Singapore GP Thread ***SPOILERS***

gav Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> James Allen's "BOOM" comment on the replay of
> Raikkonen hitting the wall.... oh dear.


That was funny, it was like he was trying to think of something to fill the dead air, and the only thing that was in his head was BOOM. Straight after I imagined him standing there wondering what the hell he just said.

BOOM works for John Madden, not for James Allen :P

Sim

---

All Hail The New York Giants - Winners of Superbowl XXI, XXV and XLII!

"I'd love to know what goes on in that crazy head of yours sometimes, Sim..." - Locke Cole

Those tic tac thingy's are a bit of a twaddle, hope they get rid of them next year. But that James Allen thing was a bit of a classic for me, out of nowhere he just says "BOOM!"

BOOM

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

I hope Martin Brundle goes to the BBC with Ted Kravitz, becoming a full time commentator, and they leave James and Louise behind.

---

Order a giffgaff SIM from my link and get £5 credit, free!
Season 1 and Season 3 GPGSL World Champion!
Member of CTDP - Cars Tracks Development Program - 3D Carshaper

mika19b Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Im looking forward to Bruninho's explanation
>
> Im sure he's thinking of something right now to
> defend Piquet!!

I warned Bruninho to watch his words or take the consequences. On the other hand I'd appreciate if you nobody needled him.

Great race, great atmosphere, great track. More of that please.

---

REHAB IS FOR QUITTERS

In regards to Ferrari, if I were Luca I would go into the office on monday and FIRE a whole lot of the people in there. Baldassari is the guy who runs the garage, and for me the number one individual that should be removed before next year. Tactics wise he has been steps behind many of his counter parts in the pitlane. He should be tossed and jean todt with schumacher should be put in his place. The two have a great working relationship, and can manouver the team back to their winning ways. Schumacher would be in a more apprentice roll. Whose won more gps than him anyway? Jean todt has, who better to learn from.

In regards to the drivers, Luca, should get on the phone tonight to the agents of kubica, alonso and vettel, work out some sort of arrangement, money talks, bull$*%T mistakes must walk. Wait until the end of the season and announce Massa and Raikkonan have been fired. Both have made rediculous mistakes. Have they really looked championship worthy? This is a mockary!

IMO Ferrari has had only one thing going for it, its CAR! The car imo has been faster than the mclaren. There are quality control issues that need to be taken care of. That sort of quality control is the responsibility of the management to ensure, they have failed.

Kimi has looked disinterested all season. He looks like he only wants to drive a handfull of circuits, he makes mega mistakes that are not worth 50 million $. Massa is a goof, he shows his colours in the rain and with that disturbing display at hockenhiem. Send them out the door, and build the team around two of those three drivers I listed earlier. Any of the three would go to ferrari in a hearbeat.
Give people who deserve a chance a chance, and fire these overpaid inconsistant pricks.

Also, Piquet should have been fired 10 races ago, boot that lunitic, he is as consistant as Ricardo Rosset was.

One more thing: I thought it was classic when james allen called Nakajima, Shingi Nakano HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

A far more lively race than I expcected.

re: the Massa incident. What surprised me was that once Kimi had been serviced (or even during his qued stop) no one from Ferrari had the foresight to leg it down the pit lane sooner! Took a good 30-60 seconds before you saw them running. as everyone knows thought he sooner they bin that light system the better!

Glad Alonso won. Liked the body language towards LuLu (who had a face like a smacked arse for good measure!)

Disappointed with Kimi. But no surprise about Piquet or Bourdais

@Marco1: Great text!

Kimi, so, Massa Fernando Sebastian is faster than you. Can you confirm you understood that message?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/28/2008 07:07PM by IWE.

The car has been performing well, and this incident in the pitlane *wasn't* Felipe's fault. Its the bloody pit lights system which has screwed up again. Baldassari and Collijani (However you spell his name) are both eejit imo, Collijani keeps on talking with his shoddy english and Baldassari keeps putting his head in his hands when everything goes wrong. I agree, Todt should be put back along with Brawn. They should've done lots with Brawn to stop him from going to Honda. Kimi has fired up with only 3 races to go, no point now he's lost the championship and now lost out on the constructors. Get Kubica or Vettel in there. Alonso might just throw his toys out of the pram if Felipe challenges him.

@Marco1: Great post



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/28/2008 07:10PM by Monza972.

I disagree about Massa. He has improved immensely over the season, did you not see qualifying? Granted Silverstone was awful as well as the first races, but other than that he´s been pretty much spot on.

As for the race. Well, I really enjoyed this one. I wasn´t to excited about it when it was announced, but I must admit I was very wrong. Absolutley brilliant, I just hope that they don´t spoil things now by making every race in Asia and Australia a night race. If we had say 4 or 5 night races, I think that would take some of magic that this race provided. As rubbish as it is to get up at 5am for Japan or China, I would still rather do that, and Australia should be the first race of the season at a ridiculous hour in the morning. It makes it special.

Super drive (and lucky) for Fernando, I´m super happy about that. Nico too and Glock. I agree with everything that´s been said about Kimi and Piquet. Both are useless and currently don´t deserve to be in F1.

Congrats to Fernando, awesome drive! Needed an element of luck with safety cars etc, but it still takes something superhuman to win a Grand Prix in a Renault R28. He's had his faults in the past, but he richly deserves this success. This season he's reminded us why we became fans back in the day.

Great drive by Nico too. Drove brilliantly to pull out that lead before he took his penalty.

F1 is in a sweet spot at the moment. 7 different winners this season in 5 different cars, the most since 2003. Nick Heidfeld's 25th consecutive finish breaks M Schumacher's previous record of 24. Also, Kimi equals the all-time record of 10 fastest laps in a season, and could well break it before the end of 2008.

msater Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> BOOM
>
> Sorry, I couldn't resist.

LOL, James Allen apparently unable to distinguish between a car hitting the wall and an engine blowing up...
I'd add to that his daft comment about the time difference "It's like being a teenager again". He obviously lived to excess.

> I hope Martin Brundle goes to the BBC with Ted
> Kravitz, becoming a full time commentator, and
> they leave James and Louise behind.

Defo! We badly need him to carry on commentating. A telling thing I noticed, just last night: In the F1 stills ITV show on Nightscreen, Martin is the only member of the broadcasting team who isn't in the group photos. In fact, he doesn't appear anywhere. Hopefully that's a sign he's made em unhappy by signing for the BBC

---

On Massa, Although he has had a better than normal (for him) season, he should be booted from that seat. He has been at ferrari for three years.

Year one was full of mistakes, blunders, schumacher beatings, with only a couple of high points. I still maintain that had barricello stayed for that final schumi year, ferrari would have walked to the championship.

Year two, again out performed by his teamate, a couple of nice glimpses, but mistakes like Malaysia were enough to boot him right then and there.

Year Three, beating his teamate, second in the championship. However, some really pathetic displays. a) all the races in the rain have been poor b) wheel to wheel battles with hamilton, raikkonen and other rivals, he is usually on the losing hand.

I remember a couple years ago, Trulli was fired for Barricello's last lap pass on him at Magny cours. Now we have two championship rivals, and massa yeilds to hamilton like a backmarker at hockenhiem. The trulli move didnt involve a championship. But the Massa move DOES involve a championship. Right on the spot I would have pulled a flavio and fired the guy.

This year it hasnt been Massa who has been impressive, it has been the car. These two ferrari drivers are NOT what they are made out to be. Do you really think an Alonso, a Schumacher, a Kubica, A hamilton, A Vettel, A rosberg, or even a Webber and Heidfeld would have allowed Hamilton to hang around and lead the championship while they were driving the best car in the field?

Also, let's remember that it is the drivers responsibility to relay feedback to the team in testing to develope the car throughout the season. Ferrari has seemed to hit lauls throughout this year. Stretches where they went from being a mile ahead to barely able to cope. That is a management and driver issue that cannot be continued in this day in age.

I disagree with bringing back Brawn. Ferrari have enough people to use. I would go with the two proven winners already on the staff, Todt and Schumacher. Schumacher can manage this team for the next 30 years theoretically, invest long term in him. When ferrari needed brawn, he went on sebatical, screw him, let him sit at a desk for honda.
The people that built the multi championship scuderia of the 21st century are still there, use them.
@ Monza972: Finally I would not knock anyone for their ability to speak english, but rather I would pass judgement on those who have made a mockary of their jobs and positions of power. The gentlemen in question at ferrari are not the leaders which a storied team like ferrari need. But rather they are the kind of people that need need to be given orders. The leaders in the team fall to the feet of one little frenchmen and his apprentice 7 time world champion.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/28/2008 07:26PM by Marco1.

Marco1 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> @ Monza972: Finally I would not knock anyone for
> their ability to speak english, but rather I would
> pass judgement on those who have made a mockary of
> their jobs and positions of power. The gentlemen
> in question at ferrari are not the leaders which a
> storied team like ferrari need. But rather they
> are the kind of people that need need to be given
> orders. The leaders in the team fall to the feet
> of one little frenchmen and his apprentice 7 time
> world champion.


I know that no one would knock anyone on their ability to speak englsih but the thing with Collijani is that the way he puts the team in the press' spot light is worse than it was before. Before we would get a sentence or something from Brawn who would outline everything that happened. With this guy however, he is just too annoying at times and doesn't put forward the team in a positive limelight. When the mechanic got knocked over, they could've atleast 4-5 people running after Felipe's car straight away rather than when half the field went past. At that point he starts to talk that "we look after Human beings and etc" while they're losing the championship from their hands. I think that if they had ran after his car straight away, he wouldn't have been at the back.

Felipe was smart enough not to go over the pit exit line to have his car looked at.
Ferrari just didn't have their heads screwed on today, they have showed similar instances of chaos before, i remember Eddie Irvine's botched pit stop where they couldn't find the right tyres and similarly bad problems with Rubens in the past.

@Monza972: I agree he could have put together a better choice of words than that he used. However, I believe human beings and their well being should come before a championship. With that being said, I must say that the team itself looks disorganized even with their responses to the media, I know it was a difficult moment to be doing an interview, and that in situations like this chaos does take over from order for a couple minutes until people find their barrings. However, it was his choice to conduct an interview during all the chaos in the pits. Instead of doing the interview mere minutes after the events, he could have waited for 20 minutes until the dust settled. Choices and decissions like that make it apparent to me at least that Ferrari are in a disorganized mess that needs solving. You have a situation in the team where it seems that everyone is doing their own thing not in harmony with what everyone else is doing. Instead of focusing on one task they seem to be focusing on a number of disimilar tasks.

@ Mikef1: Perfect example of Eddie Irvine's incident. If we look back at that point in 1999, there was a complete lack of driver leadership in the team. That resulted in poor performances during that stretch without schumacher, pitstop fumbles, Irvine showing up at monza plastered out of his mind. That stretch of 7 or 8 races without schumacher's leadership is a clear example of what this season and last season have been like. There has been no vision and no willingness to win until the S*%t hits the fan and push comes to shove. Last year they shot themselves in the foot mid season, however thanks to the Alonso v Hamilton Mclaren mockary, Ferrari were able to stay in shouting distance and win the world championship.

regardless, this year especially there is a complete lack of leadership in this team. They cannot rely on Luca to come in every now and them and yell at them. They need to be doing the job themselves. There is a problem with the mechanisms in place at this team that need to be resolved asap, I can understand one Bad race, but it is now a bi weekly consistant episode of ferrari arriving, running well, and blowing it on race day, there needs to be change.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/28/2008 07:43PM by Marco1.

Massa bears mechanic no ill-will for pit incident


SINGAPORE: Ferrari's Felipe Massa said he holds no ill-will for a crew member whose mistake during a pit stop Sunday led to his disastrous finish after starting from the pole position at the Singapore Grand Prix.

In an embarrassing blunder for the Formula One powerhouse, Massa was given a green light to drive with the fuel rig still attached to his car. This resulted in the hose being yanked off its moorings and trailing Massa's car all the way to the end of the pit lane before he stopped.

The incident happened in the first set of pit stops, and by the time he rejoined the track he had gone from leader to 18th and last.

"The only problem is that we had a human problem," said Massa who had started on the pole and finished 13th after losing time while waiting for his crew to run the length of the pit lane and remove the hose from his car.

That was only the beginning of a calamitous race for Ferrari. Massa's teammate, Kimi Raikkonen, who started third, crashed his car into a barrier after bouncing over a chicane with three laps to go before the checkered flag.

Ferrari has not identified the crew member who gave the green signal to Massa, and the Brazilian was philosophical about the debacle.

"These things happen. We are all human beings. Everybody can makes mistakes. I am not the kind of guy who goes to the guy and fights with him," he said. "So I went to the guy and gave him even more motivation because we need him and we need everybody together for the last three races of the season."

"Today is really a black day because the best car is the last on the result," said Ferrari team principal Stefano Domenicali.

Ferrari has not identified the crew member who gave the green signal to Massa. Domenicali said the man was so distraught that he broke down and wept before being consoled by the 27-year-old Massa himself.

Massa incurred a drive-through penalty for an "unsafe release from a pit stop" because he almost collided with another car while leaving the pit with the hose. A mechanic was knocked to the ground in the incident and was rushed to an on-track medical center.

Massa is now seven points behind championship leader Lewis Hamilton of McLaren.

"But we have 30 (points) in front of us and we have a quick car. That's the most important thing," Massa said.

The 27-year-old Massa, who has 25 podium finishes, never thought he would be a victim of such a bizarre incident.

"You know anything can happen," he said. "But I didn't imagine this thing to happen today. For sure not. But anyway it happened, so we need to think forward."

His disaster coupled with Raikkonen's crash deprived Ferrari of valuable points in the constructors' championship. Had Raikkonen maintained his fifth position at the time of the crash, he would have received four points.

Ferrari was leading McLaren by five points before the Singapore race. Now, McLaren is at 135 and Ferrari at 134.

In other incidents, Renault's Nelson Piquet Jr. crashed against a side protective barrier, Ruben Barrichello's Honda stopped suddenly and Adrian Sutil of Force India crashed into a barrier in lap 52, bringing a second safety car period.

Piquet was apparently unhurt, climbing out of his wrecked car before dashing across the track to get out through an opening. Barrichello also found his way out of the track to mingle with spectators and shake their hands.

Marco1 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> @Monza972: I agree he could have put together a
> better choice of words than that he used. However,
> I believe human beings and their well being should
> come before a championship. With that being said,
> I must say that the team itself looks disorganized
> even with their responses to the media, I know it
> was a difficult moment to be doing an interview,
> and that in situations like this chaos does take
> over from order for a couple minutes until people
> find their barrings. However, it was his choice to
> conduct an interview during all the chaos in the
> pits. Instead of doing the interview mere minutes
> after the events, he could have waited for 20
> minutes until the dust settled. Choices and
> decissions like that make it apparent to me at
> least that Ferrari are in a disorganized mess that
> needs solving. You have a situation in the team
> where it seems that everyone is doing their own
> thing not in harmony with what everyone else is
> doing. Instead of focusing on one task they seem
> to be focusing on a number of disimilar tasks.

That's the thing, he should've waited. It's things like this which is giving a very dysfunctional view in front of media. Whilst they are the "top team" in F1 they are not behaving like one. We should expect these things from teams such as FI and even they do not do that they wait and, as you said, let the dust settle.

The Ferrari press officer (more like propaganda dispenser) - Luca Collini, or something - I'd fire his ass straight away, the smarmy, lying weasel. "I haven't seen the replay so I cannot issue a comment", even when everyone was TELLING him what happened. Argh! The guy's even worse at dodging questions than Colin Powell (former US warmongering advisor to George W Bush).

Just OT: How many "night-mare for Ferrari" puns d'ya think we'll see in the papers tomorrow?

---

K*bots UK, specialist providers of 'fun science' Curriculum Enhancement days for Primary and Secondary schools in Britain.
Please find us on [en.wikipedia.org] for more information.

Locke Cole Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The Ferrari press officer (more like propaganda
> dispenser) - Luca Collini, or something - I'd fire
> his ass straight away, the smarmy, lying weasel.
> "I haven't seen the replay so I cannot issue a
> comment", even when everyone was TELLING him what
> happened. Argh! The guy's even worse at dodging
> questions than Colin Powell (former US
> warmongering advisor to George W Bush).
>
> Just OT: How many "night-mare for Ferrari" puns
> d'ya think we'll see in the papers tomorrow?

Thats exactly the annoying thing which pisses me off. Louise must've told about 5 times that the light showed green, still he doesn't yield. Puns for Ferrari, I think it'll be loads.

edit for grammatical errors



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/28/2008 09:53PM by Monza972.