F1 Fanatic

I’m just answering your question.

He already is a great driver by every same-standard measure, but people seem adamant on saying “he still has things to prove”, followed by a double standard statement. There is never an objective argument mentioned when it comes to discrediting Vettel.

- When assessing the car’s speed, the Ferrari is always measured by Massa, and the Red Bull is always measured by Vettel. Not the worst result for both or the best result for both; no, a double standard. And so, no matter how far back Webber is, ‘Vettel has only ever won a race in the fastest car’.
- People who feel that Hamilton has already proven himself, claim that Vettel is not great because he has never won from ‘the back’. By no objective measure is 3rd (Vettel’s furthest win back) to 4th (Hamilton’s furthest win back) the difference between front and back.
- Again, no one questioned Hamilton pre-’13 for only driving a McLaren, but when discussing Vettel and ‘fastest cars’, his one-and-a-half years in Toro Rosso are swept under the rug just to make the argument that Vettel has never performed in a slower car.
- Of course there are the variations to ‘Vettel needs team preference to beat Webber, he’s not really that good’. Funny thing is that the Alonso/Massa relationship is somehow perfectly acceptable.

And those are just the examples for which you need zero understanding of Formula One. So as long as people believe in this vicious circle, they will be asking the questions you did, like “would he have done this or that”. There are a lot of ifs and buts, but if you would look at the situation objectively, without a double standard, you would not be asking if Vettel would have been a triple world champion without that car than if Alonso or Senna would have been multiple champions without their cars.

Re: winning from pole
What exactly is the relevance of pole? If you’re fast enough to win the race, you’re not going to not win it because you started 2nd or 3rd or 4th. Look at how often people jump 2 or 3 drivers at the start.

Pole is a nice statistic, and qualifying is a skill in itself, but in a discussion about skill to race, it is completely irrelevant. Because if you think that is relevant, then you must too believe David Coulthard to have a certain kind of greatness, because he only won 1/13 races from pole position. Is that true, or is ‘winning from pole’ instead of ‘winning from the front’ really just an arbitrary statistic?

Re: being equal to A/H/R
But what exact non-double standard, objective basis do you have for not believing he could? Like I said, and will again show in my next response, all the arguments always used against Vettel are double standard. Trust me, I would love nothing more then to finally hear a fair and valid argument, but if they’re there, they are always lost in a whole stream of double standard arguments.

Re: JB being uncomfortable with Vettel

2010, Ferrari got played! They totally suckered them with their choice of who they wanted to win… Ferrari just covered the wrong bull…

A fair, non-double standard argument would actually cover 2010, not just the last race. There is for instance no mention whatsoever of the net 63 points Vettel lost through no fault of his own. I mean, if we’re only focussing on the last race(s), what should we think of Fernando Alonso?

If this were a fair and non-double standard argument, we would not be singing praise of Alonso, but mention how ‘Schumacher got played and we should feel uncomfortable about Alonso’s second title’. There is nothing fair and objective about singling out the final, or any one race, to discredit a driver.

2012… Although a harder fought season… I still cannot and probably will never be able to think of him as a great… since we saw at the begining of the season that he was incapable to deliver when the car was not as it´s best…. unlike a certain other driver… SV was only able to deliver when he had the best car on the grid again (after the Valencia upgrades)! So that is what prevents me from thinking he is a great driver or champiuon for that matter… Basically, if the car doesn´t suit him… he can´t deliver…

Again a double standard at work here.
Why is it considered ‘not delivering’ for Vettel to finishes 2nd to 6th, but when Alonso finishes 5th to 9th, it is considered delivering? This reverts back to the earlier example given of the double standard in judging a car’s pace.

The objective, non-double standard fact is, Vettel had the best race pace of Red Bull in 17 out of 20 races, no less than Alonso who had the best race pace of Ferrari in 17 out of 20 races. The only way you can say Vettel didn’t deliver where Alonso did, is if you judge the car’s pace by a different standard. If you judge a Red Bull by the fastest driver, and a Ferrari by the slowest driver.

Okey doke. Vettel was faster than Webber in 16 races (all bar China, Monaco, GB and probably Brazil. Australia? Don’t know where you got that from @kingshark , Vettel was 2nd behind Button), with Alonso faster than Massa in at least 18.

Obviously neither of them are worst champions. Which is where the topic should stay, since it’s getting off topic again.

Nevertheless, as for the worst champion of all time, it’s got to be Villeneuve in ’97. It’s a shame that so many people say Rosberg, he drove a much slower, Natural Aspirin powered car compared to the Ferrari’s and Renault’s who had much stronger Turbo engines. Unlike Villleneuve, whose Williams was the fastest car by a margin, and he still nearly managed to lose the championship to Schumacher, who drove a vastly inferior Ferrari.

And that is what makes Schumi so great… that is what makes a champion, in general, great! Being able to battle to the end in an inferior machine and yet almost accomplish it. It shows what a champion should be! Every great on has lost a championship at least once in some cases more than once and yet they have been able to come out on top in the end.
In all fairness to Villeneuve though… the same happened to Button in 2009…. so objetively, they are both equally bad.

As tempting as it is, I don’t really want say a driver who I haven’t seen race. Since I’ve started watching Formula One the worst champion would have to be Button, although he is up against Schumacher, Alonso, Raikkonen, Hamilton and Vettel. Having said that, I also wasn’t very impressed with Button in 2009 after he stopped winning.

If a driver clearly has the best car for that season then he needs to put less into the car than all the others to win,therefore he is the worst driver for that season, i think thats what you call a paradox and make Vettel the worst driver for the last three years.

I think this is a lousy topic which only ever provokes worthless debates. It’s like asking which was the worst Renaissance painter or who was the most disappointing astronaut.

Inevitably the people who come forward with the strongest views about something like this are the ones who’ve got an axe to grind about a particular driver, and when pushed will usually admit they’re only familiar with the careers of a few other world champions at most.

Can I suggest that the best point we can agree on here is that this is a pitiful line of discussion with no worthy answer and should all do better than to waste our time on it?