pokerman wrote:
j man wrote:
Zoue wrote:
Lojik wrote:
And once again we are back to a Hamilton versus discussion. Amazing.
People have been discussing Alonso's state of mind in this particular incident, which itself set off a chain of events which heavily influenced Alonso's legacy, so it's relevant. And unfortunately Hamilton is involved in this, if only as a catalyst. Where the discussion appears to be getting bogged down is that some are getting hung up on blame, whereas in reality the only real relevance is to point out how it may have affected Alonso's mind and subsequent actions. Who was right or wrong is another discussion entirely
In any case I don't think the Hungary incident was the trigger that tore the team in two that season, Alonso's mental capitulation had occurred much sooner. He was all over the place in the Canadian GP with several uncharacteristic off-track excursions; I could only conclude that it was all frustration at being behind Hamilton because I've never seen him drive that badly before or since. Then there was the outburst over the radio in the next race in Indy where he demanded that the team apply team orders to give him the win. For his part Hamilton was noticeably peeved at being told to hold station behind Alonso in Monaco and was clearly not prepared to play second fiddle and was only going to retaliate to Alonso's attempts to engineer himself number 1 status in the team. I'd rather see Hungary as the final straw in a tit-for-tat battle for supremacy that had been escalating for the entire year. Probably ever since Hamilton stuck it round the outside of Alonso at Turn 1 in Australia.
Indeed which I was trying to explain with Hungary being the tipping point not just an isolated thing that happened out of the blue.
The battle for supremacy was Alonso wanting #1 status and Hamilton wanting equal status,
I can never understand why perhaps Hamilton himself could ever be portrayed as a villain in all of this. I can understand a driver earning #1 status by simply being better but when 2 drivers are close to equal it's so wrong for one driver expecting to be given #1 status when it's not even in a contract.
Then I'm sorry but I'm afraid those Hamilton-shaped blinkers are working overtime. Both Hamilton and Alonso were just as volatile, not to mention infantile, as each other and share the blame for the way things turned out between the drivers.
In the case of the specific point being discussed, if you really cannot see that Hamilton taking matters into his own hands - effectively against both Alonso and the team, as the "preference" rota had already been agreed - was in any way not selfish or provocative, then it's clear that nothing Hamilton will ever do will be wrong to you. Just because he felt put out that it went wrong for him in the previous race (which, by the way, had nothing to do with Alonso anyway), doesn't mean he can appropriate what wasn't his in the following race. This is pretty basic stuff and I'm surprised anyone would seek to pretend it wasn't wrong to do so.
None of this is to excuse Alonso's own stupid reaction and escalation, which is on him. But let's not rewrite history and pretend that Hamilton acted whiter than white in all of this and was somehow a completely innocent passenger
edit: and BTW, one of the claims being made is that part of the reason Alonso was so upset was because he had been verbally promised by Ron before joining that he would be made number one driver. He was so worked up because he felt this promise was not being kept. So while it may not have been written into his contract - although quite how we know that for sure is unclear to me - Alonso clearly felt that this was an agreement that was not being honoured
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