LKS1 wrote:
Are you saying that Schumi decided to leave Benetton in the summer of '94, but instead of signing a contract with Ferrari and leaving (given as you say, he had the necessary excuse) he decided to wait another year before signing up with Ferrari?
Don't forget that at the time Weber and Schumacher wanted to leave Benetton for damaging his good name, the official verdict on their cheating was still to come. Which, if you think about it, means that Weber and Schumacher had already decided Benetton were indeed cheating. But leaving there and then would have constituted a breach of contract, with consequences. It may well be that Weber and Schumacher were as surprised as all of us when the FIA decided not to throw the team out for cheating.
LKS1 wrote:
Presumably you're also convinced that Schumi only left Benetton 'cos his priority was the money offered by Ferrari - even though it was a gamble whether Ferrari would become championship contenders in the future?
Senna was going to Ferrari; do you believe he wanted to go to a team without any prospect of winning the title(s) with them, after leaving McLaren when their dry spell started? I don't. I am convinced Schumacher - and Weber - were aware of how Todt was changing the way Ferrari worked. Since Ferrari never dropped out of the top tier of teams (despite what some would have us believe about the state they were in in the first half of the nineties), they had every reason to believe switching to them was less of a gamble than you seem to think. 1997 showed they were right; Schumacher threw the title away, but he was a contender down to the final race.
LKS1 wrote:
Why do you think "It is quite possible that Ferrari's opinion about Räikkönen changed during 2007. ... both world titles were won, mission accomplished." Surely Luca employed Kimi 'cos he was convinced that he would win the championships?
That was a ironic reaction to callMEcrazy; since we know that the decision to parachute Alonso in and drop Räikkönen from Ferrari was
not taken in 2009, but only weeks/months after Räikkönen had won the drivers' world championship, and Ferrari themselves won the constructors' championship; it would be interesting to know just how their opinion of Räikkönen had changed since he was recruited. It was clear they were not really capable of building him the car he needed, but whether that was his fault or theirs is not something I need to think long and hard about.
LKS1 wrote:
Your question "If Ferrari itself didn't want Kimi, why did they hire him? Who forced him on them?" has already been answered - although clearly you prefer to ignore this.
I'm not ignoring anything; but the suggestion was made Ferrari didn't want Kimi. That may be true, but they did recruit him to race alongside Schumacher. If they didn't want him, why hire him?