by Mr Ree » Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:04 pm
Yes, even though it only got confirmed this week, James was always going back to Ferrari, but I think Lotus had him on temporary gardening leave, until someone wrote a big enough cheque to get him on board sooner rather than later.
Ross has taken ALOT of flack over the past few years, but yes, he is simply building the team from the ground up, as when Honda sold it to Brawn, he had to lay off half of the work force, about 250 people if I remember rightly, so its been a HUGE transitional process to go through to get all the ducks in a row.
Ross isnt going to be there much longer, and he knew that when he took over running it as Merc in 2010, so he is simply laying the foundation for what will one day, be a great team. Nothing worse than having a knowledge vacuum in any sports team, let alone a top tier F1 team.
Regarding Ferrari and their lack of performance, it all goes back to the same thing thats been happening for the past few years...the parts they are making in the factory, and testing in the simulator/wind tunnels, isnt correlating to on track performance. They have actually been removing parts off the car over the past month to 6 weeks, that were supposed to bring big gains, but actually slowed down the car and made it imbalanced.
Alonso has shot himself in the foot though, as he is always so quick to point the blame at the team and its under performing car, which while factually accurate, isnt good at galvanising the squad around him. He is slowly but surely losing the respect of people inside the team, and once that happens, its a slippery slope.
He should take a leaf out of Michaels book and STFU, put his head down, and keep on keeping on.
Thats why he was so respected by his teams as he NEVER said a bad word about them ever, not even in his last 3 years while driving the grey bus did he utter one word of frustration, as thats not how you rally the team around you.
wak thud gush!