SPOILER -- CAN'T DEFEND MASSA ANYMORE

Massa has to win his 4th race yet but its coming. I cant wait to buy a nice bottle of Amarone with the help of the C note he will be sending my way when Alonso can no long catch Massa in points.

 

1. I made the statement On Merit which means earned on the track and not by judicial fiat. There is a very big distinction which truly belongs in a separate thread. While Ferrari won the title thanks to rulings by the FIA and the Hungarian stewards, the fact is that the two McLaren drivers accumulated more points than the two Ferrari drivers. In the absence of intervention by the regulatory authorities, Ferrari would not have ben awarded that title.

While I am happy that Ferrari was the 2007 WCC, that title was not nearly as satisfactory as previous WCCs or the 2007 WDC for that matter.

2. I actually have used Schumacher as an example of someone who beat not only Massa but all his teammates handily. I think he makes an excellent benchmark for evaluating how talented his teammates are, since it is a good argument that he extracted the maximum potential of every car he ever drove and therefore the degree to which his teammates lagged behind is a good barometer to the degree to which each extracted the maximum performance they could out of the car as well.

Separately, I distinguish between Schumacher (whose achievements I respect but whose racing ethics and attitudes I don't) from the Ferrari team. Too many folks here seem to think they are one and the same.

3. I don't recall Massa ever beating Schumacher in a race where Schumacher did not have some sort of problem. I do however recall several races in which Rubens simply outperformed Schumacher straight up, Austria 2002 being the most obvious example.

I may be wrong, if you can think of a specific race where Massa outdrove Schumacher straight up, I would be interested to know.

Massa does not have 4 wins this season. That was the bet

By the way, are you aware that I have already committed to donate the winnings (should I win the bet) to charity?

 

Fair-Weather Frank enjoys following the bet but he doesn't want folks to remember that Maxorido stepped up to accept the wager that he was too cowardly to accept himself.

 

He an he alone was responsible for ruining the reputation of the team that day.

He initially regarded the teamorders, and by delaying the move untill the very last metres of the race he was solely responsible for reveiling the teamorder so blatantly, thus bringing both his teamleader and the team itself a lot of discredit. Remember the crowds reaction? Let alone the media all around the world. Also, Schumacher had to face a very hostile crowd once on the podium. He did the only thing he could do, handing the top step to Rubens, which then brought the team a penalty to top it all off.

Mind you, this particular teamorder wasn't anything more than the teamorder that saw Heikki giving Lewis an easy access to third place last sunday or the teamorder that saw Patrese moving over for Mansell in France 1992. The only reason it brought the team so much trouble, was because of the way Rubens executed it. That day he somehow didn't understand that the win wasn't his and never was going to be his. Both Ferrari's were running well ahead of the field. Both cars were told to extend their lead but not to attack eachother. Schumacher wasn't just handed the win, because he was told not to attack as well. That day Ferrari had the luxury to stay out of any risky racing and were in the position to determine from the pitwall which of their cars was going to take the win. Ferrari never made a secret of of their strategy which was to take the drivers crown as early as possible, and it was always going to be Schumacher. How Rubens ever thought he had a better claim to this victory than Schumacher and therefor was 'robbed' by the team, I'll never know, but I do know that this isn't the kind of behaviour one would like to see from a reliable #2 driver. So therefor, yes, I would have sacked him on the spot.

This is all off topic of course, not in the least because I believe Massa is NOT Kimi's #2 as Irvine and Barrichello were to Schumacher.

 

there ya go, another condescending post !

not all of us can afford to lose a bet of that amount so calling someone a coward is pretty poor form

seriously, when are the mods going to look at how some people behave around adults ?

check this guys posts out and you will see his negative posts are overwhelming, I don't have to I've seen his posts for some time now and they aren't pleasant

 

There were some races were Rubens got the better of Schumacher, but Austria surely wasn't one of them. It may have looked that way to the informed bystander, but it wasn't. But it is of no surprise that in some races Rubens beat Schumacher given these two drove for the same team for six seasons. That is almost 100 GP's.

And didn't Massa beat Schumacher in Turkey 2006?

Anyway, to me it is not really helpful to 'cross judge' two drivers. You can only judge drivers against eachother when they have use of the same equipment under similar cirumstances. Rubens has done nice races in a Ferrari and has had some dissapointing ones as well and the same has to be said of Massa. Which of the drivers is better? I honestly couldn't tell you, other then they do the job they were hired to do and that is racking up WC points.

 

I see a lot more people responded to this, than I expected.
Here are some facts that certain people here love to overlook. Rubens spend a lot more time as Schumi's teammate than Massa. As a matter of fact Rubins has more GPs behind the wheel of a FErrari as MS teammate than the total of Massa's career. The other factor that people conveniently leave out is that Rubins career with ferrari was during the Scuderia's total dominence, not exactly their situation in the last 3 years.
And yes, Massa has outdriven MS in Turkey. Just like he has outdriven everyone else on that track for the last 3 years.
Not to mention that when the team has had their act together he has pretty consistently outperformed his WDC-teammate.

 

I have that same Massa/Alonso points bet as well, but I will not rub anyone's nose in it prior to or after winning it. Every dog has its' day.

I took that bet for different reasons than the Massa sucks issue. I took that bet based on my belief that the Renault was a piece of crap and I believed that any driver in a Ferrari could out point Renault/Alonso. I even went so far as to predict that Alonso would fail to get a podium finish this season. Although he looked like he was in position to do so a couple of times, I find it ironic that Piquet Jr lucked into Renault's first podium finish of the season this weekend. My bet had nothing to do with the abilities of Massa and Alonso.

By the way, I will ask Ted to donate my winnings should I happen to win.

Massa still needs to win another one and if the McLaren/Hami duo improvement is for real, Massa may have a hard road to hoe. not counting Kimi's mission. We'll see...

 

Kimi's mission??!!?? It reminds me of an old joke from my country.
a man walks into a bar and orders a martini with 3 olives
he drinks it but sets the olives on the side
He orders another one again with 3 olives and does the same
when he orders his 3rd martini again saying he wants 3 olives,
the bartender tells him "OK I'll make it the same way, but why you order them this way if you don't touch the olives?"
"Well my wife send me for a jar of olives" the guy responded
Lately Kimi has been on a similar mission it seems.

 

No?
What I saw, was Hami cutting wheel to wheel, getting a tiny bit ahead, then pushing left all the way forcing all of them to either brake, go off then on. Some of the top-down shots then cockpit shots seemed to show a more gutsy LH, and nice, nice lines to the left cutting off the track and forcing their hand. thing is, if they would have challenged him, LH would have won the racing judgement and gained... he took chances and they blinked. but, they were out of room none the less.

r

 

But to counter the idea that Rubens was there longer and that he was there during the era for Ferrari total dominance, I will say that Rubens also had MS (IMO the greatest F1 driver ever) as his teammate, whereas the past 2 years Massa has "only" had Kimi as his teammate. Also, as for the Ferrari dominance, I have zero doubt that if Schumacher was in the car last year, he would have run away with the title by a good 20+ points, and this year he would be easily winning by a 10-20 point margin.

He magnified the car - he made it look great. Don't forget the number of times that Rubens finished mid-pack whilst Schumi was way off in the distance in P1.

 

sooo, does that mean Kimi will get the job done, just a more indirect route,
or
that Kimi still parties a lot
or
olive vant to du is vin

 

I think he means that Kimi just likes to bar-hop on an international basis, and driving F1 means free plane tickets and hotel rooms to lots of different bar-laden towns each year

 

I have not been a big Hami fan because he has not proved to me that he has been capable of winning the WDC. But this last weekend he showed a lot of mustard and put the rest of the field on the trailer. That is two races in a row that he has showed what a WDC is made of. I was very impressed, more so than anything I saw last year or the beginning of this year. Those passes that some have tried to down play, were agressive world class passes.
It looks as though he may be tough to beat for the WDC.

 

To be fair, he catches a lot of crap too. I wouldn't place the blame solely on one person, it's kind of a merry go round. I usually agree with him on most things, but the exact capabilities of Massa is something that we do disagree on.

 

Watch the vid again, he was not ahead. Had Schumi done this three times in a race everyone would have been screaming. Of course we will never see it, however, had this been done to the Schu, Hami would have had an invite to a nice bowl of kitty litter. Turn about after all.

 

What the hell?

 

Ted, with this single statement, you have removed the credibility of any previous post you have made and any future post you may consider. Senna'a ethics are amongst the worst in F1 history, so please, do not make any comments about any other driver when the one for which you named your avatar is one of the worst when it comes to ethics. Senna admittedly intentionally ran into the back of a competitor at 150mph!! Not because the competitor was a problem but because Senna did not like the attitude of the head of the FIA. That is nuts!!!!

That is not only insane, that is absolutely unethical. STOP!!!!!!!!

 

+1


!!!???!!?!?!?!?!?!???


????????

 

From my perspective Massa made a decision to be conservative and hold on to third rather than push a car he had no confidence in into the grass trying for second.

Did fine in my eyes.

 

Knowing Ted, this is just a game, do not take it seriously. He is a good guy.

 

BINGO!! You got that correct, give the man a night with Heather Locklear. On the podium, points for third, only what, 3 or 4 behind first? Beating his $45 million/year teammate, I call that pretty damn good in my book. But then, winning the WCC and then the WDC is most important in my book, not impressing these Monday morning quarter backs on FChat.

 

Ridiculous. What would that prove? At the end of the season, if you eliminated yourself because you "tried to make it difficult", what would that prove? Only that you have a small penis and you will do whatever stupid action you must do to let people think you have more than 5 inches. Give me a break.

Not exposing yourself to a possible reduction in points is intelligent. Moving out of the way of the inevitable is smart. Thinking about a championship is smart.

Fighting the ineveitable is stupid.