Best rookie of the season

[ThumbsUp]

Andres, what about the crash in the wall in quali in Singapore, and what about the second spin in Sochi crashing into the barrier? I think they're both driver mistakes. So that would set them equal on mistakes during the race weekends. Also I don't think they are making that much mistakes. These 2 are the best rookies. They push eachother to great levels. Both are future Grand Prix winners. But you know my pick already.

[TAG]

Was thinking about this myself after the Sochi GP, I think this is the best crop of rookies we've had in a long long while. Max, Felipe and Sainz all have their strengths and all are very capable and all have shown very strong performances.

As far as I'm concerned the jury is still out but I wouldn't be opposed to seeing any of them get the honor.

[efuloni]

IMO, Sainz is, at the moment, better than Max. But considering the ages and the experience of both, I guess Max has more talent. However I wont be surprise if both turn out to be WDC contenders in the future.

Nasr isn't in the same category as Verstapen and/or Sainz, Nasr only delivers on circuits that rely on Power Unit strenght.

About Nasr, I think we might be underestimating him. First, because Sauber is way worst than the STR. And his car only behaves a little bit better in circuits that depend of PU. So its not his fault.

And, in addition, Nasr had a quarrel with his race engineer and asked him to be replaced by the one who worked with him in pre-season tests. The press said his former engineer didnt apply the car setups he asked for. Sauber denied the change until Sochi. He had his second best result there. Could be a coincidence, or not. Let's wait and see.

I also followed Nasr in GP2 and I didnt even think he deserved the place. But if you look for, he has his excuses to his performances in GP2 and, before that, he really nailed the BMW Formula and the British F3. So may be he is good, but couldnt show it at GP2.

[Edax]

Verstappen by a very wide margin.

A F1 is as much about branding as it is about racing. Therefore driver exposure is extremely important. Of course driver skill is a must but here have been plenty of drivers which were extremely skilled but did not make it in F1 because they didn't have sufficient marketing value.

I don't know how or why. But Verstappen has that part sorted. He gets the camera time on an off track. As long as he shows decent performance he will get a ride with a top team.

Nasr has done a very good job this year. But it will only be noticed by us hardcore fans because he is barely visible during the races. You have to pick up the lap charts after the race to see how well he actually drove. Getting a drive in a podium capable team will be a much harder for him.

Sainz is more or less in between the two.

The one goal of a rookie season is establish a brand on which to build you're further carrier. That one goes to Max. He still has to fulfill those expectations, but he has done a stellar job in creating them.

[Andres125sx]

Andres, what about the crash in the wall in quali in Singapore, and what about the second spin in Sochi crashing into the barrier? I think they're both driver mistakes. So that would set them equal on mistakes during the race weekends. Also I don't think they are making that much mistakes. These 2 are the best rookies. They push eachother to great levels. Both are future Grand Prix winners. But you know my pick already.

True about Sigapore quali, but there are no points on saturdays, and he managed to score points finishing the race just behind Max (8th and 9th), despite he started 6 positions behind

About Sochi, you can´t be serious. Maybe he should have stopped the car before doing the second spin because the brakes were done, but the race was finished because of a mechanical failure, not because of a driver mistake. You could say he broke a rear wing, but that´s all, it had no impact on the final result. And he proved to be brave, not many drivers will try to finish the race without brakes

So he did one (big) mistake in the whole season, and scored points that weekend, very different to Max with his two retirements because of two crashes on his own

[Andres125sx]

The one goal of a rookie season is establish a brand on which to build you're further carrier. That one goes to Max. He still has to fulfill those expectations, but he has done a stellar job in creating them.

I more or less agree with your view about drivers must stablish a brand to earn a seat in F1 because there are a lot of talented drivers, but I´d say Horner (or it was Marko?) claiming he´s the new Senna played a big role there.

[ME4ME]

Very interesting debate.

Nasr started the season with a great performance in Australia, but other than that I think his season has been mediocre to be honest. Ericsson was terrible last year, and started on the same low level this year, but has made a step forward, equaled, and even out-performed Nasr on occasions. I don't want to put Nasr in a negative spotlight here, cause his car is after all one of the slowest, but so far I'm not convinced he deserved any more than a midfield car.

Verstappen and Sainz on the other hand have been absolutely spectacular. You can see the hunger for success in their approach to each weekend with total commitment. That's something we rarely see anymore - some drivers, like Hulkenberg to name one, seem to just go through the motions. The Toro Rosso boys add some strongly needed spice to the show. Sainz has surprised me with his performance in qualifying, he really does have great speed. What puts Max one step above for me is his killer instinct in races. To me he seems very similar to Alonso. WDC material.

As for the Manor drivers, I'm not particularly impressed with any of them. It's too early to judge Rossy though.

The thing is, although F1 needs a couple of senior drivers, I think currently we have too many and the system is congested. Personally I would have been happy to see Button and Raikkonen leave at the end of the season and make place for other exciting rookies like Vandoorne, Magnussen or even Palmer to join.

[efuloni]

Nasr started the season with a great performance in Australia, but other than that I think his season has been mediocre to be honest. Ericsson was terrible last year, and started on the same low level this year, but has made a step forward, equaled, and even out-performed Nasr on occasions. I don't want to put Nasr in a negative spotlight here, cause his car is after all one of the slowest, but so far I'm not convinced he deserved any more than a midfield car.

I guess we could say he was impressive in Australia, Singapore and Sochi. These are the races he showed great qualities. But we shall wait. He indeed didnt show that many things yet.

The thing is, although F1 needs a couple of senior drivers, I think currently we have too many and the system is congested. Personally I would have been happy to see Button and Raikkonen leave at the end of the season and make place for other exciting rookies like Vandoorne, Magnussen or even Palmer to join.

I coundn't agree more. I'm a big fan of RAI and BUT, but, lets be honest: they wont be champions, they are not likely to win races and dont bring much excitement to me anymore. I'd me way more interested in see young drivers being tested in their seats.

Between 16 and 17 we must see all these old lads getting retired: Alonso, Massa, Raikonnen, Button

[MercedesAMGSpy]

Very interesting debate.

Nasr started the season with a great performance in Australia, but other than that I think his season has been mediocre to be honest. Ericsson was terrible last year, and started on the same low level this year, but has made a step forward, equaled, and even out-performed Nasr on occasions. I don't want to put Nasr in a negative spotlight here, cause his car is after all one of the slowest, but so far I'm not convinced he deserved any more than a midfield car.

Verstappen and Sainz on the other hand have been absolutely spectacular. You can see the hunger for success in their approach to each weekend with total commitment. That's something we rarely see anymore - some drivers, like Hulkenberg to name one, seem to just go through the motions. The Toro Rosso boys add some strongly needed spice to the show. Sainz has surprised me with his performance in qualifying, he really does have great speed. What puts Max one step above for me is his killer instinct in races. To me he seems very similar to Alonso. WDC material.

As for the Manor drivers, I'm not particularly impressed with any of them. It's too early to judge Rossy though.

The thing is, although F1 needs a couple of senior drivers, I think currently we have too many and the system is congested. Personally I would have been happy to see Button and Raikkonen leave at the end of the season and make place for other exciting rookies like Vandoorne, Magnussen or even Palmer to join.

I am very disappointed in Hulkenberg, he doesn't show why he deserves a top seat. A Le Mans win in a top car doesn't change that. I expected him to do a lot better and to make it even worse, when there is a chance for a podium, it's his team mate doing the job.

[ThumbsUp]

True about Sigapore quali, but there are no points on saturdays, and he managed to score points finishing the race just behind Max (8th and 9th), despite he started 6 positions behind

About Sochi, you can´t be serious. Maybe he should have stopped the car before doing the second spin because the brakes were done, but the race was finished because of a mechanical failure, not because of a driver mistake. You could say he broke a rear wing, but that´s all, it had no impact on the final result. And he proved to be brave, not many drivers will try to finish the race without brakes

So he did one (big) mistake in the whole season, and scored points that weekend, very different to Max with his two retirements because of two crashes on his own

Doesn't matter if he got points on Sunday it was a driver mistake. Which you where talking about. Max started 8th had a glitch that switched off his car, was 1,5 lap behind and and set times that matched the front cars set the 3rd or 4th fastest lap and got points. Yes he was lucky with the safety car. But so was Sainz in Sochi.

And yes I'm serious about the second spin being a driver mistake. You may call it brave I call it just silly. As I said before that's how I see that single event that happened in his best race of the season.

Also Max had most of the mechanical issues during quali therefore he had to start most of the races on the backfoot and he still is ahead of him point wise. The way Max was overtaking in Singapore was much more neatly done then Sainz was overtaking, he overtook the Lotus guys by putting the car alongside and went off track and forced the others off track as well with no penalty at all. That's why I think Max is slightly the better one of them.

[Andres125sx]

Doesn't matter if he got points on Sunday it was a driver mistake.

Yes it matters because we´re comparing them, so we must analyse the points they´ve scored, the points they´ve not scored because of car problems, and the points they´ve not scored because of their own mistakes

Max started 8th had a glitch that switched off his car, was 1,5 lap behind and and set times that matched the front cars set the 3rd or 4th fastest lap and got points. Yes he was lucky with the safety car. But so was Sainz in Sochi.

So Sainz was lucky in a race his car didn´t finish, while Max was lucky after suffering problems and he could score points... Those are very different ways to be lucky

And yes I'm serious about the second spin being a driver mistake. You may call it brave I call it just silly. As I said before that's how I see that single event that happened in his best race of the season.

But you keep ignoring that mistake didn´t cost anything because his race was finished and the mistake came when he tried to finish with a broken car. Very different to what we usually call a driver mistake wich costs a DNF to the team

Also Max had most of the mechanical issues during quali therefore he had to start most of the races on the backfoot and he still is ahead of him point wise.

Exactly, he suffered problems in quali but was able to solve it in sunday, as Carlos did after Singapore quali mistake but finished the race 9th

But Carlos had most of the mechanical issues during the race, when there´s no more chances to solve anything so he didn´t score a lot of deserved points because of the car.

For example, the race when Max scored the bigger amount of points, Hungary, in that race Carlos was in front of Max until the team used the pitstops so Max undercut Carlos Yes, instead of calling Carlos first as any other team would have done, they called the driver behind. The only reason for that, apart of the team favouring Max, is they saw some problem with Carlos car, because it finally broke and DNF.

In normal conditions (with his car finishing and the team calling the driver in front first) that 4th position should have been for Carlos.

Then Sochi, when he lost 6 points because the brakes died, same for Silverstone and Austria, he was in top 10 in all of them. It looks like anytime he´s on top ten doing a great race, the car break apart

In last 8 races Carlos was in top ten 7 times, and the car broke 5 of them
In last 8 races Max was in top ten 7 times, and the car broke 1 of them

There you get the points difference

[Kingshark]

I don't think there's a lot to split the top 3. Nevertheless Verstappen wins, just barely ahead of Sainz and then Nasr.

[Andres125sx]

I am very disappointed in Hulkenberg, he doesn't show why he deserves a top seat. A Le Mans win in a top car doesn't change that. I expected him to do a lot better and to make it even worse, when there is a chance for a podium, it's his team mate doing the job.

Anytime Alonso is asked about who deserve a top seat in F1, he always says Hulkenberg. To be sincere I´ve never looked at him in detail, but drivers know better than anyone so I wouldn´t think he´s underperforming, maybe it´s Perez who is performing flawlesly

As I said didn´t look into it in detail, but Nico DNF 5 times for only 1 for the mexican.

[Kingshark]

As I said didn´t look into it in detail, but Nico DNF 5 times for only 1 for the mexican.

In China he was outside of the points. Singapore and Russia were his own fault.
In Hungary Perez got Maldonado'd and had a brake failure in the same race.
Belgium? Fair enough. Maybe 8 points lost relative to Perez.

I also don't rate Hulkenberg that highly. 5 years in F1 without a single podium now.

[Godius]

As for Hülkenberg I think that the top teams wrote him off already in 2012 after the Interlagos race where he spun his car when he was in the lead and later on drove into Hamiltons back in that same race.