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.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.
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.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.
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.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.

Now you're using this cop out? No one disputed that. Your point was that Ferrari was stone's throw from a championship and only some random event prevented Alonso from winning. In fact it was the opposite, many random events (and driving) enabled the very small chance of winning. It didn't happen car because the car was not strong enough, beaten most of the time by McLaren, RB, often by Lotus and sometimes by Williams (Barcelona) and FI (Bahrain). These weren't small gaps and random events. Why is this still going on BTW?bhall II wrote: 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.
All in all, I'd say that's a very distinct possibility. In fact, if you're one of the poor saps who has to pay to watch F1, you might want to consider sending a strongly-worded letter to your local broadcast provider, because it seems they didn't show you the real 2012 season.iotar__ wrote:...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.



...is extraordinarily weak.The season that included Ferrari losing to Williams after leading the race
Surely contracts and gardening leave make such transfers less of a problem. The bigger problem i think is when one entity owns more than one team (ie Red Bull and Torro Rosso), preventing sharing then is surely a much larger hurdle. A potential showcase of this are the "They're not end plates, they're body work" rear wing "endplates" that appeared at the same time at the Le Mans test on the R18 and 919.aleks_ader wrote: Now i had 1 silly idea even if the electronic way failed (or is insecure due whatever reason) what prevent them not to just "buy" or hire "every week" new employee witch carry with him all data to other team?
I think you get my point; Question remains HOW prevent data leaking?
Too much vodka for Kimi or you?nacho wrote:I think Kimi was quite fast compared to Mercs until the pitstop and spin.
Kimi's pace was good and putting similar times to vettel, till Vettel's first stop after which Vet was faster.wickedz50 wrote:Too much vodka for Kimi or you?nacho wrote:I think Kimi was quite fast compared to Mercs until the pitstop and spin.
I have 0 doubts about the profesionality of his mechanics. And I dont want to imagine that Ferrari could put less interest on one of its drivers because of a stupid mistake.PlatinumZealot wrote:Kimi was keeping up OK on the supersofts. But he was mediocre on the soft tyre as expected. He is not just adaptable enough. He made Vettel look like a legend out there. I was actually cheering for Vettel to catch and pass him at one point. I am not sure how the team feels about kimi now, but the scene with the Mechanic outstretching his hand in bewilderment was a very strong reaction I think. Because of his weaknesses his mechanics might not be giving him the full support right now.
Agree with you on how the team feels about him. But he was good on Softs when compared to Vettel but slow on SuperSofts. Vettel was faster on Softer tyres near the end of the race. I think Kimi had to save fuel hence the drop in pace.PlatinumZealot wrote:Kimi was keeping up OK on the supersofts. But he was mediocre on the soft tyre as expected. He is not just adaptable enough. He made Vettel look like a legend out there. I was actually cheering for Vettel to catch and pass him at one point. I am not sure how the team feels about kimi now, but the scene with the Mechanic outstretching his hand in bewilderment was a very strong reaction I think. Because of his weaknesses his mechanics might not be giving him the full support right now.
Did you watch the race? Kimi was keeping very well with the Mercs on the first stint until the late when his tires started to wear. His race went downhill after the stop and spin, perhaps the tires got damaged in the spin. I think they should have taken another set of softs seeing Vettel's pace on them.wickedz50 wrote:Too much vodka for Kimi or you?nacho wrote:I think Kimi was quite fast compared to Mercs until the pitstop and spin.