GPR-A wrote:Regardless of the final results, are you sure they had a championship contender in their hands in 2012, if not for Alonso? My whole argument is based on the fact that Ferrari haven't managed to be at top of the pile, purely based on Merit. They have been at best, the second good team, which is never going to help any driver(s) win championship.
Given the nature of the last two (or three) World Champions, I think a reasonable argument can me made that it's not possible to be genuinely competitive every year, because it seems there's always a team willing to trade present competitiveness for future gains.
While Ferrari fought for, and won, World Championships between 2006 and 2008, Red Bull was a competitive afterthought, content to remain on the periphery as it amassed the infrastructure necessary for the 2009 rules overhaul, and for good reason, too. The addition of a second team to run identical cars proved to be a hell of a way to inaugurate a formula that placed a very strong emphasis on aerodynamics (by virtue of the engine freeze) and simulation (testing ban).
It's better to have four sets of data than two, yanno?
Ferrari managed to mount very competitive challenges to Red Bull's domination in 2010 and 2012. For its part, Mercedes was more or less nowhere during that period, because they were busy behind the scenes making use of a very Red Bull-like strategy to address the 2014 rules.
The Telegraph wrote:“We started thinking about it almost as soon as the team was bought by Mercedes,” Fry told Telegraph Sport. “It presented the best opportunity of overhauling Red Bull, so resources were dedicated to it from a very early stage.
Even Brawn GP's title efforts in 2009 were aided by a disastrous 2008 campaign for Honda that enabled
a very early start to what became the BGP001.
By and large, I agree with much of the criticism that's been directed at Ferrari lately. It's just difficult for me to take it to any sort of extreme, because, on balance, Ferrari has still been the sport's most consistent team over the last 15-20 years.
(Is it just me, or does anyone else think this whole argument is kinda weird? Speaking of weird...)
iotar__ wrote:It's OT but it's baffling to see this claim so many times, I feel like whoever makes and upvotes it (that's how much those points here are worth) watched some different 2012 season. The season that included Ferrari losing to Williams after leading the race and to Force India more or less on merit.
I don't vote. However, I imagine it's not out of the realm of possibility that at least some of the folks who do vote might consider the points tally to be a decent barometer of a team's level of success. It is, after all, the FIA's preferred method.
No one has ever won a Championship trophy for being the best driver or for developing the best car. Such trophies are awarded to those who score the most points.