The F1 thread

gavin_axecaster

Fretwired said:

Garthy said:

Alonso is retiring.

Off to Indie car? I wonder how long Hamilton will hang around?

Hasn't he just signed a two year extension? Assuming he wins the title this year and one more I'd say he'll be off at the end of 2020. I think he wants to underline that he's the best driver of this era - getting 2 titles over Vettel should do that.

Fretwired

gavin_axecaster said:

Fretwired said:

Garthy said:

Alonso is retiring.

Off to Indie car? I wonder how long Hamilton will hang around?

Hasn't he just signed a two year extension? Assuming he wins the title this year and one more I'd say he'll be off at the end of 2020. I think he wants to underline that he's the best driver of this era - getting 2 titles over Vettel should do that.

Could be .. I doubt he'll do an Alonso and drive crap cars into his twilight years. There are some talented youngsters in the wings.

Hamilton wants to go into music .. he says he has no desire to race anything else.

Alonso should have won more world titles.

Cols

Fretwired said:

gavin_axecaster said:

Fretwired said:

Garthy said:

Alonso is retiring.

Off to Indie car? I wonder how long Hamilton will hang around?

Hasn't he just signed a two year extension? Assuming he wins the title this year and one more I'd say he'll be off at the end of 2020. I think he wants to underline that he's the best driver of this era - getting 2 titles over Vettel should do that.

Could be .. I doubt he'll do an Alonso and drive crap cars into his twilight years. There are some talented youngsters in the wings.

Hamilton wants to go into music .. he says he has no desire to race anything else.

Alonso should have won more world titles.

I’d say Hamilton will wait to have a peek at the 2021 regulations.  If he doesn’t fancy them, he’s off.  If not, I’d say he’d fancy a spin in the red cars.

Alonso should’ve been at least a 4 time world champion; he just had the unfortunate knack of getting himself into the wrong teams at the wrong time.  It also didn’t help that he made some powerful enemies in the big teams along the way.

gavin_axecaster

Alonso certainly ruined his own career. If he hadn't been such a prima-donna and played silly games at Mclaren he may have won it when he was partnered with Hamilton. Again had he stayed the following year he would have had a car capable of winning.
But playing the "if only game" works for everyone - Hamilton should be a 6 time world Champion (at least) "if only" Mclaren hadn't left him out on bald tyres in 2007 and "if only" his car had been more reliable in 2016 Hamilton would have walked it.

simonk

Genuinely going to miss Alonso. He’s made some crap career decisions, wound a bunch of people right up and cost some people staggering amounts of money, but man he’s talented. Seems a proper shame he spent his twilight F1 years at the back of the grid when he probably could have been scoring podiums.

thumpingrug

Somewhat inevitable but still a shame.  Champions need to go out while they are still on the top not suffer a lingering slow death in the back seats.   Its fine to try to go to a middling team and help them move forward over a couple of seasons but if thats not happening after a couple of years you have to get out.  Alonso burnt his bridges with the big teams so moving to a different type of racing was the only thing left.     

Fretwired

Looks like Alonso will be staying with McLaren ... ;-)

McLaren look like they are about to announce their entry into Indycar.

shugz

I'm surprised FA not had thoughts of his own empire/ team. I know he does have interests in a few things but wondered if there was a bit of Sir Jackie/ Niki about him looking on after the driving was over. Possibly a little early, I know he's not done behind the wheel yet. I could see that either being a massive success or failure no inbetween. 

Great if incomplete driver, the modern day Mansell. Nothing wrong with that. A very good innings if possibly an underachievment considering his talent.

H

Heartfeltdawn

Fretwired said:

Could be .. I doubt he'll do an Alonso and drive crap cars into his twilight years. There are some talented youngsters in the wings.

Hamilton wants to go into music .. he says he has no desire to race anything else.

Alonso should have won more world titles.

I'd rather drive crap cars than release crap albums. 

Heartfeltdawn

shugz said:

I'm surprised FA not had thoughts of his own empire/ team. I know he does have interests in a few things but wondered if there was a bit of Sir Jackie/ Niki about him looking on after the driving was over. Possibly a little early, I know he's not done behind the wheel yet. I could see that either being a massive success or failure no inbetween. 

Great if incomplete driver, the modern day Mansell. Nothing wrong with that. A very good innings if possibly an underachievment considering his talent.

H

Alonso loves driving. Going down to a 'lesser' division like WEC or Indycar isn't a problem for him, and I think WEC and Indy both surprised him with how much he enjoyed it.  

And who's to say he wouldn't come back to F1? Retirements can be suspended. 

stickyfiddle

Heartfeltdawn said:

shugz said:

I'm surprised FA not had thoughts of his own empire/ team. I know he does have interests in a few things but wondered if there was a bit of Sir Jackie/ Niki about him looking on after the driving was over. Possibly a little early, I know he's not done behind the wheel yet. I could see that either being a massive success or failure no inbetween. 

Great if incomplete driver, the modern day Mansell. Nothing wrong with that. A very good innings if possibly an underachievment considering his talent.

H

Alonso loves driving. Going down to a 'lesser' division like WEC or Indycar isn't a problem for him, and I think WEC and Indy both surprised him with how much he enjoyed it.  

And who's to say he wouldn't come back to F1? Retirements can be suspended. 

Yeah this. I think Indy last year gave a him the nudge, and winning Le Mans sealed it. It's more fun being at the front, whatever you're racing, because it means something. Coming 9th for McLaren is shit - even if you've wrung the car's neck every weekend it's still below where Alonso should be and well below where McLaren should be (though the latter is arguably becoming less and less true with every recent season). 

I have to agree with those suggesting he made his own bed as far as team moves and available options go, but nevertheless it's a waste of his talent to have him at the back any more when he could be in another series having fun and giving us all something worth watching.

shugz

As I said, it was/ is maybe a little early for team Fernando but I'd not rule it out in the medium or longer term. I'd imagine he could draw backing from Spain plus wider territories. He strikes me as 'leader'....good or bad? Who knows? I don't see him driving just anything until his doteage. 

He won't be back in F1 at the sharp end unless something pretty drastic occurs. Think (again) Mansell '94 if required. Different days though. The top end teams have their men. Look where Ricciardo has landed as a result. 

H

Cols

I can’t see him trying to run his own team under the current climate.  Literally no-one is making any money from F1 other than Liberty Media and a handful of drivers; why would you want to start throwing your money down a bottomless pit?  Even if he could get financial backing only the top 2-3 teams are able to win; at best a new team would be scrabbling for points, which is precisely what he doesn’t want to spend any more of his life doing.

Fretwired

Cols said:

I can’t see him trying to run his own team under the current climate.  Literally no-one is making any money from F1 other than Liberty Media and a handful of drivers; why would you want to start throwing your money down a bottomless pit?  Even if he could get financial backing only the top 2-3 teams are able to win; at best a new team would be scrabbling for points, which is precisely what he doesn’t want to spend any more of his life doing.

I suspect he could end up like a Lauda at a leading championship winning team .. who knows McLaren maybe back at the top by 2030.

Heartfeltdawn

shugz said:

As I said, it was/ is maybe a little early for team Fernando but I'd not rule it out in the medium or longer term. I'd imagine he could draw backing from Spain plus wider territories. He strikes me as 'leader'....good or bad? Who knows? I don't see him driving just anything until his doteage. 

He won't be back in F1 at the sharp end unless something pretty drastic occurs. Think (again) Mansell '94 if required. Different days though. The top end teams have their men. Look where Ricciardo has landed as a result. 

H

Few predicted Schumacher would one day return. Spain backing an F1 team right now when economically it's in the shit would be a bad political move. I see Alonso as being like Button in many ways. JB said he lost the love for F1 when his dad died: Fernando loses a bit of love every time his McLaren dies. JB's tried other disciplines, he was at Le Mans this year, and he seems to be enjoying racing in Super Gt in Japan. Fernando's found the love of racing again by going elsewhere. It's the right move for him. 

shugz

I think certain folk close to Schumacher knew he felt it was unfinished business. The way LDM brought things to a head gave MS at the time no real option. He even went bike racing as he couldn't really shake off the speed need. Mercedes/ Brawn didn't need to sell it to him really.

More a med-long term thing regarding him possubly running/ owning a team. He seems to have the gravitas of a leader in the way a select few others have done. Who knows? And like I said, who knows if he'd be any good. 

Heck, he might just race bangers in the Touring Car championships for shits n giggles. Doesn't really have too much to prove. I did wonder though if he'd be motivated enough to try and win something from a management perspective down the line a bit perhaps. Put a few ghosts from his time as a driver to bed etc. Payback for a few things that didn't go his way perhaps. 

Time will tell. F1 should have tried a bit harder with him, it's not like there's too many in it with box office appeal these days.

H

not_the_dj

I'll see if I can grab him for a chat over the weekend at Silverstone to get the lowdown ;-)

(me and my eldest lad are there for the WEC).

stickyfiddle

Sainz confirmed at McLaren. Poor bastard..!

Multi-year deal, so presumably he's formally out of the RB thing

Cols

I believe RB had to offer him a seat at the senior team this year or he was a free agent.

Probably better off at McLaren tbh; Red Bull have been reasonably clear that they see Verstappen as The Golden One, so whoever got the second seat was going to be fighting an uphill battle before they even get in the car.  It doesn’t help that there’s already bad blood between them from Toro Rosso days.

Fretwired

Cols said:

I believe RB had to offer him a seat at the senior team this year or he was a free agent.

Probably better off at McLaren tbh; Red Bull have been reasonably clear that they see Verstappen as The Golden One, so whoever got the second seat was going to be fighting an uphill battle before they even get in the car.  It doesn’t help that there’s already bad blood between them from Toro Rosso days.

I've read Vestappen has a veto over who partners him. Saintz is probably the only name on the list - as you say there's bad blood.