Whatever is right. FA had to have the team slow Felipe down to pass. Thats a fact. Not only that FA has been beaten by Kimi and MS. Next. Felipe also lost the title by 1 point as well.
+1 love to see a resurgent Felipe but not holding my breath. That being said contrived titles and racing are back in style by Ferrari. Slow the team mate down so the annointed can pass since he was UNABLE to do it on his own. Yes thats REAL racing. Way to go Alonso. For all the bluster and hype it came down to a radio call for FA to pass Felipe. Thats the mark of a 2x WDC!!
Agreed--I've always seen Massa as a Ruben-esque driver, a good loyal guy but lacking that killer Champion instinct. And that revealed itself when he complied with the team orders then whimpered about it afterwards. My feeling is, you either ignore the orders and tell the team to stuff it, or you comply and button your trap like a good soldier.
Correction - Alonso is the Santander boy. As long as they are paying the bills Alonso will get preferred status....
Yep. Massa has no problems moving over when he's out of the title race mathematically. He's shown this before and the move went flawlessly. Germany 2010 is a different matter. Massa was still in the title race. I hope he puts his money where his mouth is and wins in Hungary (icing on the cake would be another pass from 2nd or 3rd into the lead into the first corner!
Despite the fact that no driver has been eliminated mathematically from the championship yet (bizzare but true) its never too early.
I hear what you are saying but do you really think Santander calls that shot at Ferrari? Let's say we reverse the roles of Alonso and Massa so Massa is ahead this year... would Ferrari still be gifting Alonso wins if he was behind just because of Santander? I don't think they would... people would go crazy if they did. I respect the fact that Ferrari wants to put the team first, even though I don't think it's kosher and is very fan-unfriendly. But I think it's way too early in the season to take these measures... Massa was one DNF (on Alonso's part) away from being tied with Alonso, and the season is barely half over. It's not like we've got 3 races to go and Alonso trails by 10 points or something... so I think the anger is largely due to how early it is in the season.
With the current system you will most likely not get Massa mathematically eliminated until the very end of the season. At this point even Yamamoto has still a shot at the title. Or Heidfeld. Wasn't there a WDC in the past that was actually mathematically decided at Hungaroring? Unthinkable with the current points.
Ahh, an astute point, Massa is now 2.88 race wins back from the WDC lead - and would be 2.60 race wins back from the lead if he won. I believe that the decision wasn't made because Alonso has a 1 race win advantage in points - it's because of other factors. Not only does he need Alonso to DNF in order to be even with him - but he needs to perform extremely well in the remain races to claw back the lead from Lewis (and beat all the other drivers that have more points). By Ferrari making the call to have Massa/Alonso switch is essentially showing they have little to no confidence in Massa to win the WDC at this point in the season. I can't find fault them - they have orders of magnitude more information than we do about F1, relative performance between Alonso/Massa, better information about their chief competitors, far better historical data.
Oh yes it is: You get 7 points over second place. Makes a huge difference. It gives a much bigger chance to somebody coming from behind to catch up than when the difference was only 2 points. As I said even somebody who currently has zero points could still clinch the title. Unlikely, but that's not the point since we're talking here mathematical exclusion.
Second place is 72% of the value of first place. That's different compared to the previous system where second place was 80% of the value. A significant change, but not a total game changer. Far smaller a change than the 60% value that was the historical standard for F1. Ummm, that would be possible under any points system. Lewis Hamilton has 6.28 race wins. There are 8 races left. What is different this year as compared to previous championships is that it's a 3 team fight for the championship (quite rare) and the 19 races (also rare).
Kubica is faster than Alonso. Put them in similar cars and Sausage would be quicker. Next to McHam, Kubica is it. Ferrari missed the boat by signing Claude.
