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Here's a shocker...Alonso to Ferrari

744 views 4 replies 4 participants last post by  Teutone 
#1 ·
The worst kept secret in F1...

It's official: Alonso joins Ferrari for 2010 (GMM) Ferrari on Wednesday announced that Fernando Alonso has signed a three year contract to race for the famous Italian team beginning in 2010.
The 27-year-old Spaniard will replace Finn Kimi Raikkonen, who was contracted to stay with the Maranello squad for one more season.

"With common consent, we have agreed to terminate the contract binding me to Ferrari to the end of 2010," Raikkonen, who is expected to move to McLaren, is quoted as saying in the Ferrari press statement.

El Pais newspaper in Spain believes Raikkonen will receive 45 million euros for the split: substantially more than his agreed 2010 retainer.

"I am very sad to be leaving a team with which I have spent three fantastic years," said the 29-year-old, who won the drivers' championship at the end of his first season with Ferrari in 2007.

"I have always felt at home with everyone here and I will have many happy memories of my time with the team," Raikkonen added.

Ferrari said Alonso's teammate will be Felipe Massa, with Giancarlo Fisichella the reserve driver.
 
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#4 ·
This actually has me excited about next season - the potential of Kimi and Lewis racing each other at McLaren combined with Alonso being kept honest by a very capable Massa at Ferrari. This should make for some great racing - three world champions and a guy who missed it by a point.
 
#5 ·
James Allen on Alonso's Ferrari move

James Allen on Alonso's Ferrari move

Wednesday, 30 September 2009 17:56
F1 | ITV Sport

It’s the move that the Formula 1 world has been expecting for months, but as James Allen explains, the Alonso to Ferrari deal for 2010 has only been definitively concluded in recent weeks.

The itv.com/f1 columnist also looks at why it has been Raikkonen, and not Massa, who has been forced to make way for his generational rival, while also explaining why F1 is set to be the real winner from this particular driver merry-go-round.


Fernando Alonso joining Ferrari was the worst kept secret in recent F1 memory.

The Spaniard was first mooted as a Ferrari driver in December last year and the rumours have swirled around ever since.

But it was really only in the last few weeks that the deal has come together.

There was an understanding between them that had either 2011 or 2010 as the start point depending on how the season panned out.

Ferrari took their time over deciding what to do.

As of Spa it was still not clear exactly which way they were heading.

At Monza came the scheduled announcement that Santander would be joining the Ferrari team.

The deal is a big one, in the region of €45 million a season.

When you consider that they still have Philip Morris and other sponsors, that their share of the TV and prize money is $50 million and they get an extra payment for their historic status in F1, they are very well funded for the new-look F1 where budgets are supposed to come down to below €100m in 2010 and then down to around €60 million in 2011.

Alonso will drive alongside Felipe Massa.

Many people are surprised that it is Raikkonen who is making way when Massa is the cheaper driver to pay off and it is not clear yet that he will be his old self when he gets behind the wheel.

However Ferrari clearly feels that the brave little Brazilian is part of the family and they would not dump him when he is at his most vulnerable.

This would play badly in Italy and around the world.

Also the reasons for dropping Raikkonen stretch back through his time with the team. He has a very different way of working from Michael Schumacher, he has a social life which is oriented very differently from the Italian way and it wasn't such a great fit.

You have to admire Kimi for being his own man, but I think he will regret not trying to fit in to what they expected of him.

He achieved his dream, to win the world championship and you can bet that he will be massively motivated to do it again in a McLaren to show Ferrari and everyone else how good he is.

Lewis Hamilton will have a tiger by the tail next season, if they end up as a pairing.

As for Alonso, he will go well at Ferrari. He's intelligent, fast, organised and ruthless. He is the leader they have been lacking.

And the rivalry between Alonso, Hamilton and Raikkonen is going to make F1 one of the most compelling spectacles in sport in the coming years.
 
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