What are the odds of Alonso losing it?

[siskue2005]

I may be wrong, but I believe Kimi Raikkonen accidentally did hit Alonso at the back of his car at Suzuka, hence Alonso lost control and spun. One evidence why Alonso does deserve the title is because despite being in a car well off the pace the entire season, he still managed to lead the championship and is still only thirteen points behind Vettel.

the ferrari car is not slow
Even in the first race they were having great race pace
Only problem was quly speed, which was negated with wet race and 3 quly session (wet tracks favouring Ferrari all season long) and added on with irrational pace of rbr and Mclaren at the beginning allowed him to build the gap and also a series of alternator failure of vettel and gearbox, suspension and team failure for Lewis allowed Alonso to have a lead in the championship.

The true pace of the Ferrari is reflected in Massa's results, this is why Alonso is known to 'overperform' the car.

Haha, true pace of the car is massa's results. you must be joking
Then they're pace of RBR must be webber's pace and all those years before true pace of Ferrari was Rubens' pace?
So then vettel and Schumy must be wizards

Nobody can outperform a car, it is physically impossible ...you can drive close to their limit and on it but not ahead of it!

Vettel's an absolute beast of a driver, no doubt whatsoever, but these past three years he's had one of the fastest cars, (if not fastest in 2010).

this is just my opinion though.

2010 rbr was fast but with terrible reliability , that car failed like 4 times with mechanical failure compared to alonso's one
His dominant car was 2011 that's all rest of the two seasons he had equal fastest top car

[FoxHound]

The Red Bull has very clearly been a better car than the Ferrari.

If you want confirmation of this, look at the No2 drivers for the respective teams.

4. Mark Webber 167
9. Felipe Massa 89

You dont need to be a brainiac to work out who has had better equipment overall. Stats tell you this, and so do your eyes.

It's not the whole story, but it does show that a) Massa has underperformed and b) Alonso has overachieved with what he has had at his disposal in comparison to Vettel.
He is like a wasp that will not go away, persistant and angry. Vettel can swat him in an RB8, but if he has a bad day Alonso will sting the hell out of him.

Kudos to Alonso for making 2012 interesting in a car that is good, but not the best.

[FoxHound]

2010 rbr was fast but with terrible reliability , that car failed like 4 times with mechanical failure compared to alonso's one
His dominant car was 2011 that's all rest of the two seasons he had equal fastest top car

When has any team in 2010 and 2011 had a faster car or joint fastest?

And when in 2012 has anyone had as consistently a fast car than Red Bull? There is a reason they are leading the constructors and have more wins or poles than anyone, it's because there car is the fastest and has been consistently the fastest.
McLaren have been close, but have not had the all round capabilities nor the update's to match Red Bull.

[jdlive]

For some reason people seem to assume that whenever Alonso performs well, it is due to his own skills, while when he performs bad, it is due to a bad car.

Completely agree, people are dissing off Vettel coz he has a good car
When Vettel wins it is his car ....and when he looses it is coz he can only win in good car
And when Alonso wins it is his skill not the car.....and when when is looses it's the car

This attitude is pissing me off, I have seen the same attitude from people when Schumy was winning everything

Vettel and Schumy are absolutely untouchable if they get a winning car and also can put a poor car near the top when it is needed and that is what brings them sucesess and all the records they have now.

Indeed. But success always brings out haters that will find things to downplay achievements of the winners. Schumi in his prime and Vettel now are pure domination machines, and many people don't like this. I'm sure Vettel will eventually beat every record ever set and become the best F1 driver in history.

Over the entire season so far, the Ferrari hasn't been worse than the Red Bull neither. What a fallacy to say otherwise.

Nobody also seems to take into account that Red Bull has always gone for a qualifying setup aimed at getting P1 and P2 in qualifying, at the expense of some race pace. They probably chose to do so because both Webber and Vettel are fast over 1 lap.

[jdlive]

2010 rbr was fast but with terrible reliability , that car failed like 4 times with mechanical failure compared to alonso's one
His dominant car was 2011 that's all rest of the two seasons he had equal fastest top car

When has any team in 2010 and 2011 had a faster car or joint fastest?

And when in 2012 has anyone had as consistently a fast car than Red Bull? There is a reason they are leading the constructors and have more wins or poles than anyone, it's because there car is the fastest and has been consistently the fastest.
McLaren have been close, but have not had the all round capabilities nor the update's to match Red Bull.

Ferrari had as fast a car over the course of the entire season, Mclaren had a faster car over the course of the entire season. It's Button and Hamilton that are lacking in quality. Put Webber and Vettel in this years' Mclaren and they'd be 1 and 2 in the drivers championship and 1 in the constructors.

[LionKing]

You dont need to be a brainiac to work out who has had better equipment overall. Stats tell you this, and so do your eyes.

I thought you didn't like stats being brought to driver discussions and had a dismissive attitude towards that?? Maybe my memory serves me wrong

McLaren had the faster car overall this year. They were still fastest at Singapore till Lewis's car failed!

[FoxHound]

You dont need to be a brainiac to work out who has had better equipment overall. Stats tell you this, and so do your eyes.

I thought you didn't like stats being brought to driver discussions and had a dismissive attitude towards that?? Maybe my memory serves me wrong

McLaren had the faster car overall this year. They were still fastest at Singapore till Lewis's car failed!

Did I not mention Stats AND eyes?

[FoxHound]

Ferrari had as fast a car over the course of the entire season, Mclaren had a faster car over the course of the entire season. It's Button and Hamilton that are lacking in quality. Put Webber and Vettel in this years' Mclaren and they'd be 1 and 2 in the drivers championship and 1 in the constructors.

I'm afraid I cannot agree with this assessment of yours.

There have only been 2 McLaren fastest laps. There have been 5 Red Bull fastest laps and 0 for Ferrari.
There have been 6 Red Bull poles compared to McLaren's 6, and Ferrari's 2.
There have been 7 Red Bull victories compared to 5 for McLaren and 3 for Ferrari.
There have been 12 podiums for Red Bull, and 11 for McLaren and 10 for Ferrari.

McLaren have suffered appalling reliability, that regardless of the driver they would still suffer. So to say Hamilton and Button are lacking in quality does a)not take into account they have suffered 5 retirements, 2 of them whilst leading and Red Bull have only suffered 1 official retirement.
If Ferrari have has "as fast a car" as Red bull during 2012, would Alonso( abetter driver than Vettel in my opinion) not have as good a qualifying record as Vettel? Would Massa not have a comparable record to Webber?
Of course, they dont. What does this tell you?

[Stradivarius]

The Red Bull has very clearly been a better car than the Ferrari.

If you want confirmation of this, look at the No2 drivers for the respective teams.

4. Mark Webber 167
9. Felipe Massa 89

You dont need to be a brainiac to work out who has had better equipment overall. Stats tell you this, and so do your eyes.

It's not the whole story, but it does show that a) Massa has underperformed and b) Alonso has overachieved with what he has had at his disposal in comparison to Vettel.
He is like a wasp that will not go away, persistant and angry. Vettel can swat him in an RB8, but if he has a bad day Alonso will sting the hell out of him.

Kudos to Alonso for making 2012 interesting in a car that is good, but not the best.

This is not a confirmation. How can you be so sure that the comparison between Mark Webber and Felipe Massa gives any idea of how the cars compare? Wouldn't you then need to make the assumption that Webber and Massa are at the same level? You don't know that! This proves nothing, as long as I could make a similar argument, for example by comparing Alonso and Webber in Valencia. Alonso came 1st and took 25 points, while Webber came 4th and took only 12 points. Thus, the Ferrari was better than Red Bull in Valencia, to follow this logic.

Now, Massa just recently signed a new contract for Ferrari after having been criticized for a long time for not performing good enough. In my opinion it is pretty obvious that Massa's points is not a good indication of Ferraris car, but it is of course not possible to prove this by looking at results. The fact is that although Ferrari didn't look good at the beginning of this season, the tyre situation, and other circumstances have resulted in all the teams having big problems at some races. Red Bull didn't have a great car in the first few races either. McLaren was doing pretty bad in some races, with Silverstone perhaps being the worst. So things have turned around several times for all of the teams. At times Ferrari has been better than Red Bull. At times Ferrari has been better than McLaren. At times Lotus and McLaren and even Mercedes has been better than Red Bull. And so on.

In the end of the day this is nothing more than a guessing game, where people make assumptions regarding the strength of the car and the team mate, in order to arrive at the desired conclusion regarding a specific driver. There is no evidence in it. What we do know is that Alonso doesn't have to live with the threat of his team-mate although Massa have been faster than him in a couple of races lately, while Vettel has had to fight his team-mate. We also know that Alonso has not had any DNFs this year due to reliability issues, while Vettel suffered both in Valencia and at Monza. In Valencia Vettel actually lost 32 points towards Alonso through no fault of his own. And at Monza he lost another 10 points. Alonso retired at Spa through no fault of his own, and maybe he lost 15 points (if he would have been able to advance to 3rd from his 5th starting position.) In total, I see an easier situation for Alonso when it comes to the help from his team mate and from the reliability of his car. On the other hand, maybe Red Bull has been faster than Ferrari overall this season. But as earlier mentioned, that is less clear.

[CHT]

So the argument here is that, everything that Ferrari achieved this season is all because of Alonso, while whatever Vettel have achieved with RBR for the past 3 season has got nothing to do with Vettel.

And we also have to also discount the fact that RBR has never win any championship prior to Vettel and Ferrari has won multiple record championship prior to Alonso.

[munudeges]

That's called playing mind games. He's done it all the time.

To be honest it just makes him look desperate, but I don't think it is mind games. It's more delusion. Mind games are OK to a certain extent when you know you've got reasonably equal speed and you just throw something out there as a bit of mischief, but it's a bit of a daft thing to say. To my mind it's just a reflection of how much pressure Ferrari and Alonso are putting on themselves, as if they have a right to win the championship.

The seeds were really sown at mid-season. Alonso and Ferrari had built a reasonable points lead via Alonso's opportunism and the Ferrari lucking into performance in changeable conditions. They didn't get to that position by sheer speed and dominance and it should have been clear to Alonso at that point that whoever could end up stringing two or three races wins together would probably win the championship. Even around Monaco he was talking about beating whoever was second in the championship at every race. That was never going to be good enough.

[ParanoiD]

good thing is that Vettel and Alonso still trying to respect each other.

Everyone agrees that Alonso is driver of the year. But if he cant win it, I can't imagine how emotional it will be at the prize giving (or even at Brazil).

[Gerhard Berger]

What we do know is that Alonso doesn't have to live with the threat of his team-mate although Massa have been faster than him in a couple of races lately, while Vettel has had to fight his team-mate.

If Massa was fast enough in the early races he would have fought with Alonso. However he wasn't. This isn't an advatange for Alonso. Sure Massa didn't take points off him, but he also took very little points off his championship rivals.

[Gerhard Berger]

I may be wrong, but I believe Kimi Raikkonen accidentally did hit Alonso at the back of his car at Suzuka, hence Alonso lost control and spun. One evidence why Alonso does deserve the title is because despite being in a car well off the pace the entire season, he still managed to lead the championship and is still only thirteen points behind Vettel.

the ferrari car is not slow
Even in the first race they were having great race pace
Only problem was quly speed, which was negated with wet race and 3 quly session (wet tracks favouring Ferrari all season long) and added on with irrational pace of rbr and Mclaren at the beginning allowed him to build the gap and also a series of alternator failure of vettel and gearbox, suspension and team failure for Lewis allowed Alonso to have a lead in the championship.

The true pace of the Ferrari is reflected in Massa's results, this is why Alonso is known to 'overperform' the car.

Haha, true pace of the car is massa's results. you must be joking
Then they're pace of RBR must be webber's pace and all those years before true pace of Ferrari was Rubens' pace?
So then vettel and Schumy must be wizards

Nobody can outperform a car, it is physically impossible ...you can drive close to their limit and on it but not ahead of it!

Vettel's an absolute beast of a driver, no doubt whatsoever, but these past three years he's had one of the fastest cars, (if not fastest in 2010).

this is just my opinion though.

2010 rbr was fast but with terrible reliability , that car failed like 4 times with mechanical failure compared to alonso's one
His dominant car was 2011 that's all rest of the two seasons he had equal fastest top car

FYI there were only 2 wet qualifying sessions this year and Vettel only DNFed twice due to mechanical failures. Other than that, i think you'd probably have more fun posting on Autosport.

[raymondu999]

Vettel only DNFed twice due to mechanical failures

Siskue never said he had more than 2. He said alternator for Vettel, and then gearbox/suspension/team (through bad pitstops etc) for Hamilton.