I have said before that in terms of Mclaren's pace in 2007 I feel Alonso had VERY LITTLE to do with it...he never stepped foot into the MP4-22 until it was already testing. Any real problems with that car would have been unfixable (is that even a word?!
) by the time Alonso tested that Mclaren. As a result I concluded that huis supposed 0.6seconds he brought to Mclaren is codswallop and frankly taking credit for the hard work of the hundreds of people who worked on the design of that car.
HOWEVER, having said all that I have never said Alonso is not a good development driver. I feel he is, If we look at Renault's rise from 2001 to the "golden years" of 2005-2006 the car was being consistanly improved and was clearly being developed around him (like the Ferrari was being built around Schumi) [come to think of it maybe a lack of that sort of detail attention is what left Alonso unhappy at Mclaren?] anyway...
Regardless of any "superior tyre" talk, a tyre no matter how much better can only benifit the car it is designed to be used on. I.E if we conducted a test, and stuck Michelin tyres on that years Ferrari it would likely go slower, and likewise sticking Bridgestone tyres on that years Renault would have a similar effect.
The fact of the matter is that the Renault/Michelin/Alonso package was stronger than that Ferrari/Bridgestone/Schumacher package in 2006. That does not however deminish Alonso's abilities. It is no coinscidence that the performance of the 2008 Renault has improved greatly towards the end of the season (A point which nicely backs up by "Alonso@Mclaren" theory - Alonso comes to Renault and its stil a dog of a car, BUT by the end of the season, after considerable development time improvements are show, proving a driver can't improve a car by 0.6seconds in winter testing alone.) It does also however show that Fernando, over the course of the season, in conjuction with his team, has developed that car from "dog" to "Respectable Runner".
Yes Islamatron is right, the wins had a certain luck about them BUT, luck or not the Renault R28 circa Melbourne would NOT have won those races.
No disrespect intended at all Islamatron but you are clearly a Hamilton fan (nothing wrong with that) but from reading your posts I fear you are anti-Alonso as a direct result. Its fine to be anti-alonso (in the same way its fine to be anti-anybody) but i fear that your doing a great driver (and many in the paddock feel he is a great driver) a disservice by judging his abilities through hate alone.
i.e, I'm English, it'd be like me saying "Diego Maradonna was a crap footballer" just because I hate him for his hand-of-god goal in 1986. Its just not fair, yes he was wrong to do it, and yes I dislike him greatly for it, but as his other goal in that same game proved he is one of the all time greats, and dirty rotten cheat or not, you can't deny that he had sme awesome talent.
The (at the time) youngest ever (and back-to-back) world champion MUST have more than simply a superior car. And your argument hold less water because you often use Hamilton's performance against Alonso at Mclaren as a measure of how good Hamilton is. But now your effectively changing your story saying Alonso couldn't beat a rookie...what exactly is that saying about Hamilton's ability - is he now nothing more than your average rookie? Clearly he's not. I'm just saying don't let emotions blind your judgement.
Silence is golden when you don't know a good answer.
