To be honest, me neither until I wrote that. Then it dawned on me what duell of epic proportions we will finally witness: Ferrari F1 WDC Iceman vs Ferrar F1 WDC 7 times legend MS ...vs Hamilton ...vs Alonso (hopefully at Spa) We know how the MS-Alonso duell will end, but we don't know about MS-Kimi and MS-Hami. THIS WILL BE SO UNBELIEVABLY COOL!!!!
To right, IMO between LH and FA there is nothing in it on track in a straight fight. However FA isn't in the right car but he will be fired up I'm sure. And you could say FA has the measure of MS so add Vettel and Webber, Button if his car has improved with updates and it will be the recipe for epic racing.
I expect Vettel to beat MS. But that's not really what I'm looking for. Kimi vs MS is the real deal. No excuses there. Mano versus mano, WDC vs WDC, Ferrari vs Ferrari. It doesn't get much fairer than that.
+1000. MS according to my father is already having fitness issues ... which means he will have lost that edge and the "edge" is everything when milli-seconds count so much. Kimi has been doing okay lately so has found some sort of performance out of the truck that is called a F60. Also a lot of MS's speed came from his love of the sport and thus millions of serious testing miles, fine tuning the car and importantly HIM within that car ... he can't do that anymore. Remember how he used to return early from holidays to see the new car and get familiar with it as soon as possible ... nobody does that anymore I almost predict a 1 race return like Mansell for MS ... and maybe the team will install a "create very obvious oil leak" button so they can self destruct the car and save MS's face and blame the car yet again (like they did for the Silverstone accident that broke his leg when it was so obviously a driver rage error after a very, very, very poor start) ... It will be interesting ... and he will not likely get away with parking the car in qualifying again Pete
They might fumble the pitstop and thereby ruining the race for him to save grace. Silverstone 99 wasn't a driving error because he never braked at all. Conspiracy yes, as they never came clean about what exactly happened, but not a driver error. Most likely an unsecured screw of a brake line. Failure by a mechanic, but since we don't know them by name we can't be sure.
Hmmm ... he tried to go around the outside of Irvine in a panic due to poor start. These cars have brake balance bars and separate circuits for front and rear ... no way you could have absolutely no brakes, even if a brake line was left off completely. MS didn't brake because he expected Irvine to get out of his way, but miss calculated Irvines position which was further down the road and thus MS could not even hope to make the apex. It was not a mechanics fault, but a car too fast off line. Mechanic took the hit to save MS's face ... Pete
oh FFS...saving face? no one gives a damn if he comes last. He's a hero....end of story. Would anyone have bad mouthed armstrong if he'd come mid pack? no...he's done what he's done in the past, and no one else has. same with MS....it's exciting...it's interesting, but the results really don't matter...but i HOPE they're good.
Actually I know many people that think MS was only winning because of the dominant Ferrari. If he performs poorly then they will forever think that drivers make little difference and that MS was just lucky to be in the best car on the grid. LH has recently enforced this belief in many motorsport outsiders, unfortunately. My boss for example believes motorsport is like horse racing, if you sit on the fastest one you win simple as that ... he of course does not realise how much testing and setup time is involved in car racing that horse racing never needs, which is the difference and main area for a driver to make the difference. Plus many people don't watch F1 with the knowledge that many on this site have and thus remember the early Ferrari years and how MS pulled a weak car up and thus IMO earned those good car years. Also we can see the little differences he made even when he had the dominant car, and we also could see how he had lost some of that in particularly 2006 ... Pete
I accept that my memory might be wrong, but this is not how I remember it. Anyway I'll never believe he had no brakes, completely impossible, even on my Toyota Tarago family car if I left off say the left rear brake bleeding nipple I would have "some" brakes on the diagonal opposite side. Racing cars like F1 cars have a completely separate circuit for front and rear so they can alter the brake balance, not diagonally like road cars. The pedal design in a racing car is such that if one circuit fails completely the other will still work a bit. Now of course if he lost his front brakes he would loose around 70% of his brakes which would be scary ... I guess I don't like the statement from Ferrari. They should be more accurate and say he lost his front brakes or rear brakes or whatever but saying he had no brakes is BS and like how they used to say the car had an electrical failure when there was a conrod sitting behind the car on the road ... we are not ALL that stupid. Show your audience some respect please. Pete
You just made me doubt my memory so I looked it up lol. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbUDAlrJuY8 He is on the inside but he also appears to have brakes (the fronts lock up momentarily). However, the car doesn't react like any I've ever seen from that point on. Normally some speed is scrubbed off when there is so much run off area before the tires but in his case he seemed to continue at full tilt. It really does look like something went wrong with the car and it wasn't just over-driving on his part. It could have been some other component on the car that failed but not something Ferrari wanted to admit to having on the car for fear of losing a possible technical advantage the others didn't know about. Personally, I don't see racing again as a losing proposition for Michael. If he wins a few races and/or beats Kimi my opinion of him will be even higher. If not, I won't be that surprised because of the situation (no testing, 40 years old, only 1 month to get fit after 2 years off, etc.). It won't tarnish my view of what he achieved in the past. In the end it won't make a difference IMO. Those who hated him will continue to hate. Those who supported him will also continue.
You can't be serious. The F2005 was a joke and he still willed that POS car to 3rd in the driver standings. Take Imola for instance, Schumacher's skill kept that car right on Alonso's gearbox despite Alonso having a far superior machine. In 2006, Schumacher had Alonso beat and was leading at Suzuka before his engine let go on him. Yes Alonso finished higher in the standings but I wouldn't say he "beat" MS convincingly enough to call him past his prime...
Seems a strange one that looking at the video, his brakes are clearly on when on the track, then on the run off area its as though they are off unless the surface of it doesnt make the tyres smoke, also there doesn't seem to be much wheel turning even though he does attempt to turn the steering wheel, but it is plain to see he has far to much speed to make that corner regardless. Oh just noticed its gravel and he skimmed across it
Agreed, and I'll be at Spa to witness it! I'm planning to be at the top of Eau Rouge, so I hope he at least makes it through La Source in one piece!!
They might fumble it anyway, given the team's track record over the last couple of years. That's one thing I hope MS can help fix, while he's back. Without testing, he's not going to fix the car. This late, he's not running for the WDC. What he *can* do is deal with: "oops, Felipe, you don't have enough gas" "no, Felipe, you don't have to take another Q1 run." "nor you, Kimi" "go! no, wait! somebody go get the fuel hose" "rain coming, let's run another stint on the same slicks" "put on rain tires for ten laps, but load him up with enough fuel to sink the Exxon Valdez" "go! (It's only Sutil.)" Massa didn't lose the WDC last year; the pit crew did. If nothing else, maybe Schumi can translate the fuel rig instructions into Italian.
Like Alonso in the recent past and present, Hamilton has been force fed humility this year. That tends to put one's ego in check.
It's useless at slowing cars down. It belongs in kitty litter boxes and (add water) topless mud wrestling pits
From personal experience I have to disagree. I had a major brake issue at the end of a ~120mph straight and would have hit a bank and gone through trees with out the gravel trap ... which was not there the previous time I raced at this track. The deceleration I experienced via the gravel trap was massive and I stopped about 2 feet short of the bank. I don't know where this idea that they do not work comes from? We have to remember if the car has a failure sometimes the driver cannot do anything about it (or if they are unconcious) and thus an extra bit of tarseal will have no effect at all!!!!! Pete
That's a good point Pete. I was thinking how much better asphalt runoff areas work when the driver hits the brakes after leaving the track at high speed instead of skipping over the gravel. I didn't stop to think that it doesn't work at all when the brakes fail or the driver is unconcious. 150 mph into the wall wouldn't be pretty!
