2014 Formula 1 Season Thread

That's quite offensive. First of all, Michael isn't dead. ...

Not to defend mpicco, god knows I don't agree with him often, but I think he's saying that reincarnation would happen after a person dies, but with Michael still being alive, it was before. I don't think he meant any offense by it, and probably would have said the same thing had Michael's terrible accident and injury never occurred.

At least that's how I took it. :dunno:
 
Good GRIEF you guys... don't dogpile on Mpicco for that remark... I would have said 'Schumacher Reborn', but we all know where he's coming from. Stop being dicks because you don't like him.

I think Seb will do well there, new start for him, new start for them.. And hell, I'm not a massive Ferrari fan these days, but I'd still walk away from any other team on the grid to race for them.. I didn't have Williams or McLaren or RBR posters on my wall as a kid.. I had Michael Shumacher's car up there though.

The problem with Alonso is that while he is easily one of the best drivers ever to walk onto the pitlane, he is also his own biggest fan and it tends to put people off. I'll always watch him, he's a better driver than Mansell, Prost, Senna, or Schumacher, but he has the unerring ability to get under people's skin, be it fans, teammates, or team bosses.
 
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supporter



you clearly aren't a supporter of the ferrari team anymore. why still feel butthurt? pick another team and root for them!

That's like saying you're not a patriot and you dont want your country to get better, just because right now, it's going through a bad time with bad leadership and poor results. Does that mean you don't cheer for it, root for it to get better and go back to being a great place?

That's quite offensive. First of all, Michael isn't dead. He might be getting colouring books for christmas for the rest of his life, but he's not dead. I agree with you that Merc will still dominate, but that's because the engine freeze more or less cemented the the status quo last year. If you think that Vettel can't develop a team, then how come he brings RB's chief mechanic and the race engineer, who oversaw his first win for Toro Rosso with him? Ring a bell? Schumacher also brought select trusted people with him and don't underestimate Allison. He might just know what he's doing and the relatively easy-going Vettel might fit in better with Ferrari's passion than the conniving bitch that was Fernando Alonso. Vettel comes to Maranello because he's been dreaming to drive for them since he was a kid watching Schumacher. Alonso went there thinking they were his bitch and that he's bigger than the team. Such antics never went down well with them.

I explicitly said he's not dead. Are you this thick? Honestly you should be the one who should focus a little more on coloring books.
There's a lot of speculation and from different, quite reliable, sources, that the original deal had Vettel and Newey moving to Ferrari, and then Red Bull somehow convinced Newey not to, and to stay at RBR in another capacity.
I don't think Vettel alone will be able to flip it around.

probably would have said the same thing had Michael's terrible accident and injury never occurred.

I was referring to the overwhelming amount of comparisons done between Vettel and Schumacher by absolutely everyone, including this forum, way before the accident. Like he was not Vettel, but Schumacher 2.0. So yes, you got it right, everyone else, well, why try to understand it? it's a tifosi, of course he's a disrespectful asshole, despite having posted repeatedly on the Schumacher thread, showing his support. Nevermind that he knows perfectly well Vettel has been alive for 20 something years while Schumacher was in perfect health!
 
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When people compare Vettel to Schumacher it's not that they believe Vettel literately is Schumacher it's because Vettel is a dominant German driver (Much like Schumacher) who's F1 career was inspired by Schumacher, saying Vettel is the next Schumacher isn't reincarnation it's just another way of saying he's the next great German F1 driver or even then next great F1 driver.
 
maybe they'll start performing again! :lol:
 
Maybe Ron Dennis wants to actually eventually work with nobody. Just him in a big building with only Honda money and a rack of cheesy bomber jackets for company.
 
Maybe Ron Dennis wants to actually eventually work with nobody. Just him in a big building with only Honda money and a rack of cheesy bomber jackets for company.

Sure seems like it... He's managed to piss just about everyone off that has worked for him, be it driver or engineering/technical personnel.
 
There was a rumour of Gerhard Berger replacing Ron Dennis at McLaren so maybe it is time for Ron to step down, maybe he could have Bernie's job instead.
 
Marussia are going to miss the US GP too due to financial issues. At that point they're on the slippery slope, so I wouldn't expect to see them again.

What a fucking sad state Bernie's greed and incompetently short-sighted management of the sport has brought us to. He's so busy shoving all the money he can find up Ferrari's mid-field arseholes with his special deals for the teams he arbitrarily considers "important" that there's no business model that works for the bottom half of the grid. And without the bottom half, the second quarter becomes the bottom half.

Teams won't run three cars because it's 50% more car, more transport, more staff, more parts, more engine usage, and no sponsor is going to pay 50% more for one more car. Is Bernie going to pay 50% more prize money once they run three cars? Sure. His pet unicorn will come right around with those bags of cash.

The three car teams idea is a slippery slope in itself anyway - once the top 10 is entirely locked out by 3.333 teams, more teams will go bust. So what, four car teams? Five? Might as well go single-make-spec-series.

F1's been teetering on the edge for a while. Depending on how the next year goes it could die all together as we know it.
 
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Cant fault any of that.

Cant really see things improving anytime soon either. Remember that GFC thing? Yeah well, it hasn't really gone away.
 
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What a fucking sad state Bernie's greed and incompetently short-sighted management of the sport has brought us to. He's so busy shoving all the money he can find up Ferrari's mid-field arseholes with his special deals for the teams he arbitrarily considers "important" that there's no business model that works for the bottom half of the grid. And without the bottom half, the second quarter becomes the bottom half.

Wtf. Is everything wrong with F1 Ferrari's fault, all the time?!
 
Marussia are going to miss the US GP too due to financial issues. At that point they're on the slippery slope, so I wouldn't expect to see them again.

What a fucking sad state Bernie's greed and incompetently short-sighted management of the sport has brought us to. He's so busy shoving all the money he can find up Ferrari's mid-field arseholes with his special deals for the teams he arbitrarily considers "important" that there's no business model that works for the bottom half of the grid. And without the bottom half, the second quarter becomes the bottom half.

Teams won't run three cars because it's 50% more car, more transport, more staff, more parts, more engine usage, and no sponsor is going to pay 50% more for one more car. Is Bernie going to pay 50% more prize money once they run three cars? Sure. His pet unicorn will come right around with those bags of cash.

The three car teams idea is a slippery slope in itself anyway - once the top 10 is entirely locked out by 3.333 teams, more teams will go bust. So what, four car teams? Five? Might as well go single-make-spec-series.

F1's been teetering on the edge for a while. Depending on how the next year goes it could die all together as we know it.

Formula 1 has always seen teams come and go. Nothing new about that, nothing to write home about.

Seriously.

There were more than 300 racing teams active in the Formula One since it has been founded. Over three hundred! And only 13 of them left any significant trace. Thirteen!

Cooper, Brabham (Ecclestone's own team btw.!), Tyrell, B.R.M., Matra... all gone. Some of them even won the championship. Remember Hesketh Racing? That was James Hunt's first team. Gone long ago, too.

So what's one or two teams more or less? They will be replaced. It has always been that way, even way before Bernie Ecclestone became important. So cry me a river when another team goes down the drain. It has neither to do with Bernie Ecclestone nor with the current F1 rules or the general injustice of life.

It happens. Because money. Get over it.
 
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Yeah, but how many brand new start ups have there been since say, 1998? Toyota? I'll also count BAR as they basically set up their own operation despite buying the old Tyrrell team. Apart from Marussia, Caterham and HRT who entered under the premise of a budget cap and have never ever really looked like getting on terms with the rest of the field, that's all I can think of. Pretty lean period.

A lot of teams are in a pretty precarious position. Sauber are just about at the wall, we hear Lotus are struggling and can't find a buyer, and Force India may yet see their income streams reduced as investigations into Vijay Mallya's businesses continue. There's three straight off the bat without looking at McLaren's struggles to find a title sponsor, Toro Rosso's complete dependence on Red Bull (Red Bull's complete dependence on Red Bull), and even Williams are probably still running a very tight ship. Mercedes wont be there forever either, they'll go as soon as they win a few titles and find the going tough just as Ford, BMW, Honda and Toyota did.

There's just very little new money flowing into the sport, and much less of it going to the teams.
 
We don't have the 70's anymore. You won't easily find the proverbial oddball billionaire who spends hundreds of millions for a racing team just because he likes cars and racing. Also for a big part F1 has fallen to political correctness, there are no macho drivers anymore, who drink and smoke and have sex with willing girls. Formula 1 has become a high-performance sport and being just a good driver hasn't been enough for at least 20 years.

The number of guys like Dietrich Mateschitz (Red Bull) or Vijay Mallya (Force India) is limited and they don't come without economical interests, too. Formula 1 isn't a sport for patrons anymore. It's a sport for companies, for sponsors. The interest in marketing is at least as big as the interest in sporting success...

You can either like it or not but the wheel of time won't be turned back. No matter how hard you bemoan it.
 
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Wtf. Is everything wrong with F1 Ferrari's fault, all the time?!

I didn't criticize Ferrari at all. Read again.

Anyway, the issue isn't that F1 has lost a couple teams - as you said that's always happened. The issue is that teams aren't lining up to snap up the entrance licenses and move up from GP2, FR3.5 etc. There used to be a queue of teams longer than the available entries being offered.
Now, it's only Haas because it seems Ferrari are willing to give a lot of support to have a pseudo-B-team (again, that isn't criticism, before anyone goes having a fit at me mentioning Ferrari...)
All the other big teams from outside of F1 see by now that the business model doesn't work unless you're a huge manufacturer running it at a loss for marketing reasons. And there are only so many of them willing to budget an F1 operation. Not enough to fill 10-11 team slots.

And if the only way to run in the sport is to accept it as loss-making, then my statement that the business model is broke is justified.
 
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