Formula 1: Swapping Felipe Massa for Fernando Alonso not the best idea Ferrari have ever had

I agree with you that Ferrari hiring Alonso would not be the best move, but could not disagree more on everything else you wrote. You do not give Massa anywhere near enough credit with your comments. I understand this article was written before the last two races at Monaco and Montreal, both races where Massa has hopefully gone some way towards silencing his many critics, but even so, your comments are rather harsh. Massa is indeed a good qualifier, as you note, but he is also very under-rated in a race. His ability to come through the field in particular is overlooked, probably because of one poor race in Hungary back in 2006 where he qualified badly and could not overtake on what was a particularly dirty track. Since then, he has had several good drives through the pack from near the back to a good points scoring finish, such as Aus 2007, Gbr 2007 and just this last weekend in Montreal where the safety car left him 20 seconds or so behind everyone else and with, as it turned out, the same amount of pit stops still to make. Yet, he finished 5th, overtaking a number of cars on the track. These examples, I hope, refute your claim that Massa cannot overtake. While on the note of overtaking, your claim that Massa has never won a race he did not start from pole is simply not true. He won in Bahrain this year from 2nd, as you may recall. Let's move onto your other points. You claim Massa does not convert poles into wins enough. This is fair enough, but the fact is last year Massa got six pole positions, three more than Raikkonen, sometimes putting the car above its true level of performance and drifting back in the race because McLaren were quicker (He did this again in Monaco this year, incidentally). He was robbed of wins from pole twice last year by Raikkonen, in France where he was dreadfully unlucky with traffic in the pitstops and in Brazil where as you say team orders came into play. His driver errors have been less frequent this year and last year than they were in previous years, and in any case, have been matched in number and seriousness by the three drivers you claim he does not deserve to be considered in the same league as - Alonso, Hamilton and Raikkonen, all of whom have made driving errors that have either ended their races or seriously compromised them on at least two occasions this year. But until Massa wins the title, and fingers crossed he will this year, people will continue to judge him on things that happened years ago, when he was a wild rookie at Sauber, and struggling to compete with Schumacher at Ferrari in '06 (though he did still beat him on merit at Turkey and Brazil that year). Look at the last two years and you will see that he has been very close to Raikkonen over the two years, and only a DNF in Italy that came at just the wrong time and was not his fault spoiled his title charge last year. This should be what forms pundits' opinions of Massa, not things that happened so long ago, yet it doesn't, and this is disappointing. Your suggestions as to who might replace Massa are Rosberg and Vettel, both of whom have been lucky in terms of their perception despite not really showing that much on the track. Rosberg's rookie season saw him annihilated by Webber, and, although he beat a near-retirement and out-of-sorts Wurz last year, and is edging Nakajima this year, these are hardly credentials that should see him being linked to a Ferrari drive. Vettel is similarly over-rated. Liuzzi, a driver who you have not mentioned as a possible replacement for Massa but who actually has a decent CV, if you accept the possibility that Scott Speed might have been better than some thought, actually beat him in qualifying and races on head-to-head last year, and Bourdais, a rookie from Champ Car, has held his own so far. I remain to be convinced that either of those Germans are anything more than moderately promising youngsters who at present are recieving a good deal of hype.