Sebastian Vettel
Discussion
David_M said:
My view (which may have been covered 10 times already in this long thread) is that SV is a very quick driver, but only:
- in a car that suits him perfectly; and
- when he is not under pressure.
So in RB's dominant years he got to the front and drove away. He repeatedly makes mistakes under pressure and can't get the best out of a car that is not 100% suited to him.
Other drivers can deal better with both of the above, I think that makes them both better drivers and better racers and that is why I think that his 4 titles flatter him beyond his ability compared to them.
Spot on.- in a car that suits him perfectly; and
- when he is not under pressure.
So in RB's dominant years he got to the front and drove away. He repeatedly makes mistakes under pressure and can't get the best out of a car that is not 100% suited to him.
Other drivers can deal better with both of the above, I think that makes them both better drivers and better racers and that is why I think that his 4 titles flatter him beyond his ability compared to them.
Landcrab_Six said:
2 of the 4 years were very hard fought.
One of my points is that the RB in all 4 of those years was so much better then any other car it should not have been a hard fought battle, ergo, SV is not good enough to make it easy.CoolHands said:
Ah. I was wondering if it would be a circular way back for him.
I think... they probably don't want him back regardless. They'll toy with the idea so long as the media is interested by the prospect - but, really?They'd have DR back in a heart beat but the reason he had to leave still exists so...
CoolHands said:
Is red bull, which has Aston martin all over it, anything to do with Aston Martin next year?
No. This year red bull and aston are technology parters (I think thats the term).Stroll snr is now a major shareholder of aml, so will remove this partnershilp and rebrand racing point to aston martin for 2021
CoolHands said:
Oh so who will RB replace them with for sponsorship, do we know?
Don't think they've revealed a new sponsor publicly, doubt they'll struggle though - they're the second top team in the sport with perhaps the most hotly supported driver..Or an existing sponsor that's doing well with them can buy more car real estate and become more prominent.
Landcrab_Six said:
From reading these discussions.
Vettel. Only won because he had the best car.
Hamilton. The Mercedes is an upper midfield car and it's Hamilton's genius that drags it to wins.
This is almost as tribal as football.
If Vettel was British and Hamilton was American, people on here would be far kinder.Vettel. Only won because he had the best car.
Hamilton. The Mercedes is an upper midfield car and it's Hamilton's genius that drags it to wins.
This is almost as tribal as football.
Its amazing what a kind press and good PR can do for someone. When Giancarlo Fisichella obliterated Jenson Button in 2001, I really thought that was it for him....fast forward a few years and he looked top tier again and those sharpened knives were put back in the kitchen drawer.
oyster said:
Gazzab said:
If he only beats stroll by 0.3 of a second or less in qualifying then that proves he is past it. He needs to beat him by 0.5 to 1.0 to prove he still has it.
What a ridiculous assumption! Stroll is no Hamilton, but he’s no slouch.
Gazzab said:
Stroll isn’t top tier. If Vettel is really still top tier then he needs to prove it by way of decent margins.
It doesnt matter whether it's 1 second or one thousandth of a second in pace, either way. If Vettel gets more points on the board, that's what AM are paying him for. Gazzab said:
oyster said:
Gazzab said:
If he only beats stroll by 0.3 of a second or less in qualifying then that proves he is past it. He needs to beat him by 0.5 to 1.0 to prove he still has it.
What a ridiculous assumption! Stroll is no Hamilton, but he’s no slouch.RonaldMcDonaldAteMyCat said:
Gazzab said:
Stroll isn’t top tier. If Vettel is really still top tier then he needs to prove it by way of decent margins.
It doesnt matter whether it's 1 second or one thousandth of a second in pace, either way. If Vettel gets more points on the board, that's what AM are paying him for. It also ignores 2020 where I believe Lance has been much closer in qualifying.
So by that standard, Perez, who a lot of people on here think are good enough to keep close to Verstappen, is 2 thousandths of a second away from being an also-ran...
Even Hamilton isn't beating Bottas by 3 tenths in qualifying yet he's destroying him on race day. So I think Gazzab's standard is unrealistic, personally.
David_M said:
My view (which may have been covered 10 times already in this long thread) is that SV is a very quick driver, but only:
- in a car that suits him perfectly; and
- when he is not under pressure.
So in RB's dominant years he got to the front and drove away. He repeatedly makes mistakes under pressure and can't get the best out of a car that is not 100% suited to him.
Other drivers can deal better with both of the above, I think that makes them both better drivers and better racers and that is why I think that his 4 titles flatter him beyond his ability compared to them.
I agree too. I've never seen even a single year WC make so many mistakes. By the time they are WC they are almost perfect drivers. Luck often plays a part on world championships (right car right time) but no-one has been as lucky with his timing as SV. Sure, he's a good driver but he's not a 4 x WC quality driver despite achieving this.- in a car that suits him perfectly; and
- when he is not under pressure.
So in RB's dominant years he got to the front and drove away. He repeatedly makes mistakes under pressure and can't get the best out of a car that is not 100% suited to him.
Other drivers can deal better with both of the above, I think that makes them both better drivers and better racers and that is why I think that his 4 titles flatter him beyond his ability compared to them.
I look at LH and think only Max or Charles could realistically challenge him properly in the same car and yet SV has been challenged and found wanting against many team mates.
C350Akra said:
One of my points is that the RB in all 4 of those years was so much better then any other car it should not have been a hard fought battle, ergo, SV is not good enough to make it easy.
That's just nonsense - I think there's some very biased views being posted.In the Red Bull years, it was vastly more competitive - not because Seb is slow or prone to mistakes, but because the much simpler cars meant many more drivers and teams had a shot at wins. Plus we still had the unpredictability of engine blow ups, too. Let us also not forget that Red Bull were a customer team.
2010 had 3 different cars and 6 different drivers winning races in the first 7 races. And in 3 of the 4 years, his team mate (a not too shabby Webber) was nowhere.
I do still wonder if Mercedes will be found to have been cheating the power plant rules for years - are Ferrari just unlucky to have been caught? I find it very odd that Mercedes have had such a big advantage for such a sustained time period, with Renault, Honda and Ferrari not really getting anywhere near them on a consistent basis.
Landcrab_Six said:
C350Akra said:
One of my points is that the RB in all 4 of those years was so much better then any other car it should not have been a hard fought battle, ergo, SV is not good enough to make it easy.
That's just nonsense - I think there's some very biased views being posted.In the Red Bull years, it was vastly more competitive - not because Seb is slow or prone to mistakes, but because the much simpler cars meant many more drivers and teams had a shot at wins. Plus we still had the unpredictability of engine blow ups, too. Let us also not forget that Red Bull were a customer team.
RonaldMcDonaldAteMyCat said:
It doesnt matter whether it's 1 second or one thousandth of a second in pace, either way. If Vettel gets more points on the board, that's what AM are paying him for.
^^^ this.1 second in a phase where the regulations are so stable would also be unusual. Stroll isn't the next Hamilton but nor is he a slouch. Competent.
Vettel should be ahead of him the majority of the time, and score more points, at least after the first few races (depending if there is any testing next spring)
The AM looks like a pretty stable car that both Perez and Stroll find fairly easy to set up, so next year bodes well for them...
C350Akra said:
Your reply is nonsense, the Red Bull was shown to be a faster car than any other by a margin of around 1 second per lap in nearly all of those 4 years. SV was the chosen driver at RB and the car suited him, therefore he should have been able to show a clean pair of heals to everybody else. The fact that he did not proves my point.
I think your conclusions are specious tbh. I think drawing any conclusion about a different paradigm in F1 and applying it to other eras is probably not empirically valid.Vettel's championship wins (at least some of them) were much closer than Hamiltons have been. You could (and appear to) argue that this means Vettel wasn't that much better than the competition, but you could equally say that the margin between the competing cars wasn't as great as it is now. The only difference between those two arguments - equally speculative - is bias.
I don't think Vettel is better than Hamilton, but he's no slouch. The fact his championship wins were closer (one of them came down to the final race) meant that he was under more pressure, and he dealt with it. He has shown that when he can be at the front and has a speed advantage he can convert that into results consistently.
it would've been great to have seen what Vettel could do in an equal Mercedes car, right now, compared to Hamilton, but unfortunately we never get what we want in that respect. F1 is a strange sport in that its perfectly valid and acceptable to fans that drivers work their way through their career into a car that is objectively better than others on the track, where the others have no hope of winning from the very start. At least with other sports skill is truly the singular differentiating factor - Liverpool aren't allowed to play with 2 extra players, or their opposing team 2 less, etc. That's a different discussion though.
The true acid test for Vettel and his legacy will be AM. Right now he's on gardening leave, so I would not expect him to have much motivation at all. Frankly if your boss told you at the start of the year that you were going to be out on your ear by the end of it, would you be putting the hours in? I doubt it. If Vettel doesn't best Stroll next year and - assuming the car is competitive - is amongst the pack at the front, then we'll have a better picture of his overall capabilities. Of course, next years car might still not suit him properly, but that would be a legitimate failing at that point - being unable to adapt. Hamilton, by contrast, has been able to drag every car he's driven up to places he ought not to have been able to get to.
C350Akra said:
Your reply is nonsense, the Red Bull was shown to be a faster car than any other by a margin of around 1 second per lap in nearly all of those 4 years. SV was the chosen driver at RB and the car suited him, therefore he should have been able to show a clean pair of heals to everybody else. The fact that he did not proves my point.
How was the car shown to be that much faster? If Vettel wasn't showing that, then Webber certainly wasn't showing that, and noone else drove those cars in any races.Schermerhorn said:
Landcrab_Six said:
From reading these discussions.
Vettel. Only won because he had the best car.
Hamilton. The Mercedes is an upper midfield car and it's Hamilton's genius that drags it to wins.
This is almost as tribal as football.
If Vettel was British and Hamilton was American, people on here would be far kinder.Vettel. Only won because he had the best car.
Hamilton. The Mercedes is an upper midfield car and it's Hamilton's genius that drags it to wins.
This is almost as tribal as football.
Its amazing what a kind press and good PR can do for someone. When Giancarlo Fisichella obliterated Jenson Button in 2001, I really thought that was it for him....fast forward a few years and he looked top tier again and those sharpened knives were put back in the kitchen drawer.
He seems to be a has-been!
Can't qualify in Q3, trundles around in the 2nd half of the grid, crashes from time to time - just an embarassment. Which may be why Ferrari dumped the loser.
Good luck Renault.
Although Nico Hulkenburg might have been a better option if they hadn't written that option off before!
Can't qualify in Q3, trundles around in the 2nd half of the grid, crashes from time to time - just an embarassment. Which may be why Ferrari dumped the loser.
Good luck Renault.
Although Nico Hulkenburg might have been a better option if they hadn't written that option off before!Gassing Station | Formula 1 | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff