pokerman wrote:
I'm not one for making countless negative posts about Schumacher, you made a statement about Schumacher not being favoured at Ferrari from day 1 and I remembered an interview with Irvine that said differently, simple as that.
I happened to catch a lot of flack for what I said but fortunately I managed to find the interview to back up what I said.
Regarding comparisons you want to make between Schumacher and Hamilton I don't really want to take that any further in a thread that is about Vettel.
Indeed, I did make the following statement:
Quote:
I agree with pretty much what you are saying here, though, I don't think that it was a definitive #1 even for Schumi, I do believe that had one of his teammates come out and taken it to him from the start of the season, that Ferrari would have played things differently. The issue was... there was no one close to Schumi... Rubens was a much better driver than many of today's fans realize, or are wont to admit, it was both his good fortune and bad luck to be teamed with Schumi. Good in that he got to drive one of the top cars, if not the top car, for many years... got to race at or near the front nearly every race and was a critical part of a championship team. Bad luck in that he was not a match for Schumacher, but then neither was any one else.
To your credit, you did find a statement by Irvine that would challenge that thinking. However, I still have a very tough time believing that being out-qualified at the first race would result in Schmacher not only trying to, but having the power to stop Irvine from practicing for the rest of the year, and to be honest, I have seen nothing other than that anti-michael-schumacher.com site to suggest it did happen. Do you not find it odd that after Irvine made that comment, we did not see every F1 media source raising a huge stink over their Schumi/Ferrari's actions. How could Ferrari have swept it all under the rug so completely that it is most difficult to not be able to find collaboration of Irvine's claim in a google search?
As far as the Lewis mention in this thread about Vettel... Hamilton had been discussed earlier and not just by me. A thread titled "Vettel & Number 2s" was bound to bring in references to other drivers less it appear that Vettel is the only driver to have "2s".
One more question for you, poker. Do YOU really believe that Michael Schumacher had Irvine blocked from testing for the entire year because he was bested in qualifying in the first race of the season? Serious question.
and if you do, how does that explain Irvine's comments about he (Irvine) having been done most of the testing, tire testing, and chassis testing. Admittedly, it could have been in different years, but wouldn't that be a rather dramatic turn around?