It's not what you say, it's what you do. Reading over the comments to my last post, and particularly the discussion on Alonso that sprang up, I was reminded of Alonso's statements after leaving Renault but before he first drove the McLaren.
It seemed that Fernando had always wanted to drive for McLaren, a sort of boyhood ambition. I can recall Ron Dennis expressing his surprise when he jokingly asked Alonso to drive for him and the Spaniard agreed immediately, surely an indication of eagerness to drive for the team. It all fits very nicely with Fenando's stated ambition.
But now that Flavio Briatore has claimed that he and Alonso were talking about a return to Renault as early as the Australian GP last year, this deperate desire of Fernando's to be a McLaren driver looks more of a public relations effort than the truth. Even if, as Arnet has put it, it was just a case of the Flav saying something like, "Please come back. I've left your bedroom just as you left it", surely Alonso would have laughed at such an idea, if he was genuinely fulfilling a childhood ambition. And I can imagine Flavio not being eager to recall such a humiliating moment.
My conclusion is that the lifelong dream thing was just hype, the kind of statement drivers make whenever they change teams. No doubt Fernando was just going to the greenest pastures available after losing patience over Renault's dithering about whether to remain in F1.
Usually it is Ferrari that drivers cite as their dream team, the one they always wanted to drive for. I am old enough to remember Gilles Villeneuve saying as much when he first joined the team and subsequent events were to prove the truth of his words. Traditionally, it has been almost a requirement in the Ferrari driver's contract that a new recruit make some sort of statement to this effect and rare indeed are the drivers who declare openly that they will never drive for the Scuderia.
Inevitably it was Nelson Piquet (senior) who summed up the rebels' point of view most aptly: When Ferrari win, it is thanks to the car; when they lose, it is the driver's fault. It seems to me that there must be many who joined the team only to learn the truth of Piquet's words.
It was Kimi who broke the mold, of course. I watched carefully when he moved from McLaren to Ferrari but never did he claim a boyhood ambition, not once did he talk of long years spent yearning to drive the red cars. And it is quite ironic that he has fitted into the team so well, albeit after a long adjustment period.
I guess the moral is that we should take these statements with a large pinch of salt. Naturally, a driver changing teams is going to be optimistic about his new employers and will say nice things about them. Even Fisichella, so obviously pushed out of Renault and having to take whatever he can get, is full of praise for Force India.
But, in the end, it's when the rubber hits the road that the truth is revealed. Give a new driver a bad car and he will soon forget his hopes and dreams, muttering about bad handling and unfair treatment. The grass may appear to be greener but sometimes it turns sour pretty quickly.