mds wrote:
It's true that there could be different reasons. But it's not really a thing "now", is it? I mean, there were talks of it as early as his first stint at Renault (where it got to another driver being fired), there was the fall-out with Hamilton, there was blackmailing a team boss, there was accusing his own team of not doing all they could, Ferrari was reasonably OK, then there was
2007 was very toxic and Alonso's all over that so no argument there. I don't think Trulli getting the elbow was down to anything other than Trullli blowing it in France and not recovering mixed with some contract disputes though but there were other instances in Renault which could qualify to be fair.
By being a thing now I just meant since last summer it's the go to line as to why he can't go to Ferrari or Mercedes while neither of them seem keen to go the Red Bull two rooster route with anyone else either so it just comes across as lip service to me now.
Quote:
But it's not just the car - it's how they come out, united or separated. Alonso has had a history of separating his performance from the team, Vettel always comes out with a united view. And I'm pretty sure if the Ferrari was hanging around at the back he would still do that. He would probably leave, in the end, like most would, but I don't think he would give the media so much food like Alonso is doing.
Maybe he wouldn't, he certainly doesn't give the press as much as Alonso in other areas as well like I mentioned earlier in the thread about the recent "deserves" comments from Alonso that I didn't like.
But it's easy to say it, one of the things that happens when the team struggles is the press goes after them including the driver and it's this that can lead to the driver hitting back. Seb had a taste of this in 2016 in the second half of the year when there were stories in Italy of engineers lamenting Alonso's departure because of Seb's performance when the car wasn't great.
To his credit I didn't see him bite back but if you start reading that for 8 years you might start to get a little defensive about things and those kind of comments might appear.
Quote:
But think of this: I can understand that the teams do not want to put Alonso next to Lewis or Seb. Fully. However, if Alonso is still the best driver on the grid, then why, especially with the cars now closely matched, wouldn't they want to outright swap their lead driver for Alonso?
They are happy with their driver lineup, agreed, but I'm not convinced driver attitude isn't one of the factors to that.
And of course I cannot possibly prove any of this. So in the end, I see and respect your opinion and fully accept it as a possibility.
Ditto.
I think in terms of replacing rather than sitting next too, I just don't think there is enough difference in performance to go for the upheaval of bringing him in, he's older and in terms of attitude his desperation for a competitive car must be through the roof so I can see teams finding that off putting in of itself so I can see his attitude plays a role on some level at least yeah.