This is a common misconception, and how may I ask could I "specifically" explain this to you ? Us mere mortals on internet message boards can't possibly have specific inside knowledge of how Mclaren favors it's #1 over #2, we can only go by Mclarens past. Senna/Prost, Dennis always plays favorites and Senna was his choice during the 88/89 seasons. Prost used to laugh at journalists who doubted the Senna favoritism, saying that fans could never know but you have to be in the garage. Dennis did everything he could to help Senna win his second championship in 89 but Senna kept having poor luck. Mika/Coulthard, outright favoritism here, team orders were used and lets just say poor ol David was never the one who benifited. Hamilton/Alonso, this is another case, to a higher degree, us mere mortals can only go by what Mclaren usually does, the team clearly got behind the British driver. I seem to remember Alonso's family in the pits for a race and explained that they were made to feel so uncomfortable by the obvious Hamilton favoritism that they left the area ! Way to many Hamilton fanbois on this board, if you look at the past of Mclaren, it's only obvious. What did hamilton get that Alonso didn't you ask ? Support from the team, it might seem small but it's quite possibly the most important factor in winning a Grand Prix. Let's face it, it's easy for a crew of mechanics to make one car slightly better than the other. Do you Mclaren/Hamilton fans REALLY believe Lewis was never given a slight advantage, or is it just that you really want to think that he didn't ?
Ha ha Ha hang on a min team orders FA and LH, thats why they won the WDC that year then NOT! DC and Mika DC is British, the better driver overall was Mika end off. Talking about team orders and Mclaren fans on this site, what a joke. Remind me about MS and Rubens, as teams mates.
WTH You must be a liberal by the way you dance around the facts. I'm not sure I should even dignify your response with one because I think the elucidation might go flying over your head. Regards,
It seems to me that it would take an awful lot of inside information to determine if car design, set up, and maintenance favored one driver over another, but I suppose it could be done. More interesting would be to examine fuel load strategy the year Hamilton and Alonso raced against each other, as long as the person doing the analysis could determine which driver was advantaged. More interesting is the fact that since McLaren has been in F1 they have won 12 driver's championships and only 8 manufacturers championships. Ferrari, on the other hand, since there has been a WMC (1958), has won 12 driver's championships and 16 manufacturer's championships. I believe that McLaren puts more emphasis on driver's championships than manufacturer's and thus the results. Having a #1 driver favors winning a driver's championship and having two excellent drivers out there battling away (as Kimi and Felipe did) favors winning manufacterer's championships.
Not so, McLaren has alway had a number one and number two driver. The only difference is that they said they did not. Another case of being better off not saying anything instead of lying about it. In racing, in general, it is all but impossible to give two drivers equal equipment as can be clearly seen by the fact that a team with the technical and financial resources of McLaren only had one updated car for Germany which rightfully went to Hamilton. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/motorsport/formulaone/lewishamilton/6240540/Kimi-Raikkonens-McLaren-return-could-be-making-of-Lewis-Hamilton.html
I never said the team used team orders in the case or LH and FA, there are other ways to favor a driver over another. I think thats what you're saying, but your reply is somewhat confusing. Once again, confusing remark. "end off" whaaa ? It's interesting that the team favored Mika, anytime David was in his way, Mika was let by. David is Scottish, maybe that explains it. I don't have a problem with teams favoring drivers and team orders in general, just hypocritical teams who claim not to use the tactics and their fans who believe them, that's the real joke.
Building on my remarks above, why would McLaren favor the driver's championship over the manufacturer's championship (and therefore on having a #1 driver)? McLaren makes it's money from sponsorships (and winning) and products are sold on star power, therefore McLaren has tried to build stars to attract sponsors. Ferrari also likes sponsors, but they sell cars, thus the manufacturerer's championship is more important to them, and it shows in the results I have noted above. Now that McLaren is going to be selling cars, they may find it more important to win the manufacturing championship and place more importance on having a competitive #2 driver. I wonder how the Hamiltons will feel about that?
Whatever makes you happy is fine by me. However, you first have to have an opinion, I mean response, that contains some level of elucidating content. So far IMO it hasn't happened yet but I'll be happy to inform you when it does FYI...IMO, you might consider working on your ability to correctly extrapolate info. This is something I'm working on as well. Best,
So basically it boils down to that you think Hamilton was the favored driver, and you're basing this on a report where Alonso's family "left the area" because the McLaren folk made them feel so uncomfortable. That's more than a little thin, to put it mildly. Could you go ahead and post that article? I don't remember reading it... surely an article like that must have been big news and will still be around. I can still post articles talking about MS parking at Rascasse, so finding this one should be no problem. Now, regarding facts - there are facts which clearly show your "feelings" are misplaced. The driver who gets to pit first for fuel has the advantage, because they get to run with a consistently lighter load then their teammate. If you look at pretty much ALL the teams up and down the pitlane, you see that the #1 drivers pit first, and the #2 drivers pit second. So since Hamilton was favored, he always got to pit first, right? Wrong. McLaren traded off - one race it was Lewis, the next Fernando. It alternated. So if Lewis was favored, why wouldn't they give him the choice pit stop? It makes no sense. Let's think about some other stuff too... McLaren was paying Alonso WAY more than Hamilton. Why would they do that, knowing they were favoring Lewis? In other words, why would they go out and hire a top shelf driver just to put him at a disadvantage and hold him back? It makes no sense at all. Your assertion that "one car was made slightly better than the other" is one of the biggest leaps I've ever read on this forum. So McLaren spend hundreds of millions of dollars per year to be in F1, for the sole purpose of winning, and they spend metric tons of cash to get a hundreth of a second here and there. And then the mechanics collude together with the team principals to artificially make one of the cars slower so it won't win? That's just too ridiculous to even contemplate. The claim that the teams spend hundreds of millions of which tens of millions went to their star driver, just to detune the car to let the rookie win, is laughable on it's face. All this BS about "feeling welcome" is irrelevant too. And actually, we don't even need to make up a bunch of stuff to try to rationalize why Alonso was pissed or why he lost to Hamilton. Alonso said it outright! He himself never claimed that Hamilton was given any advantage. What he DID say was that he felt HE should have gotten the advantage because he was a 2xWDC winning driver. He felt it was unfair he should be made equal to Hamilton and that he should have Hamilton supporting his bid to be WDC.
1) McLaren did not have a #1 and #2 driver when Hamilton and Alonso drove together. See my post above for all the proof of that 2) Alonso is a whiner, and always has been. If he was not getting equipment Lewis was getting, he would have screamed bloody murder. But he didn't (not about that anyway). His beef all along was that HE should be the designated #1 driver. He never once said he was the #2 driver or that Hamilton got a better car. Actually, he complained that Hamilton shouldn't have his improvements/setup because HE wanted better equipment than Hamilton had. So, the data shows Hamilton was not the #1 driver, and the record shows even Alonso (the man actually in the car!) didn't claim Hamilton had equipment he didn't have. So for people on the internet to ignore the data, and to ignore what Alonso's complaint actually was, and to then state a different complaint, is more than a little silly.
* See Pitpass.com for an article on the amount of money spent by Merc on motors and research. They are not an endless well of cash.... 'Button's Brawn deal hinges on Merc buy-in' Monday 26th October 2009 - PlanetF1.com Brawn may be 99 percent sure of securing Jenson Button's services for next season, however, reports claim the deal hinges on Mercedes buying in, which would give the team the money they need. Button may have won the World title for Brawn GP in Ross Brawn's first season as a Formula One team owner but limited funds have resulted in the team failing to secure his signature for next year's Championship. The newly-crowned F1 Champion is reportedly wanting to return to the £8million-a-year he was earning before taking a £5million pay cut when former team owners Honda pulled out last December. And although the team are keen to hold onto the Brit, Brawn admits finances are the sticking point in contract negotiations. "Jenson has a contract with us. But that contract is not the salary of a World Champion, not the salary of a team that is in a much stronger position than it was 10 months ago," he said. "We're working with Jenson to find a balance between what we can afford and what he feels is fair for his status and the contribution he can make in the future." Finances, though, are in general a sore point for Brawn GP. 'They have used up all, or nearly all, of the £120m Honda left them with when they handed over ownership to Ross Brawn in March. That has been spent on running costs, development of this and next year's cars and laying off 200 staff,' claims the Daily Mail. 'Even with Virgin's name plastered over the car all season at a rate of £150,000 per race, it has yielded only £2.5m if, as many doubt, the arrangement has been paid up in full.' However, Virgin are set to walk at the end of the season, swapping their allegiance to newbies, Manor GP, while as yet rumours of a new title sponsor for Brawn GP have not been confirmed by the team. But there is talk of Mercedes buying in, increasing their role from engine supplier to part owner. The German carmaker, who currently owns a 40 percent stake in McLaren, are reported to be wanting a '75 percent share in Brawn', which would provide the team with the funds needed to secure Button's signature. The newspaper added that 'there remains a great deal of negotiation to be carried out. It is also uncertain whether Mercedes, at boardroom level, support the idea of spending extra money on Formula One when the car industry is struggling in the global recession.' And should Merc opt out of their Brawn plans, they would also walk Button over to McLaren...
Sorry If I came across vague. My point is what ever way you look it had Alonso been appointed #1 status or Hamilton, one of them would have won the WDC, as one would have helped the other, alot of folk seemed to think this should have been given to FA, and in the sense of him winning the WDC that year they would have been right, However Mclaren did not play it that way, LH was quick from the off and amazed everyone. IMO FA was upset LH had not been slapped down to a supporting role to him. It was quite plain to see they were fighting each other, so much so FA tried to give his engineers a incentive bonus if they got his car faster than Hamiltons. SRT Mike has covered the rest. My point with DC was, you seemed to infere that because Mclaren are a British team they favoured a Brit driver. Mika wasn't British, he was just faster than DC on alot of occasions. Team orders are against the rules, although they probably still happen albeit in a discrete manner. I'd like to think most teams give both there drivers at the start of the season a even hand at mathematically beating there team mate on a fair even basis. IMO Just because a driver arrives at a team with a WDC under his belt does not mean he should automatically have a #1 status he should earn it with his inherent skills and work load. A case in point will be at Ferrari next year.
You haven't proved anything except that you disagree, and disagreeing is proof of nothing. No matter what I put out there you'll disagree so whats the point in continuing, agree to disagree is all...
What ever way you look at it ? Look, the team clearly favored Hamilton, I'm not saying it's like Schumy/Rubens but more like Senna/Prost. Of course they aren't helping each other, they dislike each other. I'm not saying "team orders" with Ham/Zo but the British driver on the British team had the advantage, denying that is ignoring the team's history, as well as the inevitable resignation of the #2 driver. Well, offering a bribe to British mechanics working on a British team so a Spaniard can beat a British driver would surely be a long shot, no ? He just disagrees is all, he hasn't "covered" anything really. When did I "infere" [sic] that ? Of course Hamilton is a Brit so it's common sense that there would be a greater likelyhood of favoritism, but when it comes to Mika, the team was clearly favoring him. It's like Schumy/Rubens when it comes to Mika/Coulthard, sure Mika is clearly faster, but Coulthard would accaisonally out perform him, and Coulthard would yeild to Mika. Just like nobody is ever going to confuse Schumy for Rubens, the same goes for Mika and David, but there was no doubt as to who was the favored driver. You'd like to think that but it just doesn't work that way I'm afraid. You can disagree until your blue in the face (or Silver I suppose) but you're just overlooking the teams past history, and considering the Brit driver angle, it's even more likely I'm correct here. You and Mike remind me of the Schumy apologists who you would claim wear Red blinders, except yours are Silver... [/QUOTE]
The team didn't clearly favour Hamilton at all ..do you remember "GO SWIVEL" Lewis to Ron Dennis why would he say that, if he was being favoured. What are you saying it wasn't true ..google it. Mike is one of the most respected on F1 matters on here, with many posts I'd take his word over yours anyday. Infere it!! are you mad you said it in your next line highlighted in this post. You clearly think because Mclaren are British they favour a British driver, most of the teams engineers in F1 are British google it. Your barking up the wrong tree pal, since your such a big RED Ferrari fan why don't you subscribe and show us your garage. Mike loves MS AFAIK thats why we planned a trip to SPA hoping to see him, he is going wipe the floor with you I'am afraid.
Nope. I proved that, despite claims from some folks that Hamilton was given an advantage, that this is not the case. There are things that we can see and measure that are clear advantages to the drivers - and those things were distributed equally between Hamilton and Alonso. Furthermore, we have the testimony of the man in question - Fernando Alonso - who himself says his problem was that he wanted to be the designated #1, and have Hamilton support his effort. So... given that all the data we can measure shows that there was no advantage given to either driver, and given that the man in question himself made clear his complaint was not an advantage to Hamilton but rather lack of an advantage to him... it pretty much kills the argument that Hamilton was getting perks that put him ahead. Clearly, he wasn't. To say he was is silly and entirely unsupported by any facts, and actually the facts show the assertion simply isn't true. It's not a matter of what we think may have happened or agreeing to disagree. It's a simple matter of looking at the data, listening to what was said, and basing our conclusions on that. It was previously said that "some Hamilton fanboys" just wanted to believe he did it on talent alone. Well, it's not fanboys, it's just people looking at the facts and listening to what was said by those involved. Those who would cling to the idea that Hamilton DID have an advantage, despite all the facts and statements from those involved proving otherwise, clearly have their mind made up by something other than facts and figures, and are just looking to spout off about Hamilton with absolutely no data to support them.
On youre first point, maybe they didn't have a number one or two driver at the start of the season but by midway point of the season, it was clear who they were behind. You don't provide any proof otherwise. Equipment is one thing, team support and preferred race strategy quite another. On your second point. Completely irrelevant and only your opinion. You wouldn't know what he said or did, you don't work for the team. This is an old argument and not really the point. McLaren has not had a great record in it's history, trying to field two top drivers with supposed equal number one status. They always end up favoring one or the other which is natural. The same thing will happen if Button comes to the team. It likely, will be a huge mess unless one of the drivers accepts a supporting role like DC did. I think he would know better how things work at McLaren better than any of us.
When Alonso arrived at Renault he was given immediate #1 driver status. When Kimi arrived at Ferrari he was given priority over Massa that whole first season. Rubens was very open about the team orders at Brawn this season as well. I won't comment on Hamilton because apparently team orders don't exist at McLaren. lol --- #1 status can, and does, happen when a driver shows up at a new team. Team orders do exist and while they are handled in a way that doesn't make them illegal, they still happen. Every season I've watched in F1 this has happened.
+1 I have to agree... I really don't know what Ferrari are thinking in signing Alonso with Massa in the team. What I do know is that Alonso wants a championship badly. Massa.....even more badly. With Alonso's problems at McLaren.....this cannot be good. Unless you're Hamilton, because if Ferrari are in bad form, then two of your competitors are at a disadvantage right out of the bag.
Complete nonsense. There is no "maybe" about it! The fuel strategy alternated between drivers for the whole season. If they were going to make Hamilton their #1 driver, why wouldn't they give him the choice fuel strategy? Also, if Hamilton "became" the #1 driver by the midway point, how come Alonso outscored Hamilton in the 2nd half by a wide margin, since, at that point, Hamilton was supposedly the #1 driver? Again, utter nonsense! It's not my opinion at all - there were LOADS of news articles that had quotes from Alonso himself saying exactly what I said. The man himself never claimed he was the #2 driver, what he said was that he felt he should be the #1 driver. He never made a claim of having worse equipment, or strategy, or team support. He said his team supported him very well, but he felt that the higher-ups (i.e. Dennis and Whitmarsh) weren't appropriately respecting his 2 x WDC's and he felt he should be the designated #1 driver. I don't know why some of you guys can't just accept that with equal equipment and equal opportunity, that Hamilton beat Alonso. He just did. There's no argument about it! You guys invent a bunch of fabricated reasons why Hamilton won - that he was given something Alonso was not. And then you say I don't know what was going on and am making stuff up?? LOL! Seriously, what's so hard... Hamilton beat Alonso with equal equipment. That's just a fact - that's what happened. No sense fabricating reasons for how it happened when Alonso himself doesn't even make those excuses.
