Alonso ignores Hamilton sabotage reports

Fernando Alonso has fended off the latest press revelations about his stormy relationship with McLaren and Lewis Hamilton in 2007.

In his newly-launched biography about Bernie Ecclestone, author Tom Bower said Spaniard Alonso had asked his then boss Ron Dennis in Hungary to sabotage the sister car driven by Hamilton so that it ran out of fuel.

Bower’s ‘No Angel’ book also claimed that Alonso, who now drives for Ferrari, tried to blackmail Dennis into making him the team’s number one driver in exchange for keeping quiet about spygate emails.

“I ignore what is said from other countries,” Alonso was quoted by the Spanish press at a sponsor event in Madrid.

Asked about the Bower accusations specifically, he added: “I don’t know — everybody is getting on with their own jobs.”

Source: YallaF1

'Alonso wanted to sabotage Hamilton's car'

Any biography about Bernie Ecclestone is bound to come with a few surprises, the latest being that Fernando Alonso allegedly tried to sabotage Lewis Hamilton

The acrimonious relationship between the two during their year together at McLaren in 2007 is well documented. The duo not only fought on the track but also off it.

Following qualifying for the Hungarian GP, Alonso was stripped of his pole position for blocking Hamilton in the pits during qualifying, preventing the then-rookie from challenging for pole position.

Added that, there was the Stepneygate spy scandal where McLaren received secret technical information about Ferrari's 2007 challenger.

The scandal reportedly came to light when Alonso threatened to report team boss Ron Dennis to the FIA if he was not handed number one driver status.

But it now appears that those were not the only controversies during the Spaniard's time at McLaren.

According to The Star, Tom Bowers' recently published biography "No Angel: The Secret Life of Bernie Ecclestone", claims that Alonso asked Dennis to sabotage Hamilton.



The book alleges that, hours before the start of that tension-fraught 2007 Hungarian GP, Alonso approached Dennis, telling him to short-fuel Hamilton's McLaren so that the Brit would run out of fuel and fail to finish the grand prix.

And although Hamilton and Alonso have insisted in recent months that they have buried the hatchet, these claims may spark yet another war between the two World Champions.

Source: Planet-F1

Kimi Räikkönen Press Conference Shell at Brazilian GP 2007

Source: Anelise30

'Alonso should have stayed at McLaren'

Fernando Alonso would have come out a stronger person had he remained at McLaren after his tension-fraught season with Lewis Hamilton, according to Steve Nielsen.

Alonso's one and only season with McLaren saw the double World Champion partnered with Hamilton, who was in his rookie campaign. However, the latter's results were by no means that of a rookie.

Hamilton took the fight to Alonso out on track, causing a great deal of tension within the team as the Spaniard was not given the number one status that he had been guaranteed at his previous team, Renault.

The on-track feud soon turned into off-track drama with reports of in-fighting and favouritism making headlines as did McLaren's involvement in the Stepneygate spy scandal.

The end result was that Alonso left McLaren at the end of that one season to return to Renault. However, if he had been the Spaniard's manager, Renault's sporting director Steve Nielsen says he would have told Alonso to stay and fight Hamilton.

"Fernando was clearly our No1 driver. I think he liked that. And when he joined McLaren, I'm sure he expected the same thing," Nielsen told eurosport.fr.

"But McLaren treat their drivers equally and Lewis, even though in his first year in F1, was very fast. Fernando was shocked at having been denied No1 status and surprised by Lewis's speed. It was an uncomfortable situation for him.

"From there his relationship with McLaren deteriorated and everything about it has been published (in the Stepneygate scandal). We know what happened and he came back (to Renault).

"In fact, I think - and I do not know if he agrees with me on this but he knows I love him - that return to us was probably a mistake.

"If I had been his manager at the time, I would have said: 'Listen, you have to do this, stay and beat this guy.

"Firstly because you have the best car now, secondly because your best chance of being Champion next season is by still driving for McLaren.'

"I think he would have come out stronger."

Source: Planet F1

Räikkönen: three unforgettable years together

"I will never forget the three years I spent at Ferrari. At the wheel of a car from Maranello, I managed to realise my dream as a driver, which was to win the Formula 1 World Championship title, but it’s not just because of the results that I will never forget this experience. It was a very intense time, a mix of indescribable happiness and some difficult moments: throughout it all, we were always united, as befits a real team.

I took nine wins with Ferrari and three of them stand out. The first was in Melbourne, in 2007, because I could not ask for more than to start my career with the Reds in this way. Then there was the last one at Spa last year, because winning in those circumstances, with a car that was not as good as that of the opposition, was a real morale booster for the team, which was going through a particularly complicated time. Then, there was the victory in Sao Paolo, which brought me the world title and no other words are needed to explain why that race is special for me.

My character and how I express myself is very different to the Italian way, but that did not stop us from understanding each other and the emotions we shared. I gave my maximum effort over those three years and I got so much in return and even if, in the end, we went our separate ways, I will always have some really nice memories.”

Source: Ferrari

Pilots, what a kind of people: the Holy Drinker’s Conundrum

Today I’ve promised to talk about Kimi and maybe I could get off with a direct and frank admission: I have always had a sincere liking for this atypical and unusual blond, for his extraneity to some styles of ‘robot’ behaviors in this post-modern Formula One, and so on. But I understand that would be not enough.

So. Well, since the beginning of his career Raikkonen seemed to me a subject comparable to someone like Mansell. Do you remember, the British Lion? Definitely he was not as complete as Senna and had not 'political' talent like Prost had, and that’s because he was beaten by him during the year they spent together at Ferrari. But Mansell, with a steering wheel in his hands, was a volley of pure emotions.

The Holy Drinker, ditto. Since the beginning, back when he still was at Sauber, we had guessed that his relationship with the auto motor-racing got exhausted in the agonistic element. Driving. Keeping the pedal on the metal. Pushing the car you had to the limit. And paying zero attention to the outside, to the details, to the unwritten rules that are characteristic of that environment.

Is it a limit? For the way things went, for the way things turned out to him, certainly yes. Usually when a driver becomes world champion is cuddled by the team that he brought to triumph. So I also was wrong when on the magical evening of Interlagos 2007 I thought “Kimi has won in an incredible way, I know, he was helped by the feuds inside McLaren team and by the consequences of the spy-story scandal, but now, at Maranello he will be the king, the landlord. So, a new age is coming and this age will last, because the talent can’t be questioned anymore".

I said that I was wrong. The Holy Drinker also was wrong. In 2008, after the success in Barcelona, the second of the season, he had the championship in his hands. On the contrary, because of the tyres covers forgotten at Montecarlo GP, the wrong tyres at Silverstone, the failure to the exhaust in France and the crash with Hamilton in Montreal, well, the de-legitimation is started. Accompanied by a strategic choice that it’s not the case to further analyze here: Ferrari had decided to bet on Alonso, perhaps the course was already fixed in the late 2007 summer, when El Banco was decisive in destroying Dennis, showing those notorious e-mails of his computer.

But this news is story now. I claimed and I still claim that Raikkonen didn’t deserve to be treated in that way. I have the deeply knowledge that if Todt didn’t change job, well, nothing of what we have just told would be happened. But I can’t prove my own sensation, then I stop here.

In brief, Kimi as a driver can’t be disputed and even those who left him agree with this statement. Kimi is the king of Spa and anyone who knows the Ardennes knows that on that track the top winners are really Dragons, from Senna to Schumacher to Prost. Perhaps Raikkonen doesn’t worth these three in absolute terms, for example no-one has ever described him as a formidable test driver. But among his contemporaries (Schumi is not, though he made the foolish thing to return in F1) I haven’t seen yet a pilot who can or should be considered significantly higher than the blond. Alonso is not that, Hamilton or Vettel are not either.

Maybe (and so we come to the heart of the problem) the human element didn’t help the Holy Drinker. I mean, Kimi is really a person of few words. Raikkonen is not a pimp, he doesn’t butter up anyone, he asks for what he's worth, he respect and demands respect. Then stop. I have no memories about ‘political’ pressures he has exercised, in three years he has never been angry with Massa and his clan, and so on. Another driver, in his place, after the miracle of 2007, would probably have raised his own voice, telling ‘from now I am the leader’. He didn’t. He shut up. Sometimes he came to ‘racing department’, chatting with the engineers, then he went to Fanano, where there is an ice establishment, to organize a hockey game.

You understand yourself that, at the end of the day, to get rid of someone like him, very naive but also very practical, it was just a matter of money. Kimi has not a lobby behind, he has no allies in heaven, on Ecclestone’s maps Finland is just a tiny mark. “Everything is held and there is nothing wrong, it’s life and it’s time for you to grow, you have to take it so, yes, beautiful ...” (Vasco Rossi, when you need it, you need it).

In the end, speaking a bit about loyalty and fair play on the track, I don’t remember blatant improper acts or fauls of the Holy Drinker. Hard and tough gamer, but without bandit attitudes. In this, he is much like his compatriot Hakkinen, a fair player.

I think Formula One is missing Kimi, not vice versa.

Source: Quotiano.net - Turrini's Blog
Courtesy: _TaniaS_ KROF

Alonso: F1 scandals just wrong place, wrong time

New Ferrari recruit Fernando Alonso has defended his somewhat besmirched reputation in the wake of his implication in two damaging and high-profile F1 scandals over the last three years - insisting that in both instances, he was simply in the 'wrong place at the wrong time'

Fernando Alonso has insisted that his involvement in two of the most explosive scandals in F1 history in recent years has simply been a case of being in the 'wrong place at the wrong time', and as he begins his new – and what he claims will be last – stage of his ultra-successful grand prix career with Ferrari in 2010, the Spaniard stresses that all of the controversy is now 'in the past'.

In 2007, not only did Alonso infamously fall out with both McLaren-Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton and team principal Ron Dennis during his sole, unhappy campaign at the Woking-based outfit, but he also found himself embroiled in the so-called espionage row, after the multiple title-winning British concern was found to be in possession of confidential technical data belonging to arch-rival Ferrari.

Following a particularly bitter dispute with Dennis in the wake of the Hungarian Grand Prix qualifying session mid-summer, the Oviedo native is even believed to have attempted to blackmail the Englishman by threatening to disclose information to governing body the FIA, which was investigating the crime. McLaren was ultimately fined a sporting record $100 million and disqualified from that year's constructors' standings.

Two years later, and the same Alonso again found himself caught up in a headline-grabbing tale of outrage, as his employer Renault was exposed as having deliberately 'fixed' the result of the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix, by instructing Nelsinho Piquet to crash out to necessitate a safety car period that played perfectly into his early-stopping team-mate's hands and enabled the double F1 World Champion to triumph in the sport's inaugural night-time race from a distinctly disadvantaged grid slot.

Having been implicated – directly or otherwise – in two flagrant examples of cheating have admittedly done little for Alonso's reputation, and whilst he has always protested his innocence in and ignorance of the 'Singapore-gate' saga and was never doubted by the subsequent FIA World Motor Sport Council (WMSC) hearing that very nearly resulted in Renault being banned from the sport outright, his critics argue that mud sticks.

“With the spy history I was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” the 21-time grand prix-winner told British newspaper The Guardian, “but I was very happy to help the FIA discover everything. 'Crashgate' was not easy. It was a bad season for F1 last year and Flavio [Briatore – former Renault F1 managing director and Alonso's manager who allegedly initiated the Singapore conspiracy] is a friend. I have been working with him many years now, so for all the [legal] decisions that go well for him I am happy – but I don't know everything about his case.”

Briatore subsequently proved successful in getting his effective lifetime ban from all FIA-sanctioned forms of motorsport overturned by the French High Court earlier this year, but Alonso insists he has 'no idea' as to whether or not the flamboyant Italian will ever return to the F1 paddock. When put to him that he must have been shocked that his former employers could stoop so low as to resort to potentially life-threatening tactics, all he will concede is: “It is in the past.”

One person who certainly was shocked by the turn of events in the Far-Eastern city-state that night is Alonso's new Ferrari team-mate Felipe Massa, who angrily contended in the wake of the fall-out that Renault and Piquet's foul play had likely cost him 2008 title glory, given that the Brazilian had been leading in Singapore prior to his countryman's crash and in the enforced rushed pit-stop there was a problem with his refuelling hose that led to him ultimately taking the chequered flag a lowly and point-less 13th.

The Paulista went on to lose out on the laurels by just a single point in the final reckoning to Lewis Hamilton –somewhat ironically, Alonso's arch-nemesis in 2007, with little palpably love lost between the former McLaren team-mates. Given that ten points were on offer for victory in Singapore and Massa picked up none of them, the 28-year-old's ire is understandable – and it has led, some opine, to a somewhat frosty relationship with the man who has joined him at Maranello this year. Not so, stresses Alonso.

“People are only writing these things because they know we are very strong,” he urged, before concluding: “Felipe and I work for the team.”

Source: Crash.net