F1 Fanatic

Appreciate giving your opinion Todfod but it doesn’t have any bearing on Roberto’s application of his criteria. My issue isn’t where he ranked Button.

In my book, if in doubt about determining a mistake you see if the driver put himself in a position where it was always going to go wrong. The jump start would never have turned out well for Alonso, whereas Hamilton’s attempted overtake would have worked but for the freak breaking of a rear suspension and the survival of a front suspension after contact (look at Monza two weeks before, where Hamilton was always going to come off worse). Vettel’s move in Turkey was stupid because he drove into where a car was, which had no obligation to disappear; in Spa he followed a car as if it was also going to get out of the way for him and put himself in a dangerous position.

I don’t think the cost comes too much into it. It’s worse if it costs you or not, not how much more it cost you than someone else.

So, Part II is here. Part III will be here tomorrow!

16th – 6th

16th – Nico Hülkenberg
Probably there were too many expectations on him, being the reigning GP2 champion. Yes, his pole position was legendaty but, other than that, what has he done? You can hardly remember any stellar performance by him before qualifying in Interlagos. However he kept himself honest against Barrichello – he has potential, and it will be a shame if he fails to get a seat for next year.

15th – Nick Heidfeld
Have shown why he should never have quit the sport in the first place, being immediately on the pace of Kobayashi in a car he had never driven, and showing de la Rosa how he should have done. There is still unfinished business for him in F1, however, with so few competitive seats available, his future is looking bleak…

14th – Timo Glock
“Impressive” is not enough to describe Glock’s work this year. He has always been on the gearboxes of the Lotuses, and sometimes even coming home in front of them, in a car that was arguably not capable of such feat. Worthy of note was his defence from Sutil at Singapore – pure class, he didn’t even need to put a wheel off the racing line!

13th – Heikki Kovalainen
The best of the trailing pack. Heikki found peace of mind at Lotus, after his confidence and motivation were thrashed at McLaren. In some occasions he was just a few tenths off the Toro Rossos, and secured Lotus its 10th place. I guess everyone watched a new Kovalainen this year – you can see the fire in his eyes.

12th – Adrian Sutil
The season began on a high for him, but the last races couldn’t have gone worse. At the beginning he seemed to have shaken away the crashes and silly mistakes that prevented him of scoring earlier in 2009, and was a solid point scorer and Q3 contender. However he seemed to have stagnated after the summer break, but I give him the benefit of the doubt, as it looked like the performance of the VJM03 slumped after Force India lost Mark Smith and James Key.

11th – Felipe Massa
Underperformed in the third best car of the grid. Much was discussed about the (bad) relationship between his driving style and the Bridgestone tyres, but unlike Schumacher, it seemed like he hasn’t improved on that front. He was utterly beaten by Alonso this year, so hardly that he could barely help his team mate to take the title, however, it was always going be hard to keep up with him, with his motivation dragging through the mud after Hockenheim.

10th – Michael Schumacher
One of the biggest disappointments of the season, although everyone must admit that the expectations on him were never realistic. It looked like he would improve after the European season began, but he couldn’t best his own results from Barcelona and Turkey. He improved a lot on the last races though, with a pretty solid race in Suzuka, a delightful performance in Korea and another solid race in Brazil (despite the strategical mistake from Mercedes). Is that the sign that there is much more to come from the living legend of this sport in 2011?

9th – Kamui Kobayashi
Give him fresh option tyres and you are guaranteed to love the race. Kamui has done a stellar job this season. After being pestered by reliability problems and the odd rookie mistake here and there, Kamui started to score solid points for Sauber, with 8 points finish from the last 13 races. His performance ended up showing the back door to de la Rosa, and he fared rather well against his highly-rated team mate Nick Heidfeld, finishing behind him only once. By far the best rookie of the season.

8th – Rubens Barrichelllo
Not quite what he’d wish for after his season with Brawn GP, but Rubens did a great job this year. When he arrived at Williams, the car was the seventh faster at best, but once his technical input was translated into new parts for the car, the performance improved a lot, taking the fight to Mercedes and Renault quite often. His pass over Schumacher at Hungaroring was the stuff of legends, and at some points in the season he was only slower than the Top 3 teams. Now heading to his 19th season, his longevity in such voracious spot is the proof of his worth.

7th – Jenson Button
To me Button simply lacked the pace to keep up with the other contenders this year. As always, his ability to make crucial calls still gives him valuable points, but only if he could sort out his qualifying seaons, he wouldn’t need to make up places via strategy calls. He was the only contender who failed to score a pole position this year, and his failure to win a race under normal conditions summarizes the season for him.

6th – Nico Rosberg
Impressive. I never rated him highly, but now it is hard to be indifferent about him. When everyone though that he had just landed on the worst seat possible, he just proves everyone wrong by beating soundly his seven-times world champion team mate. His podiums were pretty impressive too, especially at Silverstone, where he clrealy outperformed his mediocre car.

AUS_Steve: the code for bold is <”strong”> and <”/strong>, without the quotation marks.

27. Yamamoto : The pay driver’s pay driver. Kobayashi shows why Japanese companies should stop embarrassing the country by funding guys like this in the first place.
26. Buemi : Just not good enough. No progress from last year, no spark of inspiration, no raw speed, doesn’t deserve a drive next year. He’s driving a version of the RB5, don’t forget, not a generic tub from Dallara. Severely underperformed his teammate and the car – only scored more points because of a lucky 8th in Canada, and a string of unlucky 11ths for Jaime. Can you imagine Vettel struggling to get out of Q1 in the Torro Rosso?
25. Liuzzi : Another man dragging a midfield car backwards down the grid. Always somebody else’s fault, too.
24. Senna : Looked like an OK rookie until Klien embarrassed him in his first race back. Career ending weekend, that one.
23. De La Rosa : Didn’t deserve to be dropped mid-season, but he saw the writing on the wall himself earlier than that and Kobayashi showed up the speed difference.
22. Sutil : Still doing not much to impress me. Lots of talk about him moving up to a bigger team, all of it coming via his manager. He didn’t crash as much this year and people seem to see that as a sign of a maturing driver. Blind people in shopping trollies crashed less than Sutil in previous years, however. Like Buemi, was shown up for what he really is by the conditions in Korea.
21. di Grassi : Anonymous season for the rookie.
20. Klein : Embarrassed Senna first time out, then was more evenly matched. Good performances but not anything to get him back next year.
19. Trulli : Lotus in a class of their own in the New Teams battle, but Trulli doesn’t want to be there, and there’s nowhere up the grid he hasn’t already been. The Trulli Train is the millstone round his neck in the paddock, not the performance of the Lotus.
18. Alguersuari : Good solid “rookie” year. Not spectacular, not a star of the future, but doesn’t have much to guarantee a seat next year.
17. Massa : Shadow of his former self. A driver that wasn’t rated much by the paddock, then had a great spell of a year and a half, got injured, then got psychologically destroyed by his new teammate, with the conniving and disgraceful help of the team he loves. His drives weren’t all bad, but playing tame kitten to Alonso, as opposed to Webber’s almost career suicidal “screw you Helmut Marko” attitude puts him down the list in my book. He killed off his own career, and that’s not what makes a winning driver.
16. Chandhok : Beat all his HRT teammates despite only running half the season. Great PR guy, intelligent, and a safe pair of hands. Deserves a drive next year. Not the fastest, mind you.
15. Petrov : A real actual “never done this before” rookie, he had some woeful performances, but he has sparks of talent and grit lots of other drivers further down my list lack. Deserves another season and I think he’s got room for improvement, unlike the Sutil’s and Liuzzi’s of the world.
14. Hulkenberg : Best of the rookies, he started to find his feet at the end of the year, caught up with Rubens (which isn’t as easy as Ruben’s detractors might like you to believe) and pulled that stormer of a lap in Brazil. If you can leave Vettel, Hamilton and Alonso looking baffled as to where you’ve found the speed on a qualifying lap, then you’re a rare talent.
13. Schumacher : Not great performances this year, but a much much improved human being in the world of F1. Probably due to lack of pressure to win, not so concerned with dominating the sport, and time off seems to have done him good – he was all smiles this year and though he did attempt a murderous move on Rubens, staring straight at him, he actually stuck up his hands and admitted where he was wrong, and full respect to him for that. This is driver rankings, though.
12. Heidfeld : Like the rest of Heidfeld’s career, I feel that I’m putting him here because he’s done a better job than the people below him, rather than as a reflection of his closeness to those above him. As usual, that’s a disservice to him. But it’s also true.
11. Glock : This is driver rankings, not team rankings. Glock doesn’t deserve to be in that Virgin car, and he needs to get out of it. If FI retain their two drivers next year and don’t give Glock a drive, then they’re mugs. Straight up mugs.
10. Kovalainen : Look at the stats for the “Group B Championship” in the forum and you’ll see all you need to know. He knows his car isn’t good enough but he’s pushing it as far as it’ll go anyway, he’s not giving up and he’s good enough to get the success he wants. A change of team has made a new man out of him, Lotus are going places, unlike Virgin, and he should stay there for at least next year. Massa take note.
9. Barrichello : Is the man to start saving the Williams team. They should put him on retainer and keep him on staff when he retires. Good results, solid drives, but more importantly he fixed what was a bad car at the start of the year and turned it into a solid P8-P6 mainstay, which is more than can be said for Patrick Head, Sam Michael and the Williams engineers over the last few years.
8. Rosberg : Good results but too anonymous to make an impression on the top 5. Deserves to be higher on the basis of how he made it in a team expected to be dominated by Schui, but his personal performances don’t warrant it yet.
7. Kobayashi : Much better than last year. Kept the pace and the overtaking ability, while showing genuine racecraft and no more dangerous overtakes/illegal moving in the braking zones. 50+ laps on those tyres, and taking his place back from Alonso after the pitstop? Stunning.
=5. Webber : Architect of his own failures, but @Aussiegrit all the way. When some parts of the organisation were trying to sabotage him, he stomped all over them. But then let it all slip out of his grasp when he’d fought so hard to get it.
=5. Button : He was expected to be shown up by Hamilton all year, and ground into the dust like Heikki was. He was beaten, but not always by much, and he beat Hamilton fair and square more than once. In the first 4 races, he looked like he was going to grind Hamilton into the dust, as Lewis was looking lost, downcast, and dispirited and Button was winning twice, in impressive style. His performance in Monza was stellar, dragged a slower car where it didn’t belong, but didn’t whine at the team when they made an amateurish hames of the pitstops. On the other hand, he was too complacent when he was outpaced and not aggressive enough sometimes.
=2. Alonso : Undeniably fast. Undeniably a winner. Undeniably probably the best driver on the grid, all round. The cackling laugh in Korea was brilliant, as was his driving. But a bad first half of the season, some silly spins, and a real winner doesn’t need to ask his teammate to move over. He’s in the #2 group on talent, but in a sporting sense he’s off the list altogether.
=2. Vettel : A well deserved WDC, easily the fastest man, but still hasn’t been tested on the overtaking ability, and he *should* have wrapped up this season and won it several races ago. Loses a lot of marks for Turkey and smashing up Button.
=2. Hamilton : Beaten at the start of the year. Back to his old whinging childish self after a year of personal growth. Then found his feet, showed just how quick he is, and deserved to go as close as he did. Just didn’t have the car for the job, and made a few mistakes.
1. Kubica : Proved the doubters (like me) wrong and dragged a team, and a car, right up the front pretty much single handed all year round. Unlike Vettel, Hamilton and Alonso, he didn’t make lots of horrible stupid mistakes. So he’s my Number 1.

Didn’t see this for ages, sorry if I repeat anything.

1) Fernando Alonso.

Difficult for me to say this, but I think he was the master of the second and more important half season for the same reason I thought Hamilton was the best in the first. His car was slower, yet he outdrove both Redbull drivers despite their faster cars. After his predatory Monza drive, his flyaway season was sensational, with the pinacle being to totally controll Vettle for the entirety of the Singapore Gran Prix, despite having a car with significantly less performance than his challenger. In Singapore the differance was Fernando Alonso, over the most demented lap in the calender, with the immense preassure of having run out of mistakes, the differance he made was more than Sebastian Vettle and the RB6 put together. An he nearly pulled it off, a mistake outside of his controll cost him the title, an while he showed why I dilike him so much next he is undeniably, when on top form, just that tenth over the season ahead. An with the current lot, his fightback of a season has been nothing short of spectacular, people allways call him the complete package, an in the crafty patient hunter in the faster car we saw at Monza and the ice cool, rock solid defender in the slower car at Singapore, the point is illustrated perfectly.

2) Sebastian Vettle

My favourite stat to encompass how great Sebs final races where and how lucky we where to get the season we did was if it wern’t for his engine in Korea and Hulkenburg in Brazil he would have pole positioned and won the last four races of the season, almost like he started. A run of form like that wins you a championship and he might have had the car to do it, but after Fernando contained him, an in my opinion conclusivley prooved himself the better driver for the time being, he never let it happen to him again. Every lap he was perfect, he lost no positions at the start, he controlled every race, an he was able to free himself from the preassure like no other. A well deserved champion, I put him here despite not knowing what he’d be like if he had to fight that little bit more.

3) Lewis Hamilton

The man with the second worse luck this season Hamilton prooved he wasn’t blowing smoke when he claimed he’d changed as a driver. Sensational early season form an bad luck showed us the exciting Hamilton, later but it was his consitancy in outpacing eventually his teamate and his car, in both qualifying and the race that leads me to place him here. We’ve yet to see a great defensive drive from Hamilton but he’s prooving quickly he has everything else, I think the only driver of the current crop that can take it to Alonso regardless of Alonso’s form and the only driver with the potential to truly match Alonso. My half term ranking of Hamilton goes into further detail but as for the second half of the season he showed that while he was still learning, he flattered his car in qualifiying, he kept his car on a faster race pace longer than his supposedly tyre friendly teamate, he still kept himself in contention even with a car now a clear thrid fastest and he still shows enourmous growth as a driver, practically with every lap.

There’s my top 3, i’l carry on tommorow.

27 – Yamamoto
26 – Chandhok
25 – Di Grassi
24 – Senna
23 – De La Rosa
22 – Petrov
21 – Klien
20 – Buemi
19 – Liuzzi
18 – Trulli
17 – Glock
16 – Heidfeld
15 – Kovalainen
14 – Alguersuari
13 – Hulkenberg
12 – Sutil
11 – Schumacher
10 – Massa
9 – Kobayashi
8 – Barrichello
7 – Hamilton
6 – Button
5 – Alonso
4 – Webber
3 – Kubica
2 – Rosberg
1 – Vettel

27. Yamamoto
26. di Grassi
25. Senna
24. Chandhok
23. Trulli
22. De La Rosa
21. Klein
20. Luizzi
19. Schumacher
18. Buemi
17. Heidfeld
16. Petrov
15. Kovalainen
14. Massa
13. Alguersuari
12. Glock
11. Hulkenberg
10. Sutil
9. Barichello
8. Kobayashi
7. Rosberg
6. Webber – Drove well mid-season, bit more mature than Vettel but this should have been his title with a fully reliable RB6.
5. Kubica – Amazing at the start of the year. Second half of the year he still put in some awesome performances.
4. Button – Rarely matches Lewis in normal conditions, poor Qualifying but done A LOT better than I though. Last 2 races he would have beaten Lewis if not for the title situation.
3. Hamilton – Could have been his title if it wasn’t for his 2 straight DNF.
2. Alonso – Did unbelievably well to keep with the Red Bulls this year.
1. Vettel – Did everything he needed to do at the end of the season. If he’d have finished in Korea he would have won the last 4 races.