F1 Fanatic

@wsrgo I don’t understand that at all. There’s nothing wrong with you having those opinions and sharing them on this site, especially if you can back them up with genuine reasoned arguments. That’s the whole point about a Formula 1 site such as this, to encourage genuine, mature debate and exchange of opinions. If people don’t like your opinions or disagree, they can simply reply and offer a counter argument or just ignore you completely.

As it happens, I’m also not a fan of Lewis Hamilton myself for a number of reasons and I would be happy to explain why if I was asked (the only reason I wrote something about Alonso to begin with is because I was fed up of people asking me why I didn’t like him). You shouldn’t shy away from giving your opinion because of what it is – it’s how you give your opinion that matters. Making a deliberate thread like this to make your argument in a proper and reasoned manner is fine, in my view. If people are really bothered by it, they can either offer their own argument, or they can simply ignore the thread completely. On the other hand, making a knowingly provocative comment on the ‘rate the race’ article that also completely contravenes the guidelines for rating races just because you’re upset that a driver you don’t like has won a race is the entirely wrong way to go about expressing your controversial opinion.

Seriously, you made a topic about why you dislike Räikkönen? I’m sorry but I think your anti-Räikkönen feelings are getting unhealthy. The funny thing is that you often complain how Kimi fans are irrational and loudy…

About the child case: the woman who hits the child is his/her mother and Räikkönen told her that she should check his kid (and not chase his autograph). It wasn’t the best possible behaviour from Räikkönen, but it is shameful how some people keep twisting this incident like it was some random kid that Kimi hit and then left alone even though the kid’s mother was present and caused the accident in the first place.

Apart from personal preferences, I find it difficult to judge a driver’s personality in a race. I have been karting myself and I am sure that I have been quite obnoxious to fellow drivers and teammates at some points. On other occasions I am quite easy going (I hope…). Same goes for other sports. A football player will shout to his teammates: “Go there!”, or “Do that!”, rather than “Will you please go there for me?”. It’s just the heat of the game, and that’s what happened between Kimi and his race engineer in Abu Dhabi 2012 I suppose.

Character judgment is always fun to do, but it is neither helpful, nor has it anything to do with the actual sport. In my opinion, it is even good for the sport if some of the drivers polarize public opinion, it adds some nice spice. After all, this is supposed to be entertainment, isn’t it?

Actually I think its a great idea to create this thread in the FORUM @prisoner-monkeys, certainly the Forum is just the place to discuss why one would or wouldn’t like a certain driver, team, sport etc.

I did mind giving a 1/10 for a race review for the simple reason that Kimi won it, as it seems for be to be a nonsensical way of rating a race just for who got first and ignore that others did some very nice driving in that race too. And even worse it if becomes the focus of discussion in the comments about the race. But on the forum, why not?

Everyone who does feel they have arguments to add to either view, or think there’s no point to having a view, or whatever, that is just great, as it adds to the community that makes this part of F1Fanatic a living social thing.

As for Raikkonen him being a positive for the sport or not. Well, I am not too big a fan of Lotus (or rather Enstone called Lotus) milking the “leave me alone” thing, or the Iceman thing, or those annoying hashtags. But its not much worse than Ferrari keeping up the talk about fighting back from an enormous way back with “gladiator” Alonso, or Red Bull when they keep saying they are not one of the biggest teams out there. That said, all of these things are just distractions of what happens on track and to criticize a driver for what his fans do or not do and say, hm.

With the racing Raikkonen has shown us since his return, I think it would be absurd not to see that as a positive. Just as Sutil showed us something positive in his first race back, and Bianchi showed why it can pay off to take on a talented driver instead of a wallet bearing driver, all of that make it more interesting to watch and that can only be good, can’t it?

I thought it was pretty sad to hear “watch your language” on the podium after the race, and we all know that is due to Kimi’s Abu Dhabi comments (perhaps with the addition of childish Vettel imitating him). F1 drivers aren’t stupid or immature, and they well acknowledge the fact they are live worldwide; simply, whilst Vettel thought it was allowed or there was nothing wrong with it, Raikkonen did not care at all. This is an example of the behaviour he sometimes shows and which I cannot respect. He is a great driver, but like with his pit crew he should acknowledge that F1 is a team sport and that he has to respect every single team member, instead of being the egoistic whiner he is.

@prisoner-monkeys I don’t think this topic is unacceptable and should be deleted. However, I believe it’s pretty much pointless. I know your opinion on Raikkonen and the importance of attitude in F1 in general (all the regular F1 Fanatic commenters know it), you have voiced it several times on F1F. And I fully respect it even if my own opinion is a bit different. But I don’t see the need to start a new forum topic to repeat that, particularly as the main focus here is on your dislike for a particular driver. In my opinion, ‘Why I don’t like Vettel’ or ‘Why I like Sutil’ are never good forum threads. The discussion about the importance of drivers’ behaviour off the track might be an interesting talking point but then you should simply have named the forum thread ‘Drivers’ attitude and behaviour’ or something like that and not focus on Raikkonen that much.

As for the attitude, for sure, it is important. I also strongly believe that swearing or being rude do not make one a ‘cool character’ and I think that what drivers say or do off the track often gets overhyped and that most of Raikkonen’s quotes, Vettel’s jokes or pictures of Alonso’s feet on Twitter should simply be treated as nothing special.

But it is also important to separate drivers’ behaviour from their performance on the track when it matters. For instance, the behaviour is an important factor when I decide, which driver I’m going to support. But it doesn’t play any role when I make my half season driver rankings. I think that is the way it should be and that is the way this website is and should be run.