Or it just proves that Massa is really that good and has learned well over the years. He did handle Kimi on the track for the better part of 2 seasons... Massa and Alonso I have confidence in. We need to hope the Scuderia gives them the ride they need to compete.
Mike - I am more of a lurker here than an active participant. And while I generally agree with many of your points, here I will have to disagree and will take you up on your wager. I really feel it could go either way and think it will end up very close. As long as they are fighting over podium finishes (P1 preferably) all season we will both win. So, a 12 of Sapporo for you versus 2-12s of Peroni for me. CC
At this point this is about as concrete of an assessment that can be made. The rest are talking out their @ss.
You missed my point. Massa has just had a near death accident. It will take him a while (especially with the testing ban) to find those last few tens of a second which make the difference between mid-field and a front runner. This means Alonso has a confidence advantage but he does have to get used to a car and team ... which has been no issue for him in the past as he was immediately quick at McLaren. Thus I expect Alonso to gain more points early in the season and that will put more pressure on Massa to prove himself, if he even can race again. It is a real shame for Massa because his massive efforts were winning the game against Kimi, but Alonso is also a very hard worker and thus he will not be able to rely on that anymore. Pete
They did not fire Kimi. Not really. What is implicit is that they expect him to carry on the #2 support driver role as they have a new star. Massa touted his horn about equal status yadayadayada, but was immediately reigned in by the Scuderia and had to change his tune.
I like Massa and want to see him win. But I think Alonso is going to be a force to be reckoned with. Alonso is going to make us proud. They are going to kick ass. Next season is going to be good!
How can anyone say how Massa will react when he races again? Not even Massa can answer that now... For all you know he might come back and be fitter, more determined and more focused and be few tenths faster, who knows!! Schumacher was certainly not slower when he returned after his big shunt in 99. He was majestic at his 1st race back at Sepang, pole position, fastest lap and moved over twice for Eddy. And ok, it was not as life threatening injury as sustained to Massa, but Micheal has said since that in the moments after the Sliverstone impact, as he was losing consciousness, he thought he was about to die. Later during the recovery period, he also admitted that he considered deeply about pulling out of the sport. He went on to win 5 more championships !
They dropped a WDC with whom they already had a contract, and paid a fortune to get rid of him and open up a seat. That is indeed fired, just with a proper golden parachute.
Both parties agreed to split. That's not letting somebody go. Similar situation to Alonso's departure from McLaren. Prost got fired by Ferrari, Kimi did not. The six million dollar man. Right. Image Unavailable, Please Login
"Sure, you can stay Kimi. We just won't have a car for you to drive. Oh, and the test driver spot is taken too...." Surely you've seen this in the real world. Plenty of folks are allowed to resign first to retain their dignity and image.
Then let me ask you this: Was Schumacher fired by Ferrari in 2006? By the same logic there was no more seat available and they paid him a handsome sum "to hang around".
I have become almost exclusively just a bystander here, but I can't bite my thong here. You are not really comparing someone being the oldest racer on the field, who holds every record in the sport and has nothing left to prove and a wife and two kids who have been asking him to quit for years, with someone who spent two years in Ferrari with no visible commitment that was outperformed on a regular basis by his supposed number 2, are you?
One part of it has to do with the timing. If the contract is up, then it's not firing - it's just moving on. Another part of it is which party wanted to continue the relationship and which didn't. Did Alonso quit Renault or was he fired? Or was it neutral? Well, he wasn't fired, because Renault would want to keep him, but Alonso was the one who didn't want to be there. So he quit. Did Rubens quit Brawn or was he fired? Or was it neutral? Well, he didn't 'fire' Brawn, since he still wanted to work there, but they didn't want him any longer. We can call it neutral, but we all know brawn was the one who ditched Rubens, not the other way around. In Kimi's case, his contract term was not up. It was terminated early. By who? By Ferrari. He wanted to continue at Ferrari, but they didn't want him. Calling it anything other than fired is being more than a little naive. He was fired in the purest sense... it was the equivalent of coming home and finding your girlfriend in bed with another guy, your stuff all out on the street, and the locks changed. Sure, you can tell your friends "well we just decided to go our separate ways", but once they are done laughing, everyone will know the real score, even though they will assure you they agree that it was mutual. Schumi wasn't fired because his contract was up, and because he was given the option to continue. Kimi had no option to continue - Ferrari didn't want him there. Schumi was paid a lot of money to keep coming to work. Kimi was fired to such an extent that he was paid to *stop* showing up to work. It couldn't be more convincing on this one. And you know I've stuck behind Kimi these last years Andreas, but I can't excuse him anymore. There will be no next year... he sucked so bad at Ferrari that midfield-Massa smoked him, and he did such irreparable harm to his rep that he is not only out of Ferrari for 2010, he's out of F1. Probably forever.
Squeezed out, maybe... but fired, no. The worst thing Luca did with MS was to stop giving him his preferential 'anything you want Mike' status within Ferrari. Like I said above... gigantic difference between "we'll pay you to keep coming here" and "we'll pay you a ton of money, but please, for gods sake, just go away"
Thanks for the correction -- I had forgotten that his contract had ended. In that case, there's simply an end to the relationship, as anyone in IT or Law or manufacturing has experienced.
I think the deal with Schumi was probably more to do with timing than anything. I hated Luca for a long time for what I perceived as him pushing out MS. But in retrospect, it was a tough spot to be in... MS was gone either that year or the next, but Todt wanted out and Brawn too. Luca had Kimi ready and waiting, and at the time he looked like the next MS. I think the only pushing Luca probably did was to tell MS he HAD to make a decision, and to tell him that the days of uber-preferential treatment were over. And so MS retired, earlier perhaps than he otherwise would have. I think he would have wanted to get one more year in... and would have won the WDC in 2007, no doubt. IMO, and I completely agree with you, a totally different situation to Kimi's.
This coming from you I have to accept the facts. While I'm a still a big Kimi fan, it was a letdown that he didn't obliterate midfield Massa. He made Massa look much better than this guy deserved. I can't wait for Alonso to correct that perception.
Mid-field Massa? C'mon guys. He does deserve a little more credit than that. Were it not for team blunders in 2008 he would have won the WDC in 2008. I know - he also had his own gaffs in the 1st two races. He outscored the beloved Kimi by 22 pts (both with two retirements) that year. He was showing him the way in 2009 (22-10 before his accident) in a car that was horrible! He is a hard worker, has learned a lot, and has come a long way. Give him credit where credit is due. He certainly no longer deserves the moniker "Mid-Field". CC
