Would You Hire Alonso?

[mikathegreat2 2]

Does that new AleHop F1 car of yours say Ford on the side of it??? In that case, make it blue with 2 white pin stripes, not silver so they Dodge can be happy!

[Schumikonen 2]

Yes I would hire him, he would be a good test driver, he can help any team to develop the car but if you give him a racing seat you will get a lot of problem, so the best position for him is as test driver.

[Bro. 0]

This answer is off topic! There is a joke topic in The Cafe forum...

My answer is yes, of course!

Angelo, I did answer the question later on and what I said was no humour involved what so ever.

[Jean Todt 4]

What I hate more is that I can't think of a good name for the team.

A good name those days is what can make you win races.

You can name it Duper Alhop, aldork drive.

or alldork f1?

[Bro. 0]

To be honest beating DC isn't all that hard but Mark's qualifying performances aren't exactly thrashings. A guy who sets his car up for one laps and is incapable of getting a decent race setup on the flipside outqualifying one of the weakest single lap drivers out there and goes for race pace isn't much of an achievement. Besides, DC came out on top overall this year, didn't he?

Come on Elle You're being innorgant.

DC lucked into out scoring mark this year.

The only races DC was good at were Bahrain, Spain, Nurgburgring, and Fuji and China

There was only two races all year that DC had the woody on mark and that was at Bahrain, even though Mark had problems in that race, never the less DC was better in that one, and in China he had marks cover.

You cant compare Spain cos Marks car didnt feel like racing there that weekend.

and the other two, Mark got the UNFORGETTABLE PODIUM and Mark got that UNFORGETTABLE BRAIN FADE BY THE F#%^EN ROOKIES.........................................................................

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At Fuji Mark could easily have won that race by 3 laps over hamilton anyway And DC was miles behind him and Mark then would have out scored DC liked he deserved.

And in the rest Mark, whilst his or DC car was on the track, Marks had the wood on him by 500 miles or more.

Nothing more, nothing less. karpish?

[Grabthaw the Hammerslayer 4]

Come on Elle You're being innorgant.

Innorgant? Is that like being ignorant, but only indoors? Or is it someone who trades body parts in pubs? Or is the opposite of extorgant?

[AleHop 0]

You can name it Duper Alhop, aldork drive.

or alldork f1?

It is very funny.

Some people in Spain call Fernando just frenando... Look it up.

Or ask Quiet One for the meaning.

You should keep your crane-boy as your avatar one year more.

[Eric 0]

Does that new AleHop F1 car of yours say Ford on the side of it??? In that case, make it blue with 2 white pin stripes, not silver so they Dodge can be happy!

Fail.

White with 2 blue stripes is Ford.

Of course Ford should really be baby blue with orange and big Gulf logo on it.

And Dodge Viper is red with silver stripes. Though now it's being promoted in a sick nasty green.

[AleHop 0]

Does that new AleHop F1 car of yours say Ford on the side of it???

It says EBRO.

They provide the engines like Mercedes for McLaren.

The name should be AleHop-Ebro then.

[Jean Todt 4]

It says EBRO.

They provide the engines like Mercedes for McLaren.

The name should be AleHop-Ebro then.

dont you mean Alehopless-ebro?

[mikathegreat2 2]

Fail.

White with 2 blue stripes is Ford.

Of course Ford should really be baby blue with orange and big Gulf logo on it.

And Dodge Viper is red with silver stripes. Though now it's being promoted in a sick nasty green.

A proper Ford is red with 2 white strips & yes the Viper is red with 2 SILVER stripes!

[Rainmaster 7]

It depends on the circumstances, but yes I would hire Alonso in most cases - I've heard he can drive fast.

[Eric 0]

A proper Ford is red with 2 white strips & yes the Viper is red with 2 SILVER stripes!

A proper Ford is big bulbus and beige. Duh.

No, in all seriousness, a proper Ford is:

And a Viper may be red with silver stripes, but I want a black one. Pretty cheap too (find me another 600hp car for $83k and I'll buy you non-alcoholic c#cktails for life...and no, it can't be a used car, either). And of course, this is a proper Viper:

Can you snakeskin green?

[Jean Todt 4]

It depends on the circumstances, but yes I would hire Alonso in most cases - I've heard he can drive fast.

I can drive fast!

[Rainmaster 7]

I can drive fast!

Thats true, but can you develop a car so that it gains half a second?

[Grabthaw the Hammerslayer 4]

I can drive fast!

Sorry you don't qualify, you don't have bushy-enough eyebrows or a "monobrow"

[Jean Todt 4]

Thats true, but can you develop a car so that it gains half a second?

no, I can develop a car that takes half a second less, I don't have heavy eyebrows!

[Jean Todt 4]

Sorry you don't qualify, you don't have bushy-enough eyebrows or a "monobrow"

but, I am monosyllabic!

[wapi 4]

Thats true, but can you develop a car so that it gains half a second?

Who said that and why do we believe?

[goferrarigo 0]

Who said that and why do we believe?

Alonso apparently said he brought 6 tenths of a second to Mclaren...

[dark rider 13 0]

i wouldnt you can actually be a gr8 driver without thinking youre the best and voiceing youre false opinions everywere to the detrement of the team and youre teammate but then again lewis was also guilty of this hell kimi is a gr8 example of a very quick driver that never moans even in brasil when lewis obviously slowed him down on his fast lap he didnt shout his mouth of and when MM had he fast car s##t reliability like to see lewis and alonso shut up in both of those situations there as bad as each other!!

[Rainmaster 7]

Who said that and why do we believe?

Alonso said it and I don't believe.

[Eric 0]

Alonso said it and I don't believe.

I said it and Alonso don't believe.

I'm predicting that:

Renault will fail at life with the spy saga part 2, and Alonso won't go...and he will therefore not race in 2008 and sit on his bum and make babies with Raquel. And then come back in 2009 at TBD.

[Grabthaw the Hammerslayer 4]

I said it and Alonso don't believe.

I'm predicting that:

Renault will fail at life with the spy saga part 2, and Alonso won't go...and he will therefore not race in 2008 and sit on his bum and make babies with Raquel. And then come back in 2009 at TBD.

I think you are right, young sir.

[Fed up 0]

Which team will Fernando Alonso race for in 2008? That's the big question of the winter ('Spygate II' notwithstanding), so we asked expert analyst Mark Hughes to assess the Spaniard's options.

Fernando Alonso’s immediate future appears to reside with either Renault, Red Bull or Honda.

Flavio Briatore is apparently keen for him to return to the fold where he won two world titles, but is reportedly not willing to offer him just a single-year contract. The money on offer is also less than Alonso would like.

Red Bull are said to be prepared to meet his financial demands and his desire for a one-year contract, but that is a team with less of a pedigree than Renault’s.

Honda might be prepared to make an accommodation to have him on board alongside Jenson Button.

So if you were Alonso, which should you choose?

If I were him, the first one I would discount would be Honda – even with Ross Brawn in technical command.

Why? For two reasons: 1) Their new car has been conceived in the same environment and by many of the same people as created the disastrous RA107. 2) Because in Button, Alonso would have a team-mate that would give him every bit as much of a headache as Lewis Hamilton did at McLaren.

The ideal scenario for any F1 driver is a fast car and a slow team-mate. At Honda, he would have exactly the opposite – and thereby be in even bigger trouble than at McLaren when he was at least running near the front when fighting his team-mate.

Actually, it would be yet worse, because the perception of Button’s level still hasn’t caught up with the reality – and so Alonso’s stock would fall yet further.

Alonso is a superb racer, with a great racing brain and capable of commanding performances.

But to clearly establish superiority over drivers of the calibre of Hamilton and, yes, Button, would require a freakish raw speed that he doesn’t have.

He’s enormously fast – but not freakishly so. Freakishly fast is someone like Michael Schumacher, as proved in testing recently at Barcelona where after a year’s lay-off he climbed back into the car on a general test day and was immediately fastest.

Yes, he was in perhaps the fastest car – the Ferrari was definitely quicker than the McLaren around Barcelona in the race there this year – but he was also 0.5s quicker than team-mate Felipe Massa.

Not coincidentally, this was the average of his qualifying advantage over the Brazilian when they were team-mates in ’06 – and significantly greater than the advantage Kimi Raikkonen enjoyed over Massa this year.

Alonso has done many remarkable things in his career but he has only very rarely produced the lap that made you question how it could be possible – the sort of thing Schumacher or Ayrton Senna before him used to do several times in a season.

So if not Honda, what of Red Bull? If you were Alonso, you might quite fancy the RB4-Renault to be a competitive package.

Adrian Newey’s second car for the team, with many of the glitches – wind tunnel calibration, transmission weakness – that clouded the RB3’s form now presumably sorted, might just be a flyer.

After all, even the RB3 was quick when it was working well – and showed a real upturn in pace towards the end of the season, usually a good sign for the following year.

But regardless of whether it was Mark Webber or David Coulthard alongside, the other Red Bull driver would be enormously motivated to show well against him and Webber in particular could just be fast enough to give Fernando a much harder time than he might expect.

Again, Alonso’s stock could be hurt. He might however, fancy a one-year Red Bull deal alongside DC; the indications are that DC’s contract is rock-solid and that it would be easier to move the Briatore-managed Webber (to Renault) to create the necessary space.

Renault are confident they have absolutely nailed the problems that made the R27 such a mediocre machine – and they began work on their ’08 car probably earlier than anyone else.

There is every reason to believe Renault will return as genuine contenders again next year – so long as they survive the World Council espionage hearing relatively unscathed.

And they remain operationally the best racing team in the pit lane.

Combine those two things with Alonso’s driving and his ready-made relationships with the people of the team, and you have a quite formidable force.

And whether his partner is Heikki Kovalainen or Nelson Piquet Jr, he could probably emerge as the number one (although even that is not a given).

But there still remains the mismatch of contract length.

If Alonso really has got a Ferrari deal in place for 2009, maybe the best thing to do would be to take a year off? But how would you fancy going against a race-honed Raikkonen, in a team that he will have made his own, with 12 months’ worth of rust? Might not be easy.

The root of the difficulty of his options is that he is not freakishly fast, merely exceptionally good, maybe even the best overall.

He could of course take one of these options and prove that theory wrong, but I really don’t believe he could.

Nor do I believe this is a problem Michael Schumacher, Ayrton Senna or Gilles Villeneuve would ever have faced had any of them been in this situation.