Gerhardsa wrote:CHT wrote:Making such bold statement will actually put unnecessary pressure on himself and the team. Having said that, the Italians are known for their philosophical speech, so I am sure they will be able to orchestrate a soft landing if things doesnt turn out right.
My guess is that Luca will say that Ferrari has failed Alonso...and then someone will be sacked.
If luca says that, then it will be 100% true.
Alonso havent put a foor wrong this year, I think we can all agree on that, but we all know he cannot do it by himself.
I don't agree! Well, obviously Alonso is a top class driver, but at Suzuka he did put his foot wrong and sent himself out of the race at the first corner. When considering Massa's performance in Japan, where he went through the field to take 2nd place after having started 10th, it is likely that Alonso lost at least 18 championship points through his mistake in Japan. These 18 points could easily turn out to cost him the title.
How many points have Vettel lost this year through mistakes of his own? I can only remember the 5 points he lost in Germany for overtaking Button off the track without giving the place back. Giving the place back would have given him 15 points (unless he would have been able make a legal pass stick at a later point). His penalty left him with only 10 points, so he lost 5, maybe 8 points on that mistake. Has Vettel done any other obvious mistakes this year?
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. It is correct that Ferrari had a pretty bad car in the beginning of the season. But their car turned out to perform great in wet conditions and there has been a lot of wet races and qulifying sessions this year. And although Ferrari didn't have a great car at the beginning, they improved it and for several races this year, Ferrari has been better than Red Bull, the earlier mentioned race at Hockenheim being one example. Reliability-wise I believe that Alonso has had the best car this year.
I think that Alonsos chances are now pretty slim. He probably needs to beat Vettel in all of the 3 last races, while Vettel only needs to beat Alonso once in order to end up with more points in the end. This is under the assumption that other teams will keep driving slower than the title favourites. Even if Ferrari can improve, it looks unlikely that they will be able to consistently beat Red Bull, especially since Red Bull seems likely to start each race with two cars in front of Alonso. Ferrari are quite close to Red Bull in the race, but far off in qualifying. And as we saw in Japan; Alonso isn't flawless. I struggle to see any evidence which demonstrates that Alonso deserves the title more than Vettel, or that Red Bull through the whole year has had a superior car to the Ferrari.