Unpopular F1 opinions

[Londoner]

I think people should hating on Bruno Senna.

I think they should continue, as he is a gloryhunting clown. He has deliberately used the Senna name to get himself to F1, even though his name in a typical English language format is Bruno Leali (in Portuguese the mother's maiden name is also included in their offspring's full name). Therefore he has deliberately gone against convention to use the Senna name, as if it were a brand. Yes, I know, Ayrton did it too, but he did it to hide the fact he was racing from his parents when he was young (his true surname being da Silva).

He does not have the talent to cut it in F1. He is riding along on Embratel money and his uncle's surname.

This, so much.

He's one of only three drivers currently on the grid that I dislike (the others being Hamilton and Vettel...)

[Gerudo Dragon]

The new podium sucks.

[FullMetalJack]

The new podium sucks.

If you mean the one they used at Silverstone, I agree.

[Ferrim]

I think people should hating on Bruno Senna.

I think they should continue, as he is a gloryhunting clown. He has deliberately used the Senna name to get himself to F1, even though his name in a typical English language format is Bruno Leali (in Portuguese the mother's maiden name is also included in their offspring's full name). Therefore he has deliberately gone against convention to use the Senna name, as if it were a brand. Yes, I know, Ayrton did it too, but he did it to hide the fact he was racing from his parents when he was young (his true surname being da Silva).

Wrong. It's usual for Brazilian people to use the mother's surname as the first one, instead of the father's, and hence why Bruno's mother is also called Senna. His legal name is Bruno Senna Lalli, and that wouldn't be the case if the Brazilians didn't use to carry their mother's surname to the next generation.

[DemocalypseNow]

I think people should hating on Bruno Senna.

I think they should continue, as he is a gloryhunting clown. He has deliberately used the Senna name to get himself to F1, even though his name in a typical English language format is Bruno Leali (in Portuguese the mother's maiden name is also included in their offspring's full name). Therefore he has deliberately gone against convention to use the Senna name, as if it were a brand. Yes, I know, Ayrton did it too, but he did it to hide the fact he was racing from his parents when he was young (his true surname being da Silva).

Wrong. It's usual for Brazilian people to use the mother's surname as the first one, instead of the father's, and hence why Bruno's mother is also called Senna. His legal name is Bruno Senna Lalli, and that wouldn't be the case if the Brazilians didn't use to carry their mother's surname to the next generation.

Not wrong. You didn't read my post correctly. I said that in English language format, only the father's surname should be carried over. In F1, names are anglicised, such as Baumgartner Zsolt having his naming order reversed. Of course in Brazil they say Bruno Senna Lalli, I know this, my girlfriend was born in Rio so I know the naming conventions there. But my point is, when having his name anglicised for the purpose of official entries and marketing etc, he deliberately went against the normal protocol and used Senna instead.

[AdrianSutil]

So? He's used the Senna name to get into F1. If I was him, I'd have done the same.

[DemocalypseNow]

So? He's used the Senna name to get into F1. If I was him, I'd have done the same.

Well, yeah. Doesn't mean he should be immune to getting stick for it though. Also doesn't change the fact he's not good enough to justify that Williams seat. I don't see how his position can be justified on talent alone.

[Aerospeed]

So? He's used the Senna name to get into F1. If I was him, I'd have done the same.

Well, yeah. Doesn't mean he should be immune to getting stick for it though. Also doesn't change the fact he's not good enough to justify that Williams seat. I don't see how his position can be justified on talent alone.

Bruno Senna is way better than Maldonado, in the sense that he doesn't crash the car. And in the end, I'd rather take a consistent guy who can score points than someone who is really fast but erratic.

I can see Bruno Senna becoming a #2 in the near future...

[Myrvold]

But my point is, when having his name anglicised for the purpose of official entries and marketing etc, he deliberately went against the normal protocol and used Senna instead.

Oh - Fernando Diaz then?

[DemocalypseNow]

But my point is, when having his name anglicised for the purpose of official entries and marketing etc, he deliberately went against the normal protocol and used Senna instead.

Oh - Fernando Diaz then?

Spanish is the opposite way round to Portuguese. Though I guess that means it should really be Pedro Martínez instead of De La Rosa, but whatever. Carlos Sainz comes to mind, his full name is Carlos Sainz Cenamor. And Luis Pérez-Sala Valls-Taberner, Jaime Alguersuari Escudero, Adrián Campos Suñer...you get the idea.

[UncreativeUsername37]

So? He's used the Senna name to get into F1. If I was him, I'd have done the same.

Well, yeah. Doesn't mean he should be immune to getting stick for it though. Also doesn't change the fact he's not good enough to justify that Williams seat. I don't see how his position can be justified on talent alone.

Bruno Senna is way better than Maldonado, in the sense that he doesn't crash the car. And in the end, I'd rather take a consistent guy who can score points than someone who is really fast but erratic.
I can see Bruno Senna becoming a #2 in the near future...

But scoring points is the problem. He's not fast enough to score points, and it's better to inconsistently score than to never score at all.

[Salamander]

The new podium sucks.

I think that's a fairly universal opinion.

[mario]

So? He's used the Senna name to get into F1. If I was him, I'd have done the same.

Well, yeah. Doesn't mean he should be immune to getting stick for it though. Also doesn't change the fact he's not good enough to justify that Williams seat. I don't see how his position can be justified on talent alone.

Bruno Senna is way better than Maldonado, in the sense that he doesn't crash the car. And in the end, I'd rather take a consistent guy who can score points than someone who is really fast but erratic.
I can see Bruno Senna becoming a #2 in the near future...

But scoring points is the problem. He's not fast enough to score points, and it's better to inconsistently score than to never score at all.

Moreover, I hate to say this, but there are quite a few current and former drivers who would fit the bill for consistent, clean racers that would be able to score points on a fairly regular basis and would have just as much, if not more, potential than Bruno. Alguersuari and Buemi for a start, particularly the former thanks to his work with Pirelli, Barrichello, Heidfeld, Sutil: all of those drivers would have the benefits of being consistent, fairly clean drivers with experience of the current generation of cars, and Sutil could have potentially brought in a little bit of sponsorship.

[David AGS]

Agree, could bend the rules and add Klien to it possibly. Ditto for de la Rosa if he wasnt at HRT and still on the books at McLaren.

[Gerudo Dragon]

Jérôme d'Ambrosio is better than Charles Pic.

[CoopsII]

The new podium sucks.

I think that's a fairly universal opinion.

With us fans yes but as the upper echelons of F1 rarely pay much attention to what we think we may be stuck with it. Cant wait til it happens in the rain

[Pamphlet]

Jérôme d'Ambrosio is better than Charles Pic.

I'd take this further and say that JDA is better than even Glock, though how much of that is due to the latter's disappearing motivation is a mystery.

[pasta_maldonado]

The new podium sucks.

I think that's a fairly universal opinion.

With us fans yes but as the upper echelons of F1 rarely pay much attention to what we think we may be stuck with it. Cant wait til it happens in the rain

I can see someone slipping and dropping the trophy, or knocking everybody over, or almost falling off

[girry]

Jérôme d'Ambrosio is better than Charles Pic.

I'd take this further and say that JDA is better than even Glock, though how much of that is due to the latter's disappearing motivation is a mystery.

I would take it even further and say that even if I have nothing against Glock, he is rather overrated imo and Marussia is being held back due to having no proper lead driver. Yes, he matched old Trulli at Toyota, but after 2009 Jarno lost to Kovalainen (who isn't any driving god really..) pretty much hands down and Glock has at least struggled with all di Grassi, d'Ambrosio and Pic..

..were Toyota cars 08/09 better than everybody thought?

[Pamphlet]

I would take it even further and say that even if I have nothing against Glock, he is rather overrated imo and Marussia is being held back due to having no proper lead driver. Yes, he matched old Trulli at Toyota, but after 2009 Jarno lost to Kovalainen (who isn't any driving god really..) pretty much hands down and Glock has at least struggled with all di Grassi, d'Ambrosio and Pic..

Pre-Lotus/Caterham Trulli is, in my view, one of the most underrated drivers in recent years. I consider him, in his prime, to have been better than Kovalainen will ever be, but after Toyota's departure neither he nor Glock had any reason to push anymore.

..were Toyota cars 08/09 better than everybody thought?

I always saw it as an...inconsistent car. It was much stronger than most people thought it was, and on some tracks it was, at the very least, the second best car, but strategic mistakes when it mattered most (didn't they waste a 1-2 finish?) along with other incidents and the aforementioned inconsistency cost them a better place in the championship.

[CoopsII]

I can see someone slipping and dropping the trophy, or knocking everybody over, or almost falling off

Or Kimi saying "F**k dis, it is raining, Im off for a s**t"

[girry]

The Trulli of 2000-2005 was a top driver, top driver as we say about Alonso, Hamilton, Vettel today (remember start of 2004 and 2005..) but I see it as if he wasnt that much of a top driver at the end of his Toyota career anymore.

admittably, Jarno has always been a perfectionist - he was, basically, crap when everything didn't 'click' - maybe the weakening performance in later Toyota career was just down to having to drive cars that didn't always suit him perfectly and not about 'passing the peak'. This would support the inconsistency theory, but regardless of the reason I say matching the late Trulli was never a feat really, and Timo's 'good' reputation comes only from doing it.

[mario]

..were Toyota cars 08/09 better than everybody thought?

I always saw it as an...inconsistent car. It was much stronger than most people thought it was, and on some tracks it was, at the very least, the second best car, but strategic mistakes when it mattered most (didn't they waste a 1-2 finish?) along with other incidents and the aforementioned inconsistency cost them a better place in the championship.

I believe that you are thinking of the 2009 Bahrain GP, where Toyota started 1st and 2nd on the grid but fell back during the race.
Now, it has to be borne in mind that Toyota's initial 1-2 at the start was a little misleading, since Trulli and Glock had qualified with a lower fuel load than either Vettel or Button - in qualifying trim, Vettel was the outright fastest, and in race trim Brawn were more competitive too. They did have a chance at winning that race, although their slightly too short first stint cost them even before their decision to run the harder compound for the middle stint (a strategy that might have had a chance of working with track position, but they lost that by stopping a few laps ahead of everybody else).

The TF109's performance was strangely inconsistent throughout the year - their aerodynamics seemed to be fairly solid, at least during the earlier part of the season, but they were lacking on the mechanical side (they had a number of problems with their suspension settings that year, which saw them struggling at times with poor mechanical grip) and the Toyota engine definitely lacked power compared to the leading manufacturers.

[Aerospeed]

Wasn't the TF110 the best chassis in the field but Toyota withdrew because they didn't want to become embarrassed about their lack of power in their engines?

[TomWazzleshaw]

Wasn't the TF110 the best chassis in the field but Toyota withdrew because they didn't want to become embarrassed about their lack of power in their engines?

I can't see how it could have held a candle to the RB6 but I guess we'll never know.

The TF109's performance was strangely inconsistent throughout the year - their aerodynamics seemed to be fairly solid, at least during the earlier part of the season, but they were lacking on the mechanical side (they had a number of problems with their suspension settings that year, which saw them struggling at times with poor mechanical grip) and the Toyota engine definitely lacked power compared to the leading manufacturers.

The mechanical grip was abmysal on the car yet Glock somehow hauled it to 2nd place at Singapore. It wasn't that it was just inconsistent, it was inconsistent with no inherent pattern whatsoever and a bunch of incompetent fools running the team who had no idea what the problem was let alone how to fix it

[dinizintheoven]

Yeah, sure why not, I'm the best driver in the freaking world. Even better than Don Pentecost, believe it or not.

I've only ever been indoor karting once, and was so monumentally awful at it that the four-man team I was driving for that day only escaped coming last because our main rivals were given a 10-minute penalty. Watching F1 for 17 years, as it was then, knowing what a racing line is was absolutely no guarantee of being able to put it into practice. Furthermore, in that rival team, two of them had ever even had a single driving lesson before.

And despite all this, I'm still a better racing driver than Don Pentecost.

[CoopsII]

I've only ever been indoor karting once, and was so monumentally awful at it that the four-man team I was driving for that day only escaped coming last because our main rivals were given a 10-minute penalty.

Way too honest. You should at least blame the tyres, the engine development and the fact you werent happy with the set-up all weekend.

[AdrianSutil]

I've only ever been indoor karting once, and was so monumentally awful at it that the four-man team I was driving for that day only escaped coming last because our main rivals were given a 10-minute penalty.

Way too honest. You should at least blame the tyres, the engine development and the fact you werent happy with the set-up all weekend.

"Dinizintheoven, everyone is faster than you... can you confirm the message?"

[mario]

Wasn't the TF110 the best chassis in the field but Toyota withdrew because they didn't want to become embarrassed about their lack of power in their engines?

I can't see how it could have held a candle to the RB6 but I guess we'll never know.

The TF109's performance was strangely inconsistent throughout the year - their aerodynamics seemed to be fairly solid, at least during the earlier part of the season, but they were lacking on the mechanical side (they had a number of problems with their suspension settings that year, which saw them struggling at times with poor mechanical grip) and the Toyota engine definitely lacked power compared to the leading manufacturers.

The mechanical grip was abmysal on the car yet Glock somehow hauled it to 2nd place at Singapore. It wasn't that it was just inconsistent, it was inconsistent with no inherent pattern whatsoever and a bunch of incompetent fools running the team who had no idea what the problem was let alone how to fix it

The TF110 will probably remain one of those great "What if" questions - it has come up a few times already in this thread - because the car did feature a number of interesting features, some of which did subsequently appear on other cars (the TF110 had what is called an "endplate-less" front wing, where the traditional front endplace is blended into the front wing elements rather than being a separate feature - something which most of the teams in the field now use). It would probably have been pretty competitive because Toyota could have partially compensated for their slight lack in power through better fuel efficiency, although whether it could have matched the triumvirate of Red Bull, McLaren and Ferrari is something that will remain unknown.

You're right about the inconsistency of the mechanical grip of that car - they were absolutely nowhere in Monaco, and whilst they were significantly better in Singapore, Glock's podium was somewhat fortuitous (he was reasonably fast in practise and qualifying, but looked more like he'd be in the lower than upper part of the top 10). It was pretty much the case that they knew they had a problem, but couldn't work out quite what it was...

[dinizintheoven]

Way too honest. You should at least blame the tyres, the engine development and the fact you werent happy with the set-up all weekend.

Bathplug. I forgot all those. I told you all I'm not a racing driver...

"Dinizintheoven, everyone is faster than you... can you confirm the message?"

At least Felipe Massa only ever heard that particular line once. I am reminded every time I'm in the pub with any of the other drivers.

I then remind them I'm the better driver in real-world conditions, having tackled everything that the Alps, the Pyrenees, Norway, Iceland and the Milan Tangenziale at rush hour have ever thrown at me, conditions which would make those who would try to mock my racing inability perform an unwanted and spontaneous impression of Kimi Räikkönen not watching Pele.

[Aerospeed]

Yeah, sure why not, I'm the best driver in the freaking world. Even better than Don Pentecost, believe it or not.

I've only ever been indoor karting once, and was so monumentally awful at it that the four-man team I was driving for that day only escaped coming last because our main rivals were given a 10-minute penalty. Watching F1 for 17 years, as it was then, knowing what a racing line is was absolutely no guarantee of being able to put it into practice. Furthermore, in that rival team, two of them had ever even had a single driving lesson before.

And despite all this, I'm still a better racing driver than Don Pentecost.

I'm the next Andrea de Cesaris, because I'm terribly slow and I kept holding up a couple of people

[FullMetalJack]

I'm the next Andrea de Cesaris, because I'm terribly slow and I kept holding up a couple of people

That's more late 80s Arnoux-esque. De Cesaris was always a fast driver.

[TomWazzleshaw]

I'm the next Andrea de Cesaris, because I'm terribly slow and I kept holding up a couple of people

That's more late 80s Arnoux-esque. De Cesaris was always a fast driver.

Well... until he inevitably threw it into a wall that is

[FullMetalJack]

I'm the next Andrea de Cesaris, because I'm terribly slow and I kept holding up a couple of people

That's more late 80s Arnoux-esque. De Cesaris was always a fast driver.

Well... until he inevitably threw it into a wall that is

Exactly, a bit like Maldonado. Although Maldonado can never be the next De Cesaris, as Maldonado has somehow won a race.

[Faustus]

I think Lewis Hamilton will never again be Formula 1 champion.

[FullMetalJack]

I think Lewis Hamilton will never again be Formula 1 champion.

I hope he won't be.

[AndreaModa]

I think Lewis Hamilton will never again be Formula 1 champion.

That's interesting because I was thinking something similar a couple of days ago, although he's still young and got plenty of time ahead of him, I can't see him having the overall complete package as a driver in comparison to a driver like Alonso. Granted, Hamilton did well in 2009 when the McLaren was nothing like competitive, but in general he's just been good, not outstanding in my opinion, certainly in these last couple of years anyway.

[FullMetalJack]

I think Lewis Hamilton will never again be Formula 1 champion.

That's interesting because I was thinking something similar a couple of days ago, although he's still young and got plenty of time ahead of him, I can't see him having the overall complete package as a driver in comparison to a driver like Alonso. Granted, Hamilton did well in 2009 when the McLaren was nothing like competitive, but in general he's just been good, not outstanding in my opinion, certainly in these last couple of years anyway.

Hamilton was good as soon as the McLaren became competitive, even Heikki was quicker than him before then.

[Pamphlet]

I think Lewis Hamilton will never again be Formula 1 champion.

That's interesting because I was thinking something similar a couple of days ago, although he's still young and got plenty of time ahead of him, I can't see him having the overall complete package as a driver in comparison to a driver like Alonso. Granted, Hamilton did well in 2009 when the McLaren was nothing like competitive, but in general he's just been good, not outstanding in my opinion, certainly in these last couple of years anyway.

Hamilton was good as soon as the McLaren became competitive, even Heikki was quicker than him before then.

This. He only started doing well after the car got good. Even then, he only beat Raikkonen by one point. Massa would've torn him apart.

I think Lewis Hamilton will never again be Formula 1 champion.

Prior to this season I was actually thinking the same of Alonso. Even then, I still think this is his last chance, but only because the Ferrari is far too good now. He's been lucky in 3 seasons already (2007, 2010 and the start of this season). His luck is going to run out sooner or later.

Speaking of unpopular opinions, the F2012. It was never that bad. People keep bringing up Australia, but Alonso would've made it into the top ten had he not made that mistake, and we all saw how easy it was to climb back from below the top ten - nearly everyone did it. Malaysia was almost as big of a fluke as Europe was. Massa, on the other hand, was just utter shite, and made Alonso look extremely good in comparison.

Yes, I'm going to say it - Alonso is overrated. And this is coming from not just a tifosi, but also someone who heavily respects him for his actions in 2007. I consider him to have won 2005 (Newey messed up) and 2006 (Renault and Ferrari shared the top spots) by merit, but he was insanely lucky to stay in the championship fights in 2007 and 2010.

[FMecha]

Yes, I'm going to say it - Alonso is overrated. And this is coming from not just a tifosi, but also someone who heavily respects him for his actions in 2007. I consider him to have won 2005 (Newey messed up) and 2006 (Renault and Ferrari shared the top spots) by merit, but he was insanely lucky to stay in the championship fights in 2007 and 2010.

Except that the fact he stayed in championship fight in 2010 was, IMO, helped by the German GP Team Orders.