toonarmy wrote:Calm down. If you pay closer attention, I put the Martin statement in parentheses after pointing out the deal with a lot of points and no championship. I fully understand the similarity ends there. As for the last couple races, I think you will see Rubens driving his butt off trying to win the championship. He's not a docile little flower out there to help Button become world champion.
Rubens has been driving his ass off -- and outperforming Button -- all summer. But when push comes to shove and if Button's title is at risk because of Rubens' pace, Brawn will put Rubens in his place.
There's no way Brawn wants the No. 1 to go to another team. Ross learned at the shoulder of the master of subtle and not-so-subtle team orders, Jean Todt.
Plus if Brawn (team and team principal) thought so highly of Rubens and was willing to give him equal treatment in the crucible of a title fight, then why are they letting him go after this season?
Your sense of equality within Brawn is noble. I also think it's misguided. Button is The Chosen One in that team.
Take care,
PK
"You know why I love boxers? I love them because they face fear. And they face it alone." - Nick Charles
"First on the throttle, last on the brakes." - @MotoGP Twitter signature
pk500 wrote:Plus if Brawn (team and team principal) thought so highly of Rubens and was willing to give him equal treatment in the crucible of a title fight, then why are they letting him go after this season?
Because he's got 8 or 9 years on Button, and the young, media-friendly German driver Nico Rosberg makes a great amount of sense to the folk at Mercedes.
pk500 wrote:Plus if Brawn (team and team principal) thought so highly of Rubens and was willing to give him equal treatment in the crucible of a title fight, then why are they letting him go after this season?
Because he's got 8 or 9 years on Button, and the young, media-friendly German driver Nico Rosberg makes a great amount of sense to the folk at Mercedes.
Plus Button is the chosen son.
I find it hard to believe that if the roles were reversed, and Rubens led Button throughout the season, that Button would be the driver being dumped and Rubens re-signed.
If so, it would be shades of Damon Hill in 1996, although I hope Williams in 2010 is better than Arrows Yamaha in 1997!
That said, as the topic of signature drives was brought up in this thread, one of the greatest drives of Damon Hill's career came in that Arrows Yamaha when he led a ton of laps in Hungary and would have won if not for a broken throttle linkage. That was an EPIC drive in a sled of a car.
Take care,
PK
"You know why I love boxers? I love them because they face fear. And they face it alone." - Nick Charles
"First on the throttle, last on the brakes." - @MotoGP Twitter signature
pk500 wrote:That said, as the topic of signature drives was brought up in this thread, one of the greatest drives of Damon Hill's career came in that Arrows Yamaha when he led a ton of laps in Hungary and would have won if not for a broken throttle linkage. That was an EPIC drive in a sled of a car.
3:13 in this video, a great pass and one of my favourite Murray moments:
He gets more stick than he deserves, Damon. What people tend to remember is his underwhelming 1995, when he had the best car and was crushed by Schumacher and Benetton, and the 1999 season in which he simply didn't want to be there. Even then, at Spa that year he was fastest man of all through Eau Rouge in qualifying...at his peak, he was a bloody good racing driver.
I've been watching F1 since 1996 so that clip brings back a lot of great memories. Thanks
I was re-thinking my post about Jenson in one sense: Suppose his fortunes went in reverse chronological order? That is, suppose he had a weak start to the season and then went on a rampage over the last races of 2009? We'd have the exact same outcome to the season, but instead of being slammed, Button would be praised by everyone for his mighty comeback of 2009.
I'm not sure if that's a completely valid point, but it did come to mind when I was trying to counter my more recent claims.
Smurfy wrote:I've been watching F1 since 1996 so that clip brings back a lot of great memories. Thanks
I was re-thinking my post about Jenson in one sense: Suppose his fortunes went in reverse chronological order? That is, suppose he had a weak start to the season and then went on a rampage over the last races of 2009? We'd have the exact same outcome to the season, but instead of being slammed, Button would be praised by everyone for his mighty comeback of 2009.
I'm not sure if that's a completely valid point, but it did come to mind when I was trying to counter my more recent claims.
Exactly! I don't get the argument that all because he was completely dominant in the first half of the season, somehow if he wins the championship it is lesser than if his wins were staggered, or at the end. Yeah, his early wins were because his car was better than the other cars -- is that not the point of Formula One, though? In this era of F1 there is not a driver out there who can overcome a crap or even mediocre car and win consistently. If Button were out there assing up race in and race out then I would tend to agree that he is a less than deserving champion. The fact is that he is the points leader driving a freaking Brawn. He has also come in ahead of his teammate 10 out of 15 races with the cars supposedly being quite equal according to the Brawn team. If either he or Rubens win the title will they go down as an F1 legend? Of course not. However, this has not been as an abysmal performance as some people here and in the media like to say. Rubens and Jenson are not out there on the track running hot laps, uncontested. There are some really good drivers on the grid, along with some good constructors.
The only thing a driver gives a flip about is winning the championship. How it comes about really concerns them. Let's look at Kimi's title year he won three times in 2007 and won the championship by one point.
In fact after his thrashing of everyone in Australia he won two other races and IIRC he disappeared for a good part of the year until the very end. Things change in F1 rapidly as teams play catchup. We all knew Red Bull, Ferrari and McLaren were not going to let Brawn easily run away with the title.
Yes Brawn is not as dominate the second half of the season as they were the first part and really it's all about the car for the most part to deliver a win with the exception of a top class driver to eek out the most of a car on race day.
Schumacher and Alonso are two of those drivers who can put a half assed car over the top. So yeah if Jenson wins it and even if he backed into it, he will always be considered an F1 champion. And that's all he'll care about.
It was neat to see Montoya hit the wall and still carry enough speed to qualify 5th at Fontana today. Speaking of Fontana, can you believe it's been nearly ten years since Montoya won the Champ Car championship - and of course since we sadly lost Greg Moore?
miget33 wrote:Anyone else catch the ending to Indy Lights race today?
I really thought Romancini had made his move early, but he got the sling shot to work off 4.
Yep, I'm at Homestead, working the race. That entire Firestone Indy Lights race was insane. Great action, great finish. The leader never was ahead at the line by more than two-tenths the entire race.
Take care,
PK
"You know why I love boxers? I love them because they face fear. And they face it alone." - Nick Charles
"First on the throttle, last on the brakes." - @MotoGP Twitter signature
It was an interesting finish to the IndyCar season and a hell of a call by the Ganassi team and fantastic execution of that plan by Dario.
The track seemed exceptionally racy yesterday in the bits I saw and Dixon and Briscoe were going at it at the front, a good finish to what has been at times a ho-hum IndyCar series.
Here's hoping for a positive off-season and more cars on the grid next year.
This race isn't over yet - 3 to go as I type - but I will concede that Jenson Button's gone some distance to really, really shutting me up this afternoon...
A big congrats to Brawn for putting together an unlikely season that included both the driver's and constructor's titles. Brazil often offers an entertaining race, and today was no exception. Button drove his tail off.
Now that the due honors are out of the way, Button is a one-and-done World Champion. He'll never win another one unless there's a significant regulation change that allows a few teams to gain a temporary technological advancement like the diffuser this year that allowed Brawn to jump out of the gate with such success.
And unless there's a radical regulation change, I highly doubt we'll see again in the next few years the parity of technical ineptitude that we witnessed this season. I can't recall a year in a long time in which EVERY team bumbled and stumbled this badly for certain periods of time during the season.
Take care,
PK
Last edited by pk500 on Sun Oct 18, 2009 5:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"You know why I love boxers? I love them because they face fear. And they face it alone." - Nick Charles
"First on the throttle, last on the brakes." - @MotoGP Twitter signature
Unless you count Mike Hawthorn, whose sole win of 1958 came in either the 5th of 10 or the 6th of 11 rounds depending on how you keep your records (mine say the Indy 500 was a round of the world championship and so he's safe, though he didn't take part and strictly speaking it was a whole separate discipline to the Grands Prix...), Jense is in very real danger of becoming the first man to ever claim a Formula One world title without winning a single race in the second half of the year.
The thing is, of course, that if some of his other recent drives had been anything like as feisty as today's effort nobody would care. The move on Grosjean, who spent the whole weekend doing his best impression yet of friend of petrolheadblog.com Nelson Piquet Jr, was gutsy and well executed, and his subsequent passes of Nakajima, Buemi and especially the potentially lethal but otherwise impressive Kobayashi were beautifully made. That whoop down the radio after he cleared the Toyota gave some indication of how fired up he was, and it was great to see. Nearly made me wish I hadn't been so critical lately.
Nearly.
Bob Kubica's run to 2nd was top stuff too, as was Hamilton's 3rd. Shame Heikki misunderstood Whitmarsh's instruction to go out in a blaze of glory, though he did set up Martin Brundle for, "Remember Kovalainen, not five minutes ago, was dragging a fuel line down the pitlane, setting fire to random Ferraris."
Jense is in real trouble of not being with BrawnGP next year as he's asking for more than what Ross wants to pay. Now that he's won his title lets see if Ross blinks.
Rodster wrote:Jense is in real trouble of not being with BrawnGP next year as he's asking for more than what Ross wants to pay. Now that he's won his title lets see if Ross blinks.
Ross will want the number 1 on his car, and it is a silly man who leaves a title-winning team of his own accord when there's no obvious alternative available (unless you include McLaren, which I suppose you could, but that's a massive outside chance). I can't immediately think of any newly-crowned champion doing that, come to think of it; moves to another car with proven pedigree, yes, but the only one of those Jenson is a contender for is the Brawn. There will be a deal done.
Rodster wrote:Jense is in real trouble of not being with BrawnGP next year as he's asking for more than what Ross wants to pay. Now that he's won his title lets see if Ross blinks.
Ross will want the number 1 on his car, and it is a silly man who leaves a title-winning team of his own accord when there's no obvious alternative available (unless you include McLaren, which I suppose you could, but that's a massive outside chance). I can't immediately think of any newly-crowned champion doing that, come to think of it; moves to another car with proven pedigree, yes, but the only one of those Jenson is a contender for is the Brawn. There will be a deal done.
There is no question a deal will be done if Jenson actually wants to be competitive next season. I'm sure the terms will be met closer to what Brawn wants to pay rather than what Jenson would like to be paid. The top running teams essentially have solidified their driver lineups, as Simo says, and there is no way Jenson will go with a weaker team unless some team decides it wants to overpay Jenson just to be able to say they have the reigning F1 champ driving for them. Of course, there are other variables at work here such as potential increase in money flow to Brawn due to sponsors throwing more money Brawn's way. Perhaps something like that could make for a more sizable increase in Jenson's wages.
On a side note, did anyone else notice the expression on Lewis' face when they handed him that POS plastic trophy?
GB_Simo wrote:Ross will want the number 1 on his car, and it is a silly man who leaves a title-winning team of his own accord when there's no obvious alternative available (unless you include McLaren, which I suppose you could, but that's a massive outside chance). I can't immediately think of any newly-crowned champion doing that, come to think of it; moves to another car with proven pedigree, yes, but the only one of those Jenson is a contender for is the Brawn. There will be a deal done.
The John Barnard-designed Ferrari wasn't a competitive alternative when Schumacher left Benetton in 1995 after his second title.
But the number of zeros after the first digit on his 1996 Ferrari paycheck certainly was a superb alternative.
Take care,
PK
"You know why I love boxers? I love them because they face fear. And they face it alone." - Nick Charles
"First on the throttle, last on the brakes." - @MotoGP Twitter signature
pk500 wrote:The John Barnard-designed Ferrari wasn't a competitive alternative when Schumacher left Benetton in 1995 after his second title.
But the number of zeros after the first digit on his 1996 Ferrari paycheck certainly was a superb alternative.
Take care,
PK
I did consider that one, and its performance did fall away in the later races, but for much of the year the '95 car was no truck. Only won the one race, but with better luck, better driving and less of a temper it could quite easily have won more. Ferrari, as was so often the case before Todt was really able to get hold of the team, were their own worst enemies for much of that year, though the incident at Monza in which Alesi's onboard camera fell off and shattered Berger's suspension was a high water mark for creative self-destruction.
The other point, of course, is that Michael was worth a few tenths over either Gerhard or Jean, and knew it. Does Jenson look at something like a McLaren and reckon it'd go a few tenths faster with him driving than it does with Lewis driving? He might do, but I'd bet nobody else does.
If you're talking about the '96 Ferrari, though, the last thing I saw that was as unwieldy as that beauty had 'John Deere' painted up the side.
GB_Simo wrote:Ross will want the number 1 on his car, and it is a silly man who leaves a title-winning team of his own accord when there's no obvious alternative available (unless you include McLaren, which I suppose you could, but that's a massive outside chance). I can't immediately think of any newly-crowned champion doing that, come to think of it; moves to another car with proven pedigree, yes, but the only one of those Jenson is a contender for is the Brawn. There will be a deal done.
The John Barnard-designed Ferrari wasn't a competitive alternative when Schumacher left Benetton in 1995 after his second title.
But the number of zeros after the first digit on his 1996 Ferrari paycheck certainly was a superb alternative.
Take care,
PK
And if i'm not mistaken didn't he give Ferrari three wins that year? One of which was at Spa where he out drove Jacques. Funny moment during the press conference he mentioned he radioed the pit wall and asked if something was broke on the car as the car didn't feel right going thru Eau Rouge. And Ross told him nah, everything's fine keep driving. That car was a sled, even Michael said that was one of the worst cars he had driven.
