My Monday musing - How come a driver as good as Alonsos only won 2 championships? Surely he deserves more! Well, no. People always look at the way Alonso performs on race day and ask why hes only won 2 championships. The answer is simple. He is Fernando Alonso. He is far too disruptive in a team. He is irrational and arrogant. All of this leads him to simply never being in the right team at the right time, or being off an even keel when hes in the right one. Whered he go after his success at Renault? Mclaren. What happened there? He let a rookie get into his head, fell out with the team and let his old boss at Renault influence him into an ill-advised move back there where they were a midfield team. The political fallout after they rigged the Singapore GP led to him getting out of there. He had a choice before him then. Red Bull, or Ferrari. One team on the rise, comfortable enough in their own performance to not to meet the ridiculous money contract he demanded when they had two proven talents in Vettel and Webber - the other a clearly sinking ship with a horrible blame culture, but the desperation to spend the ridiculous money Alonso demands for his services. So he chose Ferrari, locked himself into a watertight contract with some of the most ruthless businessmen in the world and has been unable to get out from the under-performing team. He cant stay there because theyre restructuring and by the time they get back into championship contending form hell be too old to take advantage of that. So wheres he left to go? Mercedes dont want him - look at the stress theyve had this year with two drivers who have been straight forward with each other, and thats with the huge performance gap they have to the chasing field. Theyll have seen the way he behaves when he has a competitive teammate and will avoid him like the plague. Red Bull? They have a chassis that could challenge the Merc with a stronger engine, which they could well get next year. After the Merc its got to be the most coveted garage to race out of in F1 right now. Well, Red Bull are there as a marketing exercise. As evidenced with the favouritsm towards Vettel over Webber, how you win is what matters to them. They have to have success with drivers from their own stable to consolidate the massive investments theyve made all over the world in just about every category of racing - Alonso is not one of their own, he had his opportunity and the door has shut. Whats left of the teams that have recently contended for titles? Hes backed himself into a corner with the Mclaren-Honda gamble. Ron Dennis does not want him there after 07. He is a leader with integrity and he would not willingly hire a driver arrogant enough to hold the team to ransom and land them possibly the biggest fine in the history of all sport. Ron Dennis needs Honda, he needs Mclaren to have a works engine and Honda is the only option, he has to agree to Hondas terms out of necessity if Mclaren want any chance of getting back to the top rung again - you simply cannot do it in this formula with a lack of access to works level engine software. The engines are too technical and have too much impact on braking and handling for a customer team to even hope of contending at the front - Its like racing against teams that can change differential settings, damping rates, gear ratios, brake bias etc whereas you cannot. It appears Honda want Alonso, and it looks oddly enough that his contract will be with them, not Mclaren, although racing for Mclaren. I do not think this will be a successful partnership unless Honda absolutely nail things on the engine front, which would be extremely impressive since it looks like theyve had to go back to the drawing board to integrate the split turbo system Merc use, and Mercedes are looking to gain another 50BHP from their injection system alone next season. I wouldnt write them off, however. Honda are incredible at making small engines. Theres this image people have of Alonso as a man who holds all the cards, and he plays to that with some of the bullshit he talks in the press. He did, at the end of 2009 hold all the cards and he played the wrong hand. Had he behaved a bit more professionally, like the more experienced driver at Mclaren he would have won a title there, maybe two if he stayed for the second season instead of getting back into bed with Renault. If he hadnt let arrogance and ego lead him away from the rising force of Red Bull, God knows how many championships hed have under his belt now. All this and the fact he cant develop a car for shit as made evident by the second advantage Raikkonens steadily broken down to less than a tenth over the season make him...not as great as people assume him to be. He lacks two characteristics the REAL greats possessed. Clark, Stewart, Schumacher, Senna and the like - The perception to see where their greatest opportunity to win would come from, and the emotional intelligence to manage their working relationships. That is why he hasnt wont more championships.
Posted on: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 19:39:19 +0000
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