Silly Season 2013/14

[SectorOne]

I can't edit a thing you post but ok, maybe the mods might, but I don;t see anything controversial in this one.

Oh i´m well aware of that, i can edit my own posts. Hence my comment was you could edit yours, not mine.

I just felt this was a bit over the top, "Not trying to spread false information are you??"
clearly not as i have been advocating the opposite in several posts prior to that.

Sure no problem, but you have ignored all the fact in my previous post and thrown in the only one thing counts in the end. I can assure you the teams look a lot deeper into this than simply points.

So to refresh you points made, please point out what is not a simple black and white fact?
Including qualifying and race finishes in a fair system of excluding non-driver finishes the tally is Ricciardo 8pts vs Vergne 5pts.
Add in points back in for those races where damage occurred and you get to Ricciardo 12 pts vs Vergne 8pts.
Ricciardo is the Highest Qualifier with 5th at the British GP.
Vergne has the highest finish with a 6th in Canada.
Current Championship points are Vergne 13th with 13 pts to Ricciardo 14th with 12pts.

Anything here not a fact therein?

It seems to me it´s a flawed system. Giving points for Qualifying.
Qualifying is practice, it´s really irrelevant if a guy has taken pole all the time yet have not managed to take a single point.

If you beat your teammate in qualifying but he beats you in the real points, the whole qualifying bit is rendered useless would you not agree?
Especially when the guy that has more points has also had more technical retirements?

We have proven that Vergne has not enjoyed any sort of advantage from his point scoring.

What you are advocating is that the only thing that matters is championship points? Given the current state of the PIrelli tyre lottery that is a very one dimensional way to look at driver performance and the teams are smarter than that.

In short, yes.
Especially since this is not the first year, it´s been over 1,5 years now where Vergne has beaten him in points.

In fact the only thing that would change my mind is if Ricciardo will beat him this year. If he doesn´t i just can´t see the logic behind it because Vergne has proven in black and white that he´s been better over 2 years.

If, for instance say we had a driver with 2 podium finishes but crashed out every other race would you still take him over a driver that finished every race and made solid constructors points but accumulated 1 point less?

Now you are taking a scenario that has nothing to do with reality in terms of Vergne/Ricciardo.
We should stick to what has really happened.

[MOWOG]

Wow. This thread reminds me of a line from Shakespeare: "Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Meanwhile, while you all are yammering, there may actually be some fire amongst all the smoke:

A mischievous Mark Webber on Sunday gave away the name of his successor at Red Bull.

While the frenzied 'silly season' rumour-mongers wonder if Kimi Raikkonen, Jenson Button or even Fernando Alonso might still be in the running, Australian Webber said it is his younger compatriot who has secured the plum 2014 seat.

Team boss Christian Horner has insisted all weekend that a decision has not been made, and that an announcement is not due at least until Monza in two weeks.

But the Le Mans-bound Webber said at Spa-Francorchamps: "The decision's made. We all know who it is. I'm happy with that decision.

"It's good for him and good for Australia," he told Channel 10.

[Phil]

It seems to me it´s a flawed system. Giving points for Qualifying.
Qualifying is practice, it´s really irrelevant if a guy has taken pole all the time yet have not managed to take a single point.

I think it's rather a point of *who* is making the assessment and with what information. As spectators and arm-chair experts *cough*, we don't have much to go on to assess the differences in drivers. Points are the most logical metric to use, at first glance anyway.

However, from the perspective of those within a team that make these kind of decisions and assess different drivers, they would surely be looking at much more data. Especially if we are to compare team-mates like JEV and DR, I'm sure Torro Rosso (and therefore perhaps Redbull) has a lot more relevant data than simply looking at race-points gathered over two seasons.

As a spectator with no inside-information, I wouldn't exactly limit myself to points-achieved. If I were to make any decision on which driver is favorable for a seat, I think I'd find away to assess the drivers potential and his efficiency. The potential, to me, would be for instance his ability to extract the most out of a single lap. In Qualifying, (unlike practice-sessions) you have a pretty level playing field: Most of the time equal track conditions, similar fuel loads and tyres, most-likely identical engine-modes and equal amount of mental stress. In qualifying, it's easier to see how drivers compare under almost equal conditions.

The efficiency factor comes in on race-day. How does the driver perform in the race? That is harder to compare, because effectively, every driver drives his own race, tied to his own strategy. It's easier to compare the top qualifiers because they are likely on similar strategies (e.g.: a straight forward race), but it gets more difficult if you're comparing the mid-field teams where on some occasions, one of the drivers might have made it into Q3 while his other team-mate got eliminated in Q2 and effectively has free tyre-choice (and used up less rubber because he missed on a session). If both drivers got stuck in Q2, it also might not be directly comparable, since some mid-field teams like to vary the strategies between its two drivers, in the hope to benefit from unusual race circumstances. Sauber has always been an easy example to see this - one driver usually trying a strategy with longer stints compared to the other with more pit-stops. Sometime it works out brilliantly, sometimes it doesn't.

The point: We don't know how much Torro Rosso has been mixing up the strategies of its drivers to gain some kind of advantage. JEV might have gained the advantages during the race due to race-craft, or it might have been down to fortunate strategies. Or both. We just don't know this for a fact (I certainly don't, I really haven't been following these two closely).

I do think however that it's a bit too simplistic to look at this from a stricly "points" angle; A DNF is very costly and since we are comparing two drivers within a mid-field team where on the majority of races, it's hard enough to even get a single point, a driver lucking into a high finish might be able to sway the picture to such a degree that the other driver might not catch up by his own ability. I.e. Schumacher who had so many DNFs last year didn't have any hope of even getting close to Rosbergs points, even if their performance (give or take) was on a very similar level. The point difference between the two showed Rosberg being comfortably better, but I think a more accurate assessment would be that they were both rather similar if you dismiss the team-errors and bad-luck.

Getting back to JEV and DR; If I was to analyze the two; I'd be looking closely at their qualifying performance and also race to some degree. If one of them had a DNF, I'd try to award points depending if he was in front of his team-mate at the time or not. Even if a driver crashes out often during the race (either by mechanical or driver-error), I would still give the nod to the driver with the higher potential.

The best example is Hamilton / Button in 2011. Hamilton lost so many points through unfortunate driver-errors - yet the points he lost there, were costly to his own WDC hopes and his team-mate directly benefited from it by driving very consistant. That doesn't change the fact however that in the majority of races, Hamilton was the quicker driver, ahead in qualifying and usually the race as a result, but ended up with less points at the end of the year because of stupid errors that would have been easily avoidable. This would be a prime example of high potential (good qualifying and race-pace), but not very good efficiency (some very costly driver errors during the race).

If I were to chose a driver for my team between JEV and DR, I'd try to figure out the same potential / efficiency rate of their past races.

[Holm86]

Mark Webber has confirmed Daniel Ricciardo will be taking his seat at Red Bull:

http://tensport.com.au/news/newsarticle ... cement.htm

That's not confirmation.

[SectorOne]

The best example is Hamilton / Button in 2011. Hamilton lost so many points through unfortunate driver-errors - yet the points he lost there, were costly to his own WDC hopes and his team-mate directly benefited from it by driving very consistant. That doesn't change the fact however that in the majority of races, Hamilton was the quicker driver, ahead in qualifying and usually the race as a result, but ended up with less points at the end of the year because of stupid errors that would have been easily avoidable. This would be a prime example of high potential (good qualifying and race-pace), but not very good efficiency (some very costly driver errors during the race).

That´s a great example. Hamilton was simply terrible that year, sure he was faster but his mind was on a different planet.
His speed meant really nothing because he could not tie it together in races.

The only issue with this is that you have a couple more years to look at, 4 years to be specific.
With Ricciardo you have very very good speed and very marketable person.

It´s clear Ricciardo is the faster guy but he does not have 4 years in black and white saying "this is how good i am"
Which Hamilton had. If Hamilton had 4 years of 2011 he probably would have lost his superlicense.

Red Bull might be waiting for Ricciardo to simply beat Vergne in points, who knows.
That way they have all areas covered and it´s a done deal.

If they sign him now and Vergne puts in the next gear and start raking in points, Red Bull is going to look like idiots frankly.

[Cold Fussion]

If they sign him now and Vergne puts in the next gear and start raking in points, Red Bull is going to look like idiots frankly.

I think that's really the crux of the problem. If they're limited to just Ricciardo or Vernge, then frankly there is no real benefit of signing them up quickly, because neither of them is clearly shown themselves to be heads and shoulders above the rest. Hell, it's even difficult to say whether or not the pair of them are really any better to some significant degree to the pair of drivers they replaced at Torro Rosso. From Red Bull's perspective, it is a sellers market, I would be very surprised if there was a driver on the grid who wouldn't want to drive a Red Bull, so they can take all the time they want to get the possible outcome for themselves. They already have one of the Top 3 drivers on the grid, and one who hasn't failed to delivered for them yet. Even with someone as inconsistent as Webber they've been able to comfortably win the WCC three times on the trot.

[xDama]

If they sign him now and Vergne puts in the next gear and start raking in points, Red Bull is going to look like idiots frankly.

I think that's really the crux of the problem. If they're limited to just Ricciardo or Vernge, then frankly there is no real benefit of signing them up quickly, because neither of them is clearly shown themselves to be heads and shoulders above the rest. Hell, it's even difficult to say whether or not the pair of them are really any better to some significant degree to the pair of drivers they replaced at Torro Rosso. From Red Bull's perspective, it is a sellers market, I would be very surprised if there was a driver on the grid who wouldn't want to drive a Red Bull, so they can take all the time they want to get the possible outcome for themselves. They already have one of the Top 3 drivers on the grid, and one who hasn't failed to delivered for them yet. Even with someone as inconsistent as Webber they've been able to comfortably win the WCC three times on the trot.

+10

If they're really down on only RIC/VER, then why on earth would they make a choice before the last race of the season? They're both RB-products, both have been in F1 for 2 seasons or more and they both are ready to step in the RB-car if necessary.

Both drivers have shown equal performance/speed, so why not let them have a shoot-out for the remainder of the season, with the RB-seat at stake? Maybe it's a good exercise for them to handle the pressure.

[pob]

If they're really down on only RIC/VER, then why on earth would they make a choice before the last race of the season? They're both RB-products, both have been in F1 for 2 seasons or more and they both are ready to step in the RB-car if necessary.

Because any driver in the Red Bull academy should be wary by now that they could be dropped at any point (e.g. Alguersuari thought he had a Toro Rosso drive for 2012 until mid-December 2011!), so both Ricciardo and Vergne should be on the lookout for openings at other teams. If Red Bull wait too long, both young hopefuls may have jumped ship

[sennafan24]

Because any driver in the Red Bull academy should be wary by now that they could be dropped at any point (e.g. Alguersuari thought he had a Toro Rosso drive for 2012 until mid-December 2011!), so both Ricciardo and Vergne should be on the lookout for openings at other teams. If Red Bull wait too long, both young hopefuls may have jumped ship

Could not agree more, at the very most I can see a Toro Rosso driver getting 2 years. It is not a team where you can be long term, due to the nature and goal of its existence.

[SectorOne]

If Red Bull wait too long, both young hopefuls may have jumped ship

That won´t be a problem for Red Bull

Horner opens the front door, rings his little bell and he will have half the grid sitting like puppies hoping they get picked.

Edit: and once again people think i´m rude for saying the truth. Horner has already said there has been way more people then you think for the spots. This is the most anal forum ever in internet history.

The most --- up forum members in all of internet.

[Hail22]

Wow. This thread reminds me of a line from Shakespeare: "Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Meanwhile, while you all are yammering, there may actually be some fire amongst all the smoke:

A mischievous Mark Webber on Sunday gave away the name of his successor at Red Bull.

While the frenzied 'silly season' rumour-mongers wonder if Kimi Raikkonen, Jenson Button or even Fernando Alonso might still be in the running, Australian Webber said it is his younger compatriot who has secured the plum 2014 seat.

Team boss Christian Horner has insisted all weekend that a decision has not been made, and that an announcement is not due at least until Monza in two weeks.

But the Le Mans-bound Webber said at Spa-Francorchamps: "The decision's made. We all know who it is. I'm happy with that decision.

"It's good for him and good for Australia," he told Channel 10.

Here's Webber's comment:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCxlIgmAX9g[/youtube]

Took me a little while to track this video down!

[stefan_]

Plot twist:

[raymondu999]

You mean Red Bull will use a Mercedes engine!? D:

[sennafan24]

Plot twist:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BSn_LE0CAAAxW1K.png:large

Amazingly, Byron Young claimed there had been small talk about that very possibility, this was dismissed when he talked to one of Schumi's friends, he is happy putting his feet up.

[xDama]

After 3 years of taking a beating by Rosberg, God knows what Vettel would do to the old geezer.