No poll. Just arguement. On topic. Alonso is a 2WDC. Massa a nearly WDC. Key thing is, whilst Massa has Ferrari moulding around him courtesy of MS, Alonso can mould a team like MS. If you were Ferrari, you would have to hedge your bets very carefully indeed. (For once).

Question:
Where have we seen these legendary moulding powers Alonso has? 2007? 2008? 2009?
Can they be found from the same place as that mystical 0.6 seconds of his?

You are aware of his special relationship with Renault and Briatiore (bad name drop right now I know). That team existed for Fernando. Throughout 07 they were working on bringing him back. It's the personality gelling thing. Admittedly Massa already has it with Ferrari, but I bet Freddo will / is working on a "special" relationship as we speak. And if MS goes elsewhere...

In 2007 he lost the wdc by 1 point against a faster ferrari, and in the process beat Massa easily just as he did in 2006 when he whipped him.
In 2008 he had a great season, 2 race wins.
2009 the car was just too bad, and he couldnt do much, but still made his presence felt with poles , leading some races and a podium. Not bad for one of the worst cars on the grid.

Massa vs Alonso?

What a joke. Alonso is a double wc for a reason and Massa has zero wcs for a reason. Everyone who thinks massa will give Alonso serious trouble, is just a wishful thinking kimi fan, who know if Alonso destroys massa, it would be the final insult for Kimi. Massa is rubens barrichello, button level. Alonso is Schumacher level. It will be play out like it did with Schumacher and massa imo.

maxfan1, you couldn't resist bringing Kimi in The sole purpose for you existence

Only a fan of Alonso would ever dream of saying he won 2 races in 2008 he was gifted one by his cheating team he won only one fairl.
I really would love to see Massa wipe the floor with Alonso but far more likely is a lot of in fighting and hopefully handbags at dawn certainly from alonso with his history and well Massa the way he is going it looks more and more likely

Not that it matters, but I still feel the urge to remind people that most people with any knowledge about F1 was impressed about how good Massa measure up against Schumi 2006.

I do think Alonso is the better driver, I am not arguing about that, but this "team building" shit is starting to make me sick. First of all - if a team needs a driver to lead the way it is because they are a bad team. Ferrari was built by Todt and Brawn more than Schumacher. They gave Schumi the team, just as Renault gave the team to Alonso. It does not make either of them a good "team builder". Look at Schumi now, when he is not a driver, how well did he build Ferrari the last two seasons? A team wants to win, that means that they will do anything they can to optimize their chances. If a certain component will increase their chances to acheive their goal, they will use it. If that component is a driver or a piston is not relevant. However, if that high performance component pisses them off, they might search to find another component that perform on a similar level but is a lesser pain in the ass. Until then they will treat the component like a king. They will polish it, watch over it and they will make sure it feels comfortable in it's environment. They will also make sure that the component have a high sponsor value, if possible.

That is the reality about drivers as team builders. They are not. They are drivers.

As long as Alonso wins titles for Ferrari Im happy. Massa can help Ferrari with CC points lol

http://fabioseixas.folha.blog.uol.com.br/a...2009-12-31.html

I think I know the origin of The Legend of Alonso's 0.6 sec.
Adrian Campos visiting Brazil, talking about Senna, Alonso and Massa:

Alonso is a killer. Very aggressive and has a great feeling. When he says he's gonna win, he wins. When he beleves he can make the pole, he does it. He has the perfect feeling about how [competitive] the car is. Alonso knows he can shave 0.5 sec., with his natural tallent.

Massa is very fast, the team is in love with him. Alonso has the capacity to make the team work. If Massa is wise, he can take a lot of advantage from it. I don't know if it will be peacefull, but it will be fun.

Funny post

As a Lewis Hamilton fan I have to admit that Mclaren was better car than Ferrari 2007. Both Alonso and Hamilton failed to score that opportunity.

And I for one think, that you underestimate Massa too much. I'm sure Alonso doesn't, he surely must have learned from 2007.

Btw, for your information - Button beat Rubens in same style Michael beat Rubens - and without 'please let him pass for the championship' orders. Massa kicked Kimi out, Alonso better be well prepared.

If you think that then you obviously dont understand the difference in performance between Alonso/Hamilton and Kimi/ Massa. There is a big difference, which means the ferrari was clearly fastest and best car of 2007. Do you really think Kimi and massa could easily out pace alonso and hamilton so many times in equal cars? If you do then you dont understand f1 very well. The only reason the idea was created that the cars were roughly equal in 2007 was because of the false idea kimi was on the same planet as Alonso. When hes clearly not. Lucky next year will be final proof. If Alonso easily outpaces massa you will see how dominant the ferrari really was to allow average drivers like kimi and massa to fight drivers of alonso and hamiltons calibre over a season.



No he didnt, not even close. Michael dominated a much younger rubens in qualifying and races almost all of the time, while even at 37 rubens is faster than button in qualifying and usually a match in races.

Massa vs. Alonso should be very entertaining, especially if Massa has lost none of his speed. I have no doubt he feels threatened by Alonso's presence and the way he moved into the team. It will be interesting to see what develops if Massa has very close personal connections with larger share of the Ferrari mechanics, and has their sympathy.

This is offtopic, but your statements are simply false. Try to do a little research on stats, rather than relying on your subjective feelings.

I don't doubt the excellent relations of Massa inside the team, I just have a feeling they are mostly of the patronizing, parent's - child kind, or IOW totally different to the awe MS was held in.

IMO Ferrari will always care for Massa, nurture him whenever necessary, while at the same time not taking him quite as serious as MS (I mean can anyone really imagine a "Michael, baby" comment towards MS?). The question is where will Alonso slot in? I see the team leader role at Ferrari as vacant, it remains to be seen if Alonso can fill it.

The match for 2010 is Alonso-Hamilton.

that was 2007 and we all know how that one ended

Ya with Ferrari titles yay!

I dont care who wins, just want Ferrari to be champions

JamesAllen on Luca D about Alonso:

He said today that he had spoken with Ferrari team principal Stefano Domenicali “1,000s of times” about this subject while assessing the risks of hiring Alonso in light of the wreckage which happened at McLaren in 2007,

“I spoke with him (Alonso) and I told him that if you come to drive for us, it’s because we want you, you drive for a team, you drive for a group, you don’t drive for yourself,” said the Ferrari president. “In Ferrari we want to put you in the best condition to win. If not, we will never hire you. We know that you can win the championship — we will do our best — but you are part of it.”

I do not really care who wins ... one is South American, and the other Spanish

I'd prefer Alonso, but I will not cry any tears if it is Massa.

The only thing that is killing me is that, for the second time in my life, I will have to cheer for Ferrari to win

shaggy

“In Ferrari we want to put you in the best condition to win. If not, we will never hire you. We know that you can win the championship — we will do our best"

Poor Felipe

well for me i think Massa will have the edge (just). Not sure what exactly why just a feeling based on massas excellent speed.

velgajski1, while I think that most of his post was garbage, I'm wondering what you base this on? Taking a look at the stats, to me it looks very much like schumacher dominated rubens. Here's some stats:

Points/wdc position

2001
Schumacer: 123 / 1st
Rubens: 65 / 3rd

2002
Schumacher: 144 / 1st
Rubens: 77 / 2nd

2003
Schumacher: 93 / 1st
Rubens: 65 / 4th

2004
Schumacher: 148 / 1st
Rubens: 114 / 2nd

2005
Schumacher: 62 / 3rd
Rubens: 38 / 8th

If you take a look at each race individually for each of these years, to see how many times Rubens beat Schumacher or vice-versa we get the following:
(note I ignore any race here where either Rubens or Schumacher retired as an attempt to eliminate mechanical/car issues; although note, Rubens does worse on this since he's typically had more retirements):

2001
Schumacher beat Rubens 11 times.
Rubens beat Schumacher 1 time.

2002
Schumacher beat Rubens 8 times
Rubens beat Schumacher 4 times

2003
Schumacher beat Rubens 7 times
Rubens beat Schumacher 4 times

2004
Schumacher beat Rubens 13 times
Rubens beat Schumacher 3 times

2005
Schumacher beat Rubens 10 times
Rubens beat Schumacher 1 time.


I look at these figures, and it looks to me like Schumacher did dominate Rubens. And, I'm no Schumacher fan.

Alonso is a real competitor. He will show what he can do next year in a competitive car.

In recent years these both have come 1 point short of WDC. I'd call them even.

I think you got my post wrong. What I wanted to say is that Jense also dominated Rubens in similar way as Schumacher did.

2009.
Jenson 94 points
Rubens 77 points

Jenson beat Rubens 12 times
Rubens beat Jenson 5 times

Yes, Jenson didn't do it in exact Schuey style, but he was pretty darn close to it. You also have to note that its most likely okay to presume that Rubens probably did get somewhat better treatment at Brawn GP than at Ferrari back in the days (no blatant team orders at least).

Again, I'm not saying Jense is at Schumacher level but his performances in 2009. against Rubens were not so bad as many are trying to show.

17 point gap which was almost entirely down to rubens bad luck is not even close to schuey domination.
I never remembered rubens outpacing and beating rubens consistently for half a season either.
about 3 of those times he lost to jenson it was because of bad luck and usually even when jenson beat him the gap was small.
nothing like schuey domination.

can't really compare rubens vs shuey and vs button -as at ferrari the team was all around michael and regardless of how fast rubens was car developments and strategy always firstly get michael win/ahead of rubens and others to maximise points in WDC.


at honda/brawn there was a equal policy for both.

you cant compare qualifying and race pace? what strategy in qualifying? rubens was usually lighter than michael. there is no comparision between button and michael so funy to see some people trying here lol.

Ferrari : Alonso can turn team around..

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/80636

"In order to make a leap forward, however, we needed someone able to communicate with the team, Alonso will do that. When Stefano Domenicali, who I trust very much, talked to me about him three years ago, I told him we had to bring him here.

"Alonso was supposed to race with us in 2011, but after Massa's crash we decided to bring that forward, after learning that he wasn't involved in the Singapore scandal."

Except you forget that the Brawn GP brakes were not working on Rubens car. When Rubens got brakes that worked well in the 2nd half of the season, Jenson was the one that got beaten by Rubens and that is despite alot of problems on his car like anti-stall and unreliability.

Saying that Jenson dominated Rubens like MS is not only false, but is an insult to MS And you're right, Jenson is not on the same level as MS.

Yes, he can comminucate alright: "Ron, if you dont give me #1 status right now, I will tell FIA that we used Ferraris IP shamelessly". Lets hope Ferrari will enjoy this communication.

you're giving schumaresque credit to a guy who got beat by jarmo trulli and a rookie, as long as massa can keep his head together Alonso will have another nightmare season

when will those sour grapes turn sweet.. ?

Alonso will probably win. My reasons:
1. Massa had a big accident and has a metal plate in his head
2. Massa hasn't raced a F1 car for months
3. Massa is able to be beaten, like Nick and Fisi have done in the past. So Alonso should be able to do it too.

1, Which will cause him to brake earlier?
2, Alonso hasn't either.
3, That was many years ago.

Please, name one driver that can not be beaten.

Alonso is a hot-head while Massa is more relaxed .

Massa was regularly faster than KR in 2008 and 2009 (before his accident) , while Alonso had a hard time to match Hamilton who wa a rookie in 2007.

So, Massa has had TOP teamates every year ( Jacques Villeneuve, Michael Schumacher, Kimi ), while Alonso had Fisichela and Piquet !

Massa overshadowed Jacques Villeneuve while at Sauber and sometimes could match Schumacher and even was faster than him on a couple of occaions in 2006. JV and MS are both F1 champions. Alonso never had a world champion teamate.Alonso got beat by Trulli most of the times and Jarno proved to be faster tahn Fernando while the were both at Renault !

So my conclusion is that Massa is going to be a) faster than Alosno in 2010 and b) beat alonso throught out the entire season....

Go Michael Schumacher ! Go Mercedes-Petronas GP !

But Alonso is able to be beaten even by a rookie, like Hamilton has done in the past. So Massa should be able to do it too.

I think it's going to be quite even fight. Felipe is slightly ahead in the early season fly away races before Fernando can match and also beat Felipe when the circus comes to Europe. I think from then on their fights are most entertaining. But then again it could be that Alonso takes control from the beginning, beating Massa regularly. Difficult to see that Massa would dominate Alonso.

Can't wait for Bahrain! Both have won there two times!

2003:
Fernando Alonso 55
Jarno Trulli 33

2004:
Fernando Alonso 59
Jarno Trulli 46

Providing he settles in okay at Ferrari and gets along with the people there, I see Alonso beating Massa fairly comfortably.

So did Luca promise Alonso special treatment at Massa's expense? Why not Massa turning the team around, what a vote of confidence

Flawless logic

yeah sure

Isn't that the same guy who beat MS twice for World Champion ?
Isn't this the same guy whom MS Wanted to join Ferrari ?

shaggy

Alonso was beaten by Trulli?

And the rookie you speak of was Lewis Hamilton, hardly an average driver.

Nevertheless a rookie!
One thing is for sure the first aerious season flavio could not pull him out of the mud by some manipulation, he ran off crying!

Hamilton is the only teammate to have been anywhere near Alonso. There is no shame in being beaten by Hamilton.

And beat is probably too strong a word to use, afterall they scored the same points and the same number of wins, so I prefer to say they were equal.

Only reason why they ended up equal is due to Lewis losing his nerve in the end.
The anywhere near is neither true, since I'm 2004 after Monaco he was seriously rattled and mr manager had to step in and 'save' his investment.