DonTirri wrote:Fair enough. But how about Hamilton? He's been worse than Kimi. How about Alonso? Again, Worse than Kimi. Yes, the McLaren and Renault have been rubbish, but so has the Ferrari. So why they aren't getting any flak when Kimi is?
How have either of those drivers been worse? Let's examine this in detail:
In the case of all three, they have had bad cars for much of the season, so their team mates are their best forms of comparison in my opinion:
Let's start with Hamilton. He has made a few errors this year, but he really has driven that McLaren very hard, a lot harder than it wanted to be driven some of the time, hence why he has had offs. He has been much more of a threat in most of the races than Kovalainen has though, and has scored a lot more points than him, and let's not forget that when both Hamilton and Raikkonen had race winning cars last year, Raikkonen looked very ordinary as the reigning world champion compared to Massa, but Hamilton was clearly quicker than Kovalainen.
On to Alonso. Over the past year and a half, his Renault has been generally poor, yet he has qualified in the top ten on a regular basis, and utterly trounced his team mate. Yes, Piquet has struggled, but he really was thumped very heavily, regardless of what he might say, in terms of competitiveness by Alonso, and in 2008 and 2009 Raikkonen rarely had the beating of Massa, who, let's not forget, is not meant to be as good as Raikkonen. It was Raikkonen who was employed by Ferrari to win the championships, Massa was meant to be a solid number two.
It is for these reasons, in my view, that Raikkonen is taking so much flak.
Over the last three races, he has improved, I agree, and if he sustains that improvement through until the end of the season, then he will make me take notice, but otherwise, I think he is being flattered by Massa's absence.
I'll bring up my point from the previous post: It's easy for you to say what they should and shouldn't do from behind the keyboard, even tho I don't know first hand, I'd assume the stewards are just humans too and under tremendous pressure.
They had the entire race to look at the incident and decide whether or not to issue a penalty, so I don't think they were under a huge amount of pressure (by F1 standards) to be honest. They were under much more pressure last year with the Raikkonen/Hamilton incident, since it took place near the end of the race, meaning that they had to defer their decision, which they then made a total hash of in my view.
I apologize for those, I was just in an extremely ticked off mood of all this constant bashing of Kimi, even after his win.
Apology accepted, and you are making a much better case without them
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Everyone can have a bad season or two. Alonso's last two seasons been far from perfect, Schumi had a horrid season 96, Prost absolutely sucked in 90, Piquet was crap in 88 and 89 etc etc. Kimi, just like any other driver, is just human.
Again, let's look at these:
Alonso has actually outperformed his car quite a bit in the last two years in my opinion. Look at Piquet. If two inexperienced drivers had been racing for Renault both this year and last, I think they would have struggled to get more than ten points.
Schumacher's horrid season in 1996 was down to the car, and he still managed three wins! It wasn't exactly a shocker was it, and in spite of all the problems, Ferrari were still second in the constructors' championship, thanks to Schumacher.
I actually believe that 1996 was Schumacher's best year. He made only one big mistake (Monaco, and very funny it was too!), but otherwise he transcended the car, and made it go much faster than it was supposed to. Just ask Eddie Irvine, a man who rarely praises anyone except himself, how good Schumacher was in 1996.
Prost was challenging for the title in 1990, so I would contend that he had rather a good year actually. Do you mean 1991 by any chance? That wasn't his finest year, I agree.
Piquet Sr is the best candidate from that list. In fact how he drove for Lotus in 1988 and 1989 reminds me of how Raikkonen drove for Ferrari much of 2008 and the first half of this year. I think both were lacking motivation and drive, and whether Raikkonen has found it again or now, I'm still not convinced.
He could find the speed to be a title contender if he were to switch to another team, but his motivation over the course of an entire season seems to be his problem, not that he cannot drive quickly.
They didn't penalize kimi, end of discussion.
In terms of the results maybe, but this needs to be cleared up for next year's race. We cannot have a situation where drivers go off the track and gain an advantage at La Source every year at the Belgian Grand Prix, so the issue of solving that is still very much up for discussion in my opinion.
And for Kimi going that wide... Well, i would imagine its an istinct of every human in every sport or generally in life to try and turn a disadvantage to an advantage. Kimi had nowhere else to go than wide, so he most likely decided to go very wide and gain an advantage from it.
He did have to go wide, I agree, but not as far wide as he did go in my view, that's why he gained an advantage, and that's why I think the stewards should have penalised him.
I'm not arguing for the result to be changed retrospectively, but this issue does need to be sorted out for future races in my view (see above comments).
Sorry for the bump. =P
