Current Fernando Alonso

Suprised there's no thread (although I had one for his blogs), so i'll start off:

A double world championship vs Raikkonen and then Schumacher in 2005 and 2006 respectively elevated Alonso's status but, apparently, no one told his rookie teammate at his brand new team of a theoretical 'pecking order' the following season ... and the Spaniard was 'seen off' by the young Englishman, Hamilton, into two years of Wilderness while both Hamilton and an even younger Vettel began to make their mark through '08 and '09.

Arguably, Alonso was in the Top 3 of all the Formula One 'Aces' in the 2000s following Hakkinen's retirement - up there with either Schumacher/Raikkonen and, then, Raikkonen/Hamilton - and remains so in the early 2010s along with Hamilton/Vettel...with only Kubica knocking on the door until the Pole's horrible Rallying accident.

A question mark initially over 2004 during which Trulli lead him in the standing until the Italian fell out with ex-manager and team boss Flavio Briatore (Alonso's then business manager) under dubious circumstances after the French Grand Prix.

Another question mark is...Who has progressed more since the end of 2007: Hamilton or Alonso?

A fan. Then came the unfortunate blackmail allegations against McLaren boss Ron Dennis on the morning of the 2007 Hungarian GP which came to light at the highly costly FIA 'Spy-Gate' hearings before Spa...followed by the odour of the deliberate crashing of the Number 2 Renault car at Singapore in 2008 which lead to Alonso finishing 1st in the event and ended in the banning of Briatore and Pat Symmonds a year later.

2009 was a poor year with 'Nando's' mind likely on the prospect of Santander paving the way to better prospects at Maranello one year earlier.

2010 was a fresh start at Ferrari (who no longer had Schumacher walking through the premises regularly) but first half season mistakes ultimately cost him a title inspite of being infamously aided by a Team Orders switch w Massa at Hockenheim (which lead to more world-wide criticism).

Relatively fast, relatively consistent but prone to mistakes and a possible insecurity complex (*) based on wanting sole focus from a team and being only happy with a Number 2 in the other car running behind him. Anything else and it seemingly rattles him.

(*) This is my own personal opinion.

..and so to 2011...

He's underperformed only at Malaysia (hit Hamilton) and China (invisible while Massa challenged McLarens and Red Bulls) and, arguably, Canada...but has maximized his chances in the other 6 races culminating in the British GP win.

He said in his post-Monaco blog that 'Silverstone would be the WDC cut-off'...and so, after some major upgrades, the Ferrari looks a winner again. It might be too late for 2011 given Vettel's finishing rate...but the 2012 regs means they should keep the hammer down at Maranello.

He's signed on through to 2016...So hopes are high of a WDC at some juncture...but not yet.
 
I was thinking about this today. The real problem for us as casual observers is how do we quantify the effect of a ceratin driver on a teams development? I would suggest apart from the statements from designers and team managers as to the ability and effect of the driver on the cars development there is little else to go on.

The driver is just one small element in a massive team working towards making any car in a given season go quicker. There are a number of ways to measure a cars performance including it's results, it's pace relative to it's previous performance, it's pace relative to other teams and so on. None of that will tell you how much an input the driver had.

A really good driver will be able to maximise the speed of a car in any number of ways. Mario Andretti would work and work and work at set up until he could wring out every last drop of speed. Ronnie Peterson would tend to find a set up he liked and then drive around any other poblems to maximise his speed through sheer driving effort.

We'll never know how much Alonso is contributing to the former and how much he is just so talented that he is able to drive around any issues that another driver (Kimi for example) would have to have dialled out to get close to that pace.
 
cider_and_toast ..... My belief in Alonso's ability stem from the team principles he's driven for. They have all said as a development driver he's the best they've worked with.
Ron Dennis's comment that he has such a sensitive feel for the way a car is behaving and the ability to convey that in technical terms to a teams engineers, saves a team from going down time wasting cul-de-sacs. I think that probably says it all.
A driver of Alonso's ability would know if he's driving around problems and would convey that to his engineers so as they could correct the problem. Surely thats what car development is all about, correcting problems before they line up on the grid.
 
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It has always been my opinion that in modern day F1 a driver has only the tiniest impact on car development the best they can do is just confirm what the telemetry has already shown so even even if one driver is better at this than another it makes almost zero difference in the scheme of things.

I know that people like to believe that their fav is the best at everything and the team just could not do without him in every aspect of the sport but this is just a fantasy they live in...
 
As for Ron he is a politician at heart he simply says what needs to be said in any given situation. Look how he has heaped praise on Jenson since his resigning he wasn't saying those things during the season and look how he now doesn't blame Alonso for 2007 and in fact has started to imply that Hamilton was to blame, I personally take everything he comes out with, with a massive pile of salt..
 
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Mephistopheles .... Ron Dennis isn't paying Alonso $40 million to fulfil a fantasy and he's not paying that for race day only. He's paying that because he believes Alonso will make a real difference as to how quickly McLaren can become competitive.
 
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I agree. He hasn't got a track record of creating/lucking into good cars as, say, Lewis Hamilton has.

Don't know what that means. Possibly nothing.

Based on Ferrari's 2014 car, I doubt there's two Spaniards seen walking out of Maranello with huge stacks of paper.

So that option is out.
 
RasputinLives ..... Take me back to a quote Ras. I can save you the trouble though. I've never liked Ron Dennis due mainly to his driver management. That doesn't mean he can't judge a drivers development and race skills. Those are Ron Dennis opinions I listen to and value.
 
rufus_mcdufus ..... I've already posted this but maybe you missed it. This doesn't just apply to Alonso. The first thing a team must do is build a car with a decent baseline, only then can a driver work on developing it. It's not possible for any driver to develop a flawed design. The first four Ferrari's Alonso drove were flawed aerodynamically, last years car was underpowered. Alonso was not the designer of any of these cars but had to try and get the best from flawed designs. Not one of these cars had a good enough baseline for Alonso or any other driver to turn into a race winner.
 
Not that same old thing again...

There is no free testing anymore. Today's cars have sensors on their sensors. The phrase "car developper" is redundant these days, has been for some time. Back in the eighties it really meant something, at a time when a driver's feedback was still the ultimate link between track and engineer. Today it ain't.

When Brabham switched to Pirelli before the 1985 season Piquet accumulated some 20,000 kilometres in testing before the season because they couldn't get to grips with them.

How can anyone compare that sort of situation with anything going on today?
 
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Kewee all I'm saying is that your respect for the wisdom of Ron Dennis seems to have massively grown recently.

As for car development. I have no doubt that Fernando has a skill for development which will aid Mclarrn and Honda. With his amount of experience he is bound too. Having said that I also have no doubt thst with his Knowledge and experience Jenson Button has that skill too. In fact I'm pretty sure thats why Mclaren got the driver line up they did. So why having taken that choice would they give one more 'development' time than the other?

Heres a thought. Maybe it would be a benefit for Alonso to have Button in the car just as much as him as maybe it would mean he ended up with a better car. Maybe that was the issue at Ferrari.

Michael Schumacher certainly used Rubens Barrichello's development skills to his advantage so maybe Alonso should take the same tact with Button.

Unless he is worried that giving Jenson more time in the car might mean he might get a run for his money in the competition stakes.
 
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