Clicky

Jump to content

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Insider

Kimi Returns - So What?

Recommended Posts

Some really insightful discussion here since my last post. Thanks.

I think it's great that the luke warm Schumacher return has, in effect, made us judge Raikkonen's return far more objectively. It's not a foregone conclusion he will be great, that's for sure. I'm bo no means convinced of anything yet.

All I would say is, I don't believe for one minute that Massa had preference at Ferrari. Combine this with Raikkonen suggesting there was nver anything wrong with his motivation and in my view, you have quite a worrying prospect (if you are a Kimi fan).

My hunch is, even car adjusted, we will not see anything special.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Some really insightful discussion here since my last post. Thanks.

I think it's great that the luke warm Schumacher return has, in effect, made us judge Raikkonen's return far more objectively. It's not a foregone conclusion he will be great, that's for sure. I'm bo no means convinced of anything yet.

All I would say is, I don't believe for one minute that Massa had preference at Ferrari. Combine this with Raikkonen suggesting there was nver anything wrong with his motivation and in my view, you have quite a worrying prospect (if you are a Kimi fan).

My hunch is, even car adjusted, we will not see anything special.

a post worth saving for... for future reference

EDIT:

Kimi...good year in 2007. Kimi starts 2008 very good, winning 2 races up to Malasia...then parts being added to Ferrari after that race, making the car understeery... made a significant impact on Kimi's performances... The Lotus are quite oversteery if you read the comments from the team on Kimi's performances from testing, and his feedback is very precise (I've read this from Mclaren, Ferrari and now Lotus).. Massa beats him 2008-2009...what would make the difference? Kimi not good enough? Quote Kimi again from last post..."The problem is not motivation if the car is Sh#t – you just drive your best and don’t get results. It’s not always the driver’s fault, but it’s easier to blame the guy who is in the car. My feeling was that I drove one of my best years in 2009 so I was very happy with that.” Kimi drove races where he felt he delivered but the car was unfortunately Sh#t. I have'nt heard Massa say those comments...He was particularly happy 2008

Team preference is the only logical conclusion. It seems you now believe there was nothing wrong with Kimi's motivation, so what other possible reason do you believe it is?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Team preference is the only logical conclusion. It seems you now believe there was nothing wrong with Kimi's motivation, so what other possible reason do you believe it is?

While there is no denying that 2008 wasn't Kimi's best season, it nevertheless has gotten a much worse reputation than it deserves, IMO.

By the European GP (12/18 race), Kimi was second in rankings behind Lewis and ahead of, for example, Massa. Massa lead him on race wins (3-2) by that point, but on the other hand, Massa won France only because Kimi's exhaust failed while leading and Kimi might've gained another victory still from Canada if it wasn't for Lewis crashing into him on pitlane. From the European GP on, Kimi had a string of four unfortunate races during which he failed to score a point, including a DNF due to engine failure (Spain) and the unforgettable fight with Lewis at Spa in rain which resulted in him crashing. It was those four races that sealed his reputation for the entire season (plus maybe Monaco, when he crashed into Sutil after the tank slapper in the tunnel). After those, he was demoted to help Massa (for obvious reasons, Massa was the only Ferrari driver with a chance at the title) and took three more podiums in as many races.

My point is just that, while it wasn't his best season, it certainly was not as bad as people like to remember. He had some great races and was very unfortunate in some other (like France and Canada).

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Team preference is the only logical conclusion. It seems you now believe there was nothing wrong with Kimi's motivation, so what other possible reason do you believe it is?

I never said I believed there was nothing wrong with his motivation. I said that he didn't have a problem with his motivation. That doesn't mean there was't a problem with it, does it? There may have been and he didn't admit to it. Who knows?

Team preference is not the only logical conclusion. That, in fact, is most illogical. Why on earth would Ferrari favour Massa over their 2007 world chanpion? All this speak of Michael calling the shots because ihe was in love with Massa is pure nonsense. If Schumacher had wanted to help Massa, he would have done it in 2007, not left it until 2008.

It seems pretty straightforward to me; Kimi's was simply not as good overall as a 2008/2009 Massa.

Nothing has changed, only that time will have done Kimi no favours. Give me one tangible reason why Kimi should be any better than when he left. And make it tangible, not "because the team say he's going fast" or "because he will try really hard now".

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Give me one tangible reason why Kimi should be any better than when he left. And make it tangible, not "because the team say he's going fast" or "because he will try really hard now".

Blood does not age as well as alcohol. So, in his case...

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

My hunch is, even car adjusted, we will not see anything special.

oh Steve, you are right... as always. Stefano also thought he was right, he said Kimi will never return to F1.

So, we won't see anything special from Kimi... he will just make up the numbers. The most logical conclusion. There's just something about setting the bar so low... it creates expectation :D

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

oh Steve, you are right... as always. Stefano also thought he was right, he said Kimi will never return to F1.

So, we won't see anything special from Kimi... he will just make up the numbers. The most logical conclusion. There's just something about setting the bar so low... it creates expectation :D

Forgive me for being so cynical. In truth, I will be the first to smile if and when the Kimster does do something special. Here's hoping for you alone, that he will.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Forgive me for being so cynical. In truth, I will be the first to smile if and when the Kimster does do something special. Here's hoping for you alone, that he will.

nah, you have the right to be cynical. let's hope for the best...

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Not to re-start this, but I fall a bit on Brad's side here. A team can indeed favor a driver: by using one driver's opinion on how the car should perform over another driver's opinion. This happens quite often in F1. I believe it happened at Ferrari to Kimi. The team continued the design philosophy they had before Kimi came and the car, tho a piece of Sh#te, still felt better to Massa than Kimi. This seems right to me though I have no proof of it. Sometimes you gotta trust that what you 'feel' is right *is* right...because it's based on many years of taking in information, yadda yadda.

Anyway. Kimi didn't lose his speed just because he was in a Sh#te car. Button didn't lose his speed at Benetton or Alonso at his second stint for Renault. Drivers drive at their usual speed, within the parameters set by the car. Even a straight comparison between teammates doesn't always work unless both of them have similar driving styles. By that truth, I say Kimi is just as fast as ever. Mikey the Schu is just as fast as ever. Even JV was just as fast as ever. But they are all subject to the car and the team's design philosophy.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So if Michael is as fast as ever, Rosberg is better....yes?

Re-read what I wrote again, please. Context is king.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So if Michael is as fast as ever, Rosberg is better....yes?

If he drove his good old F2004, would he score his old lap times? :eusa_think:

Why not?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Re-read what I wrote again, please. Context is king.

OK...Rosberg has a better, faster, driving style than Mike then, whom is still going as fast as he was with his usual driving style???????? (which is not as good as Rosbergs?????) :blink:

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

OK...Rosberg has a better, faster, driving style than Mike then, whom is still going as fast as he was with his usual driving style???????? (which is not as good as Rosbergs?????) :blink:

How tiring.

The context was: Drivers don't lose much of their speed, but the car they drive can greatly hinder their results. Since not all drivers have the same style or prefer the car set up the same way, some will go faster with a certain set-up on year and suddenly go slower the following year with a different car.

To your statement: Since the mid part of, what, 2010, Mercedes have designed a car that marginally suits Rosberg. This likely isn't favoritism....the car Mikey wants (tight suspension and oversteery, very kart-like in handling) probably isn't where the Merc design team wanted to go. They experimented with a set-up more Mikey-friendly in 2010 for a few races early on and Mikey did extremely well only to have the team decide they wanted the set up that happened to suit Rosberg a bit better.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Drivers don't lose speed because speed isn't something you ever have. You can lose your reaction time, your level of fitness, your motivation, or your placement in the right team with the right people at the right time.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

On Schumi I agree with Patrese. His level is not the same. Whether it is his reaction time, his fitness, mental state, the way he prepares, or some combination of those, there is a deficit from his previous F1 career somewhere. That is to say, the problem is internal, not the car, or that a 2004 Schumi in a 2011 Merc would have beaten Rosberg, even if the car suited Nico a little better. Any other conclusion seems to me to say Schumi at his finest was never as good as a Rosberg (who is a fine talent but not a world beater), and I don't believe that.

None of the above means that Schumi won't continue to get his mojo back - he improved greatly from 2010 to 2011 - or that he isn't good enough to win a race again.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Drivers don't lose speed because speed isn't something you ever have. You can lose your reaction time, your level of fitness, your motivation, or your placement in the right team with the right people at the right time.

Partially, but if you've seen driver telemetry, you can indeed see that one driver has 'speed' while another does not...in the same machinery. (You probably have seen telemetry, which puzzles me why you made this statement perhaps it's your definition of 'speed'?)

On Schumi I agree with Patrese. His level is not the same. Whether it is his reaction time, his fitness, mental state, the way he prepares, or some combination of those, there is a deficit from his previous F1 career somewhere. That is to say, the problem is internal, not the car, or that a 2004 Schumi in a 2011 Merc would have beaten Rosberg, even if the car suited Nico a little better. Any other conclusion seems to me to say Schumi at his finest was never as good as a Rosberg (who is a fine talent but not a world beater), and I don't believe that.

None of the above means that Schumi won't continue to get his mojo back - he improved greatly from 2010 to 2011 - or that he isn't good enough to win a race again.

There isn't any proof for what I've been saying, but Patrese has no proof either, unless he can produce some telemetry of Mikey to compare to telemetry from his Ferrari days. Also, lets not forget that at most races, Mikey has mostly been a tenth off Rosberg and sometimes a hundredth off. That's damned close to a guy almost half his age! That being said, you might be right. He might not have the 'eye of the tiger' anymore.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Partially, but if you've seen driver telemetry, you can indeed see that one driver has 'speed' while another does not...in the same machinery. (You probably have seen telemetry, which puzzles me why you made this statement perhaps it's your definition of 'speed'?)

I thought about this, and I think it's a definition thing.

Here's what I came up with:

Speed is defined by the limits of all sorts of factors outside of the driver that I'll call physics for the sake of ease.

Then the car comes in, and the car adapts to physics to reach a top speed below the absolute limit.

And then the driver comes in, and drives the car somewhere below the speed of the car which is below the speed of science. So the driver actually makes things even slower, not faster, and therefore I have a hard time saying a driver has "speed," even if he/she has a relatively higher pace compared to a driver in the same car. To me, speed would imply that a driver can be faster than a car, when a driver can set quicker times in a car than another driver can in his/her car, same or different one.

But that's all definition stuff. A driver, to me, is made up of a lot of factors. Natural ability, mental commitment, fitness, depth perception, strategic ability, instinct, etc. Natural ability may be what you call speed, others call it talent, some just call it "it."

And it's definitely there. We all have some natural ability in something, or somethings, and I think we'd all agree that even though we can't really determine how/why/how much.

So can a driver lose natural ability, which may be speed or talent to others if I am thinking about this correctly?

I would think not, but then I look at Felipe Massa, after his head injury. He is not the same driver he was before then, and I say this with confidence because I see concussions all the time in ice hockey, and I've seen head injuries in NASCAR and other racing series, and I know how it works. You don't come back the same, you never do, all the teams know this, and plenty of drivers found it hard to find work after head injuries (Steve Park and Ricky Craven, in NASCAR, have talked about this, and both were promising talents that never really accomplished a whole lot because of head injuries, though they did return; and in the case of Craven, who won both his races after his injury, it was because the timing of his injury came before he was fully developed as a driver, and therefore, without it, I find it conceivable that he would have won more than just two races).

Why do head injuries set drivers back, if they set Massa back?

Physically, yes, they do, but doctors don't approve you to return until you are past the headaches and the dizziness and all that. So it's safe to assume that physically, Massa is about the same.

Mentally, perhaps there is an impact, some subconscious fear that slows him down a hair. But something else seems missing in Massa, or in Park, or in Marc Savard or Nathan Horton or any of these other hockey players...

And what is missing is as mysterious as the most mysterious driver trait of all: natural ability/speed/talent. We can't really define either what is missing, or what was there to begin with, so can we say that they are the same?

And if we can say that, and maybe we can't, then Massa "lost speed," assuming that your definition of speed is my definition of natural ability, that attribute that's all evaluated on some feeling of something that things all just come together and work and there's no reason and whether you prepare or train or study or learn it makes no difference they would still all be coming together just like someone can get an A on a calculus test without studying and someone else can spend hours before the exam practicing problems and get a C.

And that being assumed, Massa's speed/talent/ability was something in his head. Something in the brain. Perhaps psychological.

Which brings me to Schumacher...as one ages, the brain changes. There's a difference between turning 40 and being hit in the head with a spring, I will give you that. But what if speed/talent/ability is in the head, and as Schumacher aged, he began to lose some of that, simply because as people age certain things do become harder to do mentally (remembering things, for example, keeping track of names, etc). If speed/talent/ability is mental, and I suspect it is (I am not talking about the "whole" of one's driving ability with fitness, intelligence, dedication, experience, etc), it can be lost.

So what if Schumacher did lose something that we couldn't quantify when he had it and can't quantify what he lost, same as Massa? And what if that came from him aging? Another way of saying it is, it's entirely possible, I think, that Schumacher would be no better or no worse had he raced 2007-2009, not because of his car (but partially), but more because he may have lost something we can't explain, something that isn't fitness or commitment or whatever else we determine makes a driver successful as a whole.

I think that's what you call speed. And if it is, I think it can be lost.

But Räikkönen hasn't taken a shot to the head and he's still young. So it's irrelevant to him.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Are you sure he hasn't taken a shot to the head? When you're drunk on your sixteenth shot of tequila, the seventeenth shot may not end up in your mouth, but somewhere in your face....

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Are you sure he hasn't taken a shot to the head? When you're drunk on your sixteenth shot of tequila, the seventeenth shot may not end up in your mouth, but somewhere in your face....

...or an arrow to the knee (here we go again...)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I started this thread so I'll pitch in now we have seen KR at the wheel awhile. I have to admit that he as out-performed my expectations thus far. It's good to see. Let's hope my former team, [what is left of it] can give him and Romain a decent car every weekend. The Renault lump seems to have done wonders for Williams and long may that continue.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...