The Massa Sucks Thread *OF COURSE THERE ARE SPOILERS*

obviously another joke.

 

This thread was started so that Massa critics would have a place to state their opinions, leaving other threads for those who don't want to read this. Ther eis no point in closing this thread. If you don't want to read criticism of Massa, then don't participate in this thread.

 

+1000000000. BTW Andreas..it will be hot in many of the races coming up. More so hot than not.

 

What about the bet? C'mon, let's hear the crow eat the humble pie.

 

"And to be honest, it is Massa's own team that has treated him like a second-class citizen by failing to deny all of the Alonso/Vettel to Ferrari rumors. "

They have denied the Alonso rumours publicly and at the highest levels. Check the media reports for the last 3 months. Id say the team has treated him very well with MS in his corner. The support given to Massa is equal if not better than given Kimi. The team is very much a fan of their current BEST driver. Im a Kimi fan but he has done little since France to make a case for continued #1 support. Massa routinely outperforms at every level the current WDC.

PS - The denials may mean nothing but they are certainly on the public record and some from Luca himself.

 

ah yes, I forgot about that. Carry on then.

 

and Felipe doesn't suck at all thats for sure - now 4 race wins - good season so far

 

There should be a thread about Alonso and how bad he is sucking the big one. He drives like my Grandmother. Nonna if your Italian.

 

What's for sure is Massa is way better than Raikkonen this year... So if he sucks, what can be said of Kimi?

One thing that sucks for sure is the way the entire team is underperforming: wrong race strategies, tire strategies, pit management, reliability etc... Not at all the same compared to the Schumi-Todt-Brawn era... It's a miracle they are leading the constructor's championship (thank you Kovalainen)...

 

Hehe, that's a funny point. Yes, Kimi sucked in Fuji as well, not denying that. But that wasn't the question. Only one guy didn't suck at Fuji and he is currently leading the championship standings. Coincidence?

Agreed.

Massa didn't put a wheel wrong in Hungary and he did everything by the book in Valencia. Meanwhile Kimi continues to plain suck.

That said, things can still change with different/cooler weather and rain. The team needs to establish team orders, but they should wait until after Monza. As they did last year.

Couldn't agree more. That is the 50 million dollar question, isn't it?

I still believe Kimi is the better driver of the two and could drive circles around Massa, but that's a bit academic of a point if the talent is there but not the will to use it . And for the life of me I don't get it why Kimi isn't pulling out all the stops.

Burnt out like Hakkinen comes to mind as my only explanation.

 

Given the SC incident, that's debatable.

But no coincidence: when it rains, or odd SC events require the team to adapt, McLunk doesn't come out looking like a comedy team.

How well would Lewis be doing if he got the odd set of Sears discount radials on his car by accident?

Lewis's lead in the WDC is a difference in the brain trust along the pit lane. Ferrari is adapting from the days where Todt and Brawn supported Schumi doing his own strategy to an era without JT or RB and the pit wall picking the strategies. They haven't gotten the bugs out yet. And that leaves both drivers out on inters (when fulls were mandated) or two stints on inters as the rain resumes (Silverstone).

It's the team that's failing, not the drivers.

(At Silverstone, Massa was well back at the start -- that meant he had to push ... even if the car wasn't up to it. Kimi could putt along, letting his 3rd drop to 4th and still get consolation points, but Phil had to gain positions or spin out trying. And the team didn't give him the tool to do it. I don't really have many complaints about Massa's work since Malaysia.)

 

Could it simply be that he has achieved his goal (ie. the WDC) and is not interested in doing a MS?

Pete

 

I think he's just tired of all this. Even at the start of his F1 career, he didn't seem exceptionally enthusiastic. He was sleeping 20 minutes before his first F1 race. 8 years is a long time to be doing something that has a lot of extra baggage that you don't like, especially if you're already a millionaire dozens of times over. He has the bank account to simply quit and do something else.

 

Interesting point about Mika. Although just for the sake of argument, Mika took the title fight all the way to Suzuka in 2000. At the beginning of 2001, he had a major shunt in Australia. From everything I've read, the shunt happened right after he became a father. If you consider the horrible crash he had, which nearly killed him, back in 1995 or so, it's easy to see how he'd want to quit after two WDC, and recently becoming a father. So just for the sake of F1 discussion, it may have not been so much a burning out, but a shift of priorities i.e. his children. Kimi on the other hand, simply seems to want to become a rally driver, haha.

 

Forgetting what, went Hamilton came into the pits early against team orders?

 

You can analyze it until the cows come home, fact is, that Hamilton is a rain master. Not the only one, there are others, but Massa isn't one of them.

Had to bring the thread back to its original topic.

 

I disagree. Not to beat up on Jim, but I'm not buying the children argument: Mika went straight into DTM, which isn't the safest place either. Just as I don't buy Schumacher's children argument: The man went straight to motorcycles.

 

Heck I just think these guys wake up one morning and think 'Heck I'm not getting as much out of this anymore' ... maybe I should quit.

They then go to work and their bosses probably push them to staying for a while, but it really is a dangerous situation because if you are not into F1 at 150% then you are staring at a big accident. Also that 150% commitment is where the last 0.5% of the lap time comes from.

It happens to all drivers, and even Senna was talking to Berger and Ron Dennis in '94 about retiring ... and they simply should the minute they start thinking like this.

I know in my very, very, very, very, very humble club racing that I simply lost interest one test session and found myself thinking of other things ... and next second I was going around and around in a big fast spin. Motor broke in the next race, and I quit ... but if the passion had still been there I would have somehow fix it and kept racing ...

There is more to life than screaming around in relatively pointless circles!
Pete

 

He didn't go straight into the DTM. He didn't do anything for three years, 02-04 then went into the DTM in 2005. DTM is slower, and you're in a big closed cockpit car, so I imagine it's a lot safer than F1. Tom Kristensen had a horrible crash in DTM, probably one of the worst that could possibly happen, he got completely T boned at high speed, and he was back and ready for the 24 hours of Lemans soon after.

Michael's retirement, on the other hand, I agree with you more so. I remember in 2005, he sounded so motivated to continue racing, he was asked what he was going to do in the future, considering his age and the uncompetitiveness of the Ferrari, and he simply said "Only one thing to do, keep racing". I wonder what changed in less than a year to make him want to retire?

 

Lewis would be doing fine. At Silverstone, like the Ferraris, he was on intermediates not on full wets and he demonstrated how it should be done. IIRC Barichello was about the only driver on wets.

 

ROFL

+1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

 

He was on *new* inters -- the Ferraris were double-stinting their inters -- the team guessed that the rain would stop. Instead it started again, and both Kimi and Massa were ice skating.

Kimi was in a position to just hang back and try not to lose too many spots. Massa had to try to gain positions, even though the car and tires wasn't up to it.

Leaving Kimi out on worn tires was the best recovery they could manage -- he was losing time, but the 20+ sec for another stop would have hurt. But for Phil, knowing he had to gain positions to get to the points, that was another matter. As Ross figured out for Rubens -- a stop for full wets would cost time, but worn inters were costing time, and full wets gave the chance to gain spots, for a while.

Hindsight is wonderful -- but Ross figured it out on the spot. That's what's been missing in the Ferrari pits.


Oh, and who put it in the kitty litter in pit-in, when the team left him out too long on his tires, last year?

When the team messes up, it makes the drivers look bad.