How Good is Sebastian Vettel?

[mnmracer]

Some people do love their double standards.
How does 2008-2009 show Hamilton can lead the team, but 2010-2012 doesn't show Vettel can?

Alain Prost won 10 races (20%) from further down than 4th.
Ayrton Senna won 2 races (5%) from further down than 4th.
Is Senna not considered a great, on his own and in comparisson to Prost?

Answer me this:
If the top 3 of BBC's best drivers ever (and top 5 for most everyone) can consist of

• a driver who jumped teams on a whim to ensure has the best car
• a driver who drove his entire career for one team with one of the best designers in history
• and a driver with 65 pole positions, who won all but two races from the front rows

how can you claim that Sebastian Vettel does not deserve recognition because of those statistics?

 

[Il_leone]

mmmracer

I don't rate Vettel until he can prove a few things
- lead a team he is very much a Red Bull graduate
- Beat a teammate of top quality
- Win races not just 1 race when he should not or least expect to
- Newey has a bigger influence on Red Bull's domination than Vettel in 2010-2012


Senna - i) beat the world champion as a teammate and considered the best at the team and drove him out of Mclaren

if Vettel can do this to Alonso or Hamilton as teammate then I will have no complaints

- ii) he made both Lotus and Toleman and Mclaren look a lot better than they should have been
he put inferior cars further up the grid than they ought to have Lotus and Toleman would struggle to get into the top 6 consistently


- iii) Lotus - Piquet did not achieve the same results in the same team with No 1 status and this guy was suppose to be one of the best
- iv) he actually did not want to jump into a top team straight away because he felt it was too much pressure initially until he got the recognition

- v) he was a great but he elevated because he beat Prost and his performances in the 90s against superior Williams was remarkable. He won the title for Mclaren in 1991 they gave him an inferior car it was the 1990 chassis and in 1993 he had a customer Ford Engine in his Mclaren

Clark - i) he drove anything fast not just F1 cars and he had more competition in his days and had a chance of getting killed much higher - if you made a mistake then that was it not like today's run off area

- ii) his record would have been better had he not suffered poor reliability as with Chapman cars which soon became outdated against superior Brabhams

- iii) you forget he even missed a round to win the Indy 500

- iv) he won Spa 4 times back then considered the most dangerous track
- v) he scored 33 pole positions a record not broken until 25 years later

Fangio - i) the man won 5 titles with 4 different teams no other driver has won back to back titles with different teams since then and he is still considered legend by today's drivers

 

[FB]

Move the Alonso discussion to its own thread.

http://cliptheapex.com/threads/how-good-is-fernando-alonso.5735/

 

[Josh]

Okay... I was kind of trying to make a point relating to this thread.

 

[landogeorgelewis1]

FB

Ya might as well add the whole hog and add Hamilton to the list of how good is trilogy!

 

[FB]

Anyone is welcome to start a thread HammydiRestarules

 

[Slyboogy]

Time to start the "How good is Narain Khartikeyan" thread me thinks.

 

[landogeorgelewis1]

Keep it going it's a good way to kill this thread once and for all, it's just going round in circles all the bloody time!

 

[mnmracer]

I know you're gonna hate me for this, but let's remove the double standard and compare then:

Yes given no one gave him a chance at Ferrari saying the car was an absolute dog and somehow he is still in the championship

'No one' can say what they want, but the Ferrari is not as bad as Alonso wants everyone to believe. For what they lacked in qualifying pace, they often made up in race pace. Look at Abu Dhabi; what good was Webber's qualifying pace when Alonso soared past him without breaking a sweat?

Last season he also proved in an inferior car he was still able to keep with Mclarens and Red Bulls

Again, the Ferrari was clearly the 3rd best car last year, and as is common in F1, that gives you the usual shot to finish higher. Massa was usually not that far behind.

Renault suffered when Alonso left for 1 season.

Even excluding the Monza win, bar 2011, Torro Rosso has never scored as many constructor's points in a year, as Vettel on his own has scored in 2008.
Judging both by the same standard, nothing standing out there.

The guy has won for 3 teams

...who were all capable of winning.
Vettel has done no worse.
Judging both by the same standard, nothing standing out there.

Hamilton still considers him one of the toughest opponents he's ever faced

Schumacher is proud of Vettel.
Judging both by the same standard, nothing standing out there.

Alonso is relentlessly consistent just like Senna was.

And Vettel isn't? (and NO is not an answer)
Show me, with numbers, where Alonso is relentlessly more consistent than Vettel.

 

[gethinceri]

Why is this not just the Sebastian Vettel thread?

 

[Brogan]

Because the driver threads are essentially for general chit chat, etc.

If someone wants to raise a specific point or start a discussion about a particular topic about a driver then we always encourage them to start new threads.

 

[Il_leone]

mnmracer

1) The Ferrari car was awful in the dry and the race pace is down to Alonso being race consistent... most of the early season races the Ferrari was worse than a Williams or a Sauber and he still managed to finish in front of them

Its easy to soar past a Red Bull which is the slowest car in a straight line and not in clean air when it is at its most aero efficient

2) 3rd best car but at least 0.7 seconds per lap down on Red Bull who clearly had the fastest car and Mclaren were easily the second quickest car most races so Alonso should be really 5th in the championship not 3rd !
It was also only good on 1 set of tyres - the option set but switched to the prime set it was well off the pace of Mclaren and Red Bull


3) Toro Rosso of 2008 was a Red Bull chassis designed by Newey bolted with a Ferrari engine not a bad car put together with a good amount of funding from Red Bull. It was not awful car like it was made out to be


Since then Toro Rosso has had to design their own chassis with reduced funding

Vettel only looked good when he had the Red Bull 2008 chassis ..his season started with 4 accidents

4) Vettel has only won races for 1 team with cars all designed by Newey


I don't think Vettel would achieve the same results if he was in Alonso's Ferrari. and Seb still makes some very amateurish mistakes like getting when trying to pass a HRT and using all 4 wheels to pass Button even though he knew it was illegal


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Schumacher would be proud of Vettel being a fellow German but he's never raced him as a teammate competitively so he is not in position to say what a tough opponent he really is like Hamilton and Alonso are about each other

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[Il_leone]

mnmracer

You've swtiched from first of all trying to compare Vettel to Senna , Clark and Fangio ... he still has a long way to go to be compared to them

Now in comparing in Alonso ... notice the paddock are more pro Alonso for the drivers title and all universally agree the Ferrari car has no right to be challenging for the driver's title still against the superior Red Bull

 

[mnmracer]

Il_leone
My point with the big three, is that they are rated while not all achieving what you expect of Vettel.
You have done well enough that you can't argue without a double standard.

most of the early season races the Ferrari was worse than a Williams or a Sauber and he still managed to finish in front of them

Actually, not really, but that's for another day. I'll grant you a skewed perception.
However, claiming that Red Bull has not had races where it was worse than those cars is clearly a double standard.

3rd best car but at least 0.7 seconds per lap down on Red Bull who clearly had the fastest car and Mclaren were easily the second quickest car most races so Alonso should be really 5th in the championship not 3rd !

Again, gut feelings do not match up the facts.
Speed aside, where is Hamilton in (by your reckoning) the 2nd best car? Look at Vettel and Webber. Vettel was faster in 7 out of the first 10 races, yet Webber was still ahead in the standings after Germany.
Speed is only part of the equation. Reliability is equally important, as evidenced in plenty of seasons.

It was not awful car like it was made out to be

Kinda rich coming from you, considering what you want us to believe about the F2012.

Vettel only looked good when he had the Red Bull 2008 chassis..

Really?
That must be why people in 2007 were expecting him to be a future champion, because he looked so bad.

his season started with 4 accidents

Of which only 1 was partially his fault. But of course that's not an interesting truth.

Vettel has only won races for 1 team with cars all designed by Newey

So? (setting aside your loose definition of teams) Were we not pointing out pointless trivia?
When you try and make a point (winning for 3 teams) you should at least think about what it actually means. It's not like winning for 3 teams which were all perfectly capable of winning races says much about the driver.

Seb still makes some very amateurish mistakes like getting when trying to pass a HRT and using all 4 wheels to pass Button even though he knew it was illegal

Loose definition of amateurish, unless you thought Alonso was also an amateur as recent as last year.
Do you? Or is that another double standard?

Schumacher would be proud of Vettel being a fellow German but he's never raced him as a teammate competitively so he is not in position to say what a tough opponent he really is like Hamilton and Alonso are about each other

So you just wanted to tell us that Alonso and Hamilton are better than Marques, Trulli, Fisichella, Piquet Jr., Grosjean, Kovalainen and Buton? Kind of pointless...

 

[Chad Stewarthill]

Also, gethinceri, how can one judge how good any driver is without comparing them against others? No driver operates in a vacuum.

 

[Il_leone]

mnmracer

The Ferrari was terrible and still is not a match for the Red Bull although the gap is closer so when was it that the Ferrari and Alonso truly blitzed everyone race weekend this season?

The Red Bull was poor in quali because they could not use the EBD initially but once Newey worked out how to sort out the tyre issues it has been the quickest race car

Hamilton is in the 2nd best car and everyone knows he should be higher up the standings than Mclaren team bungles

The Ferrari F2012 is lot more worse than the Toro Rosso 2008 car its been slower than a Williams and Lotus Renault in the last few races

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How many drivers have been named future world champion without getting a decent car to prove it then... half the grid

- Kubica, Rosberg, Grosjean to name a few
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Vettel does still make amateurish mistakes and then has a childish rant at the backmarkers when he is in a faster car or his car is a tortoise down the straights
--------------------------

Hamilton and Alonso better than the rest you mentioned ... you are missing the point they've battled each other hard as teammates fiercely and earn each other's mutual respect the same way for Prost and Senna

That is what Button did when he went to Mclaren he wanted to earn people's respect and credit that he can beat a world class driver like Hamilton in the same team

I've already said if Vettel goes to Ferrari and beats Alonso then I will have no complaints about his status ... his idol Schumacher would have been in the top 3 of drivers had he taken on a beaten a world class teammate and every time someone asks Seb if he is favoured by Red Bull he gets nervous about the accusations

mnmracer

If you want to compare Vettel to Hill and Hakkinen

a couple points

Hill - he left Williams and they went downhill whilst he improved both Arrows and Jordan competitively and nearly won a race for Arrows and did for Jordan

That helped to dispel accusations it was the car ( and Newey) that makes him look good

- Even the Renault chief Bernard Dudot said if Damon Hill was driving for Williams he would be leading the championship in reference to the error prone performances of Villeneuve and Frentzen in 97


Hakkinen - first race outqualified Senna ! His reputation is enhanced because Schumacher said he was the only driver he respected

------------------------------------

 

[mnmracer]

The Ferrari F2012 is lot more worse than the Toro Rosso 2008 car

That must be why even with two Felipe Massa's, Ferrari would have been clear 4th in the championship while Toro Rosso with the Monza win finished 6th in the WCC.

its been slower than a Williams and Lotus Renault in the last few races

Do you have anything to substantiate that?

- Kubica, Rosberg, Grosjean to name a few

You claimed he didn't look good in the 2007 car, which is BS.

Vettel does still make amateurish mistakes and then has a childish rant at the backmarkers when he is in a faster car or his car is a tortoise down the straights

Again, you failed to answer the questions.
It's a loose definition of amateurish, unless you thought Alonso was also an amateur as recent as last year.
So, do you think Alonso made amateurish mistakes last year?
Do you think Alonso (and Button, and plenty of others) made childish rants this year?

Hamilton and Alonso better than the rest you mentioned ... you are missing the point they've battled each other hard as teammates fiercely and earn each other's mutual respect the same way for Prost and Senna

You are avoiding the question.
You claim that Schumacher has no right to judge Vettel because he didn't battle with him in the same car.
By that reasoning, Hamilton and Alonso also have no right to judge Vettel.

So either you agree that drivers can judge each other without being team mates, OR you agree that Hamilton and Alonso have no right to judge Vettel.

 

[KekeTheKing]

How good is Sebastian Vettel?

He is so good that he can turn blindly into a competitor on Lap 1, spin round, have 3/4 of the field stream by, and emerge relatively unscathed on the other side.

 

[Jen]

Has to be luck?

Isn't that what all champions need? Without it speed, talent and ability are nought.

 

[ExtremeNinja]

Hamilton had more luck than anybody this year. Just the wrong kind. If we ignore the team input, which has been the most obvious decider of this championship, then Vettel is extremely fortunate not to have finished the championship behind a handful of drivers who have performed at a higher level. Well, maybe not a handful as that would be five but I can think of three.

He's certainly stamped his name firmly among the greats now, though.