Spanish Grand Prix – Ferrari decides to sabotage their last champion again

Yay! Alonso finished ahead of his teammate in Spain. Fantastic! Outstanding! Wow!

He was almost lapped by the winner of course. But never mind that, hooray for Alonso! Emilio Botin, the Spanish CEO of Santander, was present. So it was VERY important that Alonso won the mini-battle, you get it. Okay, we had to kill off the last shred of trust that our last champion had in us. But who cares? 6th place people! Woo!

Montezemelo (L) and Botin

It doesn’t leave a bad taste in your mouth, it makes you throw up a little. Zero lessons have been learned from 2008, zero titles gained. The Scuderia have sold their soul at the crossroads. And they have thrown their former champion on the bonfire as a sacrifice.

Was it worth it? Of course not. No matter what Ferrari do this year, they will never catch the Mercedes cars. So it’s a bonfire for the vanities. Ferrari is vain, no doubt about it. But right now, they are nothing but a painted whore. Their car is out of breath, trailing after the leaders, with the tongue hanging out. And Alonso is cleverly wagging the dog, the dog being the team in this case.

I leave you with a few words on the whole affair from my friend, wrcva. He too did outstanding research on the entire Kimi-Ferrari-Santander thing. And he is the main author of that said piece on this blog: http://f1bias.com/2012/04/05/truth-about-kimi-ferrari-santander-2008/. So he is someone worth listening to.

wrcva:

What did you folks expect? Ferrari to let Kimi finish ahead of ALO in front of his countrymen in a race attended personally by Botin who happens to be the most important sponsor in F1? At a time when F1 powers are debating if they should get rid of tire blankets to save on electricity bills. Kimi signed up for this on a volunteer basis knowing full well he was walking into lion’s den, challenging ALO on his own turf. Kimi cannot just drive marginally better. He has to drive devastatingly better and do that in cars that sometimes can be personally inspected or be driven by ALO himself.

The good news for Kimi is that he showed what he can do to ALO in front of his home crowd on a track Finns would probably be hesitant to wave a Finnish flag. I’ll bet you ALO will not sleep well tonight because Kimi was way too close for his comfort today in an absolutely fu*cked up car that supposedly should suit him better. The bad news for Kimi is that now the politics will intensify. So, he has to watch his inter-team interests like a hawk, question and get informed about everything else happening at the pit-wall at all times. Even when who is in front don’t have any bearing on the WCC either.

Therefore, quit wasting your time arguing or analyzing this using race strategies that a normal and competitive team may execute. This was one race that politics were as important as racing. If not more, simply because it was in Spain – the home base of both Santander, ALO, and Botin who practically runs the country (Spain) in any case. If the same situation happened on another track, would Ferrari let the race run it’s normal and competitive racing strategy course without favoring ALO? That, I do not know…

As usual, the biggest losers are all of us (F1, Ferrari, ALO, Kimi fans) because of the betrayal by Ferrari for producing and fielding this lapped piece of junk – and that, I totally put on LdM. Forget F1, he now is hurting the Ferrari brand.

Thanks to wrcva for nailing it in a few paragraphs. We have not heard the last of this. If the saga and the farce goes on race after race, I see no reason to keep writing here as I don’t fancy rigged games. I will watch Monaco. If not for anything else, then for curiosity and updates. Steve Robertson will have a busy time until then. He has already had talks with Matiacci. Anyway, I’m tired of writing about another sad chapter in Ferrari’s history.

And with that, I am out.

A grid girl being sprayed with champagne to cheer you up