2005 F1 Season Review Thread

[Wouter Melissen]

Originally Posted by henk4

no, two, in Mexico and Monza

The Monza win was with the Hondola right?

[McReis]

Originally Posted by Cotterik

Only in the last decade have ferrari been in the contest for winning races nevermind the championship.

Ferrari are a fairly new addition to the fight.

God help you Cotterik!
You have to study your lessons harder.

[Wouter Melissen]

Not to mention the fact that a team like McLaren or Williams always had/have the choice to pick the best engine/gearbox whereas Ferrari always had to rely on their own material.

[Matra et Alpine]

Originally Posted by Wouter Melissen

Not to mention the fact that a team like McLaren or Williams always had/have the choice to pick the best engine/gearbox whereas Ferrari always had to rely on their own material.

Not sure why you see that as good.

Williams "picking" BMW was a disaster

[Cotterik]

Originally Posted by Wouter Melissen

You do realize that Ferrari is the single most successful Formula 1 entrant? Take the 1961 season for example when Ferrari won not only the F1 driver's championship, but also the Sportscar World Championship and took a victory at Le Mans. Every team goes through poor spells, some the cars McLaren campaigned between 1976 and 1984 were so bad the word Dog does not apply. Honda has won Grand Prix as an independent team.

the point i was making was not about their overall success, just that theyve only been majorly successfull in the last decade. Just to correct the previous post which stated that ferrari have ALWAYS been the best in F1, which isnt the case.

Originally Posted by henk4

that is also a bit exaggerated:

see the success in teh seventies of the subsequent 312T models with Niki Lauda, Villeneuve and Scheckter and the disaster year with the 126C2 in 1982, where both Villeneuve and Pironi could easily have won the world title had not they been mortally and heavily injured.

Ferrari is actually the only team that is still there since F1 started

you're absolutely right, but the point i was making was that they havent always been winning. Which most people seem to think. Seeing as Ferrari is considered by many to be the leading motorsport brand.

Originally Posted by McReis

God help you Cotterik!
You have to study your lessons harder.

Read what I'm actually saying and i wont have to

[Matra et Alpine]

Your words C -- "Only in the last decade have ferrari been in the contest for winning races nevermind the championship."

So you need to recognise that folks can only work with what you TYPE on a post adn not what you may have been thinking.

"Only in the last decade" wipes out the previous 40 years of Ferrari at one stroke. Folks were only pointing out that statement was wrong.

[Wouter Melissen]

Originally Posted by Matra et Alpine

Not sure why you see that as good.

Williams "picking" BMW was a disaster

Well in the last two decades Williams was able to hop from the winning Cosworth to the winning Honda to the winning Renault engine. The BMW choice wasn't all bad, IIRC Montoya was a contender late in the 2003 championship until his own stupidity took him out.

[Forza Ferrari]

My First Post!!!!

Yeah i think it was a great season. Even though i am a Ferrari fan i think that F1 needed a new World Champion in order to reignite peoples interest.

Fernando Alonso drove superbly this season. He was totally consistent throughout the season and despite Kimi Raikkonen's best efforts he had the edge on reliability and consistency.

If McLaren had been fast from Melbourne then things may have been different.

Bring on 2006.

[fpv_gtho]

In some ways it was no surprise to see Renault and McLaren being the teams to beat this year. Last year Renault, along with BAR, were the surprise of the season as they overshadowed Williams and McLaren early in the season, and took a win with Trulli in Monaco, and then McLaren found their grove again. Not having Ferrari with them though was an unexpected shock though, especially with the effort the team put into this years car, although i think they had to scrap their working designs when this years rules were finally confirmed.

Williams will be looking absolutely everywhere to get any sort of gain for next year, possibly the reasoning behind their Bridgestone and Cosworth deals. Bridgestone, now with Toyota and Ferrari should have the testing resources to create compoetitive tyres, especially now the FIA is talking about tyre changes again, and Cosworth know V8's like the back of the hand. At the very least, it should have them as a strong contender as having top 3 pace for the first round next year. I think the ongoing development of the FW27 this year indicates they have the resources to remain competitive, they just need the groundwork for a good car, which simply wasnt there this year. Had McLaren or Renault made the FW27, it wouldve been the FW27B by China.

Toyota after this year are still massively underachieving. When they didnt have Trulli's qualifying pace grossly outweighing his race pace, they were relying on light qualifying runs to get ahead. They had a solid year though, with some definate performance improvements that could be pinpointed at their choice of drivers, so next year they could be dangerous.