I don´t know if you´re kidding me or you just need to check your facts: when all that **** happened, Alesi ALREADY WAS IN the team! TOO LATE to sign with Williams. He signed with Ferrari in 1990, when they were in the hunt for the Championship and Williams hadn´t even got a single win that year. Except if you are Nostradamus, in 1990 nobody could know for sure that the team would fail so badly from 1991 on. BTW, I do remember Capelli: he was a guy who managed to lead the French GP in a Leyton House, and managed to finish 2nd behind Prost. Quite a sensation at that time. Unfortunately, things went wrong from then on.
Oops, my bad. That happens when going just from (leaking) memory. Yes, Alesi was already with Ferrari in 1990 and could not have known how bad it turned out. However he stayed with the team for way too long when he already saw that this wasn't going anywhere. Granted other drivers have made the same mistake (Rosberg at Williams) but that's normally career suicide and it was in this case too.
So anyway Massa must really grow a huge pair or grow a third for personal redemption this season. I also feel that the ONLY thing that could save his Ferrari contract is if he won the 2012 WDC but we all know that has about as much chance as a snowball in Hell.
You´re supposing that Alesi and Rosberg had another place to go. Both drivers and team must be free of contractual obligations at the same time and not always you can get out of a contract, etc... Look how quickly Alesi and Berger rushed to the winning Benetton when they had the chance. As Michele Alboreto said, no driver is loyal to any team, even Ferrari, they only want to drive the best car.
Button never cared too much about contracts and if caught in one, just bought his way out of it. Not that it really helped his career, but it is not impossible. As for the Benetton comment: That just underlines my argument that Alesi/Berger should never be compared to the likes of Senna/Prost/Schumacher: We saw what Schumacher did to Benetton and what was left of it after his departure. Then he did it again at Ferrari. Yes, Schumacher had his "entourage" of personnel that made it happen (plus a Briatore at Benetton and a LdM at Ferrari), but part of the successful F1 driver is to surround yourself with these people.
..providing the team can afforf that.....and Alesi was still able to do a very good year at benetton en 1997, he fought with Shumi for 3º place behind both williams....
Also, if you look at 95, Alesi was fighting for top plces in the first half of the season but then, Williams and benetton simply got out of reach....
We're not disagreeing too terribly here. As I said I really liked Alesi and he had some great talent. But to make it to WDC in F1 it takes also some clever choices for whom to drive (Mansell) and sometimes it just takes plain luck to be in the right spot at the right time (Button). As for Massa (about whom this thread really is): He had plenty of luck to sit in the right car at the right time and still didn't make it to WDC. Time to hand the seat to somebody else.
Many people seems to think that hiring Brawn and Co. was Schumacher´s idea. Todt said years later that he already wanted to hire Byrne when he arrived to Ferrari, when Schumacher was no more than a young promise. My point is that the sucess or failure of a driver depends heavily on the alignment of a lot of planets, lots of variables that are out of control for him. Drivers don´t build cars or hire engineers. And many times they can not even choose the team they work for. Alesi maybe was not Senna, but he could have been Hakkinen if he had not been so unlucky. Timing is everything in this life.
Mansell? He only was lucky enough to be at Williams at the right moment, but probably he only decided to go there because he was being ass-kicked by Prost at Ferrari, not because he really saw that the team was going up. If he really had that prescient powers, he would had foreseen the McLaren fiasco. And Button... well, many people said: why that idiot sticks with Honda for so long? Probably, because he had nowhere to go. Again, you need luck for everything in this life. We have to agree in this one. Massa not only was lucky: he was given many second chances. If Alesi or Berger had so many aids as Massa has, their careers would have been very different.
In summary regarding a few of the last opinion's luck and all of its variables plays such a huge factor not only in racing but in life, who's with me?
Definitely, luck plays a bigger part in the life of a racing driver than in most sports: i.e. a boxer fights alone, a football player depends on 10 guys, but drivers depend on the work of 400-500 people, complex machines, weather conditions, and the will of Bernie Ecclestone.
+1 BTW: Berger did get VERY lucky: He used up all the luck of a lifetime at a concrete wall in Italy. Watching that live (on TV) I was sure he was a goner.
+1...i was watching the race and it seemed an eternity before the marshals arrived (they actuallu were pretty quick!!!) i also think berger lost something of his speed and agression in that accident...in that year, mansell did some great races (when the car didn´t broke) it would have been interesting to see him against berger...Berger´s car broke almost every race he entered!!!
