Alonso Breaks His Toys

[yurp 0]

Ah...a high level argument finally going on in these forums. Brings back old memories.

From the outside, it is funny to see that both Adam and Mike seem to agree at the core, yet they keep trying to trace the line at each one's favoured spot, and each one's favoured spot is merely inches away from the other's. I bet that is how most of us become entangled in these discussions, but we obviously can't be aware except when we are not involved.

As for the issue itself, I can't help but partially agree with both. Mike is right when he says that it is hard to see what were they trying to accomplish with Button's overtaking and, on the other hand, Adam is right when he says that there is no easy way to trace the line, unless we know the facts after they already happened.

Alonso's my hero. He's great don't you know. I love him sooo much. Blah blah blah.

Andres - the voice of reason - you are quite right.

Obviously, I'd say it's easy to see what Ferrari wanted to accomplish by overtaking Button; 2 more pts. (but I would say that wouldn't I)

If your shower breaks and you wake up early and leap out from under the ice-cold water in the middle of winter before having to go to school and teach a bunch of screaming kids how to mangle the English language and you catch a cold and their homework is rubbish and makes you want to cry and you get home and your wife beats you over the head with the burnt frying pan (causing a headache) that you forgot about when you started cooking eggs that morning because your coffee tasted like Sh#t because you used the wrong filters that make it all watery and then at last when you go to bed, you realise that someone (you) neglected to turn the electric blanket on, so you're shivering between the icey sheets for about half an hour before you finally drift off into sleep and a horrible nightmare from which you awake screaming and sweating...

Do you blame yourself, or the guy who made the ****ing Sh#tty b#####d bollocking piece of crap shower!

That guy's gonna pay!

Yours,

Captain Obvious.

[Quiet One 15]

Andres - the voice of reason - you are quite right.

Obviously, I'd say it's easy to see what Ferrari wanted to accomplish by overtaking Button; 2 more pts. (but I would say that wouldn't I)

If your shower breaks and you wake up early and leap out from under the ice-cold water in the middle of winter before having to go to school and teach a bunch of screaming kids how to mangle the English language and you catch a cold and their homework is rubbish and makes you want to cry and you get home and your wife beats you over the head with the burnt frying pan (causing a headache) that you forgot about when you started cooking eggs that morning because your coffee tasted like Sh#t because you used the wrong filters that make it all watery and then at last when you go to bed, you realise that someone (you) neglected to turn the electric blanket on, so you're shivering between the icey sheets for about half an hour before you finally drift off into sleep and a horrible nightmare from which you awake screaming and sweating...

Do you blame yourself, or the guy who made the ****ing Sh#tty b#####d bollocking piece of crap shower!

That guy's gonna pay!

Yours,

Captain Obvious.

Took me a while to spot the modification in my quote there.

As for your post, no way Rubinho is sexier than Denise Richards. I give you that it gives me goosebumps and some stirring inside my breeches when I see him weep at the podium, but still not the same feelings.

And I also think that you are too biased in your view about eggplants. You should set your emotions aside. Broccoli is not the answer.

[Krasch27 0]

1.- All the grief started on Saturday.

2.- The problem was there from the warm-up lap.

3.- If the team had thought the engine would blow up they'd have told him to park it immediately.

3.- If he finished the race, he'd get 5 grid penalty for a gear-box replacement.

4.- As I said with Vettel, a fragile car and a damn good driver doesn't mix well.

If Alonso lose the WDC or Ferrari lose the WCC because of 2 points they might think about Malaysia, but mainly about qualifying. Having in mind we were talking about a top team and a top driver they had only two options:

1.- Park the car very early in the race

2.- Race

hey everyone...in response to AleHop- i personally think once Alonso realised the downshift problem, he revved the guts out of the car for a points finish. Massa was told by his race engineer to use max revs-i suspect Alonso was using max revs all race too- to either finish high in the order or retire before race end. a no-points finish was not an option..

My theory is...Any decent points would be worth the 5 spot-back grid penalty for the early gbox change for China,and if the engine fails(as it did) he can obtain his new gearbox penalty free for the next race...Im eluding to the idea that the engine may have even been(thru mapping) coaxed into detonation really late in the race for the sole purpose of avoiding the grid spot penalty in China... Even though the gbox was cactus on the warm up lap,Alonso retired due to an engine problem(NOT a gearbox failure)..It was important that the reason for his DNF was an engine problem(or an incident beyond the team or drivers control )as this allows Alonso's gearbox to be replaced for the next race with no penalty incurred..

I hope i explained that logically...

[UrKo 0]

That's not the smarter thing to do, that's only the way if you are in the last race and there is no tomorrow, especially now with the engine limited to 8(I think) per season, this is a championship and a good driver should always think and be able to see the whole picture, Ferrari already changed an engine in Australia, I guess they used the same engine to race in Barhain so they used a new one for this race, if that's the case Alonso only have 5 remaining new engines for the rest of the season after that they will face penalty or will have to race with used engines, right now if my calculations are right Alonso have almost thrown to the trash his chances of winning this WDC.

And that's what im saying.. Why in hell fia made such a stupid rule?? cost saving my a##. If Alonso has only 5 new engines for the rest of the season, then i guess you can't say that this is racing.

I know u r right in every word u say, but I believe that drivers should be able to race eachother and not to worry ...( ohh dear god, i must lower my revs..only 2 new engines left and still 7 races to go )... you see what i mean?? I think Vettel was in the same position last year, or even worse if im not mistaken.

So they could easily say use more engines, leave the gearbox limited and other stuff for that matter. Alonso proved that drivers can still race with the gearbox problem, but if ur in position where u have to worry about how many engines u have left, then ur just gonna watch drivers driving like they're going to the store...

[Quiet One 15]

And that's what im saying.. Why in hell fia made such a stupid rule?? cost saving my a##. If Alonso has only 5 new engines for the rest of the season, then i guess you can't say that this is racing.

I know u r right in every word u say, but I believe that drivers should be able to race eachother and not to worry ...( ohh dear god, i must lower my revs..only 2 new engines left and still 7 races to go )... you see what i mean?? I think Vettel was in the same position last year, or even worse if im not mistaken.

So they could easily say use more engines, leave the gearbox limited and other stuff for that matter. Alonso proved that drivers can still race with the gearbox problem, but if ur in position where u have to worry about how many engines u have left, then ur just gonna watch drivers driving like they're going to the store...

Spot on. Rules are schizofrenic. You can't change the points tally "so the drivers race their hearts out" and then contrain them with the engine limits, no testing, no refuelling, mandatory pitstops etc. In the end, the conservative approach will always prevail in these cases. they could as well have followed Bernie's medals idea, it wouldn't have changed crap.

@Krasch: welcome aboard. Thanks for posting what I was trying to say, although your post is much more intelligible than mine.

[Krasch27 0]

Spot on. Rules are schizofrenic. You can't change the points tally "so the drivers race their hearts out" and then contrain them with the engine limits, no testing, no refuelling, mandatory pitstops etc. In the end, the conservative approach will always prevail in these cases. they could as well have followed Bernie's medals idea, it wouldn't have changed crap.

@Krasch: welcome aboard. Thanks for posting what I was trying to say, although your post is much more intelligible than mine.

Hey Quiet One! glad you understood my post..I was really p**sed off bout the rule changes til Melbourne, but im warming to them now.As schizo as the new rules/points system is, its kinda interesting that Ferrari have used the most engines of the major teams, and yet they also lead the constructors c'ship..

I agree, the regs dictate that a conservative approach will always prevail- but then again- the conservative approach isnt leading the championship at the moment..Interesting!

[Schumikonen 2]

Hey Quiet One! glad you understood my post..I was really p**sed off bout the rule changes til Melbourne, but im warming to them now.As schizo as the new rules/points system is, its kinda interesting that Ferrari have used the most engines of the major teams, and yet they also lead the constructors c'ship..

I agree, the regs dictate that a conservative approach will always prevail- but then again- the conservative approach isnt leading the championship at the moment..Interesting!

you are right that's interesting but it is also interesting to see how will they do when they run out of new engine and start receiving the penalty for that, remember that it is not how they start but how they finish what is important.

[Rainmaster 7]

Both you and Adam have pushed me to the extreme side of the argument and then based your own responses off of that. Why is it that Freakazoid and Andres understood what I was saying and you two didn't?

Well, I figured pushing the argument to the extreme can sometimes be the best way to test it's strength. You also did some pushing back, too, by posing this essentially rhetorical question "Considering that the championship can only be won on points tally, which viewpoint will get a team/driver the most points over the course of a season?" which wasn't what I was arguing against.

Where we originally disagreed, is on the idea that a driver not pushing because his car might break, and getting the most points over the season, are the same thing. I don't think it always is, and furthermore, I thought the use of Vettel as an example of that was flawed so I pulled you up on it as it seemed a weak example to demonstrate your point.

The case of Alonso's problem in Malaysia is, ironically (considering you used Alonso as an example of good "mechanical empathy" when counter-arguing with me about Vettel), a much better example of a driver who perhaps shouldn't have been pushing his car so hard; if he hadn't tried to pass Button then arguably his car might not have broken down. Not that I agree with that idea whatsoever because of the various reasons Alonso was pushing (e.g. not getting a penalty in China, his team told him to, etc), and the problems with that argument (see Adam's posts) - but it seems a better example to demonstrate the point of "knowing when not to push" to spare the car excess stress.

However I think the main problem with your argument is the idea of, how much is enough? It's a problem that Captain Obvious so beautifully pointed out and one that you cheekily sidestepped in your first response to Twatface with: "No. Deal with it" - which I'm not sure even you can really get away with

Anyhoo, fun & games aside, my final position is that a driver in theory does need to know the limits of his car and when to push and when not to, but in practice what actually happens is in modern GP's, the team usually tells them how hard to push, and there is no easily definable level at which a driver can push which ensures a car won't break down (once again, Adam put forward this case well). Therefore I agree with you in theory and the approach you suggest to winning the title is correct, but in practice it's not too easy to implement and in most cases a driver doesn't (or can't if his team are giving him orders) actually make a difference in this respect.

Now I'm off to eat Adam's banana, forum monkey, over and out

[yurp 0]

So - whilst discussing this topic back and forth, it occured to my stupendous mind that what we needed was some kind of definitive proof. Some way of crunching the numbers, looking at the data, testing our hypotheseesesess and generally getting our head around this most vexatious of connundrums.

So I made a pointless brum brums strategy game YAY!

EDIt - don't know why I've got it attached twice - I must be thick.

strategy.html

strategy.html

[Rainmaster 7]

So - whilst discussing this topic back and forth, it occured to my stupendous mind that what we needed was some kind of definitive proof. Some way of crunching the numbers, looking at the data, testing our hypotheseesesess and generally getting our head around this most vexatious of connundrums.

So I made a pointless brum brums strategy game YAY!

EDIt - don't know why I've got it attached twice - I must be thick.

I love how committed you are to arguing your point Captain Obvious, to the extent that you created a game to demonstrate it! Of course 'puma may argue that the design is flawed because the designer is a twat

[BradSpeedMan 6]

I am going to add my "third dimension" or "z axis" to this debate: Alonso's usual behavior. He has been often criticized for being too conservative and settling for a points position instead of fighting for a podium. That he usually focus more on the championship than on the race. Of course, some other times he is criticized for losing his temper and acting like a maniac.

I think this case was neither. He obviously wasn't being conservative. I wouldn't blame him as that car would have neded in the garage before even the race start in some other driver's hands. (Remember DC and his car parked because "it vibrated too much"?). On the other hand, I don't think he lost his temper, as he was very calm after the race. This was no Singapore 2008 qualy. You could tell that he didn't just got crazy and tried to overtake Button. Having watched the onboard camera that Alex provided us, it seems to me that he wasn't pushing harder to overtake Button at that corner. The manoeuvre itself is weird as he seems to be way too fast and simply overshots the corner, and Button in the process. Maybe it was just a case of the car giving up before the manoeuvre and thus the car suddenly overrevving and going wide?

As for why he kept pushing. I still suspect that the engine failure was something Ferrari was looking for. Again, finishing ahead or behind Button would have meant a meager points' haul and a certain penalty next race due to the gearbox change. Would you rather risk these one/two points in the bag and get a clean start in next race where hopefully you will be fighting for a podium? Or settle for one/two points and deal next race with the penalty and the unknown? Only at the end of season we will know.

Don't u know Alonso by now Andres, as a fan you should have a pretty clear idea of how his mind moves, after all that has happened before. I have a pretty good idea why.

Alonso's unusual behaviour in the race can be attributed to Massa, his teammate...Do I need to explain any further, or have you figured it out

[Grabthaw the Hammerslayer 4]

Of course 'puma may argue that the design is flawed because the designer is a twat

Twat-face, twat-face not twat. There is a big difference

[Rainmaster 7]

Twat-face, twat-face not twat. There is a big difference

Well you would know!

[Autumnpuma 0]

Ferrari downplays claims of engine reliability dramas

Apr.7 (GMM) Ferrari has downplayed suggestions that last weekend's Malaysian grand prix highlighted a major engine reliability problem for the Italian marque.

After both his and Felipe Massa's engines had to be replaced before the race in Bahrain, Fernando Alonso then retired at Sepang last weekend with a smoky blown V8.

Pedro de la Rosa and Kamui Kobayashi's Ferrari-powered Saubers also failed in the Malaysian heat, even though their problems were not related to Alonso's.

Ferrari has now confirmed that the Sauber-spec engines failed due to "a malfunction of the electronic engine management". All electronic control units fitted to F1 cars are supplied by McLaren Electronic Systems (MES).

The Maranello based team also said Alonso's Sepang failure was sudden and isolated, and therefore not linked to the problems in Bahrain that were caused "by a momentary overheating".

Ferrari said Alonso's separate gearbox problem in Malaysia, where the Spaniard drove almost the entire race without a clutch, "could have caused some consequences for the engine".

"A more precise analysis can only be made when the engine is back at the works (factory) on Wednesday afternoon," added the team.

Source

Has anyone noticed this? It seems that in the fun of arguing with me, Freak's very astute posts are being ignored.

Linking the discussion of Vettel and applying it here is not relevant. My thoughts on Alonso here are a bit different from those on Vettel.

[Quiet One 15]

Has anyone noticed this? It seems that in the fun of arguing with me, Freak's very astute posts are being ignored.

Linking the discussion of Vettel and applying it here is not relevant. My thoughts on Alonso here are a bit different from those on Vettel.

Ermm..sorry, buut either you are completely off mark here or I was completely off mark since the beginning of this discussion. I thought that the fact that Alonso's engine problems were connected with his gearbox issues was out of the question. Nando explained how he handled the gearbox failure: as he had downshift problems, when approaching to a curve he had to release the gears, choose the gear that he would like to use through the corner and then violently rev up the engine until the RPMs were the right ones for the gear he selected. That would cause stress on any engine.

That, composed with the already underlying reliability issues Ferrari seems to be having with their engines, make it very likely that his engine would have given up at any moment of the race, and the more stress it sustained, the more probable it was.

I think (please correct me if I am wrong about this argument) that the questions are:

Could Alonso have avoided the engine blow or minimized its probabilities? At what moment he should have stopped hitting for more cards and standed? My opinion, Button seemed like a distinct milestone. It was the first car Alonso really struggled to overtake and it was too late to do much else anyways. If I know that, then he (and the pitcrew) would have been even more aware of it.

So the fact that he kept pushing so hard when the "conservative" approach would have been not just to stay behind Button, but also to stay as far away from him as possible so as not to stress the car too much, makes me think that they were either convinced that the extra point was vital (mmmmh...doubtful, even more so with the current points system) or that they were actively looking for an engine blow to avoid a 5 slot penalty. Or perhaps to make up for the ****up at qualy? And how would such thing compensate? Who knows?

Or, for the people who likes to believe that Alonso is an idiot and that Massa is Hamilton: he did it because he was sooooooo frustrated by Massa's amazing display of skills he got all shaken up and drove like a madman. In that case, yes I _am_ smiling (credits to Maure, all rights reserved)

[Schumikonen 2]

Don't u know Alonso by now Andres, as a fan you should have a pretty clear idea of how his mind moves, after all that has happened before. I have a pretty good idea why.

Alonso's unusual behaviour in the race can be attributed to Massa, his teammate...Do I need to explain any further, or have you figured it out

Yes, you are right again.

[Schumikonen 2]

Has anyone noticed this? It seems that in the fun of arguing with me, Freak's very astute posts are being ignored.

Linking the discussion of Vettel and applying it here is not relevant. My thoughts on Alonso here are a bit different from those on Vettel.

It's not the first time, I least I know they read it and they know why I posted it, sometimes silence says a lot

[Schumikonen 2]

Ermm..sorry, buut either you are completely off mark here or I was completely off mark since the beginning of this discussion. I thought that the fact that Alonso's engine problems were connected with his gearbox issues was out of the question. Nando explained how he handled the gearbox failure: as he had downshift problems, when approaching to a curve he had to release the gears, choose the gear that he would like to use through the corner and then violently rev up the engine until the RPMs were the right ones for the gear he selected. That would cause stress on any engine.

That, composed with the already underlying reliability issues Ferrari seems to be having with their engines, make it very likely that his engine would have given up at any moment of the race, and the more stress it sustained, the more probable it was.

I think (please correct me if I am wrong about this argument) that the questions are:

Could Alonso have avoided the engine blow or minimized its probabilities? At what moment he should have stopped hitting for more cards and standed? My opinion, Button seemed like a distinct milestone. It was the first car Alonso really struggled to overtake and it was too late to do much else anyways. If I know that, then he (and the pitcrew) would have been even more aware of it.

So the fact that he kept pushing so hard when the "conservative" approach would have been not just to stay behind Button, but also to stay as far away from him as possible so as not to stress the car too much, makes me think that they were either convinced that the extra point was vital (mmmmh...doubtful, even more so with the current points system) or that they were actively looking for an engine blow to avoid a 5 slot penalty. Or perhaps to make up for the ****up at qualy? And how would such thing compensate? Who knows?

Or, for the people who likes to believe that Alonso is an idiot and that Massa is Hamilton: he did it because he was sooooooo frustrated by Massa's amazing display of skills he got all shaken up and drove like a madman. In that case, yes I _am_ smiling (credits to Maure, all rights reserved)

What is really being discused here is if the way Alonso drove his car cuased the engine blow, nothing more, nohting less, you can refer to the title of the thread if you need help to figure out this, now you are agreeing with us, the one who said he did caused it, the reason is really irrelevant here, loosing points is never the smarter thing to do and they did and of course he would have finished the race by reducing the engine stress in the final laps, I don't believe they were looking for an engine blow on purpuose, for that matter Alonso would have stayed behind Button all the way but he clearly try (and at some point made it) to overtake Button, with just two more laps he wouldn't have tome to reach anybody else to overheat his engine so I discard that reason, but like I said reason are not being discused but if Alonso caused the engine failure with the way he treated the car.

[Quiet One 15]

What is really being discused here is if the way Alonso drove his car cuased the engine blow, nothing more, nohting less, you can refer to the title of the thread if you need help to figure out this, now you are agreeing with us, the one who said he did caused it, the reason is really irrelevant here, loosing points is never the smarter thing to do and they did and of course he would have finished the race by reducing the engine stress in the final laps, I don't believe they were looking for an engine blow on purpuose, for that matter Alonso would have stayed behind Button all the way but he clearly try (and at some point made it) to overtake Button, with just two more laps he wouldn't have tome to reach anybody else to overheat his engine so I discard that reason, but like I said reason are not being discused but if Alonso caused the engine failure with the way he treated the car.

The thread title is irrelevant. The thread was Cav's usual half troll/half joke moment of fun. He did not mean it seriously. The argument between Adam and Mike, is what I am talking about.

If the issue here is whether or not Alonso caused the engine failure then this whole thing is as trivial as it can be.

YES, ALONSO MOST PROBABLY CAUSED THE ENGINE BLOW UP.

There.

[Schumikonen 2]

The thread title is irrelevant. The thread was Cav's usual half troll/half joke moment of fun. He did not mean it seriously. The argument between Adam and Mike, is what I am talking about.

If the issue here is whether or not Alonso caused the engine failure then this whole thing is as trivial as it can be.

YES, ALONSO MOST PROBABLY CAUSED THE ENGINE BLOW UP.

There.

This is our revenge for that famous thread, "Kimi breaks his toys"

[freaky2 1]

Mmmmm, I like it how people are breaking engines. Still, I reckon Ferrari have more than 5, because I think they can fix the problem in the ones from Bahrain.

Anyway, my point this time: if they all/almost all run out of engines by the end of the year, the next-in-the-line Kimi will shine

[AleHop 0]

hey everyone...in response to AleHop- i personally think once Alonso realised the downshift problem, he revved the guts out of the car for a points finish. Massa was told by his race engineer to use max revs-i suspect Alonso was using max revs all race too- to either finish high in the order or retire before race end. a no-points finish was not an option..

My theory is...Any decent points would be worth the 5 spot-back grid penalty for the early gbox change for China,and if the engine fails(as it did) he can obtain his new gearbox penalty free for the next race...Im eluding to the idea that the engine may have even been(thru mapping) coaxed into detonation really late in the race for the sole purpose of avoiding the grid spot penalty in China... Even though the gbox was cactus on the warm up lap,Alonso retired due to an engine problem(NOT a gearbox failure)..It was important that the reason for his DNF was an engine problem(or an incident beyond the team or drivers control )as this allows Alonso's gearbox to be replaced for the next race with no penalty incurred..

I hope i explained that logically...

Welcome aboard Krasch.

SCENARIO 5,356,445

Alonso finish the race and grabs 1-2 points. The engine would be damaged no matter it had blown up or not, same thing about the gearbox... In china they put the same engine and it blows up during the race afte a 5 grid penalty for the gearbox.

Now Ferrari says it was Alonso driving that way what caused the engine to blow up, why did they let Alonso race that way. Why did Stella tell Alonso to push on Kubica?

I agree a great driver always has to know when to push and when to hold position but no driver is supposed to work as an engineer from the c#ckpit of his car.

[AleHop 0]

Mmmmm, I like it how people are breaking engines. Still, I reckon Ferrari have more than 5, because I think they can fix the problem in the ones from Bahrain.

Anyway, my point this time: if they all/almost all run out of engines by the end of the year, the next-in-the-line Kimi will shine

Alonso's engines

1. Used (can only be used in practice or Abu Dhabi)

2. Not new but useable (could be China, Barcelona...)

3. Blown up, unuseable

4. New

5. New

6. New

7. New

8. New

[Schumikonen 2]

Alonso's engines

1. Used (can only be used in practice or Abu Dhabi)

2. Not new but useable (could be China, Barcelona...)

3. Blown up, unuseable

4. New

5. New

6. New

7. New

8. New

The first three are useable but are not new and if they still have that overheating problem they will need more than those to make it to the end but that's something they can fix, you know that's something interesting to keep track of the engines it would be very useful to have a link where we can check out how many engines the team have left, something like you did, maybe you should do this after every grand prix for every team just to keep us informed, what you think?

[AleHop 0]

The first three are useable but are not new and if they still have that overheating problem they will need more than those to make it to the end but that's something they can fix, you know that's something interesting to keep track of the engines it would be very useful to have a link where we can check out how many engines the team have left, something like you did, maybe you should do this after every grand prix for every team just to keep us informed, what you think?

It's a great idea, you tell us how many engines and changes have made each team before China.