Comments on: How Kimi Raikkonen has overtaken Felipe Massa as fastest Ferrari driver

By: Keith Collantine

Keith Collantine — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 09:59:43 +0000

A little more on how Raikkonen found his F2008 easier to handle without the shark fin here: John Beamer’s F1 tech file: Shanghai

By: Navs

Navs — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 09:37:45 +0000

Maybe it was his “motivation.” And now he’s magically got it back. /sarcasm

All this is just speculation. At the edge, which is where these drivers and machines are performing, small differences can have a large impact in outcomes. This sensitivity is so high that any “cause” we attribute to changes is necessarily of very low confidence.

A lot of these changes are just noise, amplified by cut-throat competition at the edge.

By: Dorian

Dorian — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 09:37:26 +0000

@ Antifia: ‘COGNITIVE DISSONANCE’…..I haven’t heard that term since my days at university….LOL…..brilliant!

By: Keith Collantine

Keith Collantine — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 08:29:02 +0000

Antifia –

Somewhere close to the French GP, the Ferrari top brass got together and concluded that having Kimi, the fastest drive, world champion, leader of the championship and 5 times as expensive as his teamate, it was time to hold him back and start favoring Massa.
How likely is that?

Given how much they’re paying Raikkonen, not very.

By: Antifia

Antifia — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 08:26:30 +0000

Kimi did not blow Massa away last year. He won the Championship, but Massa was in contention untill Monza, when a DNF ended his challenge. This year Massa has done a better job than Kimi. Some say that this is because the car did not suit the Finn. It can be right, but it only says that Kimi and Massa have different driving styles – put them in cars with similar performance but that suit their individual styles and I don’t know who would be faster.
The problem is that many a fan seem to suffer from Cognitive Dissonance. Having already an imovable opinion about each driver, they cannot bring themselves to mold their views based on current facts. Kimi got an early reputation for being a fast (perhaps the fastest) driver – courtesy of Peter Windsor and the likes. Massa got a not so flattering reputation from his early years at Sauber. It doesn’t matter now how many times Massa beats Kimi (in the same car), they will never admit Massa has done a better job – there must be something sinister at hand.
In fact,if Nick’s opinion (for example) is anything to go by, something like this must have happened:
Somewhere close to the French GP, the Ferrari top brass got together and concluded that having Kimi, the fastest drive, world champion, leader of the championship and 5 times as expensive as his teamate, it was time to hold him back and start favoring Massa.
How likely is that?

By: Steven Roy

Steven Roy — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 19:40:26 +0000

Kimi has had two problems this season. First the Ferrari understeers like a pig until its tyres are up to temperature and that is always going to suit Massa more than Kimi. In recent races they seem to have dialled out a little of the understeer and that will always help Kimi.

Secondly there is something about this year’s cars/tyres that favours aggressive driving. If you look at the top teams you will see that the smoother driver in each team is suffering. Kimi is struggling against Massa when you would expect the opposite to be true. Lewis is making Heikki look really bad when he is a decent driver. Piquet who pushed Lewis to the GP2 championship looks like a complete amateur. DC looks like he has lost it but I think it is the same thing that is affecting him as the others. Vettel is making Bourdais look bad and Kubica clearly has the upper hand on Heidfeld. Several teams have had to spend a lot of time trying to make their smoother driver more comfortable in the car.

Interestingly in Fuji Heikki qualified close to Lewis, Piquet finished well in the race and Kimi beat Massa. I don’t think this is because these guys suddenly remembered how to drive but I put it down to the fact that Fuji has a lot of late apex corners and you lose a lot of time in those unless you have a smooth entry.

So I don’t think Kimi has driven badly this season it is simply unlike last season Ferrari have been unable to dial the car into his driving style. Even if Massa wins the championship I would expect Kimi to blow him away as soon as he is given a car he can drive.

By: Antifia

Antifia — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 12:40:03 +0000

El Gordo:
If Massa’s engine had not blown up 2 laps to go in Hungary and Ferrari had not messed up his pit-stops in both Canada and (worse) Singapore, Massa would be World Champion by now – 14 to 19 points ahead of LH (the range is due to Canada).

By: Kenti

Kenti — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 12:05:23 +0000

Senor Paz:
I need to remind you that Massa won in Magny-Cours just because Kimi had a exhaust problem otherwise Massa was no match to Kimi.And i also think Felipe sometimes gets rattled when things arnt going in his way.Saying that,he is a very good driver but certainly not as good as Kimi.As for Kimi ,he has had a luckless season

By: El Gordo

El Gordo — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 13:20:20 +0000

I’m not so sure Massa has been so dominant over his team mate this year – he made a mess of the first two races, as well as spectactularly failing at Silverstone. If Hamilton had kepts his eyes open in Canada, the championship would have been decided one or two races ago.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 12:41:02 +0000

I think Raikkonen has improved during qualifying. Massa isn’t as prone to cracking under pressure as when compared to Hamilton last year.

It was probably the set-up changes and improvements to the F2008 over this season that suited Massa’s driving style better, as before the changes, Raikkonen almost always seems to say “The car did not perform how I wanted it to\I could not get the most out of the car”, or similar, in his race reviews.

Perhaps those reversions that Melanie (#27) mentioned helped Raikkonen improve more than we would expect this late in the season.

I still think Ferrari will treat Massa as the number one driver, though, as he has performed better this year overall.

Raikkonen has just been unlucky during races this season, compared to Massa.

As for Raikkonen’s less-than-perfect qualifying sessions, his post-qualifying comments put the blame on the car set-up and inability to make the most out of the tyres\car.

I don’t know what to interpret from this though, i’m no expert.