F1 Fanatic

@prisoner-monkeys on what basis do you come to the conclusion that rennie left lotus because of raikkonen?

I find this topic funny because I always saw you (@Prisoner-monkeys) as the Kimi of the forums: Always making snide comments, having some unpopular opinions and not caring about what people thought of him. That, to me, is Kimi in a nutshell. So attitude wise you guys are pretty similar.

I was very disappointed to hear that PM gave the race a 1/10 because Kimi won. It specifically says in the article:
Please vote based on how entertaining and exciting you thought the race was, not on how your preferred driver or team performed.

Since PMs been around forever, I never thought that he would be the one to go against that. I guess its ok to say in the comments you were unhappy with the result, but to vote it poorly because a driver you didn’t like won is pretty ridiculous.

Now on to the issue you have with Raikkonen. I don’t think the personality he shows to the world is his true personality. When he started, he was very eager to do well, and even at McLaren he was pretty normal. His attitude was almost the same as everyone else’s. Perhaps it was his poor luck at McLaren, or maybe his time at Ferrari, but something caused him to become bored with the sport. At that point, he took on a whole new persona, one that he seemed to exaggerate and play with to his advantage. Surely when he joined Lotus, they saw that his character was exploitable, and they jumped on the opportunity to make the ”Iceman” persona as profitable as possible. In my opinion, its all good fun, and finally Kimi seems to be enjoying it as well.

But still, even though his off track personality may be controversial, his on track behavior is very good. He doesn’t cheat, doesn’t crash into people, doesn’t cause any major problems, and most importantly, hes super fast. Given a good car, he is one of the fastest drivers in the world, definitely up in the top 5. And just because of that, he 100% belongs in F1. To say that this sport would be better off without him is nonsense. He is exciting to watch on track, and gives the established teams a run for their money. What more can you want out of a driver?

@kingshark

What I find funny is how criticizing Alonso, Vettel or Hamilton is considered to be perfectly normal; yet when someone judges Raikkonen it immediately becomes an immortal deed.

I have noticed the same contradiction myself. I got banned from the Autosport forums for it. Nobody dares criticise Raikkonen over there, because as soon as someone does so, Raikkonen’s fans descend on the person in question, and get very critical; even abusive. Some of them are so extreme that they will attack even if you like Raikkonen, but not as much as they do. I refused to budge and got banned because I was “simply too disruptive”. One of the moderators contacted me by e-mail and explained why it happened and why he was unhappy with it. The moderators have virtually no power over there because certain groups of fans have too much influence. It’s easier for them to ban people for having an opinion than it is to ban people for attacking others, primarily because they only have to ban one member instead of one hundred. They’ve since tried to turn things around, but the damage has been done.

@prisoner-monkeys @kingshark
In my opinion, this topic alone would be fine. Annoying, (as there are few arguments in the OP that aren’t based on rumours or false statements), but fine.

The point is that Prisoner Monkeys has been ranting about Räikkönen for eighteen months and he has said every single negative thing you can say about Räikkönen thousands of times – Kimi’s attitude is bad, Kimi has bad manners, PM has heard that Kimi’s engineer left because of Kimi’s attitude, Kimi hit a child and just kept walking, Kimi’s lazy, a race is worth 1/10 if Kimi wins it – at one point PM even used to post theories that Kimi has Asperger’s syndrome.

I dare to guess that PM has posted hundreds of negative comments and posts about Räikkönen on this forum and most of them are just repeating the same rant all over again. To say that he’s “[taking] the opportunity to try and approach the issue in a rational and dispassionate manner” and then repeat the same rants and rumours again is asking for trouble. To be honest, reading how PM himself describes his doings on this forum makes me doubt his story about Autosport forum also (even though I’ve never read it, so I don’t know what the actual situation is).

PM has lots of interesting posts and comments on F1Fanatic, especially about other motorsport series and money in F1. It’s a shame he loses control whenever Räikkönen is mentioned.

Deleted more comments and closed the thread which had degenerated into silly bickering about what may or may have happened on other fourms.