“Not correct” for Alonso to skip Monaco for Indy – Massa

F1 Fanatic Round-up

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In the round-up: Felipe Massa says Fernando Alonso shouldn’t miss the Monaco Grand Prix to race at Indianapolis.

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All the talk was about what Red Bull would bring to Barcelona but has Mercedes outdone them?

The Mercedes upgrades look phenomenal. I’d say it’s close to a B-spec car looking at how everything’s changed.

Their development was barley hyped because of the Red Bull ‘RB13B/RB14’ rumours but so far Mercedes looks like they’ve made a massive leap. We’ll see how much speed they have on Saturday and we’ll definitely see over the weekend what the Red Bull has created.

I don’t think Red Bull will compete with Mercedes and Ferrari, but I think instead of averaging 1.5s behind a lap, they may be 0.5s a lap behind. And they can develop through the year, and hopefully their engine upgrades in Canada or Austria are worth 0.3 seconds of a lap, bringing their deficit down to within two to three tenths of the top two.
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70 comments on ““Not correct” for Alonso to skip Monaco for Indy – Massa”

  1. Says the guy that made the whole world cry because he was about to retire, even received an F1 car as a gift, and then decided to kept going :P

    1. Mercedes’ upgrades are seriously scary. This could be a turning point of the season. But we won’t know for sure until the cars are on track :)

      1. I meant this to be a separate comment. Oops.

    2. That’s not how it went. Massa can only wish it was up to him to waltz in and out of mid-to-front running outfits. Williams told him it was time to go (because they needed Stroll for the money and Bottas for the performance). But when Bottas to Mercedes deal appeared, Williams had common sense to get an experienced driver familiar with the team back into the seat.

    3. Claire Williams said that if it was her team, she wouldn’t have allowed it. It does not surprise me that the team’s drivers answer these sort of questions accordingly.

    4. 99% of people would accept a large gift from employer on forced retirement from a loved job, and would then go back if their employer came calling with a large check and no request to return said gift. So… nothing unusual here. I don’t see what your point is.

      1. It wasn’t a serious comment, so there’s no point behind it.

    5. If you are nostalgic for the times when gentlemen were racers or racers were gentlemen, that romantic era of F1, even if you weren’t born yet, you’ll be excited for such a thing Fernando is doing. If you are a PC, PR etc. stuck-up like people in F1 are today you won’t agree with him missing Monaco, simple as that.

      I for one, I’m not his fan in F1, but I watch with interest his ROP and I’ll be a huge and eager fan during the race. :D Indycars it’s quite exciting.

    6. Rick Lopez (@viscountviktor)
      12th May 2017, 10:42

      What’s that got to do with Alonso doing the Indy?

  2. regarding COTD, i think Red Bull are too far back already. No chance they’ll be fighting for wins this year.

  3. Liberty media have been dealt a tough hand with regards to fair distribution of wealth, but they obviously knew what they were getting into.

    When it comes to it, I really cant see how the big players on the grid will sit back and accept reduced terms. Red Bull may pull out, rest assured Ferrari will kick up a stink, and Merc will probably just state that their marketing objectives were met and put the team up for sale.

    Note too that Carlos Ghosn only approved Renault’s re-entry into F1 as a manufacturer based on the agreement that they will receive the constructors bonus should they meet the criteria.

    Its going to very very difficult to come to an agreement. One solution will be to start with a clean slate. For example, when the next regulation change comes or when the commercial agreements are due for renewal:

    – For the first two years of the new agreement or regulations, all teams get equal share of F1s dispersable revenue
    – In years three and four, all teams get equal share of Column 1 payments, Column 2 payments distributed based on championship position
    – Year five onwards, the distribution model from the previous 2 years to persist, but with the Top 3 being eligible for a Constructors Bonus of somekind

    This is pretty rudimentry, but it seems fair. With this model, in the first two years, all teams will get an “equal” shot at developing. Obviously, the manufacturers and privateers of this world with deep pockets may raise more money through their parent companies, but the point is, the teams lower down the grid will have a chance of being competitive going forward. Further to this, prospect of a Bonus for finishing in the top 3 may keep the constructors happy.

    I dont think there is a right answer here, but Chase Carey will somehow need to tame the Piranha Club.

    1. Let’s not forget, Mercedes were the last of the big teams to do a deal with Bernie over funds, so I don’t think cutting their share will offend them too much. What will offend is if they are being paid a disproportionate amount compared to Ferrari and Redbull.
      The chief culprits were Redbull and Ferrari.

    2. If you give a rattle to a child, you can’t take it away to give to another child without a lot of crying. What you need to do is give all the children their own rattle.

    3. The system isn’t fair and the only way to make it fair is to give less to the top teams and give more to others. There is no way around it. You can’t be fair and continue paying Ferrari $200m, while teams outside the top ten get $10m. You will never have competition and you will never have a decent size grid with backmarkers devoid of funds.

      I think we should get rid of Ferrari long-standing prize, Constructors Championship Bonus (for Ferrari, McLaren, Mercedes and Red Bull) and Historical Bonus in its current form. We should reward long time commitment to the sport, but these bonuses are ridiculous. And they eat up a large portion of the prize money.

      Next, we should decide what we want to reward. Personally I think it should be: participation, performance and legacy. So here is my idea:

      1. Participation. Take total prize money and divide it by number of teams plus ten. Assign one part to every team (not just the top 10). This is a participation prize. It’s a nice chunk and you’re left with ten times that amount to reward performance and legacy.

      2. Performance. Take eight parts from the first calculation. Give 2.5% of that to a Constructor’s Championship winner and 2.5% to the team that produced a World Champion. Give 5% to the tenth team in the standings and increase the bonus by 1% for each position above that, up to 14% for the top team (the top team can get up to 19% of the pool, but I feel it’s fair, given the achievement).

      3. Legacy. Remember the first calculation? You’re left with two parts. Now, for every team double their total number of race wins prior to the season and add a total number of race entered. Divide the money proportionally to this result. This is a good representation of team’s history, heritage and long standing commitment to the sport, with Ferrari bonus not exceeding $30m.

      In this system a top, well established team, would get roughly twice the money earned by a 9th or 10th team and at the very most triple the amount of any team outside top 10. Right now the 10th team gets a quarter of what the top team gets and the teams outside the top 10 have absolutely no means of supporting themselves.

  4. Josh (@canadianjosh)
    12th May 2017, 1:22

    I don’t like the idea of the inspections in F1. They gotta keep some things the same. In some aspects of a sport, tradition should remain.

  5. Why is there a general assumption that more dangly pokey outtie bits on a car the faster it goes? The Merc looks complicated but does that mean it works? If they lose any of those bits in wheel to wheel racing the whole system becomes effected. I’ll wait till after qualifying to make initial judgement. Or atleast until the things have turned a wheel in anger.

  6. Born to rich parents on a ski trip to switzerland, is not lucky enough.

    1. Sundar Srinivas Harish
      12th May 2017, 4:26

      The picture used as the article header is pure gold.

    2. Your wildly inaccurate claims about Grosjean continue to astound.

  7. Re COTD:

    For Red Bull to get within 2/10th of Mercedes & Ferrari, I’m assuming you’re thinking both teams will be standing still & allow them to catchup?

    I believe they designed that car around their trick suspension just like they did with EBD, but since it got banned, they now don’t seem to have back up plan.

    1. Im with you on this one. Im sure redbull are spending more time now on the ’18 car, and the spanish upgrade has been blown out of proportion mostly by the media. Most teams have big upgrades at spain every year.

  8. Love the idea of inspections. It won’t affect innovation, because whoever nails an idea first will get a jump on the competition anyway. Performances between teams would converge, those with bigger budgets will still be up front, but maybe not by the 1-2 seconds they are currently.

    As a fan of technology and engineering, I would love to know more about the innovative solutions to problems. Given how much input there is by the engineers, it would be fantastic to shed more light (literally) on their amazing work.

    1. Totally agree with this, just hope that it doesn’t stifle innovation in the smaller teams as they decide to just copy the best ideas from the front runners.

  9. Mercedes really is launching a massive update in Barcelona. New nose, bargeboards are the only one’s noticeable in those pictures, but I’m sure there are a lot more.

    I’m glad they’re throwing everything they can at Ferrari in this title fight. Honestly, this year’s WDC and WCC will go down to the development battle, so I expect round 2 of the Ferrari vs Merc battle to start this weekend.

    I’m sure that Ferrari have soiled their pants a little after seeing the extent of Merc’s updates for Barcelona..

    1. We’re talking James Allison here,
      Don’t get hyped up. It’s a punt, hail Mary..I’m pretty sure Ferrari’s pants are free from soil.

      1. Remember Allison was part of Ferrari’s dream team. And he was quite good at Lotus too. But I think it’s way too early to see any significant input from him on the car. The updates were in the pipeline way before Allison got hired.

    2. On a side note I’m impressed by how Ferrari are moving in silence this year. No showing off, no nothing!! They’re doing their talking on Sunday. This years Ferrari blew the myth as Massa said, that you dont need a big name like Newey but then again Ferrari still have that old dog of a diamond Rory.

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  11. Indie won’t save his murky career. I’m even hearing the clampit wants to possibly go back to Ferrari the team that fired him. He’s a pest. I’ve no time for the man.

    1. I can’t even…

      1. Neither could the fans in Singapore.

        1. There were 2 safety cars at Singapore, no one, not even Hamilton in the best car could catch Alonso after the 2nd.

          1. Yes! This! Exactly BigJoe, all these people saying it was a manufactured win just because his team-mate crashed on purpose. FIA, Renault who admitted it, what do they know?

  12. What has Brawn been smoking? It’s the same car chassis for every team in NASCAR ! The silhouette-test they have to pass is the same for everyone, races have been lost when some corner has been bent in the race.
    And there is zero technological innovations in the spec ironblock V8. So comparing two NASCAR is pointless.
    ” Look, they used two shims in the front right suspension”

    1. Most of what you state is no longer accurate. There are multiple chassis constructors and the engines are quite elaborate, especially the cylinder heads where each manufacturer differs quite a lot in architecture. The regulations are tight but every team has been ‘caught’ pushing the boundaries of what is legal this year alone. There hasn’t been a common body for some time as this was changed for better brand identification. They have also removed most of the aero parts to sync even more with the road cars sharing their name and reduce downforce for closer racing. The point of the article is that NASCAR has an open garage for the most part. The fans get to see almost everything physical on the car. I for one would love to be able to see more details of an F1 car. The technical specs of the cars are just as impressive as the performance. Now I would say that F1 should steer clear of NASCAR’s procedure for inspection as it is cumbersome, slow, and at times inconsistent. But the openness would be great for F1.

  13. Just one more reason to dislike Massa. He and Barrichello peas in a pod to me. Barichello being slightly less annoying. I always found it interesting to see Barrichellos starcof David on his helmet. Imagine if Haryanto would have had Allah in Arabic on the top of his lid! Would’ve caused an international incident.

    1. I don’t care he had that on his lid, just find it interesting. Also how some people feel the need to tell you they are Jewish, Muslim, Christian, whatever. HAM of course has lots of Christian iconography scrawled on his body but I am not sure about his helmet unless it’s really subtle.

      1. You should join up with Pennyroyal Tea and start a team of wildly unfounded, untrue and ridiculous claims. Rubens Barrichello isn’t even Jewish, he’s a Catholic, the six-pointed star was just a six-pointed star.

  14. I’d of given the update to Grosjean to stop any potential whining, l will watch the weekend with the sound down l think. Hopefully any new developments for him will include the removal of the radio or better still one that is only linked to Alonso’s car.

  15. “In NASCAR, you can go and look at someone else’s car – strip it apart and see what’s in it. That’s their way of keeping everyone loosely competitive.”

    Ross is on to something, we need to see this right now. Let back hanging teams just copy the frontrunners the best they can.

    Make it rain.

    1. IndyCar inspections are open also.

  16. I think it would be fantastic if they opened up the scrutineering to show more of it. That would make for a solid watch every thursday of a race weekend. Certainly would top watching or reading up on having a couple of drivers and journalists acting out a press conference nobody expects to hear anything new or interesting in

  17. Ted Macauley’s comments on Bernie being selfless are rubbish I’m sure. Bernie was never “selfless”, he did very well for himself off this selfless work.

    1. +1 @friedatwo

      give Bernie the fulsome praise his selfless efforts over four decades have truly deserved.

      Clearly somebody who skipped school the day they covered ‘selfless’ :p

    2. @friedatwo
      The guy is a cheerleader for Ecclestone and Putin, which is a clear sign that his opinions can be safely filed away in the bin with all of the other rubbish.

    3. petebaldwin (@)
      12th May 2017, 12:28

      Even Bernie admitted hulis job was to make m9ney for the shareholders. If his actions were “selfless,” they were being carried out on behalf of a group that certainly weren’t.

      He didn’t do anything for the benefit of the teams or fans. His (or CVC’s) actions could never be called “selfless.”

      1. petebaldwin (@)
        12th May 2017, 12:29

        Not sure why “his” autocorrected to “hulis” but there we go!!

  18. Ross wouldn’t have been a happy chappie if they asked him to do that when he was running teams.

    Saying that I would think it would be productive for teams to share data at the end of a season. Although rather than being open to every team. I think it would work best if the team that won shared with the last placed team. Team 2 shared with team 9. Team 3 shared with team 8 etc. That would hopefully bring about less blue flags. To be honest, blue flags are largely what makes the sport look stupid. F1 is supposed to be the best of the best. Engineers, drivers etc. When the competition is a few teams at the front and the never will’s, then you have to ask is it worth following.

    1. I don’t think this would work the way you want.
      With all the allegiance in the paddock, any hint Toro Rosso receive would end up on Newey’s desk the following day. Same with Haas and Ferrari (if that’s not already the case…).
      In the end, top teams would be stronger.

      1. Maybe, maybe not. Torro Rosso haven’t been helped by RB that much. They are at least 2 places behind RB. Haas want to climb so I don’t think they want a team in front to be unbeatable. Current standings would see data trade between TR and Williams or FI. Haas would be in a similar group which may include RB.

        The way I want it to work is for all the cars to finish on the same lap.

      2. Given McLarens situation, that data could have led to them finishing races.

        1. Theoretically, I like your idea but I’m sure the big teams would find a way to abuse the system.
          I’m not sure for Haas, but I think the exchange between TR and RB mainly works one way: from TR to RB. Horner or Marko don’t need a winning TR, they just need a good midfield team to train their rookies.

  19. Is it correct to retire with tears and then come back again? Don’t think so.

    1. Can you really Call it a retirement when he did not miss a single thing

      1. Did he say he’s retiring?
        I have huge respect for Massa. It’s all gone with ‘fake’ retirement.
        I gained lots of respect for Rosberg. Yes he knew he may never win championship again or beat Hamilton again but you’ve got to have balls to leave when you’re on top. We have had couple of drivers to grab to the F1 for whatever price. Life is the family not (only) fame. You need to know when to stop graving more nand more.
        Does Massa want to be one of those?

    2. Better to ask the guy who really really REALLY could not wait to retire to come back and help you out?

  20. When I saw Bernie Ecclestone on television a cold shiver ran down my spine. I’m afraid behind the scenes he’s plotting to get his hands back on Formula 1.

    Ted Macauley’s article is hilarious. Who is trying to kid… Bernie Ecclestone “selfless?” The rest he’s rambling on about is just as delusional! Bernie made Formula 1 into a big deal; and as Chase Carey said, he’s to be commended for that. But the world has moved on, while Bernie hasn’t. Formula 1’s internet presence is a joke. The social-media clampdown is ridiculous for a sport that relies so much on sponsoring, image and exposure. There’s no way to watch races online. There’s no way for ‘casual’ viewers to catch the racing in many countries because it’s only on Pay-TV. Even IF you wanted to get Formula 1 and Formula 1 only, you can’t get it directly and often enough have to buy an expensive package deal with football and whatnot.

    How is any of this going to attract sponsors? How is any of this further growing the sport? How is any of this the “plan” of a “genius businessman?”

    It simply isn’t. Goodbye Bernie, thanks for all you’ve done. But it’s time to admit you need to let go.

    1. He’s too old to live long enough to get it back.

  21. Massa is right, Alonso should feel so honoured to race in F1 that racing in a lower grade racing series would be an anathema, and he should be so essential to McLaren they wouldn’t hesitate to hinder him racing in another series, but considering McLaren’s form the presence of Alonso isn’t essential to their success, at least for one race anyway, and the trip away might do him so good.
    In addition, it could attract fans and corporates to F1, the latter could prove beneficial to teams.

    1. petebaldwin (@)
      12th May 2017, 12:24

      I agree. It’s “not correct” that a driver like Alonso wants to skip Monaco.

      I don’t blame him though. It’s “not correct” that 3 seasons have been ruined by a supplier.

  22. Post-event, a selection of cars, including the race-winning machine, are taken to () R&D facility for scrutineering, which is streamed online for fans to watch.

    If a single car going around in circles fetches 2M views, than this should break the billion ;)

  23. Let’s be honest, any one of us could take Alonso’s place at Monaco without any risk of ending up with a worse result for the team, you don’t need a double world champion when your car struggles to complete a lap. And at least there’s a chance of him earning Honda and McLaren some good press at Indy.

  24. Fellow drivers and team bosses need to mind their own business. It’s more about money now than actual racing, that is why you’ll have tracks like Monaco and Sochi that name real racing impossible. I knew Lewis won’t miss it because of the spotlight on fashion and he thinks he is a diva(though he is a guy). But this type of racing is nonsensical and BORING, its a train track. And too dangerous, simply put…IT IS NOT WORTH THE MONEY AND SPECTACLE. Just have the fashion show and concerts, that’s all Monaco is good for.

  25. petebaldwin (@)
    12th May 2017, 12:21

    That Gulf News article at the bottom of the roundup is a hillarious read.

    Mr Chase should rue his remarks and give Bernie the fulsome praise his selfless efforts over four decades have truly deserved.

    Selfless!? :D Is it April 1st?

    1. Although it is nice to see that Roy Lanchester has found work writing for Gulf News

  26. He who can shall, he who can’t shall judge.

  27. I think Liberty just needs to pay their shareholders more ;)

  28. I will tell you what’s not correct. One of the best racing drivers in the world being unable to complete a single lap in practice. Not one. That’s definitely not correct.

    If I was running Haas I would save it with the coin toss. If I have only one update it is going to go to Grosjean. Small team like that need to maximise the opportunities.

    On the subject of the NASCAR style inspections. LOVE IT! Great idea. Let’s keep this thing mixed up and exciting. That’s my two cents…

  29. These old, irrelevant cronies whining about due lauding…

  30. wow love this thanks

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