not possible not only is his driving technique not to the level of schumacher's, he is now going to a team that if far inferier of ferrari and renault
Good points Ron. if u managed to read oct's issue of F1 racing, have a look at the interview with Flav. he's a big critic of Ron's new ' mansion '. he says bigger places, factories are inefficient, and he also pointed out what good did it do for ron's team... i like Flav's attitude business-wise.
Chrysler is facing a $1.5 Billion Dollar quarterly loss and of course the financial pundits are now calling the merger a failure (when they made money last year it was a resounding success...) On the plus side of the ledger McLaren will have Vodaphone $$$$, on the negative side they don't have Newey (big loss) and they don't have experience with BS tires. McLaren will come back to the top, the question is how long it will take... Have they even confirmed their second driver? (Hamilton?)
Global economic downturn......... Except for most of the top 50 Industrials, believe you me, there is a big downturn already underway, the US economy is sitting on a razor trying to figure out which way to go. For years we had Alan Greenspan doing the right things, I'm not so sure about the new guy just yet......... Except for big-screen hi-def TV's and iPods, most folks are predicting this Xmas to be a bust big-time, and we are already seeing it - I know I'm paying about half what I used to just 2 years ago for clothes - that's good for me, but bad for store profits. We are so lucky we didn't have any major hurricanes this year, and late next year election crap will start, that won't help.
There is no guaranty about that. Other teams have been at the top too, and fell by the wayside. Lack of success makes it difficult to attract sponsorship, which in turn brings the team on a budget, quality staff move somewhere else bringing even less results: it's a downward spiral. Lotus has been there and vanished, so did Tyrrell, and Brabham; they all have won several championships and were well established teams. Williams is heading that way too, IMHO.
I may be wrong on this but did any of those other teams have the same financial relationship that McLaren has with MB? Doesn't MB own a portion of McLaren?
I agree with both of your comments but he has won the last 2 years in a row and I wouldn't have predicted it 2 years ago. Niether did anyone else.
You forget it was only in 05 that McLaren was fighting for the title and Ferrari was nowhere. MS's driving style and FA's are totally different so it's not easy to compare the two. He must be doing something right to be a two time champ at his age.
Alonso might win a one or two WDCs more for sure from a talent standpoint but 5 more WDCs requires a supreme car advantage as well and the other teams dropping the ball - a low probability scenario in my opinion.