couldnt have put it better myself
couldnt have put it better myself
Isn't alonso the "better fairly driver" that purposely braked and going very slow on hungary for making schumacher overtaking him and take the penality during his launched lap?
i pretty much doubt that, you can see jack shit out a formula 1 mirror at the best of times, and alonso had a car behind him aswell, hindering his view. Unless he has some sort of telepathy, or they quickly radio'd him to slow down because he was coming (which would have been recorded anyway), i doubt he meant it. anyway, MSC could easily have tucked in aswell. he broke the rules by overtaking, so he deserved the penalty.
I was thinking the same thing myself.
Could we quit the awfully stupid "he is better, no he is better - but he cheats, no he is more unfair" crap finally? It's boring, repetitive and on both sides in 99.9% of the time far from the truth.
It was a great race and sets up a stunning season finale. Let's go with that view of the happenings, shall we?
It was a great race and sets up a stunning season finale. Let's go with that view of the happenings, shall we?
Oh come on, Hoellsen, you spoil every party, don't you?
Alanso is teh sh1t!!! MSC pwns him!! Alonso is a cheata!! Everyone who disagrees with me sucks and is a loser because I'm right!
Let's call each other names for our opinions and be as unhappy and angry as possible!
Vain
Alanso is teh sh1t!!! MSC pwns him!! Alonso is a cheata!! Everyone who disagrees with me sucks and is a loser because I'm right!
Let's call each other names for our opinions and be as unhappy and angry as possible!
Vain
oh yes, alonso is such a nice guy and clean racer ... u may remember this for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjSFWc9jpFg
As I recall, Alonso had tyre problems.
Renault and Alonso made an error on tyre choice. The tyres were burning up and they thought by giving Alonso new tyres it would help him, had it rained again it would have. But in the end it didn't work. Correct me if I'm wrong but Alonso pitted before Fisi and thus was able to relay information back to the team... Fisi is well off the pace of Alonso so how can you even compare the wear of the tyres. What was it, 20odd seconds of a gap when he pitted over his team mate.
Second of all the wheel nut did cost him the race, even with him losing his 25second lead he would have managed to win the race. The mechanic fecked up and cross threaded it, if he is the same guy that messed up in Hungary then I hope he gets the boot.
Alonso's driving style is awesome and was 1-2seconds a lap faster than the "oh so great one". He drives with so much understeer and just makes it work. He must adapt to wet pretty easily. It kicked Fisi's ass and does so every time they sit in the car, what was it eight tenths in qualifying? He pushed so hard in the final 20laps or so and just was in a class of his own, one little mistake in that constant attack of fastest laps.
I ask you this, when has Alonso ever had front tyre problems in his Formula One, infact his entire career that have been caused by his driving?
I'm a Coulthard fan and even I can tell whos in the wrong there. Coulthard was half asleep and before he knows it he is heading for the back of the Renault. Coulthard takes an age to realise that Alonso is slowing and then reacts stupidly, he should have throw it down the inside but he was off in a world of his own. From the very start of that video Alonso is slowing, now why doesn't Coulthard realise this early enough that he can actually do something about it?
Believe me you don't want to go down the route of trying to name whos the dirtiest driver out there as you'll find there's a lot of video evidence out there that makes what you call dirty driving from Alonso, look like childs play.
Keiran
I don't get why Coulthard crashed. Coulthard was going to fast for the corner, he didn't slow down, Alonso did and Coulthard had to swerve.
Thats very much untrue. Tyres apart, if you saw the race you would know Alonso lost 19 seconds in pits and he finished 6 seconds behind Schumacher. Do the math and find for yourself it it was tyres or pitcrew what killed his race.
I dont like Alonso myself, even being spanish, but it sucks big time what his team is doing to him, theyre clearly making his life impossible only because he's going to McLaren next season. Heck, he is still their driver, he is the #1 and he's driving for Renault, are they dumb or what?
EDIT: Sounded a bit too harsh when I first wrote it...
Nope, this is what Vykos said:
So that was imho not a bad luck day from the pitcrew or whatever, he messed it up by killing his tires.
So he is saying he lost race because of the tires...that he destroyed them early than MS is not an excuse for his team for needing 19 seconds to change a wheel, which is what caused Alonso to lose the race.
So that was imho not a bad luck day from the pitcrew or whatever, he messed it up by killing his tires.
So he is saying he lost race because of the tires...that he destroyed them early than MS is not an excuse for his team for needing 19 seconds to change a wheel, which is what caused Alonso to lose the race.
So you are saying, they make mistakes at pitstops on purpose, so that Alonso doesnt become world champion this year, because he leaves the team?
Sorry, but
illepall .It was not Fernando's fault that his pit crew messed up, it was the pit crew.
Basically yes, thats what I was saying, and Alonso himself thinks it too. So I'm not
illepall at all.Do you have evidence based on this?
That's really stupid if the pit crews are doing that.
Yeah, he said it on TV.
Chinese Grand Prix 2006 review
All tied at the top
Fernando Alonso would be leading this year’s championship by 15 points if it weren’t for the man who changes his right-rear wheel.
Instead he is tied with Michael Schumacher with only two races remaining.
Although Schumacher beat Alonso to the chequered flag, Giancarlo’s Fisichella’s third place and Felipe Massa’s failure to score mean Renault regain the lead of the constructors’ championship.
If fortune favoured Fernando Alonso in qualifying, it deserted him for Michael Schumacher during the race. Unfortunately for Alonso, you don’t score points on Saturday.
A wet track greeted the teams ahead of qualifying – manna for Michelin, but potentially a disaster for Bridgestone.
The first six cars to be eliminated were all Bridgestone runners – the Super Aguris, Toyotas and newly-liveried Spyker-Midlands. By the end of the second session there was only one Bridgestone driver left – Michael Schumacher.
A sublime lap late in the session got the seven-time champion into the final part of qualifying. A similarly cool-headed performance put him an excellent sixth on the grid – but ahead of him lay a Renault lock-out of the front row, both Hondas, and Kimi Raikkonen.
The race started on a heavily wet track, but with no rain falling the track would gradually dry, meaning the Bridgestone runners would not suffer the same disadvantage they did in qualifying.
Despite the treacherous conditions and sinuous first turn, the start was clean. Predictably the two Renaults zapped away from the field with their superior traction.
Behind them, Raikkonen drove around the outside of both Hondas at turn one, but a twitch of oversteer saw Jenson Button barge back ahead. Schumacher held sixth, defending fiercely from Pedro de la Rosa.
Alonso judged the conditions on the first lap exquisitely, pulling 2.6s ahead of Fisichella. Raikkonen picked off Button towards the end of that first lap and set off after the Italian.
Further back, Felipe Massa’s race had begun from the back of the grid as he had failed to progress beyond the second stage of qualifying and taken a ten-place drop on the grid due to an engine change. At the start he moved past the Spykers and Super Aguris, and sat behind Ralf Schumacher’s Toyota.
The Toro Rosso drivers, however, were making the most of the traction their combination of V10 engines and Michelin tyres provided: Scott Speed had vaulted into eighth with team mate Vitantonio Liuzzi tenth.
BMW rookie Robert Kubica ran wide at the first turn having started 9th. But he quickly began fighting back through the field, passing Nico Rosberg for 13th on lap five.
As the track dried so it became more suitable for the Bridgestone runners. On lap eight Mark Webber past David Coulthard for 11th. Further back, Massa passed Ralf Schumacher but ran wide and had to start over again.
The elder Schumacher exploited the extra grip to pass Rubens Barrichello on lap nine. On the same lap Webber passed Liuzzi for tenth and Massa finally put one over Ralf: the Bridgestones were definitely working now.
Coulthard, having narrowly failed to make it into the final phase of qualifying, started the race heavy with fuel and a train of cars formed behind him: Nico Rosberg, making occasional runs at the Red Bull, Jarno Trulli, Massa and Ralf Schumacher.
By lap ten Massa was ahead if Trulli. He passed Rosberg on the following lap and soon scalped Coulthard, too.
Button provided little resistance to Schumacher: the German caught him and breezed past, losing little time. His next target would be Fisichella, who Raikkonen had recently gotten ahead of.
Rear tyre wear was apparently the reason for Button’s lack of defensive vigour. This became clear as the Briton signalled the start of the pit stop sequence on lap 15, dropping from fifth to ninth.
Two laps later Raikkonen was in but his race wasn’t to last much longer. On lap 19 his McLaren ground to a halt, temporarily resolving any awkward questions about how the Ferrari-bound driver might interfere with the championship battle.
Schumacher had caught Fisichella by lap 17 which also saw the high-watermark of Alonso’s lead: 25 seconds. De la Rosa and Barrichello both pitted and the latter resumed ahead of his team mate.
Button, distracted, was passed by the ever-improving Kubica. The Polish BMW driver then got to grips with De La Rosa, passing the sole remaining McLaren for seventh. Massa, too, got the better of Button.
Schumacher made his pit stop on lap 20 but the Renault team suffered a shock as they prepared for Alonso’s visit. The electricity supply to their pit wall failed on the lap before the Spaniard came in.
Most teams were electing to pit drivers for fuel but not change the tyres – better to stick with worn, warm rubber than cooler, fresh tyres. But Alonso reported damage to one of his front treads, so only the rears were left unchanged.
This dramatically hindered Alonso’s progress in the second stint and Fisichella and Schumacher soon caught him. After a couple of laps of Fisichella trying to defend from Schumacher while not hitting Alonso, the Spaniard let his team mate go and Schumacher soon found a way past as well.
While all this was going on the track continued to dry – so much so that taking on dry tyres began to look like a realistic option. So much so that when Kubica made his first pit stop on lap 24, having set the fastest lap of the race so far at 1m 42.0, he gambled on a set of ‘slick’ grooved tyres.
But his move proved to be premature and he spun off twice on his first lap out of the pits.
Kubica’s plight made Alonso’s situation even more desperate as he floundered around the circuit, waiting for an opportunity to switch to more suitable rubber. He languished in the 1m 44s while Fisichella and Schumacher dipped into the 1m 41s.
Rosberg made the switch to dries on lap 32 and when he found grip it signalled to the rest of the teams that now was the time to abandon intermediates. Alonso didn’t hesitate and darted for the Renault garage on his 34th lap.
Dry weather tyres awaited Alonso but disaster struck again as the right-rear wheel nut jammed – exactly the same part of the car that had failed at the Hungaroring. He sat in the pits for 19.2 seconds and resumed 54s behind Schumacher.
Button and Massa made trouble-free stops for standard grooved tyres on the same lap. One by one the field switched en masse to dry weather tyres, but how well they fared with them was often dictated by how aggressively they treated the tyres to generate heat in them,
Pedro de la Rosa was one who was caught out, spinning at turn one. Massa spun too. Schumacher made his stop on lap 39, followed by Fisichella on lap 40. But Fisichella tip-toed calmly out of the pits and slithered ineffectually into turn one, ran wide, and Schumacher blasted past.
Massa recovered from his spin to hound Coulthard for the last points-paying place – which could have proved crucial for the Constructors’ Championship. But Coulthard inadvertently turned in on the Ferrari at the hairpin and banged wheels with the Brazilian.
The result lacked any sense of poetic justice: Coulthard continued while Massa limped into retirement. Later Coulthard ran wide under pressure from Webber and lost eighth place.
With ten laps to go Alonso began attacking the 14-second gap to Fisichella – with Schumacher a further six ahead. Throwing caution and concern for the championship to the wind he drove with total commitment. While other drivers felt for grip levels and built up speed, Alonso was locked on to the dry weather line like a slot car.
On lap 48 he blew past Fisichella on the straight and continued after Schumacher. With seven laps remaining Schumacher had 12.6s of his lead left which, even with Alonso taking whole seconds per lap out of him, looked enough for the German to stroke the Ferrari home.
But on lap 51 rain began falling again and as Schumacher became more hesitant, Alonso pressed on. When Schumacher crossed the line Alonso was a scant three seconds adrift.
One more lap and Alonso could have won. Without the fumble in his second pit stop, he definitely would have won, regardless of his earlier tyre problem.
Button triumphed in a fraught late scrap over fourth. On the final lap with the track suddenly getting wetter he not only passed Barrichello, but also Heidfeld. Barrichello then thumped into Heidfeld, allowing de la Rosa to rise to fifth. Barrichello limped in sixth ahead of Heidfeld.
The final place in the points was claimed by Webber, who finally broke Williams’ achingly long point-less streak. He held off Coulthard by a mere two tenths of a second.
If Alonso’s luck continues like this, Schumacher can take his eighth title for granted. Both suffered ill fortune in China, but it all went wrong for Alonso when it mattered most.
The Renault driver may take heart from the speed his car showed relative to the Ferrari in the closing stages. But when will the bad luck – and the mistakes of his team – stop getting in the way?
Tags: f1 / formula one / grand prix / motor sport
http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/200 ... x-2006-review/#more-1973
^^ source
All tied at the top
Fernando Alonso would be leading this year’s championship by 15 points if it weren’t for the man who changes his right-rear wheel.
Instead he is tied with Michael Schumacher with only two races remaining.
Although Schumacher beat Alonso to the chequered flag, Giancarlo’s Fisichella’s third place and Felipe Massa’s failure to score mean Renault regain the lead of the constructors’ championship.
If fortune favoured Fernando Alonso in qualifying, it deserted him for Michael Schumacher during the race. Unfortunately for Alonso, you don’t score points on Saturday.
A wet track greeted the teams ahead of qualifying – manna for Michelin, but potentially a disaster for Bridgestone.
The first six cars to be eliminated were all Bridgestone runners – the Super Aguris, Toyotas and newly-liveried Spyker-Midlands. By the end of the second session there was only one Bridgestone driver left – Michael Schumacher.
A sublime lap late in the session got the seven-time champion into the final part of qualifying. A similarly cool-headed performance put him an excellent sixth on the grid – but ahead of him lay a Renault lock-out of the front row, both Hondas, and Kimi Raikkonen.
The race started on a heavily wet track, but with no rain falling the track would gradually dry, meaning the Bridgestone runners would not suffer the same disadvantage they did in qualifying.
Despite the treacherous conditions and sinuous first turn, the start was clean. Predictably the two Renaults zapped away from the field with their superior traction.
Behind them, Raikkonen drove around the outside of both Hondas at turn one, but a twitch of oversteer saw Jenson Button barge back ahead. Schumacher held sixth, defending fiercely from Pedro de la Rosa.
Alonso judged the conditions on the first lap exquisitely, pulling 2.6s ahead of Fisichella. Raikkonen picked off Button towards the end of that first lap and set off after the Italian.
Further back, Felipe Massa’s race had begun from the back of the grid as he had failed to progress beyond the second stage of qualifying and taken a ten-place drop on the grid due to an engine change. At the start he moved past the Spykers and Super Aguris, and sat behind Ralf Schumacher’s Toyota.
The Toro Rosso drivers, however, were making the most of the traction their combination of V10 engines and Michelin tyres provided: Scott Speed had vaulted into eighth with team mate Vitantonio Liuzzi tenth.
BMW rookie Robert Kubica ran wide at the first turn having started 9th. But he quickly began fighting back through the field, passing Nico Rosberg for 13th on lap five.
As the track dried so it became more suitable for the Bridgestone runners. On lap eight Mark Webber past David Coulthard for 11th. Further back, Massa passed Ralf Schumacher but ran wide and had to start over again.
The elder Schumacher exploited the extra grip to pass Rubens Barrichello on lap nine. On the same lap Webber passed Liuzzi for tenth and Massa finally put one over Ralf: the Bridgestones were definitely working now.
Coulthard, having narrowly failed to make it into the final phase of qualifying, started the race heavy with fuel and a train of cars formed behind him: Nico Rosberg, making occasional runs at the Red Bull, Jarno Trulli, Massa and Ralf Schumacher.
By lap ten Massa was ahead if Trulli. He passed Rosberg on the following lap and soon scalped Coulthard, too.
Button provided little resistance to Schumacher: the German caught him and breezed past, losing little time. His next target would be Fisichella, who Raikkonen had recently gotten ahead of.
Rear tyre wear was apparently the reason for Button’s lack of defensive vigour. This became clear as the Briton signalled the start of the pit stop sequence on lap 15, dropping from fifth to ninth.
Two laps later Raikkonen was in but his race wasn’t to last much longer. On lap 19 his McLaren ground to a halt, temporarily resolving any awkward questions about how the Ferrari-bound driver might interfere with the championship battle.
Schumacher had caught Fisichella by lap 17 which also saw the high-watermark of Alonso’s lead: 25 seconds. De la Rosa and Barrichello both pitted and the latter resumed ahead of his team mate.
Button, distracted, was passed by the ever-improving Kubica. The Polish BMW driver then got to grips with De La Rosa, passing the sole remaining McLaren for seventh. Massa, too, got the better of Button.
Schumacher made his pit stop on lap 20 but the Renault team suffered a shock as they prepared for Alonso’s visit. The electricity supply to their pit wall failed on the lap before the Spaniard came in.
Most teams were electing to pit drivers for fuel but not change the tyres – better to stick with worn, warm rubber than cooler, fresh tyres. But Alonso reported damage to one of his front treads, so only the rears were left unchanged.
This dramatically hindered Alonso’s progress in the second stint and Fisichella and Schumacher soon caught him. After a couple of laps of Fisichella trying to defend from Schumacher while not hitting Alonso, the Spaniard let his team mate go and Schumacher soon found a way past as well.
While all this was going on the track continued to dry – so much so that taking on dry tyres began to look like a realistic option. So much so that when Kubica made his first pit stop on lap 24, having set the fastest lap of the race so far at 1m 42.0, he gambled on a set of ‘slick’ grooved tyres.
But his move proved to be premature and he spun off twice on his first lap out of the pits.
Kubica’s plight made Alonso’s situation even more desperate as he floundered around the circuit, waiting for an opportunity to switch to more suitable rubber. He languished in the 1m 44s while Fisichella and Schumacher dipped into the 1m 41s.
Rosberg made the switch to dries on lap 32 and when he found grip it signalled to the rest of the teams that now was the time to abandon intermediates. Alonso didn’t hesitate and darted for the Renault garage on his 34th lap.
Dry weather tyres awaited Alonso but disaster struck again as the right-rear wheel nut jammed – exactly the same part of the car that had failed at the Hungaroring. He sat in the pits for 19.2 seconds and resumed 54s behind Schumacher.
Button and Massa made trouble-free stops for standard grooved tyres on the same lap. One by one the field switched en masse to dry weather tyres, but how well they fared with them was often dictated by how aggressively they treated the tyres to generate heat in them,
Pedro de la Rosa was one who was caught out, spinning at turn one. Massa spun too. Schumacher made his stop on lap 39, followed by Fisichella on lap 40. But Fisichella tip-toed calmly out of the pits and slithered ineffectually into turn one, ran wide, and Schumacher blasted past.
Massa recovered from his spin to hound Coulthard for the last points-paying place – which could have proved crucial for the Constructors’ Championship. But Coulthard inadvertently turned in on the Ferrari at the hairpin and banged wheels with the Brazilian.
The result lacked any sense of poetic justice: Coulthard continued while Massa limped into retirement. Later Coulthard ran wide under pressure from Webber and lost eighth place.
With ten laps to go Alonso began attacking the 14-second gap to Fisichella – with Schumacher a further six ahead. Throwing caution and concern for the championship to the wind he drove with total commitment. While other drivers felt for grip levels and built up speed, Alonso was locked on to the dry weather line like a slot car.
On lap 48 he blew past Fisichella on the straight and continued after Schumacher. With seven laps remaining Schumacher had 12.6s of his lead left which, even with Alonso taking whole seconds per lap out of him, looked enough for the German to stroke the Ferrari home.
But on lap 51 rain began falling again and as Schumacher became more hesitant, Alonso pressed on. When Schumacher crossed the line Alonso was a scant three seconds adrift.
One more lap and Alonso could have won. Without the fumble in his second pit stop, he definitely would have won, regardless of his earlier tyre problem.
Button triumphed in a fraught late scrap over fourth. On the final lap with the track suddenly getting wetter he not only passed Barrichello, but also Heidfeld. Barrichello then thumped into Heidfeld, allowing de la Rosa to rise to fifth. Barrichello limped in sixth ahead of Heidfeld.
The final place in the points was claimed by Webber, who finally broke Williams’ achingly long point-less streak. He held off Coulthard by a mere two tenths of a second.
If Alonso’s luck continues like this, Schumacher can take his eighth title for granted. Both suffered ill fortune in China, but it all went wrong for Alonso when it mattered most.
The Renault driver may take heart from the speed his car showed relative to the Ferrari in the closing stages. But when will the bad luck – and the mistakes of his team – stop getting in the way?
Tags: f1 / formula one / grand prix / motor sport
http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/200 ... x-2006-review/#more-1973
^^ source
Source?
If he said it on TV, there surely is some internet news site, where it has been seen.
and the award for stating the obvious goes to...
but yeah, i agree that alonso's driving style could do with a lot of work. a good few of the drivers could look at the way JB drives
How's it a habit? Sorry but that's his driving style and he has done it for many, many years. He adapted that technique before he even entered F1 and it works for him and works brilliant in the wet.
It's his style and it obviously works for him very well otherwise how would he be so fast and consistent? Surely the tyre killing Alonso would drop off the pace over the stints quite rapidly in comparison to his competitors?
Personally I don't think I could drive quickly with that much understeer, I just don't think it would suit me so I find it amazing how he makes it work for himself. I just wish there was a camera down by his feet to see how he works the brake pedal along with his understeery style.
Why do people think Alonso needed new tyres? He needed tyres in the first place to get moving cP
From what Alonso has said they changed the tyres because they were almost bald. They thought that within a couple of laps the new tread would wear down and give him the same performance as before, problem is it just didn't work. Fisi pitted two laps latter and the team knew clearly that was the wrong decision. Alonso's tyres were no worse than Fisis so does Fisi also drive with `digital` steering? Then when you consider Alonso was like 20odd seconds down the road within 15-20laps you'd think Alonso's tyre would have been a lot worse than his team mates.On the theory of Alonso's team deliberately costing him the title that's utter bollocks. You give me video/crediable media source of Alonso saying this, thats harsh words and would be all over the media as thats the sort of storys that sell. It's not just a title Renault win it's a marketing tool, they have the title of the best car manufacture in the world. It will increase sales and give them the premier spot in the pitlane and if mind serves me correctly bigger garages. The FIA have played a controversial part in the finale and along with some very rare bad luck for Renault it's falling away from them. I think Alonso looks more pumped up than ever and am looking forward to the final two races, all be it artificially created by the FIA.
Will Schumacher resort to 97 sort of tactics...
Keiran
total mess up from pit crew especially for a pit crew who are fighting for a championship title
Uhm, you are throwing two incidents together there?
#1 Alonso got new front tyres when he stopped the first time. His was awfully slow with them. Press conference suggests that was a poor decision by driver/team. Whether that was because the old ones were too worn or not, I don't know. Either way you can lay some blame on him for that.
#2 Alonso got slicks and that's where the thing with the wheel nut happened.
How is he to blame for that? Did anyone finish the race on intermediates? I doubt it.
Well his driving style has got him a world champion title so it cant be that bad!, it also suits the car! will be interesting to see what its like in Mclaren next year!, Also i would like to see you beat him
(jamesrowe posting)
Chinese Grand Prix Race ** SPOILER **
(163 posts, started )
FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG