Originally posted by Arrow
Why are you asking what handicap wins when you know full well At OZ 2005 thats the entire top half of the grid was forced to start 10- 20 while Fisi was on pole. You cannot get a more handicap race than that.
At Sepang of course Fisi looked 'dominant' and pulled away at the start, considering Alonso had 7 laps more fuel which killed his race. After that pit stop Fisi was only faster for 3 laps for the remainder of the race. Another handicap race, where Fisi's main opposition was handicapped.
Stop trying to dispute the undisputable it makes you look delusional.
Yes, in OZ Fisi had a great advantage because of the rain. But who else apart from Alonso was better and faster than him? Montoya was weak, Kimi was weak and stalled, Schumacher was disappointing. Barrichello did his best, but he had no chance against Fisi, who cruised nearly all the race, still set the second fastest lap, and pulled away to a comfortable margin.
As for Sepang, a different strategy rarely kills a race if you are in P3. Did you actually moan about Fisi's bad strategies in Imola or Monza, when he was as badly fueled as Alonso in Sepang, except he also had to compromise his race driving in the low points. No, I think you bashed him there as usual, and didn't notice his great drive in Monza as well to P4. You also didn't notice that how many times Fisi had been handicapped by awful reliability and bad pitstops. I guess you didn't noticed Barcelona 2005, where he clearly had the upper hand, and lost the P2 due to the 2nd pitstop problems with the dusted wing.
Please accept that Fisi drove dominantly at Sepang, and his win was 100% deserved there. And if you watch out for every excuses of handicaps, please list all of Fisi's as well. Like in Canada where he led Alonso with a 2-laps heavier car, and after pitting, he drastically slowed down and DNFed by hydraulic failure. Just one example of the many.
Its actually delusional to suggest that changing from the driver who won 14 races in two years to the driver who won two, will not result in a dramatic performance drop.
Usually Alonso finished ahead of Fisi with 20-25 secs in the races. Since Fisi was clearly (at least clearly for the clear-minded) dealt as a second driver, usually got the compromised strategies, had much more mechanical failures (in 2005 mainly), the point and victory tally says a big margin. But speed-wise the usual difference was on average 0.2-0.4 secs to Alonso's favour. Everything else came from Fisi's mechanical failures, bad strategies and sometimes his driver errors.
So far Fisi performed flawlessly this year, beating his highly regarded teammate (unlike Alonso, who performed much closer to Hamilton), and the very best result he can got a 5th with Kubica's DNF. Even if you count a 20-25 secs advantage to Alonso (however we don't know how well he can handle this ill car), even that doesn't count much more than 1 point or 2 per races. If you unable see this, you are clueless about what F1 is about.
Ferrari fell in 2005 because they were using inferior tyres. Mclaren screwed up their car in 2004.
Pat symonds himself said the same people who built the previous renaults built this one and he couldnt understand why they suddenly were so slow. Of course its not baffling at all he just doesnt want to admitt Alonso was the main reason the team had so much success in the previous years. This would belittle the team no matter how true the fact was.
Also I noticed you forgot to mention one of the other biggest performance drops in modern history, which was Benetton after Michael left in 1995. We are just seeing a repeat of this again. With the same team also.
Again, mentioning the popular 96 phrase is just plain ignorance. Apart from the leaving of MS, nothing had changed in Benetton. The car was still good enough for podiums, and Berger nearly won at his favourite Hockenheim track. The drivers complained and wondered how the hell could MS won with that.
Renault lost mass dampers in Hockenheim 2006, and this clearly affected their performances. Hell, even the Honda managed to close the gap last year in those races. Since then, they lost Michelins, the tyres which were clearly suited them at best (again clearly for the not nArrow-minded). They also admitted, there are additional flaws (i.e aerodynamics and lack of grip) with this car, and it's nothing driver related. Symonds praised Fisi's early performances that he drove very consistently the inconsistent car, and compared it to his 2001 driving.
So you can still continue your fairytale imaginations about all this happened by Alonso's departure, but facts seems to go on the different direction.
