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Could Alonso be injured? (Crazy Speculation) (18 posts)

Topic tags: Felipe Massa, Fernando Alonso, Ferrari

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DaveF1 said 4 months, 3 weeks ago:

Ok this may seem like silly speculation but just bare with me here.

Well all know that Alonso will miss the first pre-season test to do more training/exercise so it has got me wondering, was he injured towards the end of last season during training or something.

It seems that he had a somewhat dramatic drop in form after the Japanese GP as he had a string of quiet poor qualifying sessions as well as Massa was faster than him numerous times. Of course there are plenty of explanations for this such as pressure, tiredness etc. But considering up to Japan Alonso was having perhaps the best season in his career it did seem odd how dramatically his form dropped off.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago Alonso publicly stated that he would help Massa if Felipe was in a position to win the title. Now a lot of people say that Alonso lacks team player skills and while this could be a message to simply motivate Massa it makes me wonder is he asking Ferrari to support Massa more as he doesn’t feel he has to strength to mount a serious championship challenge due to this injury.

Fast forward again to earlier this week, Ferrari announce that Alonso will not participate at all in the first pre-season test. Once again there could be many reasons for this such as there isn’t much to learn from the first test or that he’d rather their development driver test the car first. However it seems that he is missing the test to train further. One would assume that he’s done all the sufficient training during the rest of the pre-season unless he needs this further training to recover from an injury.

Of course all of this is merely pure speculation and there is no real reason why Fernando and Ferrari would keep his injury hidden but surely I’m not the only one who’s finding all this a tad odd?

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Prisoner Monkeys said 4 months, 3 weeks ago:

No, he wasn’t injured.

Alonso’s drop in performance from the Japanese Grand Prix coincides with a resurgence in form from everyone else. His inability to compete or race wins comes from the way other cars were simply better.

As for his showing a willingness to support Massa should Massa be in a position to win the championship, it was obviously in response to a question from a journalist at the Wrooom! event. It’s a legitimate question, because Massa managed to get his mojo back late last season, and should he be in a position to challenge for the title in 2013, it would be an unusual situation for Alonso, who has never found himself having to support another driver like that.

Finally, Ferrari are putting Massa in the car for three days at Jerez so that he can continue to build on the momentum he started to gain at the end of last year. Pedro de la Rosa is driving on the final day so as to assist Ferrari with the development of the F2013, especially since they have been forced to relocate to the Toyota windtunnel in Germany.

So there is no rason to believe Alonso was injured, and no evidence to support the idea.

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Magnificent Geoffrey said 4 months, 3 weeks ago:

If Alonso was injured, the entire world would know about it. He’d make a point of telling everyone and emphasising just how much adversity he was overcoming and how the wounded samurai only strikes when the something something…

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Nick said 4 months, 3 weeks ago:

If Alonso was injured, the entire world would know about it. He’d make a point of telling everyone and emphasising just how much adversity he was overcoming and how the wounded samurai only strikes when the something something…

That’s a tad cynical, especially since he hasn’t mentioned his divorce once in 2012. I think Alonso is pretty amusing on his Twitter feed, but that’s a matter of opinion.

As far as him being injured goes; he has been participating in events, training and what not, which drivers usually skip if they’re injured. Him picking up his training can also be explained by his statements that he finds 20 races per season too much; him being tired after a season like that sounds more likely to me than being injured, but is still speculation.

I personally never considered Alonso as a great qualifier as well and Massa has already shown his powers over Raikkonen in 2008 and early 2009, so there is evidence Massa can perform really well. Massa got his act together late last season and people will ask questions about that and the potential outcome for driver roles within the team. I consider it unlikely that Alonso would fall behind Massa in points to the point team orders are given, but a string of DNFs, a car that doesn’t correspond with his wishes are just some examples that could give Massa an edge. It’s all hypothetical, I’m sure Button would help Perez chase the title as well, much like Vettel would support Webber, but we know the points difference would need to be significant and late in the season. Alonso supporting Massa would be no different.

On a side note, is Alonso becoming the new Schumacher for the fans? A lot of people agree he is one of the top drivers, but his attitude and ‘luck’ are pissing a lot of people off. Not saying this thread is hateful, but I’ve noticed a lot of negative comments on Alonso everywhere online.

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Giggsy11 said 4 months, 3 weeks ago:

@Nick Yeah i would agree with your observation. Its probably down to Fan based bais, Drivers like Alonso and Vettel will get targeted due to the success and the fact they are not British (I know there are supporters of this website from many areas of this world but it is obviously a British website with a large proportion of Uk fans). With Jenson, Hamilton being the only successful drivers from this region in recent years its fair to say that some fans will react negatively to their rivals (Alonso and Vettel) in a cynical way because of Bias.

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Magnificent Geoffrey said 4 months, 3 weeks ago:

@Nick I should clarify, my comments were meant to be taken in jest. Just poking a bit of fun at some of Fernando’s infamous tweets near the end of last season.

@Giggsy11 I know you’re talking broadly here, but I feel it’s important to point out that while I myself am British-Australian, I certainly am not a McLaren, Button or Hamilton fan. As the avatar probably gives away, I prefer my teams Swiss and my drivers Japanese. I think it’s slightly cynical to assume that the majority of the British users of this site are McLaren/Button/Hamilton fans and that the only reason they don’t like Alonso is because of bias. I myself have given my own reasoned criticism of Alonso before which I won’t bring up and bore people with again, but that’s all based on my observations of him as a driver and a person, not to do with his nationality. I have plenty to critique about Lewis Hamilton, for example, too.

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Girts said 4 months, 3 weeks ago:

Firstly, I think that the headline is a bit misleading. I first thought that these are fresh rumours and that Alonso was possibly injured today.

Secondly, it makes sense for drivers to hide their injuries or lie about them now and then, let’s remember Webber’s shoulder injury in 2010 and Montoya’s ‘tennis’ accident in 2005. So it’s not necessarily just a conspiracy theory.

But the fact that Alonso struggled to get the perfect qualifying laps and that Massa was faster than him over the final races of 2012 doesn’t tell us anything. If I remember correctly, Alonso himself has said that one cannot be 100% fit all the time and that every driver has their ups and downs. It’s very possible that Alonso simply had reached his peak in the middle of the year and felt a bit exhausted in autumn, while Massa’s peak was at the end of the season. Alonso has been a much more successful driver than Massa over the last years but that doesn’t meet that Massa is NEVER better than him.

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Giggsy11 said 4 months, 3 weeks ago:

@Magnificent Geoffrey I am English and not a supporter of Mclaren/Button/Hamilton either. I agree that most do not do this but as i said ‘ some fans will react negatively to their rivals’ and ‘ Probably down to Fan based bais’. I am not trying to criticise anyone because everyone has their own view but it is something I have noticed in minute areas.

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Nick said 4 months, 3 weeks ago:

While nationality usually is a factor in deciding who you support, I highly doubt the majority of this forum thinks along the lines of ‘well, I’ll be bamboozled! That Alonso bloke is Spanish! Didn’t we fight them in a war sometime? I bloody hate the lad already!’ simply because they’re British. Guys like Alonso and Hamilton are showing their personality on and off track and people react to that, probably more so than to nationality. Especially on a more mature forum like this (trust me, some F1 sites have comment sections where they actually ask Bernie to die, Vettel to fatally crash and Hamilton to f-off on a daily basis). It was absolutely not my intention to re-start the ‘nationality bias’ discussions again.

I was talking more directly about Alonso being a much talked about driver in a general sense; everyone has an opinion on him. It reminds me of Schumacher in a sense, where crazy rumors or stories regarding his personality or personal life would pop up that turned out to be complete speculation, though not always harmful. The bigger people in the sport will always be under a magnifying glass and people will theorize about their motives or reasons, heck, I did that yesterday in the Round-Up. I just notice that Alonso is pretty controversial and that leads to wild rumors and speculation.

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Giggsy11 said 4 months, 3 weeks ago:

Alonso solely is a very controversial character being involved in spy-gate, crash-gate and the team orders incident in Germany 2010. People like this are easily susceptible to crazy rumors as people are more likely to believe it. I would agree that he is very similar to Schumi as he has tasted his fair share of controversy over his rein.

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JB said 4 months, 3 weeks ago:

I wish people would stop taking cracks about Alonso´s fascination with the Japanese culture and his identification with Samurais like @magnificent-geoffrey said in one of his posts. Can´t you guys understand that it´s just his way to get motivation?? Everybody has something or someone that they admire… I totally understand FA… If he really believed he was a Samurai, geez, i think he would be studying martial arts as well… And I can further relate to his admiration towards them because it is all about discipline!! You have got to admire someone who is willing to commit hara-kiri because he feels he has dishonored his master or something like that… that takes balls and discipline! So yeah… just give it a rest guys, everybody is entitled to have their own role models, etc…

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BenH said 4 months, 3 weeks ago:

If anything, I am actually becoming more of an Alonso fan recently. Since him blasting into the twitterverse, he has been great at interacting (better than Hamilton who just uses a lot of random sepia’d instagram pictures on the odd weeks when he can be bothered with twitter).
With regards to the injury, I think that it would have somehow come to light, probably from himself, to try and increase the huge “underdog” vibe that (rightly or wrongly) summed up the Ferrari take on the whole season.
As for being comparable to Schumacher, well every driver now who has a moderate amount of success will be compared to him. On the current grid, we have had (from the top of my head) Button, Vettel, Alonso, Massa + Hamilton all compared to Schumacher at various points in their careers. He will continue to be a yardstick for a fair while and anyone coming close to his achievements will inevitably be tarnished with that brush from time to time.

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F1Yankee said 4 months, 3 weeks ago:

with a title like that and zero merit to the speculation in the original post, this bogus thread should be locked and buried.

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f1alex said 4 months, 3 weeks ago:

@catracho504, @magnificent-geoffrey was only trying to make a fairly dull and uninteresting thread a bit more lighthearted with a simple (and IMO quite amusing) joke… He wasn’t bashing Alonso for being interested in Samurais or anything.

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DaveF1 said 4 months, 3 weeks ago:

Maybe I shouldn’t create threads when I have a hangover, it seems to have created unintentional negative vibes…

*Tinfoil hat off*

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