Does Kimi Break His Toys?

[Autumnpuma 0]

I posted a few remarks to the effect 'Kimi contributes alot to his car breaking by his lack of mechanical sympathy'.

I was met with a firestorm of opinions on this matter. This intrigued me so I popped onto a number of other forums and, lo and behold, there were other people making the same points I was.

So now I just want to see how many members actually believe Kimi is the 'Car Breaker'. Post your proofs or not to your heart's desire. I'll probably not reply to those, as I've already submitted my thoughts on this in other threads. I'm simply interested in the poll results

[cavallino 2]

Where's the not sure option?

[Autumnpuma 0]

Where's the not sure option?

Good question. Perhaps a moderator will drop by and add one..? For now, I'll consider the count to be:

Unsure: 1

[sliderule 0]

puma the question would be, how could he break the car? remember todays cars are not lke the old days its all protected by electronics therefore i dont know how raikonen could be responsible for the breakage

[ykickamoocow 0]

Also i dont recall Kimi having large amounts of reliability problems at Sauber.

[Autumnpuma 0]

puma the question would be, how could he break the car? remember todays cars are not lke the old days its all protected by electronics therefore i dont know how raikonen could be responsible for the breakage

One instance would be him flat-spotting a tire, with the resultant vibrations tearing his front suspension to shreds. Also, the cars are not 'all protected by electronics'. His issue in Monaco wasn't protected by electronics. It's possible that, had Kimi backed off into air that wasn't turbulent and heated (behind Alonso), his exhaust would have cooled properly. Clearly you don't agree with me, and that's fine.

[cavallino 2]

Also i dont recall Kimi having large amounts of reliability problems at Sauber.

Ferrari engines

[KoolMonkey 0]

One instance would be him flat-spotting a tire, with the resultant vibrations tearing his front suspension to shreds. Also, the cars are not 'all protected by electronics'. His issue in Monaco wasn't protected by electronics. It's possible that, had Kimi backed off into air that wasn't turbulent and heated (behind Alonso), his exhaust would have cooled properly. Clearly you don't agree with me, and that's fine.

Him flat spotting the tyre and the suspension failure was his fault. No one denies that. He even said so himself that he was the cause of the flatspot. However his engine heat shield failure wasn't his fault. He had one in practice as well.

I've said this countless times before. With all the telemetry, electronics, pit crew members and so on, you mean to tell me Kimi can still blowup his car's with ease and no ones going to notice? The rumor in 2004 was that Sato was blowing his engines up too. Possible, but more likely he was the guinea pig for Honda's striving for a better engine. Better to ruin his race than Button, as no one is honestly going to care about Sato.

Another point I've also mentioned before is Kimi never "destroyed" his Sauber. Secondly and this is starting to feel like I'm bashing my head against a brick wall here, the McLaren's were blowing up BEFORE Kimi was even at the team.

So you mean to tell me Kimi is such a demon in destroying his engine that he can make one go boom, after having a fresh one installed before a race weekend, have it blowup in practice and that's his fault somehow?

If you're going to present an opinion and have polls and even try to make it seem factual, at least provide some form of quotes from more knowledgeable people who work in the industry or something.

I don't think anyones engine and car failures are their doing, unless they put it in the wall. Button's, Webbers, Nico's, you name it, it's the cars and their engines that are failing here. How is Kimi supposed to supercede all these people who are having car failures. Does he have some magical mojo at work here, that makes his cars go boom? Does he over rev the cars? What exactly is he doing here that makes you think it's his lack of touch behind the wheel that's causing the car failures.

[Kay 0]

Perhaps some styles just suit the car better and so whereas he doesn't break the car himself, he speeds the process up sometimes if an aspect is already weakened...

Although I don't see how that could be happening when I consider JPM to be harder on the car, especially as over the last few races he keeps locking up and going wide which won't help it.

Either way, people blame it on team bosses doing things deliberately before they look to the drivers, just look at what some people said about Jacques and Sato.

As for Nico and Webber, they're team mates and retired within a few laps of each other with the same problem, so it isn't one you need to look at too carefully.

However, one spanner to put in the works, during Button's career he's had very similar or better reliability to all his team mates, now he has had two engine blow ups to Rubens none. What happened there?

[irishfemalefan 0]

Well ive gone for no

i do agree that KR does seem to drive the car to the limit most of the time but i also think that luck plays a huge part in FI drivers luck or misfortune & i think Kimi seems to get more than his fair share of bad luck

[cavallino 2]

As Kay is pointing out, Mike you are opening a big can of worms here, and there is only so far you can go with speculation, because we haven't had a single article/ comment from anyone in F1 (tell me if I am wrong about this) even vaguely indicating this kind of a problem with Kimi's driving. People have criticised Montoya, Michael, Fisichella, Villeneuve, Webber etc. pretty vocally when they wanted to - either Mclaren cover it up damn good (which is unlikely - rumours get out very easily in F1) or there isn't much to the theory. We haven't had any reports even in columns like The Mole or the GP 2006 spies report or the grapevine in autosport - nothing along the lines of 'a bird in the paddock was heard saying, or a source informs us ......'

[alexnk~JaunMoytoyMontoya~alexnk 0]

GET OFF IT

[cavallino 2]

[c21 0]

Ferrari engines

The Ferrari engines were sub quality and were also not being run at maximum capacity.

Can you remember the last time an engine broke in a Sauber?

But I have checked....

In 2001

KR had 10 finishes, 7 retirements, 3 were accidents

NH had 11 finishes, 6 retirements, 6 were accidents

Was Kimi harder than Nick?

Im not sure what to think, Kimi had 4 mechanical failures to Nicks 0.

Maybe that says something.

[cavallino 2]

Sauber used to use one year old specs at that point I think.

[c21 0]

Sauber used to use one year old specs at that point I think.

Thats right, they used the old spec until the 2004 season.

[cavallino 2]

In fact was that the year when Prost were also using Ferrari engines?

[ecapdeville 0]

Thats right, they used the old spec until the 2004 season.

Whatever, but they NH and KR were using the same kind of engines, and only KR had engine problems

[c21 0]

Whatever, but they NH and KR were using the same kind of engines, and only KR had engine problems

Prost had the same spec as Sauber.

I dont think that Prost had a single engine failure with 5 different drivers.

[alexnk~JaunMoytoyMontoya~alexnk 0]

its the MCLAREN CAR not kimi go kimi

kthxbi ?

[demonhorse 0]

Ferrari engines

and tried-and-tested-for-over-a-year Ferrari engines to boot

go kimi

Yes go kimi... go right off the edge of a cliff or something

See if you can guess where my vote went.

[c21 0]

and tried-and-tested-for-over-a-year Ferrari engines to boot

Yes, but as I said, not the same quality and not the same rev limit.

[demonhorse 0]

Yes, but as I said, not the same quality and not the same rev limit.

True, hence the reason they were only reasonably fast rather than supremely fast.

[tifosi too! 0]

I also voted NO!!Its not logical and rather hard to believe that if that's the problem mclaren STILL hasn't found a good way of bypassing it!Heck why not just fire Kimi and send him back to Finland and charge him for the engines HE broke??

[c21 0]

Ok, Ive done some more digging.

I looked on the F1 website archives

From what i can see, Kimi had no engine failures. (and no heatshield fires)

In Malaysia he had transmission failure

In San marino his steering wheel fell off.

In Germany he had a halfshaft failure. (I guess thats a driveshaft, maybe someone can clear that one up for me.)

In the USA he had a driveshaft failure

In Belgium he had transmission failure

Im not sure what this says for Kimi breaking his car, but I do know that with the steering wheel, it was found that if you were too agressive with it, it was possible to pull it off without using the quick release.

Which way do you guys see it?

Im still an unsure.