[Daniel Brown]

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.

[Daniel Brown]

@David-A
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. Only around 30% of those times did Vettel start second and pass for the lead. To say that Vettel is strong from whatever position he starts in is a fallacy. This season, including on Sunday in Hockenheim, he faltered because he had to race other drivers and did not start in clean air. 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.

If the 2011 Red Bull had not quite been the fastest car, the outcome would probably have been much different. Adrian Newey gave him the car, the Red Bull pit wall gave him the strategy, all he had to do was drive. Vettel’s racecraft is I feel the weakest among the top 4-5 drivers in F1 at the moment, and in 2011 he was nearly always in clean air with a large time cushion, so he never needed to use his racecraft, making him seem much better than he actually is.

@matt90
@Pamphlet
@ShaneB457

Alonso’s misfortune was Ferrari’s litany of mistakes throughout the season culminating with him being stuck behind Petrov in Abu Dhabi. If Petrov had not been in the way, he may have been able to make progress. In the last half of 2010 Alonso outclassed Vettel comprehensively. He fought like a lion to claw back an advantage to take into the final race, where he only had to finish low in the points to win. But more Ferrari errors meant he was stuck behind a slower car being driven by a driver who had no reason to hold back a championship contender for the entire race. Let’s just say that my thoughts and opinions about Petrov would get me kicked off this site, so I will not say. Put understated terms, I really do not like him at all. If it had not been for Petrov holding him up, Alonso could well be champion, and Vettel would have remained a nobody until 2011.

[Daniel Brown]

Of course, the worst driver to win a world championship, is Vettel. His championships were built soley on the principle of winning from pole.

Without that phenomenon, he would have been just another average joe, picking up the odd win here and there. He is a 2 x WDC only because of Alonso’s misfortune in 2010, and his qualifying dominance in 2011.

[Author]

Posts