232 replies to this topic

[PlatenGlass]

That would have robbed us from an epic battle with Hakkinen, and what turned out to be one of the best seasons over the last 25 years. So no, thanks.

But that's the problem isn't it? A driver becomes too "important" to punish properly so they can basically do what they want.

[Bleu]

I still don't understand how they weren't paying attention to the race.

They were clearly paying attention only to Hamilton and Vettel. And since Hamilton wasn't able to beat Seb, Massa must be champion.

[Nemo1965]

 'Remember how Balestre refused to change the spot for pole-position in Japan, in 1990? Oh, you were so mad. If you could have done it, you would have killed Balestre. Instead of that you tried to kill me!'

'Ah Balestre? You would have married that guy if he gave you another championship.'

 

In this manner Prost and Senna would now banter in front of a camera, if Senna had survived Imola 1994. However bad top-flight sportsmen are at their peak, they are always worst at their peak. Look at John McEnroe and Ivan Lendl. They hated each other when they competed for the top in tennis, now they are such good friends, metaphorically, they could end up in the same retirement-home... and even sharing a room!

 

Prost and Senna would be the same. The 'proof' for me are Senna's words live from his car, Imola 1994. Furthermore, Prost has told in several interviews how he and Senna had made peace, even become friends. Further proof of how it works: in 1977 Niki Lauda loathed his teammate, Carlos Reutemann. He was asked back then if Carlos was an opponent or his teammate, Lauda answered: 'Neither.' Burn!

 

In the years AFTER 1977, Lauda and Carlos regularly did a comical number of about five seconds when they bumped into each other, during which one of them would impersonate Mauro Foghieri and the other Enzo Ferrari, whining in Italian how Ferrari was sabotaged by this or that or whomever.  Only people who spoke Italian understood what they hell they were doing.

Edited by Nemo1965, 13 June 2020 - 07:56.

[ArrowsLivery]

Ok let me rephrase - his form in *that* Ferrari.

You seem to be debating the quality of said car. I don't see where the debate is. That car shouldn't have been near a World Championship.

Whilst you weren't directly arguing his "form" as such, I'd say by questioning the quality of that car, you somewhat are questioning just how good Alonso actually was.

You can’t drive a car over 100%. If Alonso put up a championship challenge with it, then it was a fine enough car. While it didn’t have blistering qualifying pace, it had the best reliability, the best wet weather pace, and the best tire wear when cheese Pirelli’s were at their peak.

[1Devil1]

One of the best seasons? It was McLaren... Ferrari (actually MS)... daylight. Take Spa out and you have 3 drivers winning all the races and not many drivers outside of McLaren/Ferrari even standing on a podium.

Even the title showdown was an absolute fizzer. Take the Spa race out, perhaps Silverstone and Montreal too and much of it was rather predictable. Plus it was the start of the disgustingly bad regulations that started to rot F1.

 

Did you really watch this season? All time classic. McLaren domination, Schumacher fighting against all the odds. Races like Spa, Monza, Montreal, Suzuka, Hungary, Silverstone, Don't know, you have a lot of seasons, where only a handful of drivers can win races, doesn't make them boring if you have a epic fight at the front. 

[PlatenGlass]

They were clearly paying attention only to Hamilton and Vettel. And since Hamilton wasn't able to beat Seb, Massa must be champion.

It would seem strange that they wouldn't be aware of the Glock situation since everyone watching at home was!

[ensign14]

Speaking of the man - Alain Prost best and worst moments.

Worst - a few here too. Such as the sacking from Ferrari in '91, Japan 1989 wasn't his finest moment either (though understandable IMO after taking so much of Sennas **** for so long) but I'll go with San Marino 1991. Spinning off on the warm up lap, in front of the tifosi...
 

Zandvoort 1983.  Caught in bed with the team boss' wife, then losing concentration in trying to pass Piquet which put them both out of the race.  The fallout from that cost him the title...

[ensign14]

Mario Andretti's best and worst moments in F1 came in the same weekend...

[StraightEdge]

how about Piquet?

Best: 1981 Las Vegas is the first of many

Worst: leg breaking accident at Indy

[Atreiu]

Or maybe some of his Lotus weekends.

[Collombin]

Or maybe some of his Lotus weekends.

Starting on slicks at Hockenheim was my first thought.

[Henri Greuter]

Starting on slicks at Hockenheim was my first thought.

or in Brazil '81 ......

[DeKnyff]

Zandvoort 1983.  Caught in bed with the team boss' wife, then losing concentration in trying to pass Piquet which put them both out of the race.  The fallout from that cost him the title...

It was a mistake, but I don't think it cost him the title.

 

If Prost had managed to successfully overtake Piquet at Zandvoort (which wasn't so obvious), he would have scored three more points than the Brazilian. Piquet won the Championship by only two points, certainly, but it was only because he decided to take it easy and avoid any risk at the end of the South African GP. He could have easily won it and scored five more points if required.

 

Of course, you can't rebuild the past, because maybe other things would have different, but I don't think you can say "Prost would have won the Championship".

[Henri Greuter]

It was a mistake, but I don't think it cost him the title.

 

If Prost had managed to successfully overtake Piquet at Zandvoort (which wasn't so obvious), he would have scored three more points than the Brazilian. Piquet won the Championship by only two points, certainly, but it was only because he decided to take it easy and avoid any risk at the end of the South African GP. He could have easily won it and scored five more points if required.

 

Of course, you can't rebuild the past, because maybe other things would have different, but I don't think you can say "Prost would have won the Championship".

 

Piquet has told later on that he was to retire from that race! He had technical problems and knew he wouldn't finish the race anyway.

So in fact, when Prost and he both retired due to Prost's error, Piquet benefitted from that massively because instead of loosing points to Prost one or another, be it 9 or less, they both didn't score points. And eventually that helped him out later on. As long as Prost had scored 4th or better at Zandvoort, he was to have been the world champion.

[ensign14]

Of course, you can't rebuild the past, because maybe other things would have different, but I don't think you can say "Prost would have won the Championship".

I can, I'm not Chris Eubank.

 

More to the point, you have to think that Renault's attention may well have been a little off over those last few races when Brabham were on a tear and Renault were not.  Let alone taking a closer look at the jungle juice that fuelled the BMWs. 

[PlatenGlass]

Piquet has told later on that he was to retire from that race! He had technical problems and knew he wouldn't finish the race anyway.
So in fact, when Prost and he both retired due to Prost's error, Piquet benefitted from that massively because instead of loosing points to Prost one or another, be it 9 or less, they both didn't score points. And eventually that helped him out later on. As long as Prost had scored 4th or better at Zandvoort, he was to have been the world champion.

The number of times you hear that it turns out x would have retired anyway, I'm always a bit suspicious of it.

[DeKnyff]

Piquet has told later on that he was to retire from that race! He had technical problems and knew he wouldn't finish the race anyway.

So in fact, when Prost and he both retired due to Prost's error, Piquet benefitted from that massively because instead of loosing points to Prost one or another, be it 9 or less, they both didn't score points. And eventually that helped him out later on. As long as Prost had scored 4th or better at Zandvoort, he was to have been the world champion.

The incident was widely analyzed by French TV and magazines and I never heard about it.

 

Besides, I'd take anything that Piquet says with a pinch of salt...

[Henri Greuter]

The number of times you hear that it turns out x would have retired anyway, I'm always a bit suspicious of it.

 

 

The incident was widely analyzed by French TV and magazines and I never heard about it.

 

Besides, I'd take anything that Piquet says with a pinch of salt...

 

Feel free to do so. I also have my hesitations about Piquet and his psycho games with others and his `other` games off the track. But on track he was generally fair and OK.

But if this is indeed true, then Zandvoort was very much the first nail in the coffin for Alain's title chances of '83.

Edited by Henri Greuter, 14 June 2020 - 18:52.

[TheFish]

It would seem strange that they wouldn't be aware of the Glock situation since everyone watching at home was!

I was only aware of it through Martin Brundle. Wouldn’t have had a clue otherwise, my focus was purely on Vettel.

[Atreiu]

Same with me.

[PlatenGlass]

But everyone must have known that Glock passed Hamilton by not stopping when it started raining - because that's why Hamilton wasn't in a championship winning position any more. And then it was a question of whether it rained enough for the pitstop to have been worth it. To assume that Glock was gone as soon as the pitstop was made would be to assume the pitstop was a mistake from the start. Obviously I only watched the race with the commentary, so I can't know what I would have thought without it, but Glock was ahead on dry tyres in the wet! It was always about that!

 

Unless you mean noticing Glock being passed - I noticed Glock immediately because I was specifically looking out for it.

[PlayboyRacer]

Did you really watch this season? All time classic. McLaren domination, Schumacher fighting against all the odds. Races like Spa, Monza, Montreal, Suzuka, Hungary, Silverstone, Don't know, you have a lot of seasons, where only a handful of drivers can win races, doesn't make them boring if you have a epic fight at the front.

Yep I did watch the season at the time. Every race.

Take out Spa and you tally up how many teams and individual drivers stood on a podium in the other 15 races (and how many times they did), let alone win a race.

It was a very predictable season. The points standings tell a story. Not saying it didn't have it's great moments, it did...but they were in short supply in terms of the competitiveness of the field.

To call it an "all time classic season" just isn't warranted imo. Certainly not compared to the season before (1997) and after (1999).

Edited by PlayboyRacer, 14 June 2020 - 23:15.

[PlayboyRacer]

Zandvoort 1983. Caught in bed with the team boss' wife, then losing concentration in trying to pass Piquet which put them both out of the race. The fallout from that cost him the title...

You're not wrong... I was focusing more on individual races but hell that had a serious domino effect...

[teejay]

I had no idea about the boss's wife story - is there  a link with more info? 

[Boxerevo]

I had no idea about the boss's wife story - is there  a link with more info? 

No confirmation of this one, it is a "myth", but in this "myth" Gerard Larrousse found his wife in the bed with Prost.

 

Prost lost the championship and run away from Renault and his now angry boss.

 

But Laffite's wife was game on and wrecked Laffite's marriage. Prost marriage survived but now he had those two women at least in his life.

Edited by Boxerevo, 15 June 2020 - 02:04.

[Collombin]

I had no idea about the boss's wife story - is there a link with more info?

I had read subtle hints a couple of times over the years without ever being able to join all the dots, and then the TNF moderator revealed all in a TNF thread called "who was Nigel Roebuck referring to?" which should show up in a forum search.

[Nemo1965]

I had no idea about the boss's wife story - is there  a link with more info? 

 

I don't have a link, but I have heard from a VERY reliable source that around the time of the incident, in the lobby of the Louwes Hotel in Zandvoort, there was such a shouting match between several members of the Renault-team, the police had to be called to calm the situation down. One of the policemen was... my uncle. He did not know swat about F1, just that there were several F1-people in official Renault-garb and some women screaming their heads off... in French... which my uncle did not understand. To my everlasting sadness he was not able to explain the gist of the conflict, nor could he identify any of the team-members, even when I showed him the pictures of Alain Prost and Larousse a couple of years later.

 

So my assumption was it could be true, but it also could have been a row about something else... to which the story of Prost's assumed extra-marital activities were connected...  

 

PS: The row was also seen by a friend whom I worked later with in a pizzeria in Zandvoort. Also: not a F1-fan, hence not a reliable witness regarding individuals. Darn.

Edited by Nemo1965, 15 June 2020 - 08:30.

[TheFish]

But everyone must have known that Glock passed Hamilton by not stopping when it started raining - because that's why Hamilton wasn't in a championship winning position any more. And then it was a question of whether it rained enough for the pitstop to have been worth it. To assume that Glock was gone as soon as the pitstop was made would be to assume the pitstop was a mistake from the start. Obviously I only watched the race with the commentary, so I can't know what I would have thought without it, but Glock was ahead on dry tyres in the wet! It was always about that!

 

Unless you mean noticing Glock being passed - I noticed Glock immediately because I was specifically looking out for it.

Yeah, I knew Glock was in front, but Brundle said his times were fine. He was 15 seconds clear or so with a lap to go, I didn't think Lewis could catch him.

[ensign14]

The number of times you hear that it turns out x would have retired anyway, I'm always a bit suspicious of it.

Piquet also said that he was due to retire from the German GP 1982 with engine problems - very embarrassing for BMW on home soil - so he was retrospectively glad he got in that brouhaha with Salazar.

 

Although it didn't stop him doing a quick test of Salazar's RAM the next year and declaring it to be the equal of the BT52...

[Spillage]

Yeah to me it stands out that every time a driver crashed to take a championship and managed to do so, FIA did nothing. But the one time a driver crashed and failed to win the championship, they acted. It's almost as if it's much easier to act on the later...

Interesting point. I wonder if the FIA would have been brave enough to strip Schumacher of the championship if he'd succeeded in eliminating Villeneuve. I'm by no means convinced they would.

[Touchdown]

I had read subtle hints a couple of times over the years without ever being able to join all the dots, and then the TNF moderator revealed all in a TNF thread called "who was Nigel Roebuck referring to?" which should show up in a forum search.

I can't seem to find it - can someone who can link it here please?

[jcbc3]

I can't seem to find it - can someone who can link it here please?

 

https://forums.autos...st#entry2186504

[PlatenGlass]

Yeah, I knew Glock was in front, but Brundle said his times were fine. He was 15 seconds clear or so with a lap to go, I didn't think Lewis could catch him.

I suppose the main thing is that if you're in that position, you count the cars across the line before celebrating. Alonso/Kimi could also have hit problems on the last lap.

When Vettel won the last race in 2010 they said on the radio to Vettel that they were just checking the other cars across the line. Only then did they celebrate.