F1 – Alonso Confirmed at Ferarri

scuderia_ferrari_team_logo_07It seems like the last three seasons have been building up to this. Fernando Alonso was confirmed at Ferrari for the 2010-2012 seasons, with options on 2013 and 2014. Of course, no details have emerged on his contract, but speculation puts it around 25 million euros (36 million USD) per season.

But the story goes a little deeper, due to the contracts that were already in place. With Felipe and Kimi signed through 2011, Ferrari had to make way for Fernando to join, but that was further complicated by Massa’s injury. Ferrari had to be sure that Felipe was able to drive next year before they pulled the trigger and bought Kimi out of his 2011 contract.

Alonso made it known today that he had previously signed a contract with Ferrari starting in 2011, after Kimi and Felipe’s contracts ended.

For Kimi, this has to be an awkward situation. They surely had to give him crazy money to terminate his contract a year early. We will await official announcement, but strong rumors place him back at McLaren, which seems to be an awkward fit for the highly unmotivated Finn.

And now Luca’s failure is complete. He forced Schumacher out, in favor of the new hotness of Kimi Raikonnen. He tried to assemble a new dream team at Ferrari apart from Brawn and Todt. Clearly, this did not go as well as Luca planned. Clearly the team could not go on for another season with a mediocre unmotivated Kimi. Luca had to admit his mistakes and try to atone for them by spending a USF1 sized budget to ship Kimi off the team.

Two last thoughts:
1. You would have been much better off with Schumacher the last 3 seasons.
-or-
2. You should have hired Alonso a long time ago.

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