F1 Fanatic

So, after watching Abu Dhabi over the weeked, I got curious: what are the strengths and weaknesses (as you see them) of each driver on the grid.

For example, Jenson Button is very gentle on his tyres an can make risky and/or unorthodox strategies work (he could, after all, see which tyres the six cars in front of him were using in Hungary and adapt his strategy accordingly), but sometimes he accepts the position he’s in too readily rather than pushing to catch the next guy. Sebasian Vettel can instantly respond to a challenge from a driver behind him, but is poor at managing the relationship between himself, the team and his team-mate (or perhaps he was too naive to know what was going on between Marko and Webber). Fernando Alonso is blindingly fast and can make bad strategies work when he needs them to, but is too quick to dismiss drivers who he does not see as a threat. Vitaly Petrov is unafraid of anyone on the circuit and is seemingly immune to the pressures the likes of Alonso and Hamilton apply. Nico Hulkenberg is very quick over one lap (and will probably inherit Jarno Trulli’s title of the sport’s best qualifier if he gets into a top team), but he overdrives the car far too often, trying to seize opportunities when none exist. Lewis Hamilton is unique in that his strength is his weakness; he never, ever backs down and will try to win the race on the last corner of the last lap even if he’s a minute down – but he doesn’t recognise when it is smarter to back off (like Monza 2009) and be content with what he has. He also cannot improvise a strategy the way Button can.

Your turn.

Felipe Massa is prone to pulling spectacular form out from nowhere, but sometimes mysteriously struggles.

Hekki Kovalainen could well be another Fisichella – outstanding in midfield teams with little pressure, but struggles when the spotlight is on him.

Jaime Alguersuari is consistant and has good race pace, but doesn’t seem to realise it yet.

Rubens Barrichello is an excellent team player who can make good strategic and set up calls, but tends to have erratic race pace.

Vettel: unproven overtaker but can run away from pole, which he’s pretty good at getting

Alonso: lets things get to him all too often but can delivery speed and consistency at the same time

Webber: lacks that last 1% but rarely makes a mistake

Hamilton: makes at least one rash move a season but makes 99 good ones too, finds times from the car few others could

Button: cannot get an imperfect set-up to work but metronomic in his consistent pace

Massa: can produce drives out of nowhere but other days is literally nowhere

Rosberg: gets things quietly done which makes him unnoticeably average

Kubica: same as Massa but usually more consistent

Schumacher: crashes into people but runs rings around them too

Barrichello: just not fast but takes a car where it’s supposed to

Sutil: does one impressive thing and then makes us forget about it, usually in the same race

Kobayashi: poor qualifier but exciting driver

Petrov: fast but no consistency, except when he’s slow

Hulkneburg: first too conservative, then too scrappy, lots of untapped potential

Liuzzi: has an annoying habit of ending his few good days in a wreck

Buemi: sometimes fast, sometimes slow – the balance shifting as his career progresses

de la Rosa: forgot this guy was even an F1 driver

Heidfeld: see Rosberg

Alguersuari: fast with a good technical mind, just needs to improve

Kovalainen: bad case of Fisichella syndrome

Trulli: good on Saturday, bad on Sunday

Chandhok: he’s nice

Senna: has his uncle’s history with lapped cars in reverse and not his speed

di Grassi: I barely noticed the guy

Glock: not that fast, not terribly slow

Yamamoto: rich but rubbish

Klien: can humiliate HRT drivers, but is only good enough for to be a HRT driver

Vettel: Hard worker, quick learner, likeable character, quick qualifier but also a bit petulant, impatient and demanding

Alonso: Fit, very fast, involved with the team, but also very demanding and perhaps doesn’t quite realise how people will react to what he says

Webber: Hard worker, experienced and knows how to use his experience, can take motivation from pretty much anything, but also slower than Vettel and lets it get to him a bit too much and probably (oddly) doesn’t deal with pressure as well as Vettel

Hamilton: Extremely fit, pretty much best race-craft on the track at the moment, works well with everyone, but also very demanding and a bit impatient which sometimes gets to him

See, I equate fitness levels with the amount of performance the drivers are getting from the cars that’s not shown in the hands of their lesser peers. Ie. Alonso can wring the car harder than Massa, simply because it doesn’t wear him out as quickly. Same for Hamilton.

The teams want to work for the likes of Vettel, Alonso and Hamilton because they are either likeable (Vettel and Hamilton to a lesser degree) or are very involved with their work (Alonso and Hamilton to a lesser degree).

And while I’m sure Webber asks for the things he needs, I don’t think he demands them in quite the same way that Vettel, Alonso and Hamilton do. Which is why he can’t make up that last little bit and why I don’t think he will ever be a world champion (although I’d be happy to be proven wrong on that point). It’s also why I think Raikkonen’s championship was built more on his outright speed than most other peoples’, because he didn’t have that same level of “if you gimmi that I can do it, but with this shit there’s no way”, but rather went in with a “oh, if this is it, I’ll see what I can do with it” (before anyone wants to blast me for that, I don’t think that makes it better than anyone else’s, just different reason for why he made it and then he still needed the rival team to blow itself up as well).