Is this the end for Kimi?
Discussion
Marki said:
flemke said:
however. Some of the things that that lad has done in eight races - such as yesterday's blinder of a move on Kubica right after Hamilton had exited the pits and his tyres would not have been quite up to temperature - have been extraordinary.
Time will tell/
SuperKartRacer said:
Marki said:
flemke said:
however. Some of the things that that lad has done in eight races - such as yesterday's blinder of a move on Kubica right after Hamilton had exited the pits and his tyres would not have been quite up to temperature - have been extraordinary.
Time will tell/
As for FA's moves, you won't find me criticising him. If anything, I'd like to see him take the title this year, because it looks like this is going to be his only chance during the Hamilton Era.
One is bound to say that FA has looked as though he'd been trying too hard, but without LH's precision.
It was great yesterday when FA overtook Heidfeld, but that was only after a number of failed moves to the outside in which he consistently outbraked himself. Then when he successfully overtook on the inside, you could make the case that he forced Heidfeld off the circuit; it was close.
I give FA top marks for effort, and overall I have great respect for the man - much more so than for Raikkonen - but it seems possible that LH may set a new standard in modern F1.
Fidgits said:
AKA8 said:
Fidgits said:
How come then, if Kimi gets away with Sheer pace - can he not win with the Ferrari (or McLaren for that matter) unless its the fastest car on the grid, whereas Massa can still win and be at the thick end with a lesser car?
When has Massa done that?Barhain.
Spain.
?
flemke said:
Kubica was also fresh from qualifying fourth, so the guy wasn't exactly limping around. That was a serious overtake, my friend.
As for FA's moves, you won't find me criticising him. If anything, I'd like to see him take the title this year, because it looks like this is going to be his only chance during the Hamilton Era.
One is bound to say that FA has looked as though he'd been trying too hard, but without LH's precision.
It was great yesterday when FA overtook Heidfeld, but that was only after a number of failed moves to the outside in which he consistently outbraked himself. Then when he successfully overtook on the inside, you could make the case that he forced Heidfeld off the circuit; it was close.
I give FA top marks for effort, and overall I have great respect for the man - much more so than for Raikkonen - but it seems possible that LH may set a new standard in modern F1.
I can pretty much go along with all of that. Except the respect bit.As for FA's moves, you won't find me criticising him. If anything, I'd like to see him take the title this year, because it looks like this is going to be his only chance during the Hamilton Era.
One is bound to say that FA has looked as though he'd been trying too hard, but without LH's precision.
It was great yesterday when FA overtook Heidfeld, but that was only after a number of failed moves to the outside in which he consistently outbraked himself. Then when he successfully overtook on the inside, you could make the case that he forced Heidfeld off the circuit; it was close.
I give FA top marks for effort, and overall I have great respect for the man - much more so than for Raikkonen - but it seems possible that LH may set a new standard in modern F1.
I respect all F1 drivers pretty much equally. (excpt Ralf) What they do is quite extraordinary.
loneranger said:
I can pretty much go along with all of that. Except the respect bit.
I respect all F1 drivers pretty much equally. (excpt Ralf) What they do is quite extraordinary.
Sorry, but it is very difficult for me to respect people who accept tens of millions of dollars to do a job, who have hundreds of teammates working like dogs to support them, who have tens of millions of fans who look to them as role models and idols, and yet who aren't men enough to control their own self-indulgences.I respect all F1 drivers pretty much equally. (excpt Ralf) What they do is quite extraordinary.
Right, Kimi?
flemke said:
Frik said:
Careful flemke, you very nearly put Kimi and teammates in the same sentence.
One has as little to do with the others as he can...
Put them in the same sentence and there would be a crash at the first turn, eh?One has as little to do with the others as he can...
flemke said:
loneranger said:
I can pretty much go along with all of that. Except the respect bit.
I respect all F1 drivers pretty much equally. (excpt Ralf) What they do is quite extraordinary.
Sorry, but it is very difficult for me to respect people who accept tens of millions of dollars to do a job, who have hundreds of teammates working like dogs to support them, who have tens of millions of fans who look to them as role models and idols, and yet who aren't men enough to control their own self-indulgences.I respect all F1 drivers pretty much equally. (excpt Ralf) What they do is quite extraordinary.
Right, Kimi?
This is not a personal dig at James Hunt, on the contrary I think the sport needs these characters.
Did it ever occur to you that maybe, just maybe, his drinking antics were a release of frustration during the 2005 season, when he probably felt robbed of a title due to an unreliable car; his main motive for leaving McLaren.
Consistently beating your nearest rival only to be let down by factors beyond your control, is probably going to become a little tiresome after awhile.
Anyway, for a man who is supposedly on the lash every evening, he made a fair job last Sunday. Imagine if he didn't drink, Alonso et al wouldn't see which way he went
flemke said:
Jamesf288 said:
The very same behaviour by a certain Mr Hunt was passed off as part of the 'playboy lifestyle' and as such he was regarded as one of the 'characters' of the pitlane. Oh yes but he was British though...i guess that makes it ok then....
This is not a personal dig at James Hunt, on the contrary I think the sport needs these characters.
Did it ever occur to you that maybe, just maybe, his drinking antics were a release of frustration during the 2005 season, when he probably felt robbed of a title due to an unreliable car; his main motive for leaving McLaren.
Consistently beating your nearest rival only to be let down by factors beyond your control, is probably going to become a little tiresome after awhile.
Anyway, for a man who is supposedly on the lash every evening, he made a fair job last Sunday. Imagine if he didn't drink, Alonso et al wouldn't see which way he went
I guess a lot of people found Hunt's antics to be amusing. I always that that he was a puerile twerp whose selfishness was monumental. In time he grew up. but that was long after he had stopped racing.This is not a personal dig at James Hunt, on the contrary I think the sport needs these characters.
Did it ever occur to you that maybe, just maybe, his drinking antics were a release of frustration during the 2005 season, when he probably felt robbed of a title due to an unreliable car; his main motive for leaving McLaren.
Consistently beating your nearest rival only to be let down by factors beyond your control, is probably going to become a little tiresome after awhile.
Anyway, for a man who is supposedly on the lash every evening, he made a fair job last Sunday. Imagine if he didn't drink, Alonso et al wouldn't see which way he went
WRT your suggestion that one ought to be more sympathetic to the plight of poor Kimi in the 2005 season, perhaps one should recall that his getting wasted and out of control in that club in the Canaries, and his getting plastered and thrown out of the lap-dancing club in London, occured prior to the start of the 2005 season.
My heart goes out to him.
Flemke, you don't sound like you have a lot of fun.
He isn't anywhere near as bad as rugby/football/cricket players.
I'm also not sure that the role model thing makes much difference. Only a Finnish kid would ever pick him as a role model, and they're not the most balanced of people anyway!! You also needn't worry, there are only just over five million of them to be influenced.
He isn't anywhere near as bad as rugby/football/cricket players.
I'm also not sure that the role model thing makes much difference. Only a Finnish kid would ever pick him as a role model, and they're not the most balanced of people anyway!! You also needn't worry, there are only just over five million of them to be influenced.
I'm willing to bet that Flemke would have witnessed such excesses in a previous life...as I did...and I can tell you that the damage they do to one's faculties really does start at an earlier stage than one would think.
Read George Best's autobiography for evidence...Am I the only person to think that Kimi is looking a bit bloated and pasty faced this season?
Read George Best's autobiography for evidence...Am I the only person to think that Kimi is looking a bit bloated and pasty faced this season?
Edited by rubystone on Tuesday 3rd July 09:19
rubystone said:
Am I the only person to think that Kimi is looking a bit bloated and pasty faced this season?
No, he seems to look permanently shagged. He wasn't so bad after Sundays victory, but after qually he looked hot and bothered compared to the other two, and after some of the races this season he's looked totally exhausted.Old James Hunt was a character of course, but he did peg the championship, and until he lost interest I don't recall him being troubled by a team mate.
Re Hamiltons move on Kubica, having thought about it since I reckon that really was quite a move. The part of the track he used to outbrake his opponent never gets used, so it would have been very dirty compared to the cleaner outside of the track. I reckon Brundle was right when he said that Kubica probably thought he had Hamilton covered.
Hamilton had just refuelled and just had another set of tyres slapped on, and before he had chance to find out what sort of car he had underneath him, he outbraked somebody on the dirty side of the track. Thats very impressive, that is. I mean its not like the BMW would have been dog slow either.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula...
The man Hamilton should fear
By Andrew Benson
Motorsport editor
Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo describes Kimi Raikkonen as the driver "everyone fears" - but the Finn has done little to justify that description this season.
The man regarded as the world's fastest racing driver has struggled to adapt to Ferrari following his move from McLaren as replacement for Michael Schumacher.
The 27-year-old has looked anything but the favourite for the world title, a status he enjoyed at the start of the season.
Limping from one disappointment to another, Raikkonen - signed on a reputed stratospheric salary of £25.3m - has been a tiger without teeth.
Yet Raikkonen's convincing victory in last Sunday's French Grand Prix suggested Lewis Hamilton's hopes of making history as the first rookie to win the world title may yet be facing a serious threat.
Certainly that is what Raikkonen hopes. And with Ferrari's car expected to have a slight advantage at this weekend's British Grand Prix at Silverstone, Hamilton may need to be braced for a Raikkonen - and Ferrari - fightback.
As far as Hamilton is concerned, Raikkonen - and team-mate Felipe Massa - are the rivals he cannot control.
Hamilton's team-mate Fernando Alonso is the rival closest to him in the championship.
But formidable as he is, the Spaniard is in the same car as Hamilton, so unless the Englishman runs into problems, Alonso is unlikely to be able to make big inroads into his 14-point lead.
Although Massa is a further three points adrift, and Raikkonen another five, Ferrari were in a different league from McLaren on their way to a one-two at Magny-Cours.
If that continues, Hamilton could be looking at third as a best-case scenario at each race - and will lose chunks of points at a time.
It is every man for himself at Ferrari, and Massa remains marginally the best-placed of their drivers in the championship.
But it is clear who is potentially the most dangerous Ferrari driver as long as the man Di Montezemolo calls "the real Raikkonen" has indeed finally emerged - there have already been murmurings from within the team that Raikkonen has forced them to re-evaluate their understanding of what is possible, even with Schumacher as their reference point.
Raikkonen's inconsistent form this year has gone a long way to underlining why, while he is regarded as the fastest driver in F1, it was Alonso who started this year regarded as the best (a position which will be under threat from Hamilton if things carry on as they are).
While there is no doubt about Raikkonen's pace, his application out of the car is another matter - both at the circuit and away from it, where his fondness for what might euphemistically be called liquid refreshment is well known.
Raikkonen's dominant victory at the first race in Australia hid the problems he was having adapting to Ferrari - and particularli to Bridgestone's tyres.
Alonso had similar problems at McLaren, as the Japanese rubber is designed with a different philosophy from the Michelin tyres they had grown used to over the previous years and requires a fundamental change in driving style.
Those difficulties affected Raikkonen's performance in Malaysia and Bahrain, where he was off the pace.
Since the following race, Spain, he has been Ferrari's faster driver, but a broken suspension forced an early retirement in Barcelona.
Then Raikkonen compromised his own performances to varying degrees with errors and lapses of concentration in the Monaco, Canada and US races, where Ferrari were anyway off McLaren's pace because of problems getting their tyres up to optimum temperature.
Nevertheless, a close examination of Raikkonen's pace before France had suggested that he was now on top of his new car and that another win was not far away, as long as Ferrari could erase McLaren's advantage.
And in France, where Ferrari's pace was improved dramatically by some significant developments that improved the way it worked its tyres, he proved it.
Raikkonen's race engineer, Chris Dyer, diplomatically describes his problems as part of the "natural process" of a driver fitting into a new team.
"It's just a constant process of trying to understand him better, trying to understand the car better and get the most out of both of them," Dyer says.
Raikkonen himself says: "We had a bit of a hard time but I kind of expected to have a bit of a difficult time.
"So, OK, people always think that you've lost it when you don't have a good result but we just worked hard and try to get it right and I think we can still improve.
"In the last races [before France] we just couldn't get it together. I think it seems to have good speed now so we must keep it up in the next races."
That seems an eminently achievable aim. Hamilton says he expects McLaren to be more competitive at Silverstone than they were in France, but it is difficult to predict whether they will be a match for Ferrari.
On the one hand, the long, fast corners in the first half of the lap will favour the red car, but the slower, shorter ones later on will suit the dynamic direction change of the McLaren.
After Silverstone, there are a number of races that can be expected to favour Ferrari - Germany, Turkey, Italy, Belgium - but others that could suit McLaren.
Certainly Raikkonen sees France as a watershed.
"We knew what our problems were," he said. "We try to improve all the time and I think the work is starting to pay off now. It maybe took longer than we expected but we're kind of back in the right place now.
"We just need to keep it up and improve."
Whether that will be enough to peg back Hamilton's lead is another matter, but at the very least an on-form Raikkonen would guarantee some drama trying.
The man Hamilton should fear
By Andrew Benson
Motorsport editor
Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo describes Kimi Raikkonen as the driver "everyone fears" - but the Finn has done little to justify that description this season.
The man regarded as the world's fastest racing driver has struggled to adapt to Ferrari following his move from McLaren as replacement for Michael Schumacher.
The 27-year-old has looked anything but the favourite for the world title, a status he enjoyed at the start of the season.
Limping from one disappointment to another, Raikkonen - signed on a reputed stratospheric salary of £25.3m - has been a tiger without teeth.
Yet Raikkonen's convincing victory in last Sunday's French Grand Prix suggested Lewis Hamilton's hopes of making history as the first rookie to win the world title may yet be facing a serious threat.
Certainly that is what Raikkonen hopes. And with Ferrari's car expected to have a slight advantage at this weekend's British Grand Prix at Silverstone, Hamilton may need to be braced for a Raikkonen - and Ferrari - fightback.
As far as Hamilton is concerned, Raikkonen - and team-mate Felipe Massa - are the rivals he cannot control.
Hamilton's team-mate Fernando Alonso is the rival closest to him in the championship.
But formidable as he is, the Spaniard is in the same car as Hamilton, so unless the Englishman runs into problems, Alonso is unlikely to be able to make big inroads into his 14-point lead.
Although Massa is a further three points adrift, and Raikkonen another five, Ferrari were in a different league from McLaren on their way to a one-two at Magny-Cours.
If that continues, Hamilton could be looking at third as a best-case scenario at each race - and will lose chunks of points at a time.
It is every man for himself at Ferrari, and Massa remains marginally the best-placed of their drivers in the championship.
But it is clear who is potentially the most dangerous Ferrari driver as long as the man Di Montezemolo calls "the real Raikkonen" has indeed finally emerged - there have already been murmurings from within the team that Raikkonen has forced them to re-evaluate their understanding of what is possible, even with Schumacher as their reference point.
Raikkonen's inconsistent form this year has gone a long way to underlining why, while he is regarded as the fastest driver in F1, it was Alonso who started this year regarded as the best (a position which will be under threat from Hamilton if things carry on as they are).
While there is no doubt about Raikkonen's pace, his application out of the car is another matter - both at the circuit and away from it, where his fondness for what might euphemistically be called liquid refreshment is well known.
Raikkonen's dominant victory at the first race in Australia hid the problems he was having adapting to Ferrari - and particularli to Bridgestone's tyres.
Alonso had similar problems at McLaren, as the Japanese rubber is designed with a different philosophy from the Michelin tyres they had grown used to over the previous years and requires a fundamental change in driving style.
Those difficulties affected Raikkonen's performance in Malaysia and Bahrain, where he was off the pace.
Since the following race, Spain, he has been Ferrari's faster driver, but a broken suspension forced an early retirement in Barcelona.
Then Raikkonen compromised his own performances to varying degrees with errors and lapses of concentration in the Monaco, Canada and US races, where Ferrari were anyway off McLaren's pace because of problems getting their tyres up to optimum temperature.
Nevertheless, a close examination of Raikkonen's pace before France had suggested that he was now on top of his new car and that another win was not far away, as long as Ferrari could erase McLaren's advantage.
And in France, where Ferrari's pace was improved dramatically by some significant developments that improved the way it worked its tyres, he proved it.
Raikkonen's race engineer, Chris Dyer, diplomatically describes his problems as part of the "natural process" of a driver fitting into a new team.
"It's just a constant process of trying to understand him better, trying to understand the car better and get the most out of both of them," Dyer says.
Raikkonen himself says: "We had a bit of a hard time but I kind of expected to have a bit of a difficult time.
"So, OK, people always think that you've lost it when you don't have a good result but we just worked hard and try to get it right and I think we can still improve.
"In the last races [before France] we just couldn't get it together. I think it seems to have good speed now so we must keep it up in the next races."
That seems an eminently achievable aim. Hamilton says he expects McLaren to be more competitive at Silverstone than they were in France, but it is difficult to predict whether they will be a match for Ferrari.
On the one hand, the long, fast corners in the first half of the lap will favour the red car, but the slower, shorter ones later on will suit the dynamic direction change of the McLaren.
After Silverstone, there are a number of races that can be expected to favour Ferrari - Germany, Turkey, Italy, Belgium - but others that could suit McLaren.
Certainly Raikkonen sees France as a watershed.
"We knew what our problems were," he said. "We try to improve all the time and I think the work is starting to pay off now. It maybe took longer than we expected but we're kind of back in the right place now.
"We just need to keep it up and improve."
Whether that will be enough to peg back Hamilton's lead is another matter, but at the very least an on-form Raikkonen would guarantee some drama trying.
loneranger said:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula...
The man Hamilton should fear
By Andrew Benson
Motorsport editor
......
Thanks for that.The man Hamilton should fear
By Andrew Benson
Motorsport editor
......
We all look to the BBC for the keenest insights into motor racing.
What time does the gardening show begin?
flemke said:
loneranger said:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula...
The man Hamilton should fear
By Andrew Benson
Motorsport editor
......
Thanks for that.The man Hamilton should fear
By Andrew Benson
Motorsport editor
......
We all look to the BBC for the keenest insights into motor racing.
What time does the gardening show begin?
He has access to more people in F1 than most and has had for some time.
Sorry Flemke, I would take his word over yours.
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