Thank you for including the Mosely piece in your listings here — I’m honored to have mysteriously (grin) ended up among so many truly accomplished F1 writers. Please know that if I were to compose a similar list, not just a few of my selections would be from F1Fanatic.

Happy Weekend!

Villeneuve was negotiating with Ron Dennis for a drive for 1983 even before the Imola weekend. At one test when the McLaren and Ferrari teams had adjoining garages Ron walked out to the pit wall with a pit board with 2.5 on it. 2.5 meaning $2.5million. Gilles walked over and changed it to 3.5. The interesting thing of course is that had he gone to McLaren there would have been no seat for Prost when Renault fired him at the end of 83. Bear in mind that McLaren drivers won the championship in 84, 85, 86, 88, 89, 90 and 91. Lauda beat Prost by half a point in 84 but could he have done the same to Gilles when Gilles would have had a year’s experience of the team and probably arrived as the reigning world champion. It is perfectly feasible that Gilles could have been a multiple champion and Prost could be the guy with no championships and only a handful of GP wins. Of course it is equally possible that Lauda would have retired because he knew he couldn’t beat Gilles and we would have had Villeneuve/Prost as the McLaren team. Eventually we could even have had Villeneuve and Senna together. Those two on track in equal equipment would have been fabulous to watch.

Forza Gilles

The point about the traction control ban is that it is not the loss of TC that will have the biggest effect. The braking stability systems will affect things on the entry to corners than TC on the exit. Drivers like Alonso and Kubica who like a stable back end will be most affected by that although the fact that both had to change their driving styles last year because of the Bridgestone tyres will mean they will be less affected than if we still had the Michelins.

Paved run offs doesn’t punish enough driving failures, even when there is a synthetic turf before the paved part. Last season was a lot of examples of drivers to take some advantage driving in the run-offs. It’s the same advantage for everyone but i’m not sure if it’s fair.

I know it was an old discussion about who take more benefir of TC bannig. I found in an interview with Alonso this quote (i’ll try to do my best translating from spanish )

Q: ¿Could the driver makes a difference this year?

FA: No, it’s the same. I know people are talking a lot about TC, but last year when you came out of a curve, and throttled as much as you could, the car wouldn’t perform either. Last year when you throttled fully, the car didn’t wheelspin, but if you drove on the bad path, a little bit on the outside, if you stepped on the piano a little bit more, TC acted further and slowed you down, consequently, good drivers who did well last year will do well again this year, and those who didn’t do well last year, will not do well this year either.