Comments on: Alonso is better at development than Raikkonen, says Ferrari boss

By: amel

amel — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 19:11:24 +0000

did you seen even one race of 05 season..? if you have..you will see how mclaren are fast,and making fastest laps, so if renault were the fastest,why Mclaren done that? alonso is driver for respecting,he beat Michel,Rai…so stop talking bullsheets.

By: shortsighted

shortsighted — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 17:48:26 +0000

I think the whole thing exploded in Ron Dennis McLaren’s days when it was so obvious to Alonso and all of us that RD favored Lewis Hamilton and wanted a British driver to win the WDC to help his aspiration for a Knighthood. I don’t blame Alonso at all.

Massa to me is not a perfect team mate. Once he was free of the restrictions of Schumacher’s terms in his contract, he was a different fellow. He started to blocked, squeezed his team mate Kimi Raikkonen at the start of races even worst than he did to the other drivers. I have a feeling that he will start a battle with Alonso which will go out of control. From all his recent comments to the press, I doubt Domenicali has the ability to handle the situation.

By: shortsighted

shortsighted — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 01:42:15 +0000

Saying Alonso is a better development driver and Kimi is not is just an excuse from Domenicali to deflect criticism that he did a bad job as Ferrari Principal in 2009. Whatever mistakes the team made, he always blamed them on others, like the bad call in strategy to Schumacher and now the bad year in 2009 to Kimi Raikkonen. If Massa were to continue for the whole year, he will lay the blame on Massa too. I have not seen a single thing that Domenicali did that has helped the team. I hope his getting Alonso will work out or otherwise he will have some difficulities to lay blame on others too for that one.
I think all drivers who can tell the engineers how the car behaves are capable development drivers. Kimi has been telling his engineers that grip and downforce were lacking but what have Domenicali and his engineers done to improve things? Nothing. So blaming his driver for the lack of performance from the car is indeed a very strange thing from a team principal, who is responsible for the engineers too. Personally I don’t think Domenicali has the qualities to be a competent team principal. Look at the way he said openly that Massa is not good enough to lead the team whose task can only be furfilled by Alonso. I have no idea why he was chosen to succeed Todt.

By: Monika S

Monika S — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 18:14:47 +0000

This is a very shameful comment from SD. When you are a true team leader like he is supposed to be, you always defend your team members and do not talk bad about the ones who left for one reason or another. That says a lot about natural leadership qualities he obviously does not have, only coming from a position he holds. Of course he knows that and he is counting on Alonso to save his own job.

If there should be a Class and Professional Ethics School for F1, I would suggest SD as its first student.

By: FAster

FAster — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 14:08:05 +0000

That’s probably what you hope happens, your post is filled with so many errors but mostly fanboyism I’m not going to list them all. But number 1 point is Massa is not managed by jean Todt.

By: FAster

FAster — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 13:59:29 +0000

Renault stopped development early for the hundredth time. Plus the car was just so bad it wouldn’t win a race no matter how much development was put into it, they would basically have to redesign the whole car again.

By: Philip T

Philip T — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 20:20:12 +0000

I’m a McLaren fan, and as such a Hamilton fan, but Alonso for all his whingeing in 2007 came within a race position of a third consecutive championship. Although he didn’t get on with the competitive teammate it’s not a bad failure is it?

By: Philip T

Philip T — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 20:13:47 +0000

While I admire what Alonso has done in the past in developing cars, you can’t exactly say he worked wonders with this year’s Renault. James, do you think this may be because he had half an eye on his exit or could he just not do anything to help make something of this year’s car?

By: hazrul

hazrul — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 11:13:20 +0000

I think you got it the other way round. Alonso would be the ‘critically acclaimed’ but Kimi would be the hit at the box office.

By: Beka

Beka — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 07:37:55 +0000

Trulli beat him in the first half of 2004. I remember some crybaby comments from alonso during that period. He was briatore boy who could always clear his way. Out of a sudden trullis relations with flavio started to diminish midseason 2004. Strange isnt it? Fernando needs to prove he is able of developing same performance in the competitive environment without patronage. Something he has not done yet.