Button and Ferrari

Well if the Fia gets rid of the 2 race rule for the first year V8 if you have a motor that lasts that long it will be much more easy for the design team to increase horspower by taking reliability out of the engine.

The rule is simple the more reliability you have designed into an engine it will produce less power. this is the FIA's reasoning behind the engine longevity rules. As the designers learn how to add longevity to a race motor and keep the power or even increase it.

A good example of this is look at all of the modded ricers on the road today. These kids have taken a super reliable street car engine and are getting outragious power numbers out of it by making changes to the fuel system, ignition, and lightening up the recipercating masses. what happens the engines reliability goes out the door.

Even on an F1 race car everything is a balance in compromise. With a new engine formula for 06 and the changes to the pacakaging it only make sense to get as much on track development time that is possible. Even if the rule package is not 100% in place, Some development data is better than no data at all.

 

As Tifosi said ... not true, it was a contract thing.

BUT MS did destroy any team mate of his from his very first F1 race on. Team mates hated him as it simply showed how slow they were and many left pondering their future, saying that he never really has had a top flight team mate.

Remember it is not just the laps we see ... but the testing, etc.
Pete

 

I think BAR has a long way to go before it's truly a top flight team. They still have yet to win a race so if I were JB, Id take the first ride offered to me from a proven winner i.e. Ferrari, Mclaren, Williams, Renualt. Everybody else is just a pretender. The top teams get it wrong sometimes but you generally don't keep them down.

 

On the contract issue: would Ferrari ever contractually sign a guy as their undisputed number one who hadn't already proved himself of being the best driver available? Only the best can make such a demand and get away with it (on top of taking home that monstrous salary), and as you said, he had proved himself to be worthy of it.

This is no way diminishes his skills or lessens his abilities. If a driver is fast, at the end of the day it shows in his performance--contract or not--and it's Schumacher's talent so far that has made the hierarchy at Ferrari, not a piece of paper (The same is going on in Renault with Alonso and Fisi, I'm betting)

It will be interesting, however, to see how things will pan out with the next generation of drivers that come to Ferrari. Schumi is still damn good, no doubt about it, but his age will erode his ability eventually, if it hasn't already begun. There's no point taking a Button these days, because his ego is disproportionate to his talent.

Ferrari should demand a top tier driver, and right now the top tier is Kimi and Alonso (and Schumacher too, in my opinion), not JB. If Ferrari were to sign both Button and Kimi, Kimi would be slaughering JB on the track, and all Button would be doing is whining about having a shoddy car. I get the feeling, from all the publicity, that JB needs his ego stroked, a team that worships him. Ferrari is better than that.

Just my 2 cents.

 

A few comments:
- Agreed on how the #1 status came about. The problem with that is the occasional day in which RB is actually fast, yet Ferrari still won't let him have his day. Zeltweg

- Agreed on Kimi, Alonso and MS in the top tier and JB being a wannabe. Problem is, that as long as MS is at Ferrari because of his #1 status neither Kimi nor Alonso will join (although it'd be fun to watch, kinda like Senna and Prost at Mc Laren).

So since JB is (like RB) really fast only on occasion, he would actually fit quite nicely into the Ferrari as RB replacement. And by the time MS retires the Scuderia can go shopping for either Kimi or Alonso.