I'm sure ZIN will participate here.
JP my ole' friend I'm sorry that it appeared as though I had bypassed this thread. Far from it but it did come in at the start of a very busy weekend for me and the way the CF moves these days, this thread which is only 5 days old was languishing in page 3.
hmy:
Lots of questions:
as there invariably are before the start of a new season though this one is particularly intriguing with the variables at play.
Will McLarens be competitive with two very inexperienced drivers in their lineup? I'm not doubting their actual driving skills or talent, but they're probably lacking in the car development area. And will Ron's "stepson" Hammy be favored over Heikki? ;D
Both the young drivers are very competitive personalities and I would expect Heikki to give Hamilton a hard time. In fact I'm hoping he will and hopefully even outpoint our big-headed "superstar" who speaks of himself as though he was a re-incarnation of the late Ayrton Senna. It's one thing if observers make that favourable comment of one but for him to have done so just brings home to me the pushy ways of his inaugural season. Being knocked off his high perch of a 17-point cushion going into the final two rounds of the 2007 title hunt seems not to have made the fallen mighty one assume any semblance of humility. Now why did I even say that since I never felt humility to be one of his traits. His double-cross of his teammate in Hungary remains one of the low points of the season for me from a sporting perspective.
I'm afraid that Kimi Raikkonen will cruise to his 2nd Championship if Macs aren't competitive.
I think Kimi can only get better too since like Fernando, he will have been used to the characteristics of Bridgestone rubber but how far he does go remains a mystery to me. There were times in the previous season when I felt Kimi would and should have been faster than his teammate. He wasn't and while this can be partly due to the need to acclimatise himself with his tyres, it still makes me a little unsure about how far ahead in terms of speed he is compared with Felipe Massa. Now I fully realise it's not just about raw speed. Indeed Massa had more than his share of reliability issues in 2007 if not for which he would have been the fourth element in the title battle at season's end. He achieved 6 pole positions to Kimi's 3 though misfortune and abiding by the team effort in Brasil meant that in terms of victories, their final tally was a lateral inversion of their pole scores. Kimi drove an exceptional second half of the season. His was a championship that was fought for and duly deserved.
I doubt Renault can get their act together in just one year. That would be extremely boring season.
It's hard for me to say at this stage since there are so many unknowns. It's all relative to what the others other do, isn't it amigo? Mclaren have had to climb down from their long-held position of not having any Ferrari IP on their car. As a result of this, they would presumably have had to remove all of it from their 2008 challenger. Where this leaves them is anyone's guess. I don't think having a smaller garage from which to operate will hamper them too much. The location of their new facilities at each circuit will.... Both their pit stops and race strategy will have to be slicker. While there hasn't been much of a problem with the former, their latter can be suspect as we all know.
Another thing too is that sometime after half-season in the 2007 campaign, Renault supposedly concentrated their efforts on their 2008 car. This was a result of their pinpointing the weaknesses and design problems with the 2007 mount. If the car is good out of the box and Mclaren's is hampered by having to be re-designed around the removal of the advantages gained by Ferrari IP, then Renault could be a formidable challenger next year. At this stage, it's all in the air, isn't it?
I'm actually rooting for Fernando... but I doubt he's competitive any time soon. I hope I'm wrong and we'll get another exciting season.
Fernando Alonso, for all his unfathomable behaviour ( or is it ? ) remains one of the truly outstanding drivers for quite sometime. Only the third driver in history to overcome superior machinery ( 2005 season ) and again having to fight through against official barriers in 2006, he was only 2 points short of becoming champion for the third time in a year when he was up against the opposition which included his own team!!! If he hadn't reacted the way he did in Q3 at Hungary, he would have ended up 2nd or even won which would have sealed the title. That's an "if" I know but consider too that Mclaren botched his race strategy in Canada, that the gearbox failure at Magny-Cours cost him dear and the no-point scorer in Japan, surely a result of over-driving while his teammate escaped the penalty of dangerous driving and won the race would have given him a shed-load of points with which to take a third title. Possessing a fiercely-proud character and that of being an insular character probably didn't endear him to all within the Mclaren team so 2007 was perhaps the story of a title lost as well as one that was won.
Getting back to an earlier point. Fernando Alonso's behaviour this year has been mind boggling, no doubt partly due to the pride in his character. It remains hard to see that he did not have a point or two to make when he alleged that the team were conspiring against him since Mclaren or rather Ron Dennis has not been known for their impartial regard of drivers. It goes back to the Prost/Lauda days of 1984/85 and continued to the Senna/Prost era to the Hakkinen/Coulthard years, to the Raikkonnen/Coulthard tenure and then Raikkonen/Montoya and then to 2007. That Ron Dennis himself inadvertently pronounced while being interviewed in Shanghai that they were not racing Kimi but Fernando says it all. Fernando Alonso was having to fight his own team. While in some way the suddenness of the parting may have come as a surprise when a possible reconciliation might have been on some cards, the Spaniard must have at some point in the second half of the season been looking for a way out of the team. Severing the ties on his own accord would have resulted in a financial penalty he might not have been able to afford. As it is, he has been able to walk away from a difficult situation with his check book intact though perhaps with some form of gagging order or shall we say, arrangement.. Perhaps the only way to have achieved that was to make matters so unbearable for the team to feel it would be best if all were to go their separate ways. It was not unprovoked though since Fernando would have stayed in the team he had always wanted to join. While I'm sure he did not relish having a rookie match him, he surely wasn't counting on the team management not giving him an appropriate level of support too. Certainly not when he had brought his car-development skills to a team that hadn't won nor looked like it, in over a year and which with the advance announcement of his joining them, were able to scour the market for sponsors with deep pockets by which I mean Vodafone, Santander and Mutua Madrilena
Or will Jacques Villeneuve make a surprise comeback with Force India and steal the championship by one point margin?
Who knows ?
I have to say though that I personally am glad to leave the 07 season behind. It has in many ways been most unsatisfactory in the essence of sportsmanship which was so deficient on both team and driver level, particularly over the second half of the season when we should have been enjoying Kimi Raikkonen's climb back up the rankings.
I realise I've talked more about 07 than indeed about the forthcoming season which was the title of your thread JP but I simply haven't a clue at this stage who is to emerge as challengers to Ferrari. You need a good car to win these days and Ferrari apart, none of the other machinery are known elements. Mind you, Lotus were champions in '78 and nowhere in '79. I wouldn't rule out Nick Heidfeld though. IMHO there are five or six drivers. Kimi, Felipe, Hammy, Fernando, Quick Nick and Heikki. Kimi I agree, should be the bookmaker's favourite.
Have a good Christmas pals
ZIN
