FORUMula1.com - F1 Forum

[R00DIT]

following on from this, i think its harsh to call Kimi a car breaker. mclarens have always been weak when it came to reliability. kimi is a driver who drives hard and its mclarens error for not providing a car that could do the same.

you dont give your best sniper a stick to take into battle!

[Stephen]

Sour grapes from Mario Illien in my opinion. Like you say, the car should stand up to whatever the driver reasonably throws at it. Ilmor have been McLaren's weakness for years, if Illien had stopped bitching and started doing the job he was tasked with, Raikkonen would probably be world champion by now, perhaps double world champion. If anyone should be unhappy, it's the young Finn, I hope his Ferrari days are more successful.

[bud]

Whats Mario Illen got sour grapes for? he hasnt been part of McLaren for a while now. Hes well and truelly involved in the Ilmor MotoGP squad!

Saying Kimi's hard on his machinery isnt far off the mark, Fastest laps on the last lap of a race when youre not going to gain possy and youre meant to be saving your engine for the next GP weekend wouldnt really be called being gentle with your car, nor is when your team tells you not to do more than three "burnouts" to warm your tyres on the parade lap and you do 5, then 10 laps or so later while in the lead your drive shaft breaks?? wonder why?

[R00DIT]

i think mclaren should have built a car that suited kimi, you can't blame his driving style on failures. its been a mclaren problem for ages, it used to plague dc no end.

[bud]

Mclarens arent the most reliable no question they broke on Mika and DC in the past, and it has been the engine thats the weak part but knowing that youd think kimi would try and be abit gentle with his car??

the examples i gave above were true and they are not the most gentle thing to do with your car... especially the imola 05 one.

[darwin dali]

Agree with bud here. KR can't continue to race like a berserk or he won't be World Champ. He is fast, sure, but that's not what it's all about. You need your smarts to win the championship. Nurse your car home like AP was a master in rather than go 100% all the time. I'm glad you (bud) came around - I remember long discussions on GaleforceF1.com where you dismissed my point that KR is at least partly responsible for failures of his machinery because of the way he tortures his car through every corner. That would include tires flying off and all - KR could have used some smarts and handle the race better. Let's hope he learnt 'something' from these experiences and finally gets more involved with the technical side of the car/sport. These are weaknesses he's got to work on (and will be glad to have an expert by his side in MS) and are the main reasons why I don't favor him over FM.

[7UpJordan]

Do you mean a car breaker as in constantly crashing it a'la Sato/De Cesaris?

[Marco]

Do you mean a car breaker as in constantly crashing it a'la Sato/De Cesaris?

As in engine going bang, rather than crash-bang-wallop Salo!

[7UpJordan]

Do you mean a car breaker as in constantly crashing it a'la Sato/De Cesaris?

As in engine going bang, rather than crash-bang-wallop Salo!

Ahh. Well it does seem Raikonnen does make engines go up in smoke, imagine if he was offered to test the 1990 Life car, it wouldn't even get out of the garage before the W12 engine blew up.

[Marco]

You have style my friend, and a very good memory!

[Alien_SAP_Fiend]

Hello everyone!

I rate KR very highly as a driver and I do feel that he's been let down by Mercedes and that Illien is blaming him for breaking the engines. Yes, he did some strange things like put in fastest laps at the end of a race, when he didn't need to (like Bud says), but the car was much lighter, so was he really pushing the engine? Perhaps the team were telling him to push so that they could collect data for the next race. And how many DNF's did he have in 2006 due to him pushing the engine too hard? As for warming up tyres... have you noticed how Fonzo puts heat into his tyres? He makes Kimi look like a kitten.

Yes, he could have been kinder to his machinery, but he's a RACER fercrissakes. His duty is to get that car around the track as fast as is humanly possible and Illien's job was to build him an engine which could last the distance... one of them fulfilled his part of the bargain, then other left McLaren long ago.

Ferrari have had a very long time to plan for the Furious Finn and I am sure that they will a) give him the mechanical integrity he demands and b) tell him when to push and when to chill.

[R00DIT]

nice post alastair, the difference between alonso and kimi, was that the weaker driver had a stronger car!

[McLaren786]

Hello everyone!

I rate KR very highly as a driver and I do feel that he's been let down by Mercedes and that Illien is blaming him for breaking the engines. Yes, he did some strange things like put in fastest laps at the end of a race, when he didn't need to (like Bud says), but the car was much lighter, so was he really pushing the engine? Perhaps the team were telling him to push so that they could collect data for the next race. And how many DNF's did he have in 2006 due to him pushing the engine too hard? As for warming up tyres... have you noticed how Fonzo puts heat into his tyres? He makes Kimi look like a kitten.

Yes, he could have been kinder to his machinery, but he's a RACER fercrissakes. His duty is to get that car around the track as fast as is humanly possible and Illien's job was to build him an engine which could last the distance... one of them fulfilled his part of the bargain, then other left McLaren long ago.

Ferrari have had a very long time to plan for the Furious Finn and I am sure that they will a) give him the mechanical integrity he demands and b) tell him when to push and when to chill.

You make a very good point, but look at season 05, how many engine failures did kimi have against montoya, in fact monytoya only had two mechanical retirements and far less engine failures. Just look it up in the http://www.f1.com archives and you'll see throughout his career kimi has had more mechanical failures than his teamamtes. He does push it, hence he goes fast but not that far.

[Freddie]

Hmmm, how often was it actually the engine that broke ? It was also peripherals and suspension - has he just had incredibly bad luck ?

You know - s*** happens - maybe the bad luck is over now ?

I am really looking forward to this season, I am sure Kimi is one of the contenders for the title this year

[Alien_SAP_Fiend]

Illien's now claiming that Sports Bild made it all up!

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/56391

"I haven't spoken to anybody in the last few months about Formula One and gave no interviews," said Illien, who worked with Raikkonen when his Ilmor engine company produced engines for Mercedes-Benz.

"Kimi is a great guy. I enjoyed working with him and have great respect for him.

"He always gave the maximum in the car and he was a guy who you know would take things to the limit. I see that as a good thing."

Perhaps ze German press don't want their hero to be made to look bad by ze Finn?

As for 2005. I do recall both drivers having engine problems, with Kimi having the lion's share, this is true. I also recall Kimi putting in fastest laps when he had no hope of winning and wondering what he was up to, but I don't know if the team was telling him to push and I'm sure had they told him not to he would have taken it easy.

I'm sure that the 2005 Benz powerplant was a version of the 2004 one-race engine. McLaren gambled on speed over reliability and lost. If they'd wanted that engine to be more robust, all they had to do was set the rev limiter lower and Kimi wouldn't have been able to thrash it, but they let him whip it as hard as he could. If the same thing happens at Ferrari, either they'll tell him to chill, or force him to... not that 19,000 revs is going to hurt anybody's engines, is it?

P.S. Freddie, your sig made me snort coffee all over my keyboard!