possibly the car if it goes wrong.....just not a smart risk IMO. He made an error.....fancy that MS made a driving error.
Looks like the decision is that he's been confirmed on pole, and good for him. Regarding him doing it on his own - he was on a hot lap. Was he so sure that Alonso was even potentially going to upstage him at that point? It's a pretty split-second decision and one with huge potential repercussions to be made in an instant. It's also a very tricky move to pull off. He'd have had to juggle not damaging the car, ensuring he actually DID screw up FA's lap, and also ensuring it looked like an accident. Even if he successfully handled these things, he still had to worry about getting clipped by another driver and also being sanctioned by the FIA. All of that risk, and for what? To be P1 instead of P2? Alonso will likely pass him before the first turn tomorrow anyway and I bet MS knows that. So the risk is way out of proportion to the reward and no way a driver of MS's caliber would take that chance. He's good, very good, but he's not stupid.
I think it's because of the lack of enough evidence like I poste a couple posts above yours. The camera angles in the tunnel weren't that clear. Michael was braking to give room to accelerate to heat the tires, slippery tunnel at low speeds, etc.
It was very surprising to see what happened. I don't think that he made the mistake on purpose, but when it did happen it does look like he was taking maximum advantage of it. If you watch the corner where Massa crashed, it looked very similar, the car was a little un-settled in the rear and the correction caused him to wash out. MS's mistake looked the same, only less speed. MS was clearly disturbed during the interview, whether it was feeling of guild or surprised of the accusations, who knows. One of the headlines earlier in the week was MS saying that being on the front row wasn't as important as the strategy, different than Todt saying it is vital to be on the front row in a later report. More F1 drama.
from Grandprix.com sans souci " But let us be charitable. Michael made a mistake. He is a world class driver who made himself look like a rank amateur. If he prefers the world to see him in this light and he wins the race on Sunday, then so be it. If he was being underhand, which a lot of people seemed to think was the reality, let us hope that his apparent incompetence returns on Sunday and he crashes and clears the way for people who appreciate the true meaning of the word sport. Winning is not everything. It is how you do it that matters." to that i say - ja das ist richtig....
Well, the moment it happens, you expect people crying out Schumacher is cheating. Without much substance for that matter. Just didn't expect to encounter them on Ferrarichat. Apperantly there's always at least one.
