I can't see how no one could want him, he's not what I'd call a 'prestige driver' but he's pretty good at what he does.
People will want him, but there's about 4 teams who can afford to pay teams a salary, and Jenson doesn't fit any of them but Mclaren. Kristensen's seat in WEC is probably a better offer than he'll get in F1, from anyone but Mclaren.
Merc, Williams, RBR, and Ferrari are all tied up. I doubt he wants to just fizzle out if McLaren don't want him. If I were Ferrari, I'd ditch Kimi and replace him with Button. He'll bring more points and a positive attitude that Kimi just can't offer. Sadly...
Dear Jenson... We'd love to have you here in Indy... If Big Ron is a complete spanner, please consider joining this fine North American racing series. Just please don't hurt yourself on the silly oval bits. Amen!
Will Stevens... Only finished a lap down. Not bad all things considered. Glad Caterham made it.... Even if we didn't see a lot of them.
Ferrari are squarely back in the pre-Schumacher era. Let's see if Vettel can spark a turnaround. He's got his work cut out for him.
To be fair, i think Kimi's attitude is much different away from the cameras, he's very well liked by those he works with at Ferrari. And fwiw, i have a sneaking suspicion that he'll beat Vettel comfortably next year. James Allison will build a car with a much better front end on it but their lack of aero will hurt Vettel and he'll have a season similar to Kimi's this year. If not and Vettel does even half what Alonso does to Kimi this year though, he'll be finished.
Unless he's secretly been designing the aero and chassis for the past 5 years and Newey was just out getting pissed whilst everybody was wrongly giving him praise, then not quite sure how he'll spark anything for a good while yet. Alonso clearly thought the same, he didn't want another 3+ years of driving mediocre cars when he's already reaching his later F1 years.
You think? I can't see that at all. I think Vettel will have Kimi's number quite comfortably. I could be wrong (and usually am) but Kimi is just a shadow of his former self.
I do. I honestly think this years Ferrari was just a dog that was the exact opposite kind of dog to what Kimi could use. Whilst Alonso thrashed him over the whole season, it wasn't like Kimi was fighting for 10th (and often losing) whilst Alonso was snatching podiums or even challenging for them most races, he too was usually found fighting for low/mid points more often than not but was in the place to make the most of opportunities whenever they did pop up. Towards the end of the season Kimi was generally pretty close to Alonso and was just on the end of a lot of bad luck a few times throughout the season when he was in better positions (See Monaco, the jack collapsing last race etc), the difference whilst looking large got amplified somewhat. Yeah, Kimi did a pretty awful job in getting on top of the issues and should have been closer a lot more that he did manage, but let's not forget it was just a crap car generally, not a good car he was getting nothing out of. Combine that with Alonso... you could argue he drove the wheels off that heap all year in a way no other driver (perhaps Hamilton aside) could. If you look back to Alonso's championships, the Renault's always had a pretty numb front end compared to the McLaren's Kimi was driving, it's pretty clear that the actually handling of the car just suits Alonso better, which is no surprise, he's been there 5 years and is their undisputed number 1, not sure the front end was ever their priority.... though given how crap the rest of the car is too, not sure what that priority was! 2015 will be a James Allison chassis, he has built cars that Kimi has won in before at Lotus, knows what he looks for, i suspect that chassis will be built specifically with the front end in mind, especially knowing the troubles they had with it this year. Meanwhile for Vettel, He is undoubtedly phenomenally quick when the car is on rails but this year, the first year it hasn't been (yet was probably still one of the grippiest and best balanced cars out there), he got absolutely schooled by his team mate.... who was pinching race wins (Unlike Alonso) whilst Vettel was often found fighting with Alonso for mid points in his red dog despite being in a far superior car to Alonso. He's now moving to a team where the car is going to have even less aero grip than what he has just been owned in, to a car that should be much better suited to Kimi. Whilst it's not going to be a car that will be fighting for the title given their lack of an aero expert, i expect that the balance shift will let Kimi work with it, whereas we've seen absolutely nothing from Vettel to suggest that he'll enjoy and succeed with a car that is moving about underneath him.
Kimi just seemed to give up this season....there really was no fight in him at all, he just went missing. Now I know the same could be said for Vettel in some ways, but I fully expect him to return rejuvenated and do exactly the same to Kimi that Alonso has done. Kimi was horrible all season.
I think "anonymous" is better than "horrible". Think overall Kimi was just starting to show the odd sign he was getting on top of issues though. (albeit too little too late) Vettel can come back as rejuvenated as he wants, it's not going to change the fact he's likely to end up with a car that won't suit him at all and he's not the sort that can drag results out of a car that doesn't suit, either. Unless he comes back as somebody other than Sebastian Vettel, i don't see him making waves in whatever car Ferrari churn out. I expect they will be closer than this year regardless, but i'd be surprised... in fact shocked, if Vettel did what Alonso did to Kimi. I wouldn't be too shocked if Kimi did similar to what Ricciardo did to Vettel though. Or they could both have a year like this year and be fighting with Toro Rosso for "best Italian team" status!
I don't assume anything. I remember being in the pub with a good friend of mine, laughing when Schumacher joined Ferrari We thought he'd gone there for the payout. How wrong we were. There's more to come from Vettel.
Imho, Kimi is the same Kimi as 2012-2013. He will be back, he is unique in the way that you can't underestimate the guy as to say hes lost it. He would know in himself if he has.
The suggestions that Vettel can't drive a car that isn't planted to the track are absurd. Like all drivers he made his way to F1 impressing in lower formulae and before that in karts, he did have a racing career before 2010 you know. He's also an excellent wet weather driver so he's clearly got the skills to handle a car that moves around under him. I don't know what his problems have been this year and I'm not going to speculate or offer excuses, but he's proven over the years he's capable of sustaining exceptional levels of performance so writing him off after one bad year is completely premature; he's been nowhere near as bad as Hamilton was in 2011 and he's doing alright now. It would cost Ferrari a **** load to change drivers and wouldn't solve any of their problems. I'm sure they've pretty much written off 2015 as they look to rebuild, so there's really no point sacking Raikkonen and paying him millions to go rallying again. The future doesn't look good for them though, apparently they're on the brink of sacking Mattiacci and replacing him with the head of a cigarette company.
[video=youtube;14qA8-9nzcg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14qA8-9nzcg[/video] Out of his own mouth. He will know when its time to call it a day.
You may be right. He's certainly a very particular character. Part of his appeal has always been that 'man don't give a ****' quality, for better and for worse. The negative of that is that he appears to get demotivated easily and that seems to have happened again this year. Most of us get demotivated sometimes, it's human, but F1 drivers are supposed to be better than that. Anyway, he has bounced back before so maybe he will again. But why did he go back to Ferrari and why did they sign him when they could have had almost anyone, certainly someone younger and hungrier who wouldn't fall flat so easily? Yes, I agree with this and my post was a bit vague, I suppose. I meant it more in a hypothetical than a practical sense. But Ferrari re-signed a driver with whom they had already had problems (see above) and who, as you said, they had already paid off to make way for the keener Alonso. Now, they're 'stuck' with him again, where Button or any of several other more obviously motivated drivers would have been a better bet. Their actions in a crisis always seem to be of the knee-jerk variety, no foresight or coordination, when they should have a plan to address the roots of their malaise; even the coup of signing Vettel appears like more papering-over of the cracks.
