Will Raikkonen/Ferrari be any good?

[a fan of the red team]

kimi will do good.... i hope.... maybe schumi should stay with the team like a race strategist or anything to help them stay in shape.... cause maybe kimi is really a sort of a plug & play racer.... you guys maybe right... he is the type that shows just give me a good car and i'll win for sure type.... he does not function like schumi, right?

[geoclassic]

After the Schumacher era at Ferrari is over, it would be hard for ANY driver to come to the team and take over. Kimi does not appear to be the leader MS was. Will he bring his own engineer or try to work with the current engineers? He may struggle at first, but if he can get the feedback to the team, he'll do well.

[Giancarlo]

Kimi doing well at Ferrari will be relative to how Alonso does at McMerc & Fisi as #1 driver at Renault.

McLaren had a phenominal & heartbreaking year in '05. They had the fastest car, yet the most unreliable. They entered '06 with high hopes: a revised chassis and the same drivers. What happened? Their car is slower, still somewhat unreliable, lost a driver to nascar, and has yet to win one race this season.

I doubt Alonso will do better. While he is a great driver, his driving style is unique and it will take time for him to adjust to the new McLaren chassis or vise-versa. Reliability is another issue though. Mirrors falling off, electronic manfunctions, engines blowing up, random things starting on fire - the McLaren squad has their off-season cut out for them. And if their progress is anything like the '05-'06 off season, Alonso will cry a river.

Fisi as #1 at Renault is somewhat a mystery so far. He has the talent, he has the car, and he only has a 1yr contract. What I see as Fisi's biggest concern is he's too emotional. His problem is his mentality. If he can straighten that out - then the car will come to him. I won't be holding my breath though.

Honda has high hopes for next season and Button has been beating his chest recently that he hopes to be challenging for the WDC next year. Like we've never heard that before from Jens. On the development side, it'll be interesting to see what effects replacing Geoff Willis with a Japanese commitee, and a Japanese Technical Director, will have on the '07+ chassis. Personally, I see Honda replacing much of the English staff at Honda with Japanese employees and the F1 program imploding soon afterwards.

I would expect Honda's '07 season to be no better than '06. Hell, I'll even go out on a limb and say Red Bull will be the '07 season's spoiler for the top teams.

With that said. Ferrari has a proven car, engine, and driver for '07. No other team has that going for them. Italians are very proud and passionate by nature - they learned from the Schumi era how to win and they will keep that tradition going come hell or high water. As much as I like to see an underdog do well, Ferrari will be on top in the post-Schumacher days of F1. Having Kimi being a plug-n-play driver will only make things easier.

If someone has a chance of beating Kimi & Ferrari for the championship, I'll place my bet on Fisico. The odds are not the greatest, but that's what gambling is all about.

[pRo]

Fisi as #1 driver at Renault

If someone has a chance of beating Kimi & Ferrari for the championship, I'll place my bet on Fisico.

I have trouble imagining Fisi being #1, even at Renault.

[WhiteBlue]

I read something from Kimi today:

The team worked day and night to improve the car, but in the end my weekend wasn't so different from many others this year. Finding the right set up seems to depend too much on the weather conditions. We know that we got the right potential, but quite often it seems really difficult to find the right way to exploit it all the way. We'll nevertheless continue to give it a try - all the time.

I thought then that it was time to pull out this thread. Kimi as a plug&play driver was an apt description. certainly he isn't utilizing the Schumacher resource as Massa is. I still think that Kimi is the better driver in a perfectly set up car but he needs a high level test driver to sort it for him. PdlR was that person at Macca I think. His failure to come to grips with the setup has the Italian paers up in arms calling for Alonso right now.

[WhiteBlue]

I read something from Kimi today:

The team worked day and night to improve the car, but in the end my weekend wasn't so different from many others this year. Finding the right set up seems to depend too much on the weather conditions. We know that we got the right potential, but quite often it seems really difficult to find the right way to exploit it all the way. We'll nevertheless continue to give it a try - all the time.

I thought then that it was time to pull out this thread. Kimi as a plug&play driver was an apt description. certainly he isn't utilizing the Schumacher resource as Massa is. I still think that Kimi is the better driver in a perfectly set up car but he needs a high level test driver to sort it for him. PdlR was that person at Macca I think. His failure to come to grips with the setup has the Italian paers up in arms calling for Alonso right now.

[mx_tifoso]

Maybe the 9000km of testing that Raikkonen is going to do over one month of winter testing will help him out 'quite a bit' - That's roughly 30 GP distances! He will be the main driver in charge of the winter testing programme.

F1Technical News- Raikkonen will do 9000km of testing according to Costa

[Belatti]

Maybe the 9000km of testing that Raikkonen is going to do over one month of winter testing will help him out 'quite a bit' - That's roughly 30 GP distances! He will be the main driver in charge of the winter testing programme.

F1Technical News- Raikkonen will do 9000km of testing according to Costa

Nahhh I don´t think he has the motivation to do all that work
If you are not the Schumacher kind of driver, winter tests are boring...

Obviously any of we would live in a hut beside the circuit just for test it for free

[Shaddock]

McLaren had a phenominal & heartbreaking year in '05. They had the fastest car, yet the most unreliable. They entered '06 with high hopes: a revised chassis and the same drivers. What happened? Their car is slower, still somewhat unreliable, lost a driver to nascar, and has yet to win one race this season.

If I remember correctly JPM complained throughout his McLaren years that the car always under steered. Kimi never complained about this at all, but he was probably too busy crossing his fingers and praying the car wouldn't fall apart.

With this feedback from JPM, McLaren worked on a whole new front end for him that helped reduce the under steer (but not eliminate it), but also lowered the overall performance of the front end of the car.

It was only later in the season that the engineers worked out they were being mis-led by JPM and his feedback, and the problems were derived from the rear end setup of his car.

If the teams don't recieve or interpret what their drivers are telling them, then the whole development program of the car will go off in the wrong direction.