I do wonder that...esp from how he talks about Lauda. But from others who knew Ramirez well I read they said he did a great job of not going to deep with blame. But he did nail guys regardless of who they were and pay tribute to F1 flunkies who could have been great. He said he was very excited to work with Mike..the son of Mario who they called "the Big Foot"...LOL.

But with Lauda that Ring crash just about killed him...and he talks how almost impossible it was from him to get back into that car not even a month later..saying he'd get sick just thinking about it he was so horrified to drive. Hell how he got the helmet on and not be in wicked pain is amazing to me. But he did race and held the championship to that Jap race in the rain where he did quit because he said his tear ducts which were badly burned let his eyes water badly.

An excuse? That's what this guy Jo said. Well he suffered something like that then he can bash Lauda.

So was he unfair to Mike? Don't know for sure. I remember Al Jr being interviewed and saying almost the exact same thing...you live there as much as you can. (Mike came back with.."yea well when its him he can do that")

They said he drove faster getting to catch his Concorde flight then on the track.

And I read an interview with Senna who said there were some issues with the car(electronics) but even if the car was perfect Mike's style was wrong and he didn't work hard enough to learn the F1 car. Senna _did_ like Mike and when he came back to Indy cars and won he sent Mike a "congrats" gram.

I've read the stories about sabotage but a lot of that came from Marco....which may be true...but Senna had the same issues too with the car.

Now...my opinion was at the time...we rooted for Mike like hell. But at times I wondered if he ever watched a F1 race before! At that time a lot of the leaders would fall out by 1/2 way. We used to yell..."WAIT MIKE....find a groove and finish a damn race!!". But I think in the first three races he had like 10 laps under his belt.

I didn't agree with him getting the boot mid season but I do remember my awesome Euro F1 mag saying upper management had enough of what they felt were Mike acting like..."whatever".