Button Lashes Out At Briatore After Italian Media Comments
Jenson Button has lashed out at Renault Team Principal Flavio Briatore after comments the flambouyant Italian made to Italian sports daily LA Gazetta Dello Sport.
“The drivers in our teams have been and are world champions, while the championship is now fought between a driver who was almost retired and another one who is a good guy but a paracarro (Italian saying for being as slow as a milepost at the side of a road),” Briatore told a reporter for the newspaper.
“I don’t know where credibility has ended up with all this. To make up the gap we have to those teams is impossible.”
Button was employed by Briatore for 2 seasons, 2001 and 2002 when Benetton changed over to Renault.
He accused the Italian of being bitter.
“Unless he is at the front of F1, I am sure [he thinks] any team [being there] hurts the credibility of F1,” Button told reporters in Shanghai.
“He also needs to remember that he tried to employ me for this year, so…”
Button (L) and Briatore (Center) in happier times at Benetton in 2001. Fisichella (R) and Webber (Far Right) also present
Italian Media Slam Raikkonen, Alonso Called For
Major Italian newspaper, La Gazetta dello Sport have slammed Kimi Raikkonen’s poor performances over this season despite finishing on the podium in Japan.
Raikkonen, who won the title for the Scuderia in his first season with them last year, has failed to find form this year and all too often been on the DNF sheet.
La Gazetta reckon that Luca di Montezemolo should have shown Raikkonen the door, and got Alonso to come into the team.
“It’s a question we have to ask,” the newspaper’s correspondent wrote. “Was it really sensible to renew Raikkonen’s contract?
“(Luca di) Montezemolo has called the Finn a striker in search of his lost goals, but Kimi seems more like a mechanic who has lost the operating instructions to his car.”
“He now has two more races to help Massa and show that he still has the desire. If this run continues, Ferrari must make the call to Alonso.”
Former Ferrari driver Jody Schekter who won the title in 1979 with the team was also critical;
“Raikkonen’s life at Maranello would have been much more difficult if Enzo Ferrari was around,” the South African told the Spanish newspaper Sport.
He believes Alonso is the way forward “I think Ferrari needs someone with his personality; someone capable of being in control of things.”
Italian Press Heap Pressure On Kimi
Italian newspapers have begun to put pressure on Kimi Raikkonen after a series of lacklustre performances.
The Finnish driver has not won a race since the Spanish Grand Prix, and after spending most of the race behind Fernando Alonso in Hungary, he could only manage 3rd.
Many are wondering why he can be so good at times, in the final section of the Hungarian GP he was setting fastest lap after fastest lap, but why he seems unable to string a decent qualifying lap together.
With La Gazetta heaping praise on Felipe Massa, and Fernando Alonso hot on the heels of a Ferrari seat, is there still room for the World Champion?
“He seems a pale imitation of the driver of the past,” Tuttosport, an Italian national sports newspaper commented today
“This Raikkonen is not the driver that Ferrari needs. He needs to ask himself whether he really still has the desire to race.”
Hamilton’s Title Tainted By Cheating – Montezemolo
Ferrari boss Luca Di Montezemolo has told Italian newspaper, La Gazetta Dello Sport, that if Lewis Hamilton wins the 2007 F1 World Title, which he could do in China this weekend, that it will be forever tainted by the cheating scandal.
McLaren were only fined $100million and thrown out of the constructors championship, neither driver was punished, which we believe too was a disgrace.
“I still think that in the spying affair it was a big mistake not to disqualify the McLaren drivers as well,” the Gazzetta dello Sport web site quoted him as saying after Sunday’s Japanese Grand Prix.
“It means that if Hamilton wins the championship, he will also win it thanks to Ferrari because there is a lot of Ferrari in his car.”
Ferrari have now won the 2007 Constructors Championship title.
