Can Rosberg and Ricciardo be considered tier 1 drivers now?

[Cam]

Up-voted not because I like it but wanted to see it. No and neither is Hamilton (1,5 tier at best) nor Vettel. Not the answer you were expecting?

No, that is the answer I was expecting from you, but it's not correct. At least, the vast majority of industry professionals, would disagree with you.

Joking aside: Rosberg is where he always was which is fast but flawed, plus some nice racing adjustments and improvements: aggression and risks at last but with consequences (mistakes).

Wow. Did you see what Rosberg did? He and Hamilton had the exact same problem. Hamilton retired, Rosberg managed his problem and finished 2nd. Which part of that is flawed? He showed remarkable restraint and professionalism to get that car home in that spot. That's tier 1 in any book.

Car helps in both examples, give them FI and they're finishing way behind Perez in Canada (before the crash).

you're comparing the current No.s 1 & 3 on the WDC with Perez?! Perez is driving for FI because of the money he is bringing - not the talent - and even that amount of money wasn't enough to keep him at McLaren. That is polar opposite to what Rosberg and Riccardo are bringing to their respective tables.

Judge them by their peers - Rosberg and Ricciardo are not perfect - but they're where they are because the teams believe in them and because they have earned that position -> a drive in a top tier car, ergo, tier 1 drivers.

[Sevach]

It'd be interesting to see how fast Rosberg is when he doesn't have lewis' telemetry to look at.

Come on man, this search for "answers" why puny Rosberg can keep up with "fastest, most awesome driver on the planet" has got to stop.

This is Kimi fans circa 07/08 all over again.

[PlatinumZealot]

Joking aside: Rosberg is where he always was which is fast but flawed, plus some nice racing adjustments and improvements: aggression and risks at last but with consequences (mistakes).

Wow. Did you see what Rosberg did? He and Hamilton had the exact same problem. Hamilton retired, Rosberg managed his problem and finished 2nd. Which part of that is flawed? He showed remarkable restraint and professionalism to get that car home in that spot. That's tier 1 in any book.

Judge them by their peers - Rosberg and Ricciardo are not perfect - but they're where they are because the teams believe in them and because they have earned that position -> a drive in a top tier car, ergo, tier 1 drivers.

Dude, Hamilton's car failed first because he was in the dirty air and he pit stoped right after and the heat soak finished off what was left of his brakes. Rosberg was not in dirty air and he got the heads up and was able to react accordingly.

[Cam]

With high ambient temperatures in Montreal and a spike in temperature, the car being stationary at a pitstop appears to have overcome the electronics.

Compounding the loss of the ERS-K, there is the impact this has on the brakes.

As the ERS-K harvests its energy, it also creates drag on the rear axle and acts as part of the car's braking system.

Without it, the car therefore loses a proportion of the rear braking effort.

To save weight, teams have downsized the rear brake disc and caliper for 2014. This in turn leaves the rear brakes unable to cope with delivering the entire braking effort alone.

With Montreal being one of the hardest tracks for braking, is not surprising that Hamilton's rear brakes failed soon after the MGU-K problem hit. That said, Paddy Lowe did suggest to Sky TV that the two were not related.

Rosberg adjusted his brake bias and, with a lack of braking effort and the absence of 160hp, still managed to finish second.

Dude...... (don't ever call me that - have some respect).

While we can't know for sure exactly what Hamilton knew and when - he had options. He could have dropped backed out of the 'dirty air', for one. Ricciardo was doing this exact thing to minimise his heat issues.

"We had at exactly the same time a failure of the engine control systems, on the ERS, on the MGU-K, with a peak in temperature which was not on our priority list," he said, when asked by AUTOSPORT for an explanation.

"It shows you it is exactly the same power units, and they were racing at exactly the same pace and had exactly the same temperatures.

"In that particular part of the MGU-K we saw temperatures which were higher than expected. But we were unaware they could have such a detrimental effect and the MGU-K just shut down and we could not reset it."

Certainly Rosberg made changes and finished well. It could be that Hamilton had no notice from the team - although you'd think that unlikely. It could have been Rosberg made changes after Hamilton's failure - certainly that is possible.

But - @n smikle - you've missed the point in context. You're mate iotar__ tried to claim "Rosberg is where he always was which is fast but flawed, plus some nice racing adjustments and improvements: aggression and risks at last but with consequences (mistakes)." I pointed out that Rosberg drove a flawless race, under the circumstances. If you want to continue to argue that point - go ahead - but keep the context the same, otherwise you muddy the waters.

[GrizzleBoy]

Regarding NICO, I Don't consider winning by default because your team mates car keeps exploding tier 1 evidence.

Especially when the fact that their car exploding is probably the only reason why they don't have more than a race win in points advantage over you at the moment. Don't know why people keep forgetting that. I'm sure the media would rather die than remind us of that fact.

Riccardo's performances have been much more impressive to me, given that he's beating his team mate by actually driving better. Even though Vettel has had horrible reliability, you couldn't really say he's been handling the car that much better.

[Steven]

Both are great drivers, there's no point in discussing that really.
Whether they are best or near-best is a matter of personal taste, as long as we don't have telemetry and identical cars.

Thread locked, and votes deleted