Mike A still bashing CART

[Methanol1]

Man, what a disrespectful person.
Where I come from it is about respect. If MA had any kind of integrity he would have thanked CART for the successful years and support that he recieved. Instead, he has the audacity to bash CART publicly and announce that there will be one open wheel series in America. I hope all the rumours with Bernie and CART come true.

I guess Andretti forgot how CART embraced him when he came back from Formula 1. But I am not going to succumb to his level and that is why I love the angle that CART has taken. Depite all the sneared remarks from the IRL towards CART, CART continues with it's business and is rising above the doom and gloom.

Man, I use to have alot of respect for this guy. It is just so dissapointing to hear him talk like that about CART.

PEACE

[turn1]

I heard MA on Jim Rome and almost spat at the radio. I wish that he would just be honest and admit he chased Honda money. Grrrr!

:mad:

[sundaydriver]

I never had respect for MA the person. He seemed to always be in a crappy mood, complaining about something, or just plain boring. He's taking a beating on the internet from CCWS fans and is most likely trying to substantiate his move the Indy Retirement League.

Good-bye MA, you will never be half the man your father was. Enjoy obscurity racing in circles.

[Hurling Frootmig]

We can only hope that Mike ends up with drivers just like him in his ownership (Honda) endevour.

The guy has shown just how little class he has in the last six months.

[GOFAST1]

He did start last twice in 2002? Why do we have to care any more what old and slow have to say. One more thing -- F1 93 -- enough said.

[rabbit]

Originally posted by GOFAST1
One more thing -- F1 93 -- enough said.

Don't bring up subjects you know nothing about. Ayrton Senna and Mario have both said quite publicly that Michael got the shaft over there. Read the interview with Mario on pitpass.com. Michael got screwed.

[mapguy]

Originally posted by rabbit
Don't bring up subjects you know nothing about. Ayrton Senna and Mario have both said quite publicly that Michael got the shaft over there. Read the interview with Mario on pitpass.com. Michael got screwed.

Well, to be honest Wankerdretti didn't help his case by living in Nazareth and taking the Concorde for the races.

IMHO he would have been able to test if he did the smart thing and moved to Europe. The whole Wankerdretti/McLaren debacle is at least 50% Mike's fault.

[rabbit]

http://www.pitpass.com/features/feature.cfm?featuresid=245&page=1


At the back of my mind, and in my list of 'questions to be asked', I already have Michael Andretti's name writ large, however it is Mario himself who broaches the subject.

"In my situation, with Michael I wanted him so bad to do it," says the 1978 World Champion. "He came here with the best team but at the worst possible time, when the team was on the way down. He needed to be with a team that was surging."

I make the point that Michael's team-mate was Ayrton Senna, which can hardly have helped.

"Yeh, but that was good for him," says Mario, leaning forward to make his point. "He didn't mind that. It was a benchmark, 'that's perfect' he said. 'If I'm going to win that's what I have to beat', and Michael was never intimidated by that. What he needed was to stay on and not become the fall guy.

'He had some terrible luck," I add, trying not to sound patronising.

"Some," agrees Mario. "He had some failures with the car but also he created some of it, he spun off a couple of times but he was used to winning and he was probably trying a bit too hard. As the season progressed he was beginning to really get the hang of the car. When he came on the scene, several rules came in to play. The minimum amount of laps you could run, limited testing and so on. Before then everyone used to park themselves in South Africa and test and test but he had no then he had no miles, whereas when Villeneuve came over he ten-thousand kilometres on the clock.

"Michael had no testing, he had never run the car. The only thing he did was a bit on the year old car, and I think he was doing incredibly well considering. At Magny-Cours he had a great race, he started eighteenth and finished fourth.

"After Magny-Cours they tested, just him and Senna, they tested two days and Michael was a tenth away from Senna all through the time. His confidence was beginning to come around and there were two things with Ron Dennis.

"Senna was not going to sign, so he (Dennis) signed up Michael for quite a bit of money, a considerable amount of money, he could afford it because they were not paying Senna. So what happened was that when Senna decided to sign the contract, by then Ron had secured Hakkinen from Lotus, and then two things happened. One; he could not afford to pay Senna and Michael. So Michael, all of a sudden, these were skipped payments, he wasn't getting paid. And in addition he wasn't giving Michael any testing. Michael was begging to test, but he had to give miles to Hakkinen, because all of a sudden Hakkinen (who had been head-hunted from Lotus) was not driving in the races. It put pressure on and he said to Michael obviously to save face that he had to get Michael to cut at the end of the season. I begged Ron Dennis to let him run but to no avail. Michael didn't get paid in 2 years. Nobody knows that but he became the fall guy for a blunder that Ron Dennis created for himself. It left Michael with a terrible taste. He was destroyed about all of that."

[GOFAST1]

Yeap!It was a conspiracy. When he left the team, they improved car so much that Mika did superb job very next race. Give me a break. If he was faster than Mika [the test driver] he would stay. He was not and he was fired. You can make all excuses you want.I don't know what I'm talking obout? Maybe, but posted times and finishes of 93 season are open record.

[JLMannin]

Originally posted by sundaydriver
I never had respect for MA the person. He seemed to always be in a crappy mood, complaining about something, or just plain boring. He's taking a beating on the internet from CCWS fans and is most likely trying to substantiate his move the Indy Retirement League.

Good-bye MA, you will never be half the man your father was. Enjoy obscurity racing in circles.

100% on the mark, on all accounts.

[Hurling Frootmig]

He did get the shaft in his F1 experience but he didn't help himself much either. Flying to the races and not really becoming a part of the team is pretty much par for the course for him. Remember when Ganassi had to run a seperate shop for Big Mo. Initially, it looked like Barry Green was going to be doing the same sort of thing.

He's slurping the kool-aid now and trying to rationalize his decision about taking the money and running. Like I've said before, Honda was very kind in their retirement gift. It's easy to discount most of what he says these days as sour grapes. He's mad that he couldn't really compete anymore and now he's trying to feed his ego and talk up his step down.