The reports about Fernando Alonso’s remarks in relation to Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel should be taken with a pinch of salt. These were reported in a German publication. They were then parroted around the world by those with no idea about what is right or wrong. The reports say that Alonso said: “Lewis is very fast, aggressive and totally focused, he is only interested in victory. Sebastian has not reached that level yet. I know he’s the double World Champion, but he is still somewhat behind the level Lewis has set.”
The actual quote comes from a book produced by photographer Ercole Colombo for Philip Morris, for the Wrooom event. It was as follows:
“I consider Hamilton to to be a very quick driver, aggressive and totally focussed. All he’s interested in is winning. Nothing else. A really talented driver. In my opinion Sebastian hasn’t quite got to that level year. I know that he is a World Champion and that he’ll win another Championship in 2011, but that is the way it is. For me he’s just slightly below Lewis’s standard.”
The reference to what Vettel may achieve in 2011 is a bit of a give away – isn’t it?
Odd that it was left out…
See that’s why we come here!
I wonder if he’s changed his opinion much tho. I do love how preoccupied Alonso is with Hamilton, it’s the greatest compliment! I really hope they can have some great battles this year!
Is there a list of drivers Alonso has called the quickest, the fastest, his biggest rival, or anything to that effect, say, in the past 2 or 3 years? Cause by my count, he may just be through the field before the season starts in Melbourne.
Also, it’s quite entertaining reading this blurb, and then look back at how 2011 unfolded. Lets just say that Fernando is probably well suited for his job behind the wheel, and should contemplate a switch to fortune telling.
“should NOT contemplate”, of course.
Dieter Rencken were replicating the same in the Autosport premium content.
I can´t dispute what was written, but just look what Edd Strawn is doing at each Autosport edition.
The man is trying to elevate Sebastian Vettel as the super ultramega driver of all time.
One of his last articles About Seb is a masterpiece:
“Is Vettel now better than Senna?”
The question is, who cares?
I can’t stand the guy and his writing. This article comparing Senna and Vettel is one the worst piece of professional writing I have ever seen in Autosport.
And we still have to pay for that!
Bruno Senna?
Put Bruno in a Red Bull and Vettel at Williams and the answer would be “probably not” but let Edd “go off’ anyhow if he cannot contain himself, someone has to, not
Put Ayrton Senna in a below par car and he too would have struggled. The entire career of Ayrton is good example of how for all the greatness bestowed upon him, he still was always looking for being at the best team, with best car under him. When McLaren started to flounder and he saw Williams doing well and his arch-nemesis Prost going and winning a championship with them, he too dumped McLaren and switched camps.
Its not as if he stuck with a weaker team and help them rebuild them to their lost glories. So its wrong to belittle Vettel and saying that all his results are due to the car he drives.
So me a driver who won a race, let alone championship in a sub par car under normal racing conditions ( not lottery of wet weather or variable conditions race or race where half the field was taken out in racing incident and quarter left was done by technical DNFs, has never ever happened.
I’m not a Vettel fanboy but surely Vettels win at Monza in the Toro Rosso was one of those?
I wanted to list that Monza’08 win myself, but Seb’s detractors immediately point that till 2008 STR had more closer ties with Adrian Newey and his RedBull racing cars, of course conveniently forgetting that STR/Seb had their win even before the Parent team and all that Adrian Newey had to offer to RedBull by that time was “too tight car” ” hydraulic and transmission gremlins” and what nots, even if we think for a moment that Vettel was driving RedBull’s customer car it would still be shame that he was able to get better results from the car than their A-Team.
Imagine if a Luizzi/Karthikeyan/ Alguersueri/Chandok buys a Ferrari 2012 F1 car and qualifies ahead of Alonso and Massa and scores better in the race than Ferrari’s home drivers. The whole myth and hype around factory drivers being more talented and pay drivers just in coz of money will fall flat on its face….
ei Pyaare
Ayrton Senna to a Brazilian journalist soon after he realized Williams car for 1994 was not the wonder he had expected:
“bem na minha vez fizeram cagada com o carro!”
“right in my turn they did shit!”
@Fernando – thats not the point, my point is when he saw fortunes of McLaren fading and Williams on rise, Even the “mighty” Brazilian jumped the ship, as it turned out the ship he landed on had no answer to “Active suspension system,launch controls and other tricks” that Benetton car of Schumacher had.
But the intent to dump a fading team rather than working with it through the tough times was executed.
Got it?
Did you conveniently forget about his debut year with Toleman and subsequent years with the – then struggling – Lotus?
Mike B – Are you not conveniently forgetting my statement show me a driver who has won races in bad car, the few good results that Ayrton had in Toleman had lot to do with unreliability of cars around him and other factors such as variable weather conditions (that I have summarized in my post).
And even in Toleman he was not having any aspirations of “building the team around him to its glory days” rather than “jumping ship to team whose stars were on rise” and that he promptly did by jumping to McLaren.
The whole discussion started about driving in weak cars vs strong cars, and out of proportion credits given to Ayrton about flattering the car’s capabilities and my point being no drivers in F1 do that, everybody just gives good results in good cars…. of course there are journeymen who give below average results in great cars…
Aren’t you conveniently forgetting Vettel’s very good luck with the weather at Monza ’08, in quali and the race. Got it?
Read my original post, – “Show me a driver who won a race, let alone championship in a sub par car under normal racing conditions ( not lottery of wet weather or variable conditions race or race where half the field was taken out in racing incident and quarter left was done by technical DNFs), has never ever happened.”
Well you don’t HAVE to pay for that!
My feature containing the Alonso quotes verbatim was published by Autosport.com on 12 January – almost a week before the furore broke – and made clear that the quotes were taken from the book. In fact, this is the paragraph:
What follows are selected excerpts from the resulting publication Wrooom 2011. As could be expected from two highly individual sportsmen, in many instances their answers could not stand in greater contrast; equally, the book reveals a host of startling similarities. What follows is not a book review, but rather a dive into the fascinating mindsets of two of motorsport’s greatest champions.
See http://plus.autosport.com/premium/feature/4151/inside-the-mind-of-a-champion/
So your points is? Whatever, thanks for taking the trouble to read my stuff.
Sorry to say that not only did I not read this article, but also did not even know it existed. I do not have access to Autosport Premium, or whatever it is called. The piece I wrote was about quotes that appeared on the Web, attributed to a German publication and picked up by the usual suspects.
Nothing wrong with Alonzo’s quote when taken as a whole. However, the word “dodgy” seems a bit kind when the omission seems designed to create fire where there is no smoke. Too bad the so-called journalist in question seems unaware that journalism requires more integrity than is evidenced by intentionally giving an inaccurate impression to stir up hostile emotion…
Half the internet F1 media is made up of snippets of quotes for an exaggerated headline with a recycled story, pure annoying crap to be completely ignored
I did raise an eyebrow when reading the first reports, but your work gives it the proper perspective. Thanks for not being a lazy journalist,
Dodgy indeed. Thanks Joe for going to the source.
you mean 2012 right
No 2011
thanks Joe, for clarifying things.
I had just read the ‘report’ in a local Brazilian motoring news site and there it sounded like the interview was done a couple of days ago.
Gonna jump reading such kind of ‘news’ definitely, waste of time.
Teehee…. Fernando….
And there i was worried for Alonso´s sake that he would try his luck at mindgames against Vettel pre season. We know how that ended for said Lewis Hamilton 12 months ago and Button didnt have much luck either with his numerous attempts to unsettle Vettel during the season. There was a joint SV & FA interview for italian and german tv just before the Monza GP in which Alonso gave a more realistic picture about what might be in store for Vettel and himself within the next years. He knows how Vettel ticks and what drives him on – basically to beat Schumis records to pulp ! He knows it because Vettel is a younger version of himself just like he is a copycat version of Schumi. The ability, focus, total commitment, confidence, mental strength, looking after every tiny detail, and building teams around you to the point where the “other” driver ends up in a mere servant role are all uncanny characteristics combined in MS, FA and SV. What seperates them is only the stage of their career at which they meet.
OK what has this got to do with Lewis Hamilton. Dont ask me. LOL
Probably because Lewis beat him and the loss dented his ability, focus, total commitment, confidence, mental strength etc.
“You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war” – W.R. Hearst to Frederic Remington, before the Spanish-American war of 1898.
Yellow journalism is nothing new, and it predates the Internet by about 125 years at least.
Hamilton, quick, aggressive and focussed!
What’s wrong with Seb being quick, relaxed and in the zone
to win a world championship?
And why is the media manipulating time?
I always say too many people believe whats written by the media as being gospel.
My personal belief is it says more about the people who believe whatever is printed than the people that actually print it
Thanks for the high level of integrity you maintain on your blog, Joe…
Gotta love the section of the media that is just interested in striking headlines and emotional content, as opposed to pure facts and information.
It’s not dodgy though is it?
“he’ll win another Championship in 2011″
They did not really leave out “what Vettel may achieve in 2011″ –
Alonso is obviously talking at a time when Vettell had it all in the bag, mathematically or not, he had already displayed what he was capable of in 2011 and still Alonso did not feel it made him great, or better than LH
Depends on your standards.
It’s quite a large difference in meaning whether Alonso said it at the start of 2011, middle of 2011 or end of 2011. Without the phrase “in 2011″ and the paper printing it now, it would suggest Alonso’s view of 2012.
This reminds me of a headline a few years ago which was something like “I’m better than Schumacher, says Hakinen” (OK more than a few years ago) – reading the actual article what he actually said was “…there are some things he’s better at than me and some things I’m better at than him…”. But I suppose the headline worked and got me to read the article!
Hi Joe,
When did Fernando say this then? Prior to 2011 or during 2011?
thanks,
Balint
I have no idea, but I would think that it was the middle of 2011, as by then it was clear that Vettel was going to be champion again.
The book makes clear that the interviews with Alonso and Rossi were conducted in August
But the stories using those quotes did not.
Lazy sensationalism infects every facet of journalism. I had a good laugh a couple of months ago reading F1 Racing. They had a big interview with Kimi in which he spent a lot of time moaning about the press mis quoting him, he then went on to say “I’m not sure if winning the championship was my best memory of F1″ And the headline on the front cover? “Winning the championship is my best memory of F1″!! poor old Kimi! welcome back!
Spot on, Joe! Journalists are like all other humans, summarised in 3 categories: The good ones. The bad ones and the ugly ones.
The journalist who interpreted Alonso as saying: “I think Hamilton is better than Vettel” belongs to the latter two categories. The problem in such cases is that lots of people will contribute to spread the misinterpretation and to give a distorted perception of Alonso. And probably that journalist got credit for making such headlines.
One of the problems with F1 is that (like for football or NBA etc) there is way too much “communication” going on, as they call it. Witness the Thursday press conferences. Other than actual facts like “we’ve changed some bolts and some screws” nearly all of the talk is plain bla bla bla. I am very glad Kimi is back on board this year so we should have more of these: “Kimi, you won, are you happy? Yes. Next question. Are you happy with the handling of your car? No. Next question! I can’t wait for it!
So yes, Joe, we should actually read everything with a pinch of salt. But sometimes we need more than just a pinch!