Alonso says 2016 sabbatical possible but unlikely

F1 Fanatic Round-up

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In the round-up: Fernando Alonso may not be on the grid in 2016 if he feels McLaren’s next car isn’t competitive enough.

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Would you prefer to see more of the cars than the hotel?
Has Formula One Management lost sight of what their television coverage is supposed to show – i.e., the action on the track?

The quality of the coverage was awful today. Far too much emphasis on wide angles to show all the colourful car parks and outlandish architecture surrounding the tarmac and nowhere near enough emphasis on making the cars look dynamic or exciting.

Granted it’s pretty tough to make a car look exciting on this pancake of a circuit, but there was a distinct lack of onboards and inspired angles from sector one, the only place that the cars actually look like proper racing cars on the track.
@Naz3012

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On this day in F1

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30 comments on “Alonso says 2016 sabbatical possible but unlikely”

  1. Regarding COTD, As i’ve said in the past with some of the newer ‘flashier’ venues like this & Singapore the TV crew are told (By Bernie) to get coverage of the scenery because places like this & Singapore are pushing themselves as tourist destinations as showing nice shots of the city, Flashy hotels, Marina’s & the general ‘pretty’ surroundings may make some decide to visit the country…. Especially when you consider that often some of those shots get picked up for the sports news updates.

    With regards to this weekend & a relative lack of in-car shots & some other angles, There’s a lot of stuff for 2016 that is been tested.
    A few of the cars are running new in-car cameras that will be introduced next year & there running on some new systems which will be brought in next year & none of that is available to the live broadcast because its still in the testing/trial phase with niggles to be sorted out.

    There will be new in-car cameras, A new reception system to get the in-car feeds, New telemetry systems which will give them access to more data from the cars & some new bits of software/hardware & its all been tested over the past few races.

    The policy at FOM has always to test everything & get everything working to the highest standard before introducing it into the broadcast.

    1. Pleeease tell me these new onboard cameras will be in HD, incredible to think we’ve been waiting half a decade for those :(

      1. @gt-racer

        How disappointed are your friends in F1 once they heard Pirelli got the renewed contract? lol

        Again, for the years of Pirelli defenders “and we have tyres that last more than a lap,” added the Spaniard,”. From the motorsport article.

        Clearly Pirelli cannot make tyres that degrade at a reasonable rate and be SUPER grippy considering they don’t last long. They don’t last long, are too sensitive to being pushed (temperature), had to make the FIA impose new regulations to protect their “brand and public image because of the garbage tyres that they make. All which have nothing to do with FOM asking for 2-3 stop per race as that fool Hembery repeats

      2. @mantresx Yeah there HD.

        The upgrades to the rest of the systems is been done as there aiming to be able to get a live feed from every car. Right now although every car carries a camera they can only get live feeds from 9 at a time due to bandwidth limitations of the system, The new systems will have a lot more bandwidth with more room for future expansion.

    2. @gt-racer

      How disappointed are your friends in F1 once they heard Pirelli got the renewed contract? lol

      Again, for the years of Pirelli defenders “and we have tyres that last more than a lap,” added the Spaniard,”. From the motorsport article.

      Clearly Pirelli cannot make tyres that degrade at a reasonable rate and be SUPER grippy considering they don’t last long. They don’t last long, are too sensitive to being pushed (temperature), had to make the FIA impose new regulations to protect their “brand and public image because of the garbage tyres that they make. All which have nothing to do with FOM asking for 2-3 stop per race as that idiot Hembry repeats

      1. I’d like to know what you’re meant to be quoting, since those ‘quotes’ of yours don’t exist in the linked articles. Also why you feel the need to post exactly the same malformed comment twice.

  2. I suspect at the minute Ron has two drivers he didn’t want in his cars. While there might be little question over Alonso’s talent, Ron knows in more detail than anyone other than Alonso exactly what happened in 2007, and he’s seen from the outside the result of his partnership with Ferrari.

    Honda desperately wanted him and were willing to pay his wages which didn’t really leave Ron any choice. And the McLaren board made the decision on Button as he couldn’t get funding together for Magnussen.

    Vandoorne is likely to pass the time over in Super Formula rather than in the F1 seat he belongs and they let Magnussen go rather than wasting the best years of his career. That’s a large chunk of McLarens future young drivers being stifled by two drivers at the end of their career that I don’t get the impression Ron is fond of either of but is powerless to let go.

    At least officially anyway. This is a man who has had a word invented to describe the way he communicates. He doesn’t say anything that isn’t carefully plotted and deliberate in it’s intended purpose.

  3. Being the team player he is, Alonso will surely stick around to give McLaren the benefit of his invaluable feedback on the car during the upcoming season.

    1. Just stop with these already. Can’t can hardly be said not to give good feedback. Would you care to give some evidence for this please? What I do remember is Alonso’s feedback helping Renault develop an excellent chassis from 2003-2006, and when he left look what happened? He joined McLaren, and they instantly became winners from a miserable 2006. He joined Ferrari in 2010, they became winners from a miserable 2009. He joins McLaren in 2015 and they produce their best chassis in 3 at least 3 years. And if you attribute that to engineers, then surely you can attribute the bad cars Alonso has driven to the engineers as well.

  4. The other issue with the camera work by FOM is when one of the camera operators, either by their own choice or instructed by the directors, aim their camera at attractive female members of the crowd, which the director then cuts to. They’re not exactly subtle about it either. I can’t see how they can explain the reasoning behind it other than they’re being sexist and want to show attractive women during their coverage.

    1. And it only happens in F1; no other motorsport I’ve seen does that.

    2. What wrong about showing a good looking female for a few seconds if there is nothing exciting on track and how exactly is showing them sexist?
      Are people seriously still buying the modern media politically correct feminist bull?

  5. Arms race? PLEASE!
    All the restrictive rules that prevent proper development and evolution, which most are in place in a vain attempt to restrict costs artificially, are ruining what F1 should really be about: top minds working on top technology to achieve top speeds.
    The argument that having unlimited budget “buys” you the championship has only become true recently with Mercedes, Ferrari’s history and the current McLaren/Honda woes are proof of the opposite.

    1. If this so called ‘arms race’ brings new teams into F1, I’m all for it!

    2. True but Ferrari and McLaren are the 2 most succesful teams. Every team has dips as RedBull are now. Agreed budget helps but does not buy success look at Toyota and Honda the last time and BAR Jaguar etc. You need a certain budget which is well above the midfield teams now but then it is not the defining factor. Currently RedBull McLaren Ferrari and Merc run similar high budgets and they are not all close to each other.

  6. This sabbatical talk is quite new. Based on the interview transcript, I don’t even think it was a leading question by a reporter trying to make headlines. The word “sabbatical” was also used by Dennis first, not the reporter.
    And Alonso also changed his statement just 90 mins later.

    The sabbatical will explain why his anger subsided considerably after Japan. The “you have a good sense of humor” comment to his race engineer, the sunbathing and sneaking on to the podium in Interlagos. Signs of a driver just wanting to enjoy his last few races.

    And why shouldn’t he? He has been one of the best drivers we have seen in the last 10 years. Stopping Schumacher in 2006, almost winning the championship in 2012 will be the two highs of Fernando that I will remember forever. So what if he has won just 2 titles, the world knows 2 isn’t fair and he deserved at the very least 1 more. Lad deserves to enjoy his last few races.

    1. The last two paragraphs actually made me tear. I first noticed EJ mentioning a sabbatical for Alonso, but EJ generally says things, so i didn’t payed much attention. But, after seeing Alonso himself not rulling it out of the question yet, i wonder if we’re in for another Hakkinen here. I can’t, don’t want to belive Alonso’s career might just end with a wimp and not a bang. Despite all season long being simply abysmall, the word “retirement” didn’t even crossed my mind. After reading your second paragraph, though, i think we have serious reasons to be worried.

      Will this be the end of the man who dethroned Michael Schumacher himself? I became an Alonso fan in the first place, because he had done exactly this, denying Ferrari of yet another title. And i waited for a 3rd crown. It’s been a decade of waiting, and although he’s still after it, his unlimited passion for racing an unmatched talent and consistency, made us fans of him still beliving, that some day, the 3rd crown will come. And after 10 years of waiting, IF it comes, we will welcome it like Jesus walking the earth again.

      I’m so, so sad to actually thing this actually might be his last race. His comments don’t support this very much, but neither Hakkinen’s did. IF this is truly gonna be his final race, i hope he does something big. I hope that, for once in 2015, the car works on 100% perfection levels, the man deserves it. And although a victory or even a podium is almost impossible, i would want him to remind us, one final time, who was that young, little Spaniard, who defeated the likes of Kimi Raikkonen and Michael Schumacher, who shouted “TOMA” and punched the air with joy.

      If today is Fernando Alonso’s last ever F1 race, i want it to be a Day To Remember.

  7. “But in an age where a perpetual complaint about sports stars is that they lead really dull lives and trot out the same guarded, platitudinous responses to questions in interviews, I find it frustrating that the first reaction to a sportsperson who doesn’t do that is get on his case about it.”

    Does this guy even know Lewis Hamilton and some other “superstar” sportspeople???

    1. Shall I go with:
      Fans: “We want drivers with personality!”
      Drivers show personality.
      Fans: “We want drivers to shut up and just drive!”

      Or shall I go with:
      James Hunt was far worse than Hamilton is right now, yet I bet you’d be among the first to praise him for being himself.

      The choice is yours.

      1. james hunt was a charismatic alpha male, and hamilton is a disingenuous entitled phony who suddenly became a hipster one day.
        the difference lies in what “kind” of a personality people show.

  8. Great COTD – grinds my gears that!
    That pic of toto and niki – i dont want to sound stupid but i didnt think that sort of thing was aloud in UAE joke or not??

    1. Whether it is allowed or not is immaterial; with the immense media presence, nothing will be done about it anyway.

  9. LOL, Sean..xD

  10. ColdFly F1 (@)
    29th November 2015, 9:40

    And we have a winner!
    Congratulations to @juan-fanger for (knowing that he will be) winning this year’s Prediction Championship.

    By rightly predicting Rosberg to get pole Juan made it impossible for @thedohc and @RaV to close the gap.
    And he has sufficient names in his top 5 identical to the other contenders @ap04, @haddock5, @timtoo, @spinynorman, to be sure to stay ahead after the race finishes this afternoon.

    Now let’s all hope for a ROS HAM VET RAI KVY finish to get a final exciting result in this year’s Prediction Championship.

    1. I hope you’re right, @coldfly, but I think If @spinynorman gets a perfect 50 points I will only get 13 and that’s not enough to stay in front. My “gust of wind” would be a ROS HAM VET RAI PER finish.
      It will be very exciting race for me while all 5 of those drivers are still going.

  11. Regarding COTD, FOM’s coverage is just getting a bit tiresome. For some reason they insist on showing anything but the on-track action: the architecture, random celebrities I’ve never heard of, reactions from the pit box, people in the grandstands, rich blokes on yachts, girls with sunglasses drinking champagne. And even if FOM decides to show on-track action, the focus on showing sponsors is obvious: 80% of the screen being taken up by a run-off area onto which they have projected a hideously obvious ad, or zooming in to the extent that you can’t even see the wheels of the car anymore. Another thing that bothers me is how they want to make the coverage ‘logical’, so for instance the on-screen graphics show there’s a yellow flag somewhere, but the director refuses to show what is going on in favour of showing the ‘battle for x-th place’ they were already showing.

    Hope they can do something about that for next year, but I doubt it.

    1. It’s as frustrating as following a hot lap then they cut to a driver sat in his car in the pit garage looking at the telemetry screen….. WHY.

      I watched an early 90’s race the other day and the on boards were great as with the lesser technology the camera could not absorb the vibrations so the picture really conveyed the physical energy going through the car, much better for me. More on boards please and use the old cameras.

  12. sabbatical aha who does this guy think he is, that’s if he’s even contemplating it. He’s on 40 million to race cars. I mean he’s good, but he’s not that good.

  13. I don’t dislike Hamilton, I think he’s selfish and at times childish but I think he’s very intelligent, I keep saying it. Everyone knows that Lewis has character and that’s the part everyone appreciates even if they don’t really go bed to bed with it.
    Audi and Porsche really have tried to make their cars look different via livery. They are actually 2 specs of PU and aero. I’m not surprised Porsche has scaled back their team.

  14. COTD: Not only was the direction pretty bad (I didn’t notice it being especially worse than it’s been recently though), but I set my PVR for the race and found the hard drive filled with three hours of indoor tennis. I had to watch the race in Blocktasic Blur-O-Vision on the iPlayer. What in the name of all that is sane and rational made the BBC switch channels at the last minute? Why do they do it at all, if it comes to that? It might have been a different story 40 years ago when fewer people could recieve BBC2, but this is 2015 for Pete’s sake.

    I’m actually beginning to feel nostalgic for ITV.

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