If Vettel performs poorly this year... what will that mean?

[dobbster71]

I'm not sure that you can compare Vettel with Raikkonen this season. Red Bull know how Vettel likes his car to feel & its set-up. I would have thought that he would have had quite an influence during the design of the RB10.
Raikkonen, on the other hand, is at a new team & is clearly in the early stages of building a rapport with his new engineers. Also, I would suspect that the foibles of the pullrod suspension are new to him.

Raikkonen won the World Drivers Championship at his current team. They sure as hell know how he likes his car!

It's not probable he even has the same engineers as 5 years ago. How many Ferrari personnel have left the team during the last 5 years???
I'm sure that most of those engineers would have moved to Alonso after 2009, as Massa was the constant element & would have retained his crew. I'm sure that Kimi is using Massa's old team of engineers.

[turbof1]

I'm not sure that you can compare Vettel with Raikkonen this season. Red Bull know how Vettel likes his car to feel & its set-up. I would have thought that he would have had quite an influence during the design of the RB10.
Raikkonen, on the other hand, is at a new team & is clearly in the early stages of building a rapport with his new engineers. Also, I would suspect that the foibles of the pullrod suspension are new to him.

Raikkonen won the World Drivers Championship at his current team. They sure as hell know how he likes his car!

Sometimes I doubt if Raikkonen knows how he likes his car... .

I think Juzh asked the correct question. By no means is Torro Rosso comparable to Red Bull; he has better team enclosement (well, potentionally atleast given the first 2 races...) which extracts in turn more performance from the driver.

Honestly, I think this season will say more about his mental strength than any season before. He's been sounding decidedly shaken recently. Him standing up and saying "yep, Ricciardo's beating me fair and square at the moment and I've got to fix that" is the first sign to me that he's beginning to get his brain in the right place to launch a counter attack.

I think that's the most important clue here: how well can he pick up the pieces? I don't even think it'll be decidingly telling if Ricciardo beats him this year. Everybody can have a worse year. Schumacher had his 2005, Hamilton his 2011.

[JimClarkFan]

I'm not sure that you can compare Vettel with Raikkonen this season. Red Bull know how Vettel likes his car to feel & its set-up. I would have thought that he would have had quite an influence during the design of the RB10.
Raikkonen, on the other hand, is at a new team & is clearly in the early stages of building a rapport with his new engineers. Also, I would suspect that the foibles of the pullrod suspension are new to him.

Raikkonen won the World Drivers Championship at his current team. They sure as hell know how he likes his car!

Sometimes I doubt if Raikkonen knows how he likes his car... .

I think Juzh asked the correct question. By no means is Torro Rosso comparable to Red Bull; he has better team enclosement (well, potentionally atleast given the first 2 races...) which extracts in turn more performance from the driver.

Honestly, I think this season will say more about his mental strength than any season before. He's been sounding decidedly shaken recently. Him standing up and saying "yep, Ricciardo's beating me fair and square at the moment and I've got to fix that" is the first sign to me that he's beginning to get his brain in the right place to launch a counter attack.

I think that's the most important clue here: how well can he pick up the pieces? I don't even think it'll be decidingly telling if Ricciardo beats him this year. Everybody can have a worse year. Schumacher had his 2005, Hamilton his 2011.

Schumi never lost to his team mate in 2005 though, he was fighting Alonso and a very fast mclaren with kimi. Hamilton was up against button in 2011, many don't rate him, but he is a world champion and was not embarassed by hamilton which was a surprise for many (me included).

[Shrieker]

Though there was a time when Hamilton embarrassed Button completely; their quali fight in 2012 ended up something like 18-2 or 17-3. He also lapped Button en route to victory in Canada that year. Though to his credit, Button was trying a different rear suspension geometry.

Vettel is a 4x WDC. He gets beaten by Ric, I say "so what ?" Many years later down the road, someone's gonna take a look at the record books and say "gosh, that dude won four in a row in one of the closest eras of F1 racing". We know the truth is a bit different than that, he did nearly all of it in dominant cars designed by no other than Newey, and for some of us it kinda takes away from his accomplishments. For me, it'll be curious to see if the RB10's rear end could be sorted to Vettel's liking post EBD. It's no secret he does well with a rock solid rear. If not, then it won't be too surprising seeing Ric beat Vet with a small margin over the course of the season.

[Emerson.F]

That will confirm that Ricci is the real deal.

[turbof1]

Schumi never lost to his team mate in 2005 though, he was fighting Alonso and a very fast mclaren with kimi. Hamilton was up against button in 2011, many don't rate him, but he is a world champion and was not embarassed by hamilton which was a surprise for many (me included).

No, but there were people who doubted Michael none the less that year, even if it was obvious the car was so much off the pace. Lewis wasn't mentally 100% in 2011. Definitely an off year. 3 years later and people don't remember him for that, and rightly so.

Just to be clear; I wasn't comparing team mates for those 2 in those years.

[lebesset]

I'm not sure that you can compare Vettel with Raikkonen this season. Red Bull know how Vettel likes his car to feel & its set-up. I would have thought that he would have had quite an influence during the design of the RB10.
Raikkonen, on the other hand, is at a new team & is clearly in the early stages of building a rapport with his new engineers. Also, I would suspect that the foibles of the pullrod suspension are new to him.

Raikkonen won the World Drivers Championship at his current team. They sure as hell know how he likes his car!

It's not probable he even has the same engineers as 5 years ago. How many Ferrari personnel have left the team during the last 5 years???
I'm sure that most of those engineers would have moved to Alonso after 2009, as Massa was the constant element & would have retained his crew. I'm sure that Kimi is using Massa's old team of engineers.

am I not correct in thinking that kimi's old engineer is now alonso's engineer as you state ...stella ??

[munudeges]

I'm not sure that you can compare Vettel with Raikkonen this season. Red Bull know how Vettel likes his car to feel & its set-up. I would have thought that he would have had quite an influence during the design of the RB10.
Raikkonen, on the other hand, is at a new team & is clearly in the early stages of building a rapport with his new engineers. Also, I would suspect that the foibles of the pullrod suspension are new to him.

Raikkonen won the World Drivers Championship at his current team. They sure as hell know how he likes his car!

Raikkonen has never had a pull-rod suspension car before and it sure as hell doesn't fit in with his style of driving the car with emphasis on the front end mechanicals. Ditto Schumacher. The first thing he would have told Ferrari would have been to get that --- off his car.

[Lycoming]

Raikkonen has never had a pull-rod suspension car before and it sure as hell doesn't fit in with his style of driving the car with emphasis on the front end mechanicals.

Does the pullrod really make that much of a difference?

[sennaf1god.94]

On race pace Webber was always up to Vettel´s speed, no doubt about it.

It was in qualy that Webber was losing as soon as the RedBull cars season after season mastered the blowing diffuser concept, and getting more and more downforce out of the exhaust gases.

Particularly I suspect Webber was cheated during the last two seasons by getting an engine map that produced less exhaust gases, and therefore less downforce than his teammate. But it could just be that Webber wasn´t confortable with the concept...

What´s sure is that now cars have much less downforce than before, but even so, Redbull is the faster car around any given curve. Sacrificing top speed in the process, and you can notice it by comparing top speed differences between them and same Renault powered sister Toro Rosso car.

Ricciardo beated both Liuzzi and Vergne during his two stints at HRT and Toro Rosso, even when he perished during the battle between himself and Vergne in the F. Renault 3.5 (WSR) tittle fight...meaning both are actually xcepcionally good drivers.

This year´s cars have much more torque and quite less downforce than last year, meaning a different racing and therefore different driving characteristics are needed. So every racing driver pretty much started from zero to adapt this new cars.

This xplains why many rookies are keeping up to the speed of their xperienced teammates. Now drivers have more to say, even if there´s a team ahead of the rest, all the grid is pretty much close than ever, and intra team battles are now more indicative than ever about the different driver´s characteristics.

People forget what driving actually is. You could see Raikkonen being faster than Alonso at Malaysia, and struggle like a pig in other races. Setup work and circuit characteristics have a lot to say about accentuating this or that characteristics, then you have Perez matching the Hulk one weekend and the next you can see him almost being lapped by his teammate.

Ricciardo has apparently adapted better than Vettel to the characteristics of his car´s setup, and therefore has more chances to xcel in any given racetrack.

Alonso should better be worried about helping his team develop a winning car, instead of worrying about Vettel´s machinery, because if I´m correct, even with the 610bhp "crappy" Renault engine Vettel outqualyfied him in Q3 during this weekend´s Chinese GP, a place anyway supposed to benefit his Ferrari´s characteristics...

[Mandrake]

I truely believe this is a very bad year for Seb. Even when his car is working without any issues, the Mercs are lightyears away. Then he inherited Mark Webber's luck, something he has not experienced the last 4 years. This is very very bad for his motivation, coming from a winning streak to sit in a car that will most likely never challenge the Mercs for the whole year.

Then he has a little child at home he might want to see grow up. And I bet that currently he prefers to be with his baby than to be fighting for P3 at best.

I do not think that it will take anything away from him if he doesn't finish at least third in WDC or gets beaten by Dan. There are more outside factors than ever this year, that I'd rather say it's the opposite, this year has a lot less significance as if the same happened with the old cars.

[SiLo]

Vettel might have used up all his luck in 4 straight years to get 4 straight championships. I remember whenever something could go wrong, it pretty much always happened to someone else. He obviously had a few car problems, but things like, the timing of rain, the timing of safety cars and crashes etc used to seem like it was all a big ruse.

[Manoah2u]

i'll call it out first.

shouldn't this be in the fanboy yingyang thread?

[Phillyred]

Vettel might have used up all his luck in 4 straight years to get 4 straight championships. I remember whenever something could go wrong, it pretty much always happened to someone else. He obviously had a few car problems, but things like, the timing of rain, the timing of safety cars and crashes etc used to seem like it was all a big ruse.

So, would you have more "respect" for a world champion if he had 1) 4 consecutive WDCs 2) 4 WDCs at 4 different teams or 3) 4 WDCs over 15yrs?

I think Button is a great methodical driver, but I really think his 1 WDC was solely because of superior machinery at Brawn GP. If it wasn't for their early dominance which slowly dwindled when everyone figured out the blown diffuser he might have just had an "ok" season. Again though, I won't take away the fact that it still takes a complete and competent driver to bring the car home to finish at the end of the day.

[Powershift]

It changes nothing in my mind, I never thought he was that great and then this would only prove he was as much a fraud as I thought he was.

Yes he stepped into F1 at a young age but he never really impressed me as a friday driver(for BMW), plus circumstances were kind of skewed to put the friday drivers in a better light than they might have deserved, furthermore I kept up with the junior formula back then and he didn't impress me much in those either, maybe because he was always racing against older drivers than himself, still no major junior titles.

And then when he was called up for his first drive with BMW(Kubica's big Canada accident) he lagged behind Heidfeld(who was no slouch it must be said) all weekend and only scored points because of high attrition(including Heidfeld who was way ahead of him).

I was rather impressed with the whooping he put on Bordais, having witnessed Bordais' championship run in AOWR, but his 2008 win in Monza was not that impressive to me, in F1 there are sometimes these upside down weekends that allow crazy things to happen like Panis winning in Monaco, or Winklehock leading by a 30sec after starting in the pit lane.

Vettel is a decent driver, worthy of F1 and he did well enough to win the 4 titles that he did albeit in much superior machinery, but I have no doubt that if Hamilton(and maybe even Alonso) were in the RB5 in 2009 they would have taken the WDC over Button.

4xWDC is quite an achievement, but we've seen unworthy drivers win WDC before(BUTTON), sure not 4XWDC consecutive, but the consecutive actually puts it into light just how dominant the RB5 and its successive iterations have been, and its strength still continues to this day in the RB10, but Riccardo seemingly has a better handle on it than Vettel thus far. It's still too early to tell between those 2, maybe Vettel can catch up and change his skeptics minds, we'll see.