So I woke up this morning with a surprise in front of me. Sadly it wasn’t news that I’d won the Euro Lotto or Liz Hurley was banging on my front door demanding to immediately mother my children, but that Felipe Massa had for absolutely no reason at all gone radio rental. It’s not the first time Massa’s said something amusing (this week no less, the little ‘bastard’) but one has to wonder why Massa feels the need to lash out before Fernando Alonso has even found himself an apartment near Maranello.
Interestingly enough, both Alonso and Massa have experience of the situation that is about to happen upon them from 2010 onwards. In Lewis Hamilton, Alonso spent a season with a younger team mate heavily favoured by his team and in Kimi Räikkönen, Massa has spent three seasons against a team mate who joined him with a huge reputation and vastly superior annual retainer. And yet despite these feelings of déjà vu, one can’t help but feel this new partnership has a totally new complexion to it than the aforementioned pairings.
In short, the reason why Fernando Alonso is at Ferrari for 2010 and beyond is because Ferrari has failed to properly replace Michael Schumacher. Procuring Räikkönen was supposed to replace Schumacher’s blistering pace, however the Finn’s pace has been lethargic and stop start at best. You’ll probably now point to his 2007 world championship title, though I’d argue whilst no champion is ever “unworthy” of such status, even the most staunch supporters of Kimi would eventually concede he won this due to McLaren’s ridiculous in house bickering rather than through his own incredible campaign. A world championship via the backdoor if you will, but infinitely more creditable in my eyes than whoever wins this season’s farce championship.
Then there’s Massa, he of baby faced and loony but hilarious mechanics fame. Massa’s also not really cut it at Ferrari since chin left and although he’s contributed to the last two constructor world titles, he doesn’t have a title of his own to shout about whereas even the departing rudeboy Kimi (hint, 4:05) does. For my money, Massa hasn’t stepped into Schumacher’s shoes partly because he’s not fast enough but also because he’s not smart enough tactically mid-race and commits too many stupid errors. An interesting fact is that Massa has never won a race from outside of a front row start position which says a lot about him – he reminds me of Ralf Schumacher at Williams. Not just because they both share similarly podgey faces, but also because they both require(d) the car to be set up absolutely perfectly in order to put in a decent performance. This is in contrast to the man who is the subject of this article.
Alonso is used to hustling inferior equipment around a racetrack into positions the car has no right to claim. There’s no better evidence of this than how he beat Schumacher fair and square, twice no less, despite the FIA and Ferrari’s attempts to avoid such a scenario. Alonso and Schumacher share much in common with their careers, both spending a short period of time in a lower team before graduating up to Benetton/Renault and dragging the Briatore managed cars to two world titles whilst pointing and laughing at their diabolically bad team mates. And then Schumacher moved to Ferrari for a period of strong dominance – now it’s Alonso’s turn to mirror Schumacher once more. Perhaps this is why Massa is already attacking Alonso, because he perceives him as a very real threat and sees history repeating once more. Whilst I don’t believe Massa fears Alonso because he thinks Alonso is going to receive Schumacher-esque preferential treatment, Massa is well aware of Alonso’s talents and what else he will bring to the team.
Whilst jokes can be – and regularly are - made about the supposed extra 0.6s a lap Alonso brings to a team, there’s no doubting that he’s as fast round a circuit as Nakas is into anything shaped like a wall. This speed and his ability to work around a not 100% car will appeal strongly to the likes of Stefano Domenicali, who has often seen his red cars languish when all wasn’t right. Alonso almost seems to relish driving a challenging car, and has adapted to new regulations with ease and more importantly silverware every time. Furthermore, Raikkonen is a pretty cold character and cannot speak Italian. This played even more into Massa’s hands for getting the garage and management on his side, whereas Alonso is not just fluent in Italian and wild hand gestures, he is also not a problem to work with according to ex-mechanics, regardless of how the biased British media may force feed you otherwise. Another little amusing side-story of familiarity between these two that will no doubt bubble over next season is that they’ve already gone at it both on and off the track, with Massa coming off a very bruised and embarrassed second in each case. It’ll be interesting to see how Massa copes with a well loved team mate for the first time since Schumacher left.
But coming back to what sparked Massa off into this random rage, does he have point? Did Alonso know about fixgate before it happened? Does Alonso always know a little too much about things he perhaps shouldn’t? Are his eyebrows real or synthetic? These are all questions we’ve all thought of at some stage and ultimately we will probably never know the true answer to. What we at Patty can deduce using our pit-passless brains is that Alonso does seem to get himself in and around an awful lot of trouble, even if he is never found officially ultimately guilty. He and fellow countryman Pedro de la Rosa definitely knew of Spygate as shown by various incriminating – yet strangely wrapped in immunity - emails shared between the two showed, something decidedly dodgy went down at Hungary 2007 and now this whole fixgate saga that’s become more tedious than a Sir Jackie Stewart book recital. In Alonso’s defence, the true blame of Spygate lay elsewhere, the whole McLaren operation was a shambles during 2007 and if Alonso was complicit in any way during fixgate, Alan Permane would’ve ousted him as part of his white knight crusade. Alonso is a tough little so and so, make no doubt about it, but common sense tells us there was no direct benefit for Alonso to push for fixgate to happen, he was out of the championship running and in any event won a week later at Fuji on his own merit. Put it down to another Brazilian driver losing his mind once more this season.
I think today’s rant and the whole period of time Alonso and Massa spend together as team mates will come down to simple psychology, with the first couple of blows shown publicly today. In life, people only lash out at people they fear or believe to be a threat to their status. It’s why Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger in the English Premier League regularly rip each other to shreds in the press all season and then praise hard working little teams before smashing 17 goals past them – they’re of no threat and are accordingly patronisingly patted on the head. Massa’s actions are more important than the words he belted out today whilst bashing his chest, the fact he even felt the need to try and make a dent in Alonso’s armour tells us he is already running scared of his team mate to be. Alonso is probably smirking deep down inside at this compliment that Massa has paid him. Not once did Massa slam Räikkönen during their time together as team mates and why is that? Because for the most part he’s surprisingly had the better of him.
Alonso when asked today what he thought of Massa’s bizarre ramblings coolly responded by saying: “It is not very important for me, and I was not too worried.”
Is he talking about the rant or Massa himself? Interpret that how you will.
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BTW Hand, you seem to be a Fernando fan. Who is your favourite driver?
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Who do you support? I guess we have a go at his eyebrows because as "Pattians" we feel a responsibility to grill anyone and everyone, even if there is no good reason to and Alonso's eyebrows are about as soft a target as I can think of.
I will let you face the wrath of The Head for your Nico comment!
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I was asking because the Patronise Team hasn't bothered to update the 'About Patty' section in a long time so we've got a feature on The Knee who hasn't posted any article in ages but we've got nothing about you.
There used to be some News Junkie here last year. Where is he?
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I don't know what happened to The Knee, I've never met him and I think The Head said he fell off the face of the earth some time ago! Perhaps he will surface again one day. With regards News Junkie, I'm not sure but The Head does pretty much all of the news updates you see on the site, so maybe he just absorbed it all into his name?
P.S. Feel free to nudge The Head to give me a raise ...
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