F1 Fanatic

Out of all the ones i have seen race live not just on classic gp’s it woyld be jenson button, but i have seen live mika hakinnen, vettel, lewis, micheal shcumacher and alonso. But i also think it is Jacques Villeneuve he probably dont hold a candle to his dad who would have won a world championship, if you go down the decades and look so in the 80′s there was Rosberg, Piquet, SENNA, And prost and in the 90′s there was schumi, mika, senna, prost, hill, mansell, and jackques he does stick out in my mind as the weakest of the last three decades.

@scuderiaferrarifanatic

The statistics speak for themselves. Vettel has never won, ever, without being on the front row and when he started second and went on to win, most of the time (i think the actual figure is around 70%) he moved from second to first because of driver or team error, or car failure, of the driver ahead.

The statistics also speak for themselves when you consider that Vettel puts himself on pole position more often than other drivers. Only 4 drivers have started on pole a higher proportion of the time (Fangio, Ascari, Senna and Clark). And not many start from the front row as often. Beating the others on a Saturday afternoon automatically means you have less chances to win from behind. In fact, Senna never won from lower than 5th either.

He struggles with the pressure of racing with others; Canada 2011 he made a huge error under extreme pressure from Button and spun on the last lap; on Sunday he didn’t make a mistake but let his frustration at being outraced by Button get the better pf him. There are hard facts to prove that it is Red Bull’s off throttle blowing, giving him the fastest car by over 1s a lot of the time, gifting him almost certain pole positions at nearly every race. From pole, not having to race anybody in front of him, he was fine.

The argument that he can’t handle pressure is getting old. Canada 2011 is always dug up, yet he seemed to be fine at Bahrain 2012, and Spain 2011, where he had to defend from top rivals. And where are your “hard facts” to prove what you just said?

“He struggles with the pressure of racing with others; Canada 2011 he made a huge error under extreme pressure from Button and spun on the last lap”

He didn’t spin, he just wet wide on a wet track. The apparently magical Alonso got caught out by backmarkers at the same circuit the previous year, losing two places as a result. Perhaps if he hadn’t been struggling with the pressure he might have won…

Not to mention as others have said, he took similar pressure brilliantly at other times. In 2010 Vettel had the benefit of the best car, but he also had the least reliable. Over the season it is difficult to separate Vettel Alonso and Hamilton as being the best when factoring in everything.

And holding a grudge that severe against Petrov only for that is as nonsensical as the crazy Massa fans who continued to blame Glock for ‘moving out of Hamilton’s way’ in Brazil 2008.

@scuderiaferrarifanatic
I dont necessarily like Vettel that much but you have to admire his sort of tenacity on-track and his amazing ability to just pull out an inch-perfect lap. To say that he is the worst driver to win a WC is quite ridiculous. In 2010 he had bad reliability – Bahrain, Spain, Australia, Great Britain, South Korea – all misfortunes, punctures, component failures etc. He went into that season knowing that he had the fastest car and his first real opportunity to win a title, in a team which is fairly unforgiving on drivers who dont deliver. As people above ^^ have said, in the last four races knowing he was behind in the standings he went on to win 3 in dominant fashion, making no mistakes and losing the chance of victory in Korea after an engine failure. Its pretty impressive for, as young as a driver he is and the first time he’s been put in a true chance of winning the WC, to deliver in the last 4 races as he did. Just because Alonso is behind Petrov doesnt mean that Petrov should just role over to him. He has every right to maintain his position and defend. In fact, I really admired his ability to defend from a two time champion, in a far better car. ( I know Abu Dhabi is a tough place to overtake but still.)

As for 2011, yes he had by far the best car, but what more could he have done in that season? Breaking countless number of records, it was like seeing Schumacher so dominant in the years of 2000-2004. Do you say that he didnt deserve to win those titles, because he took pole and went on to win the majority of races in that season? Are you forgetting the pass Vettel made in Monza, on the grass? Or in spain where he had to pass 4 or 5 cars quickly and did so with ease within one lap? Vettel can race in my opinion, it’s just that he hasnt had the real chance to show everyone that he can.

Vettel is definately one of the best drivers on the grid. I mean, he has all of the attributes that show he is a true and worthy champion. By the way, all of this is coming from a Webber fanatic :) and I still admire Vettel for what he has done even though he has been quite controversial.

I accept all of the above points. They are all valid arguments to some degree. I come across strangely because I bear grudges very easily, its just how I am i guess. People around me know not to pee me off.

Regarding Petrov, what reason did he have to defend from a so-much faster car for literally 75% of the race? It just seems so utterly pointless. I am over it, but I will never forget. I hope Alonso one day gets the opportunity to screw him over big time in whatever way possible, on or off track.

Regarding Brazil 2008…dont get me started. I could rant for hours. Worst race of my life. I never, ever want to see it again, its best forgotten. My feelings about Petrov are mild compared to my views on Hamilton, but again we wont get into that. It wasnt Glock’s fault in the sense that it wasn’t deliberate to gift Hamilton the title, but I am very pleased indeed he will never be in the top or midfield again so he cant pull another stunt like that. I lay equal blame for Massa’s loss in 2008 with Alonso, whose cheating team rigged the race in Singapore in Alonso’s favour and in doing so cost Massa valuable points. Massa’s engine failure in Hungary didnt help either; I hope the team members responsible for that felt the full force of one of LDM’s boots as they got kicked out of the door.

Vettel….The ethos of my point really is that anybody can win given the best car. If you’re really good (Alonso..) you can even win in the 2nd or even 3rd best car. Im pretty confident Vettel does not possess the skill set required to do what Alonso is doing at the moment. He does just fine when Red Bull are introducing their new rule bending innovations to give him an advantage in qualifying, because they know as well as anyone else he likes it easy, to win from pole.

Vettel in the fastest car = win.
Vettel in this years Ferrari = would probably be doing a bit better than Massa, but nowhere near Alonso.
Alonso in the 2nd/3rd fastest car = Win.
Alonso in the fastest car = everyone else might as well not bother.

I think the driver ‘rankings’ based on aggregate of skills in F1 in 2012, right now, are:

Alonso
Vettel
Hamilton
Raikkonen
Button
Webber
Grosjean
Kobayashi
Rosberg
Schumacher
Perez
Massa

Schumacher is so far down the list because he’s not who he used to be. If this was 2004 or whatever, he would doubtless be the top.

Looking ahead, i hope that following the let downs of 2006, 2008 and 2010 this year isnt going to be the 4th championship near miss. There seems to be a pattern…2005 = awful 2006 = near miss 2007…excellent…(the exception to the rule) 2008 = near miss 2009 =utterly woeful 2010 = near miss 2011 = terrible 2012…seems to be going ok so far..until…

You get my drift by now I assume.

@scuderiaferrarifanatic they’re all trying to prove they’re the best. Alonso was indeed quicker than Petrov at the time. But he wanted the result. And if you put yourself in his position – why would you cede position? Can we agree on this so far?

Perez had 3 DRS attempts on Alonso in Malaysia this year, and was 8 tenths quicker. To quote you,

what reason did he have to defend from a so-much faster car…?

Also, while I don’t deny the 2011 RB7 was, over the course of 2011, the quickest car, there were races when it wasn’t. There were races when the McLaren was quicker – and Vettel still won those. Don’t let getting a pole position fool you into thinking that it’s the fastest car. Heck, look back at 2012 Bahrain. The Lotus was quicker in the first 3 stints, but Vettel still held Raikkonen off – despite the non-DRS’d Vettel and the DRS’d Raikkonen (at the time of the overtake) having something like 22kph on Vettel.

Also, 2008 Monza. While the Toro Rosso wasn’t a dog that race, it wasn’t the quickest either, more like maybe 3rd or 4th quickest.

@ShaneB457 I beg to differ. Vettel could perhaps form “Vettel” and “worst nightmare?” :P