Giblet wrote:I'd like to go back to the very beginning of the the thread and restate:
Every thing I have read over the years, from anyone in F1, or anyone who writes for F1, has been very consistent about Alonso's superb technical feedback and ability to quantify new parts. I even thought providing a few quotes to get started might help bring out some more quotes from other members and facts instead of well argued opinions.
If you want to debate Alonso's level of technical expertise against what the people in the sport of Formula 1 think, you're going to need to disprove what they have been saying over the years, and what some of his results have shown. Not what another fan thinks with his limited and/or biased window on the sport.
Either the people who have worked with him directly, and other greats before, are wrong, or a percentage of people here are right.
I tend to lean towards the former.
We should not discuss here whether any driver has better technical understanding as another because this will lead to nothing. I guess nobody here will know it from first hand, so we will just end up in flame wars between different fans.
The thing we can and should discuss is what kind of inputs a driver really can give to his engineers. What should a driver care about and what should be done by his engineers.
A driver should rather try to improve his driving skills and adapt it to the car than searching any failures at the car. The only thing he has to do is to tell the engineer how the car behaves as detailed as possible. The engineer then will find the best compromise in car setup. The next thing the driver has to do is to tell which of two options feels better.
For sure he has to know how every part works. That will help him to communicate with the engineer and even more important it can help him to drive the car. It will make the reactions of the car more predictable and it can give him additional driving techniques. Like slightly applying the brakes during corner exit, keeping the revs up during cornering, brake balance, use of tyres and so on.
On the other side he should not bother to much about developing the car.
The engineers will think about that. They have to outthink the others how little areo parts reduce the drag and how downforce can be improved.
On the same time this will keep the drivers head free. You just have to think about how many engineers are employed at a F1 team. Don't tell me that just one clever driver can replace them with his basic knowledge. The drivers improve their time on the track not in the pits.
The thing I really dislike is that the journalists always want to have the drivers in the centre of attention. This sport is mainly decided by the quality of your car but even when it comes to technical things they ask the drivers instead of some engineers. Even worse is when a driver like Hamilton then tries to claim that he has developed a new part of the car. He might have tested it and said that it helps but I can’t believe that he had the initial idea, calculated it, designed it and brought it to the car. By saying he developed the part, he totally underestimates the job his engineers are doing. I am sure he didn’t even brought them a cup of coffee while they have done that.
but i think he was generally speaking. Check planet F1 and what he says does hold some weight amongst the more passionate but not so intelligent F1 fans.