And Rubens ain’t the man for that, is he?  Though perhaps Ferrari know
that already.

Basically, anyone who signs for Ferrari thinking they are getting equal
status as MS is only fooling themselves no matter what they say to get
you to sign the contract.  If they wouldn’t give Eddie equal status to
stay (a driver who has won races for them and is their WC contender)
then why would they hand it to RB just like that?

Also Ferrari gave Irvine less testing time than Michael when he first
joined the team.

Cheers, Mike
—
Mike Marler                          Information Technology, Georgia Tech
mike.mar…@oit.gatech.edu           Atlanta, Georgia  30332-0715

I get the impression that Barrichello is saying he is willing to help Ferrari
win the constructers WC, but he is not willing to do so much for Schueys
drivers WC.  I dare say he will drive defensively when asked to, and let him
past easily enough, but I dont think he will blatantly slow down so that MS
can take the chequered flag.

Luciano

> BTW, what do you make of this comment by Rubens? How (much) does
> this  differ from the current ‘arrangement’ at Ferrari?

> "If I have to allow Schumacher to pass me, then Ferrari does not
> interest me. However, if – for the good of the team – we work to
> get a result with me as co-pilot, that’s acceptable."

I think there is a significant difference. Eddie went to Ferrari
knowing he still had a lot to learn and happy to accept a clearly
defined secondary role, which included moving over for MS from day
one, should he happen to be ahead of him. Of course, at that stage in
his development, he wasn’t likely to be ahead of him very often. It’s
only in the last year or so that he’s made it clear that his next
contract would have to be on more equitable terms or he would go
elsewhere.

Rubens, on the other hand, is going there – in his own mind – to prove
he is as good or better than Schumacher. I very much doubt that he has
accepted having the more onerous elements of Eddie’s contract imposed
on him. Surely the most he will have accepted is clause which says he
has to move over when the championship is at stake – his view of
working ‘for the good of the team’. Of course, Schumacher and Todt’s
view of working ‘for the good of the team’ may be somewhat different
from that of Barrichello.

The questions are, how much testing will he get; how much say in
development; or in choice of setup? The Schumacher way is to ensure
that his team-mate has no chance of being as fast early season. If
Barrichello let’s that happen, he will be no better off than Eddie
was, or Johnny Herbert at Benetton. Rubens is going to have to be
prepared to play hard ball from day one.

–
David Betts (dav…@motorsport.org.uk)

"Believe me, when you did well against Stirling, you knew you’d really
done something: he was the greatest I ever saw – by a long way" –
Richie Ginther

The Ferrari Gallery:
http://www.zing.com/album/ff/ff/b3/7/ffffb37f.html

- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -

> After the lack of performance in Spa and some quotes attributed
> to Irvine that Ferrari was slowing down the development of this
> year’s car*, one could start to worry that Ferrari was going to
> give up. But Luca di Montezemolo has just said some things which
> I think were intended to motivate the technical team by pointing
> out to them that blaming the drivers would not get them off the
> hook:

> "If the drivers don’t have the car, they can’t win," he said.
> "And at Spa, they didn’t have the car, we all saw that. We have to
> believe in this championship. So I’m calling now for the fullest
> possible technical support for the drivers."

> *: ok, one would expect that those were only excuses from Irvine, but:

>  1 – it was not anything which has not been alleged before. At the
>    end of 1995 Alesi complained that in the later part of the season
>    Ferrari didn’t provide some evolutions (their excuse was that the
>    budget was exhausted) that he and Berger had asked for. But those
>    evolutions quickly appeared once Schumacher started to test.

Heh, and things still suffered at the start of 1996, like in Brazil and
Argentina where they ran the F310 with the 412T2′s rear end…

>  2 – it is of course in Ferrari’s interest to help Irvine now. But
>    considering that, if Irvine were to win the championship, then
>    the wisdow of spending $100+ million with Schumacher since 1996
>    could be questioned, it might not be in the interest of the
>    careers of some of the people there.

Now now As much as they would probably expect/hoped/planned/whatever
that Michael would win the WC and not Eddie, I can’t see them throwing
away the opportunity just for that reason. Of course, I could well be
wrong, but what Ferrari did in the race in Belgium suggests that they are
still giving Eddie every opportunity to try to win the WC. The fact that
the car sucks (relative to the McLaren) is just a minor problem in
achieving that goal

It would be nice if Ferrari *did* actually produce a superior car to all
its competitors for once – it has consistently made cars which are
competitive, but which are never quite as good as those which have gone on
to win the WC each year, IMHO. If they could do that then should have no
trouble winning the WC!

> BTW, while checking if the Ferrari web page had something on this
> (I didn’t find anything), I saw that they will be testing at Monza
> from September, 1st (Wednesday) to the 3rd (Friday), with 3 cars
> and Irvine, Salo and Schumacher.

I notice on the 2nd it says "Eddie Irvine worked on set-up and some new
aerodynamic developments for the F399." So there’s some hope for Ferrari
it seems.

> http://www.mat.uc.pt/~rps/f1/     a born-again-tifoso

What has lead to this change in your .sig from this?
http://www.mat.uc.pt/~rps/f1/ an ex-tifoso since 95/11/13

I just checked and this was the day after the Australian GP. Was it
because of who was leaving the team, who was joining it, or both?

BTW, what do you make of this comment by Rubens? How (much) does this
differ from the current ‘arrangement’ at Ferrari?

"If I have to allow Schumacher to pass me, then Ferrari does not interest
me. However, if – for the good of the team – we work to get a result with
me as co-pilot, that’s acceptable."

I want other people to comment on this before I do so I can save myself
from the possibility of making a fool of myself as I have my own
feelings on what he means and I don’t see how they are much different from
the way things are (please note I said ‘much’, I didn’t say that Rubens’
job=Eddie’s job!)

Dave
—

——————————————————
 David Wright, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

 da…@smug.adelaide.edu.au | http://www.smug.adelaide.edu.au/~davew/
 sch…@geocities.com       | http://www.geocities.com/MotorCity/1560/

Something like this?

"Now now young Mr Pollock, we don’t want another little temper tantrum
like last year, with a car that looks like its livery was designed on the
wall of the gents with a spraycan after a night on the herbal ciggies
so let’s see what your marketing people have been up to, spending all
that money on paint jobs instead of development work…"

pete
—
p…@fenelon.com "there’s no room for enigmas in built-up areas" (HMHB)

> BTW2, the same article has a photograph of what may be the 2000 BAR
> livery. Sponsors are 555 (main), Motorola (front wing), Becks
> (rear wing) and Sonax:
> http://www.totalf1.com/images/cars/1999/BAR/2000bardesignbig.jpg

Apparently they will alternate races with Lucky Strike.

Though you have to wonder about Bernie.  BAR must be livid that he
walked through the Spa paddock clearly holding the pictures out for
people to ‘accidentally’ snap pics of.  And then he goes round showing
it to other team owners (Walkinshaw and Jordan are being shown it in one
photo).  But why give Bernie your 2000 livery design anyway?

As for Ferrari, the question is are they motivated enough to win it just
to see it taken to Ford?