URGH!

 

I guess this now means Alonso and Heidfeld will be swapping. Poor Nick. :(

PS. Well done Nick Heidfeld yet another great drive, (If the rumours are true) I think it will be outrageous if he is dumped from the team for 2009 after the very good season he has had.

 

I feel very sorry for Nick tonight, with Ferrari closing the door on a move for Alonso until 2011, then this is very bad news, as he always seems like a really decent bloke when interviewed unlike a certain 2x World Champion turned "cry baby" (© Alain Prost) I could mention who is now expected to be driving his car next season.

Heidfeld is good solid driver but he is not WDC material, he is a solid workhorse type driver handy for getting WCC points and staying out of trouble on the track but he hasn't got that spark to him that the likes of Alonso, Hamilton, Kubica, Vettel, Raikkonen etc have

 

Heidfeld would be the perfect lapdog in a top team like say Ferrari or McLaren if they wanted to concentrate on one driver but he lacks something that is the difference between a good driver and an excellent one

 

In footballing terms Heidfeld is Didier Deschamps and the ones I listed above are Zidane

Edited September 12, 200816 yr by B.A Baracus

In footballing terms Heidfeld is Didier Deschamps and the ones I listed above are Zidane

 

I agree you are correct on this.

 

However having a "water carrier" (© Eric Cantona) can be the difference between success and failure as Ferrari have proved over the years, and as McLaren proved the very opposite in 2007 when they did not have a designated #1 & #2 driver.

Yet when Heidfeld was Massa's team-mate he beat him, when he was Raikkonen's team-mate he beat him, the same as when he was team-mate to the vastly more experienced Jean Alesi in his debut season, with Pantano in 2004, with Webber in 2005, with ex Champ Villeneuve in 2006 and with Robert Kubica in 2007. Of his 8 full seasons in Formula 1 he's only been beaten by his team-mate once (Frentzen in 2003) and apart from #04 every year he's been with someone who's gone on to better teams, been more successful or been more highly rated. Even this year when he's not really had the luck and has been vastly outshone by team-mate Kubica he's still had the experience and tactical know-how to be 5th in the overall standings only 9 points behind.

 

I started following Forumla 1 in 2001 and along with Juan Pablo Montoya became my favourite driver who I've always followed and supported. It's a shame he's never really had the car he's deserved. He's certainly no worse than Massa, Ralf Schumacher, Kovelainen or Fisichella who've had top drives ahead of him.

Guys, = BMW don't need driver like Alonso, he is one of the best in F1, but Nick same is very quick, sometimes better than Kubica. He have 49 pts and Kubica have 57, Nick isn't 5 times finish in top 8. And he lose that points. Dr Mario Theissen is great man, and i'm sure Nick will stay in BMW 2009. :)

No comments on qualifying! :o

 

Vettel on pole from Kovy, Webber and Bourdais. Massa 6th, Kubica 11th, Raikkonen 14th, Hamilton 15th. Rain or not tomorrow will be a great race!

Wooooo

 

Fifi in 12th :cheer: ahead of Hamz and Raikz

 

Booooo

 

Button in 19th =[

LOL for qualifying!

Don't believe no-one has commented.

 

A good race and I'm really glad Vettel actually won!

Yeah, really glad he won. And I'm also glad him and Torro Rosso won when they deserved it and not because all the big guns had retired!

Yeah, really glad he won. And I'm also glad him and Torro Rosso won when they deserved it and not because all the big guns had retired!

 

To be honest I boycotted the race (and watched WBA v Everton instead), after the ridiculous farce decision by the stewards after the end of the Belgium GP, where it is now blatantly obvious that Massa & Ferrari will win the title in 2008 no matter what, as I don't like my intelligence being insulted having watched F1 for over 30 years since the days of Lauda & Hunt.

 

Well done to Vettel, great to see that every dog can have their day and he hopefully has such a great future ahead.

To be honest I boycotted the race (and watched WBA v Everton instead), after the ridiculous farce decision by the stewards after the end of the Belgium GP, where it is now blatantly obvious that Massa & Ferrari will win the title in 2008 no matter what, as I don't like my intelligence being insulted having watched F1 for over 30 years since the days of Lauda & Hunt.

 

Well done to Vettel, great to see that every dog can have their day and he hopefully has such a great future ahead.

 

You actually missed a good race, Hamilton took a while to wake up but when he did he managed to overtake, Raikkonen,Heidfeld,Kubica,Alonso,Webber, however when he overtook Massa guess what he did,he cut the chicane ;) this time he gave the place back and waited and waited and waited and amazingly stayed behind him till the finish.

 

But for being on the wrong tyre at the wrong moment he might have won. But no doubt Vettel deserved his victory, flawless race. One to watch over the next few years.

Just how amazing was Vettel!!?, I never seen anybody win a grand prix like that...................... ever.

Guys, = BMW don't need driver like Alonso, he is one of the best in F1, but Nick same is very quick, sometimes better than Kubica. He have 49 pts and Kubica have 57, Nick isn't 5 times finish in top 8. And he lose that points. Dr Mario Theissen is great man, and i'm sure Nick will stay in BMW 2009. :)

Great race from Kubica too! :).

Edited September 14, 200816 yr by Marcus

Well, great race, great tactic for Nick and Robert. But, today Dr. Mario Theissen says that will wait Alonso's decision. I really hope that Nick stays in BMW, he is great driver , now have 53pts, he is better than Kovalainen, and now is close to Raikkonen, really deserve that place in BMW. I pray for him.

:cheer: Piquet finished :cheer:

 

 

He needs to get the sack or pull his finger out his arse. Trulli was let go and he actually finshed his Grand Prix's.

 

I think this is his 3rd/4th finish of the season. i really hope we manage to get 4th from Toyota.

Now this is what I call a balanced piece of journalism:

 

Sunday, 14 September 2008 23:20 UK

Hamilton treads a fine line

By Andrew Benson

BBC Sport at Monza

 

Lewis Hamilton was asked after the Italian Grand Prix whether he felt this year's world championship was his to lose.

 

"I'm leading, so maybe," the McLaren driver said. "But I don't look at it that way. Kimi (Raikkonen) is world champion, so it's his title to lose rather than mine."

 

The best and the worst of Hamilton were on show at Monza, where only a superb performance in the tricky conditions in which he excels saved him from himself - and the loss of his world championship lead.

 

His supreme wet-weather skills, allied to the struggles faced by the Ferrari drivers, enabled him to limit the damage to his title hopes that might have been caused by a mystifying decision during qualifying.

The 23-year-old Briton started the race from 15th place - from which it would have been next to impossible to recover had the race been dry - following a terrible call by himself and his race engineer to fit intermediate tyres at the start of second qualifying.

It led to Hamilton missing the cut for the top-10 shoot-out and was so transparently wrong that a lot of people at Monza expressed their incredulity at how Hamilton and McLaren could have made it.

 

The track had been drying towards the end of the first session and was on the cusp of being ready for intermediates rather than the full wet tyres everyone had been using.

But then it had been raining for six minutes before the second session eventually started.

It was hardly the time for heroics. Nothing rests on that part of qualifying other than getting into the next one - which was not going to be a problem for F1's latest rain master if he had fitted the same wet-weather tyres as everyone else.

 

McLaren has a bit of a reputation for making odd strategy calls - to the point that some journalists have taken to singing the Laurel and Hardy theme tune whenever one happens - but Hamilton held his hand up for this one.

And many wondered whether the decision stemmed fundamentally from the same sublime talent that got Hamilton out of jail in the race, which he could have won had the weather gone his way.

 

Hamilton is not short of self-belief. Some call it confidence. Others - including former Grand Prix drivers of some repute as well as a few current ones - see it as arrogance.

 

Read this selection of Hamilton quotes following the race:

"There wasn't that much grip out there but I always managed to find it."

"I wouldn't have had a problem." (When asked if the track was driveable on intermediate tyres when he made his first pit stop)

"I'm not surprised (I'm still ahead in the championship) because I drove my arse off and you know what I can do in the wet. I had no doubts in my mind - I knew I could do a good job."

 

Hearing those comments, it is perhaps not a surprise that some observers at Monza were beginning to wonder whether Hamilton had become so impressed by his own abilities in the wet that they had persuaded him he could walk on water.

 

His performance in the first half of the race, when he elevated himself from 15th to second with some quite brilliant driving, suggested he is not far wrong - and a smattering of arrogance is a virtual necessity for the very best racing drivers.

But as one former F1 driver said on Sunday: "There are 10 million people out there in the UK wanting to call Hamilton a genius. He doesn't have to do it himself."

 

The mistake Hamilton made in qualifying at Monza was the latest in a series of major errors this year. Hamilton is unlikely to be able to afford any more mistakes if he is not to let a Ferrari driver sneak in again and win a title.

 

The first was in Bahrain, when he forgot to arm the start software properly and slipped back to midfield where he proceeded to drive into the back of Fernando Alonso's Renault.

The second was crashing into the back of Kimi Raikkonen's Ferrari in the pit lane in Canada.

The third was jumping the chicane and getting a penalty in France.

And the fourth was doing the same in Belgium, a week before Monza.

 

When Michael Schumacher won his first Grand Prix in 1993, four-time champion Alain Prost had a cautionary message for the brilliant rising star.

 

"Michael has made three or four big mistakes this year," the great Frenchman said. "You can't get away with that many if you want to win the world championship. One maybe, but any more than that and it's probably over."

 

Traditionally that has been true, so it is amazing that Hamilton still has a one-point lead over Ferrari's Felipe Massa going into the last four races of the season.

 

The fact that he has reflects poorly on the standard of his two main championship rivals - neither of whom have had exactly blemish-free seasons despite seemingly having the best car for the majority of the season.

Massa, just a point behind Hamilton after Monza, is not out of the very top drawer and has made major mistakes of his own.

As for the Brazilian's team-mate Raikkonen, he has, for most of this season, looked a pale imitation of the man hailed until recently as the out-and-out fastest man in F1.

 

Given the opposition, there would be no more worthy world champion than Hamilton this season - even if there is an argument that Robert Kubica, whose BMW Sauber car has not allowed him a consistent challenge, is the driver of the year.

 

But the same was said of the Brit during his brilliant debut season last year, when he lost the championship largely because he slid off the track on his way into the pits in the penultimate race in China when the title was in his hands.

That mistake, like the one in Monza on Saturday, came because he and McLaren were unnecessarily chancing their arm trying to achieve something they did not need to.

 

This is only Hamilton's second full season in F1, just as it was Schumacher's in 1993, so to some extent this number of errors is to be expected.

But Hamilton surely cannot afford any more if he is to avoid letting a Ferrari driver sneak in again and win a title that should be his.

 

 

Decision time looms for Alonso

by Andrew Benson -

BBC Sport 17 September 2008

 

Fernando Alonso has been at the heart of the Formula One driver market "silly season" all summer and the double world champion’s future is beginning to come into slightly sharper focus.

 

Ferrari’s decision to extend world champion Kimi Raikkonen’s contract until the end of 2010 caught most in F1 by surprise – it had long been expected that Alonso would end up at the Italian team sooner or later.

 

But with Ferrari apparently out of reach until 2011, Alonso’s options have narrowed, fundamentally to a choice between staying at Renault or switching to BMW Sauber or Honda.

 

BMW Sauber in theory do not have an opening – both Robert Kubica and Nick Heidfeld are under contract for next season already.

 

But it is not a happy ship right now and it is widely known that the team are courting Alonso.

 

A normally reliable source told this writer at the Italian Grand Prix last weekend that Alonso would indeed go to BMW next year, and when I inquired as to how certain he was, he came up with the remarkably precise figure of 98.5%.

 

That’s a pretty high level of certainty and it is based on some inside knowledge – he even professed to know how much BMW would be paying Heidfeld in compensation for losing his drive.

 

Certainly, BMW Sauber is the most obvious choice for Alonso.

 

They are the most competitive team open to him, they have made impressive progress over the last few years and are therefore on an upward curve, and they have experience through their road cars in the energy recovery systems that will be introduced into F1 next year.

 

Alonso and Kubica are close friends but that does not necessarily mean they would make happy team-mates.

 

Alonso is known to rate Kubica extremely highly – he even said earlier this year that he believes he is the best driver in F1 at the moment given what he is achieving with the equipment at his disposal.

 

Alonso has found out this year just how much he does not enjoy not being at the front

In reality, Alonso believes himself to be the best driver in the world – and many in F1 agree with him.

 

But would he really want to risk his reputation against someone that quick, especially with memories of his tumultuous season at McLaren last year alongside Lewis Hamilton fresh in his mind?

 

Turn that thought on its head, though, and you can ask the same question of Kubica – would he fancy taking on Alonso in a team that clearly was committing themselves to the Spaniard as their main hope for future success?

 

Relations between Kubica and BMW are already frosty – he has been openly critical of some of their management decisions recently – and if they sign Alonso it is possible the Pole could walk, leaving BMW to partner their new signing with Heidfeld.

 

Alonso’s other options are, on paper, much less appealing.

 

Renault have been anything but convincing this season, even if they have made progress in the last few races.

 

And while Alonso has made some mistakes this season, all rooted in trying to push his recalcitrant car faster than it wants to go, without him Renault would look pretty awful.

 

Honda have been far, far worse and the only reason for him to go there would be as a long-term project, having faith that they will get it right one day.

 

With former Ferrari technical director Ross Brawn now at the helm, that looks more likely than it did a year ago, but the question for Alonso is just how long it will take.

 

Brawn has been making positive noises about the progress he believes the team have made and about what might be achievable next year.

 

But then he would, wouldn’t he?

 

Monza was on fire with conspiracy theories about the Ferrari-Raikkonen situation at the weekend

Press Brawn on the subject and even he admits that progress in F1 is an incremental thing.

 

Surely the best Honda can hope for next year - given where they are now and allowing for their knowledge of energy-recovery systems - is to be qualifying somewhere around an average of 12th in 2009.

 

Alonso has found out this year just how much he does not enjoy not being at the front – does he really want to commit to another two or three years in the same position?

 

Even if he has faith in Brawn, it would be a very brave decision. Good technical manager that he is, Brawn does not design the cars. And some of Honda’s other senior personnel have less convincing records.

 

Logically, then, it surely has to be BMW for Alonso. But his intentions are notoriously difficult to predict, so close-knit is his little group of advisers.

 

There is one wildcard, though. Monza was on fire with conspiracy theories about the Ferrari-Raikkonen situation at the weekend.

 

They all arose from the widespread mystification about why they had extended the Finn’s contract when they apparently did not need to.

 

Raikkonen has appeared half asleep for a lot of this season, and has looked extremely expensive for his £30m salary.

 

Speculation had largely been about whether he would retire or be sacked – not whether his contract would be extended.

 

Why, people wondered, close the door on Alonso to secure on a longer contract someone whose performance you must have reservations about?

 

Unless things were not as they seemed, of course.

 

Raikkonen, the theories went, had sounded less than effusive when asked about the possibility of sacrificing his own title ambitions to support team-mate Felipe Massa’s.

 

Perhaps Ferrari had offered him another year on the condition that he backed the Brazilian against Hamilton now.

 

Or perhaps Raikkonen does intend to retire at the end of this year or next, and Ferrari have made him promise to help Massa in return for an extra year’s pay-off when he does eventually make way for Alonso, either this winter or next.

 

It might sound outlandish, but in the Byzantine world of F1 politics nothing is impossible.

 

It is those politics that led to Alonso being in his current situation. He fell out with McLaren last year and his behaviour has made some teams wary of him.

 

So far, though, the world has only heard McLaren’s side of the story, and it may be perceptions would change if Alonso told his.

 

Difficult personality or not, though, Alonso remains arguably the finest all-round racing driver in the world. And, as one former F1 driver put it at the weekend, "you’d still want him in your car."

 

Certainly he is too good not to be in a competitive seat next year – and F1 is the poorer for having so great a driver wasting his career in the midfield.

 

A lot to discuss in this excellent piece. Any Comments on any of the theories?

Here's hoping Massa takes it to Hami :teresa:

 

I wonder where the advantage will be at Singapore, possibly McLaren, same at Japan, should be equal for China and Ferrari could be on top in Brazil so if/when Massa doesn't win the title he can still win the Brazillian Grand Prix for a second time before coming back and stealing the title next year :D