How Good is Sebastian Vettel?

[Boyle]

teabagyokel 's team mate prediction game equally so.

I think you'll find that his quizzes are far more frustrating

 

[Mephistopheles]

He must also think Hamilton isn't as brilliant as some people think he is because he only outscored Button over 3 years by 1 point. Context is over-rated.

I wasn't aware that I gave an absolute opinion I thought I was saying I don't know or that I was uncertain, Lewis is going to a team that has a good chance of not being the best car on the grid next season and so hopefully we will get to see the true measure of his ability, until Seb does the same thing I stand by my opinion that I am unsure of his talent.

I assume that is okay by you..?

Edit

And just as a matter of being factual It was Jenson who outscored Lewis over a three year period, not the other way round....

 

[gethinceri]

I'm unsure, can you be a little more specific regarding the metrics that you are comparing?

 

[Mephistopheles]

 

[Bushi]

Bushi

I suppose the difference is that Ferrari never pretend that they have equal status, but Red Bull always work on the external appearance of equality...

Only difference is that Red Bull let their drivers take points of each other till it's impossible for them to win the championship. It wasn't until the last race that Mark pulled over, even so he was pretty offensive at the start at Sao Paolo.

But i was more reffering to il_leone's qoute:

It is hard enough to beat an equally fast teammate but to have the management team help him in moments of misfortune is ridiculous

Taking a win from a driver mid season, when he was doing bad in the first part, seems more ridiculous to me.

 

[Bushi]

Seb maybe brilliant or he maybe just brilliant in a brilliant car..

Who knows, but I did notice that he wasn't that brilliant at the beginning of the season when the red bull was off the pace and Mark was outscoring him, so maybe he isn't as brilliant as some people think he is....

beating a Mclaren in the first race when they where clearly better is pretty brilliant to me.
The only reason Mark got more points at mid season is because of Vettel's incident with Karthikeyan, alternator failure at Valencia and i think something happened in Monaco as well.

 

[Slyboogy]

Taking a win from a driver mid season, when he was doing bad in the first part, seems more ridiculous to me.

Massa wasn't doing too badly, it was only the three non-scoring consecutive races in a row where he didn't score is where Alonso pulled ahead, and he had problems in all three of those races.

Canada Liuzzi hitting into him, then Schumacher chopping him. Valencia had to que behind Alonso and he and Alonso lost time to the rest due to the safety car coming infront of them. Silverstone his race was destroyed at the start when he and Alonso touched, puncture on the first lap.

 

[Il_leone]

Bushi
Seb crashed in Narain at Malaysia and then called him a "cucumber" that is really childish from a then double world champion who does not know to overtake backmarkers unlike Button who admitted it was his mistake

He beat a Mclaren only because the SC came out just at the right time for him to go full speed whereas Hamilton had to follow the speed limit on his dashboard in the first race

Bushi
Silverstone 2010 Webber was only 12pts behind Vettel so Seb has a momentarily misfortune and the management decide we'll make him the championship contender.... who won the race in the end because Seb was too busy trying to do a wall squeeze and forget about what's happening behind him

mnmracer

Some factual information about Hamilton on his CV he has finished ahead of 2 reigning world champions as his teammate ... I don't see that on Seb's CV until he goes to Ferrari and beats Alonso

 

[mnmracer]

Mephistopheles
You are suggesting he is not as brilliant because Webber outscored him in the first half, disregarding the context of why that happened. So if you consider being outscored by a team-mate regardless of context a valid reason to 'suggest' someone is not brilliant, you must also consider Hamilton not brilliant.

Now if you cared about a valid comparison, you'd recognize how Webber only outperformed Vettel twice, like you'd recognize Hamilton won 10 races to Jenson's 8.

Il_leone
Yes, I'm sure Hamilton is much more proud of beating two world champions -one who has never performed well against a good team-mate, and the other who took 10 years to become 1x WDC-, than he would be of being 3x WDC with his team-mate never behind him.

 

[Mephistopheles]

mnmracer First and foremost I do not believe that Jenson is a better racer than Lewis but that does not stop me from supporting Jenson out of choice, and secondly what has my opinion on Lewis and Jenson got to do with my opinion on how good Vettel is or isn't?

Once again I will say that I have not come to a conclusion yet as I've only ever seen him in what is currently the best team and car on the grid..

 

[teabagyokel]

Mephistopheles - Best team on the grid? Evidently. Best car? Probably was painted silver last year.

 

[ExtremeNinja]

Hmm. I think that the McLaren was certainly the best car for a large period of the season but I think the Red Bull was a bit better over a larger period.

 

[mnmracer]

Red Bull was faster than McLaren in Bahrain, Monaco, Europe, Britain, Japan, Korea, India
They were equal in Canada, Germany, US.
That leaves 10 out of 20 races where McLaren was better, 3 were they were equal.

 

[no-FIAt-please]

I'd have said Red Bull and McLaren were equal in Abu Dhabi and Singapore also.

The only way for Vettel to silence his critics is to go up against either Hamilton or Alonso, or at least Button (he seems to be best of the rest by some margin). Unless someone else steps up to the table that is. Until then there will always be doubters.

 

[Mephistopheles]

It is difficult to judge when his team mate doesn't really challenge him and so the question could be how poor is Mark Webber? Certainly on face value Vettel has been flattered by Webber's poor results, comparatively speaking as he is the only yard stick we have...

 

[ExtremeNinja]

mnmracer

How do you know all that, or is it just your opinion?

 

[teabagyokel]

ExtremeNinja - Its his opinion, and a quite reasonable estimate.

 

[ExtremeNinja]

OK. On reflection, only about three races off of where my estimate would lie. I think the Red Bull and Ferrari's very competitive race pace throughout much of the season is largely ignored, though. For me the fastest car is the car capable of completing a race distance in the quickest time and I feel that the Red Bull was on par for most of the season on a Sunday.

[EDIT] On top of that, if we look at the period where Lewis and Jenson's performances were quite wide apart, it is my opinion that Lewis often made the McLaren look faster than it was. The same car in the hands of another very very capable driver din't look up to much at all for a handful of races.

I think it was Gary Anderson that wrote an article explaining how he felt that Hamilton's flattery of the car was a problem in terms of development. Because Lewis was able to constantly adjust and drive around the inherent issues with the car, it made it quite difficult for them to have a full awareness of their true pace relative to their competitors. It should also be noted that Red Bull picked up Racing Car of the Year at the Autosport awards.

 

[The Pits]

It seems to me that the estimation of the fastest car depends on the estimation of the quality of the drivers of the car, as estimated by the person performing the assessment.

If I thought Seb was rubbish, then his car must be fantastic.

 

[ExtremeNinja]

That's the problem, isn't it? Too many variables and no "control", by which to make a conclusion. The whole thing is, to a degree, subjective. I don't think anybody can truly claim to know which car was the best race car of the season. I side with Autosport's reckoning, personally, and the Red Bull team obviously did a much better job than the guys at McLaren.