2008 Rookies

[icef1mkd]

Now that the season is over, how would you rate
this years' rookies?

[Scuderia_Russ]

Bourdais, great job. Needs to be rehired.
Piquet, amazed he has a contract for next year. He was / is out of his depth.
Nakajima. Amazingly average.

[thegreat1]

Bourdais: Expected bit more from him.

Nakajima: Very average and under the radar driver.

Piquet: Lost every qualifying against Alonso and after trash talking Fisichella in 2006 & 2007 he did worse than him.

[wesley123]

Bourdais: Pretty OK, could be a bit better
Piquet: I never seen a guy damgaging so many cars in one year and DNF by his own fault
Nakajima: Pretty avarage

[Conceptual]

Bourdais did well enough that he deserves another ride in 2009, especially since the new regs will deliver cars that are much closer to Champ Cars, and he will be the only driver on the grid with push-to-pass experience.

Piquet should have been relegated to a testing role, and allowed to learn some more before embarassing himself again in 2009. He is young enough that if Renault were to pick up Barrichello or Fisi, he could have returned in 2010 much better prepared.

Nakijima did very average in a very average car. He didn't have a WDC teammate to learn from this year, and it doesn't look like he will fare much better in 2009 unless Williams surprises with the FW31.

Best rookie is Bourdais, hands down. He struggled alot but was also robbed of some good points finishes by the Gremlins. He also took getting owned by Vettel much better than I expected. I sincerely hope that he gets another ride in 09 with STR.

[mr moda]

Nakajima did a lot better than most think considering wonderboy Rosberg was not that far ahead of him all season.

[Belatti]

Bourdais, great job. Needs to be rehired.
Piquet, amazed he has a contract for next year. He was / is out of his depth.
Nakajima. Amazingly average.

+1

[Spencifer_Murphy]

Bourdais dissapointed me in that he never truely got to grips with the car itself and this prevented him from showing his gtrue ability, that and being lined up against a team-mate as good as Vettel made him look avage. All that being considered however his overall job impressed me, I think he deserves a crack at 2009, and a change to get on top of these F1 cars.

Nakajima was okay, towards the end of the season the car was being under-developed hence his (and team-mate Nico's) performances dropped. However at the start of the seaspn when the car was pretty competative Kazuki quietly kept picking up points. Flambouant he may not be, but he was doing a solid job. I'd say well done to him.

Nelson Piquet Jr...to me the gut reaction is he was totally out of this depth. We must remember though that he did give Lewis a run for his money in GP2, and for a rookie to come into F1 and drive a great car alonside a great driver (eg Lewis last year) is far easier than to drive a dog of a car alongside the same great driver (Nelson this year). A fact exhasperated by the fact that Pat Symonds claims Alonso has a remarkable ability to "drive around" a cars short-commings. (See his rediculously agressive turn-in in 2005-06) Nelson struggled hugely with the car this year. Whether or not he's completely out of his depth I don't know as I'm hoping perfoamances like Germany this year (yes I know a lucky pit-sop/saftey car combination helped A LOT - but it was a good job none-the-less) show what he can actually achieve in a car he likes.

I know he's not a total rookie, but Timo Glock also impressed me this year. It may sound boring but I feel the best word to sum his season up was competant...at no point did he look totally beaten by his teammate over a reasonable period of time. All in all a solid job.

[Steven]

I know he's not a total rookie, but Timo Glock also impressed me this year. It may sound boring but I feel the best word to sum his season up was competant...at no point did he look totally beaten by his teammate over a reasonable period of time. All in all a solid job.

For me, Timo was without doubt the best 'rookie' of the year. He proved to be considerably faster than Trulli at some circuits, while generally he was very good on the pace during the races.

Apart from that though, I spoke with him early on in the year and even then I somehow believed that he was completely up to it. He appears calm and focussed at all times, a characteristic that marks several of the better drivers out there.

[Sawtooth-spike]

But is Glock A True Rookie?

He has raced in F1 before this season.

[modbaraban]

Bourdais is the rookie of the year, imo. He was unlucky several times but his progress during the season was quite evident. He's a thoughtfull experienced race driver and should be STR's main asset in 2009.

Nelsinho lacked consistency made many mistakes and crashed a lot. That shouldn't be a surprise if you've seen him in junior formulae. I guess one can make the best of his talent giving him all the support available, but as a #2 he's useless.

Nakajima was okay... and that's more than I could expect with a such a mediocre car and such a teammate to compare with! Not to mention the special status of Rosberg in Williams, which quite possibley included the car built to suit his driving style.

Glock was great, but he's not a rookie. He debuted in Canadian Grand Prix 2004 scoring 2 points for Jordan.

[vyselegend]

For me Nakajima has done a good job. He hasn't shine like a star, but he hasn't crashed every now and then like Piquet, he was able to fight cleanly with his competitors (well, most of the time -everyone makes a mistake or two-). And, importantly, I never heard him complaining about the car or the team like Bourdais, yet in comparison with the STR3, the FW30 was (by far) a more difficult animal to score with.
I think people doubting his skills are just misjudging the talent of his team mate, who IMO has nothing to envy to a Vettel or Hamilton. (IMPORTANT NOTE TO TROLLS: Don't take this phrase as an excuse to turn this topic in a chat about Vettel or Hamilton being human Gods please )

I agree Bourdais did a solid job, as far as driving is concerned. One thing disturbs me about him though. He isn't young, and has a long carreer behind him already. So obviously Berger hasn't hired him as a rookie, but as an experienced driver, which is supposed to mean:

1/ a good ability to tune the car, and an ability to deal with the car's caracteristics.
IMO Sebastien failed with this second point, always whinning about the car being unsuited to his driving style rather than adapting to it.

2/ A solid mind, an ability to endure the hard times and keep it steady under pressure.
And here we have him crying in Spa because things didn't turn his way, and nearly crying in Monza again because he was hit by bad luck again...

I don't condemn sensibility, and I agree he had then all the reasons to feel bad, with all the incredible bad luck, and the terribly dark contrast with his team mate's success. But I repeat, he wasn't hired as a quick young talent full of promises, but as an experienced and mature driver. So IMO he failed to show what he was supposed to.

Piquet was arguably the worst rookie this year. He wasn't fast appart from France, Germany and Japan. He wasn't reliable too. He doesn't appear to be a fine tuner, and has shown a cruel disinterest toward all the off tracks responsabilities, such as PR meetings, interviews etc. The journalists keeps complaining about his inability to smile and show interest in the sport. Those are important points for sponsors, and are even more important when you represent a car maker. Think to the contrast with the shiny, always smiling Kovalainen, in terms of image for Renault!

That said, I think he was so often forced to run with full tanks because of his qualy mistakes that he might be the driver the more used to one stop strategies of the field lol. The performance in Monza was impressive, he pitted for the first time with less than 20 laps to go (and even in the wet Monza is a very high fuel-consumption track)! I didn't even thought it was possible to embark that much fuel in 2008 cars.

[Miguel]

Vyselegend, you make a very hard job trying to counter your arguments. I'll follow the Hamilton/Vettel path...

I think you make a very valid point about Bourdais. He's often been seen complaining, and it hasn't helped that most of the team radio we've heard from Toro Rosso was Bourdais complaining. But I do think that he's been unable to drive around car misbehaviours, and that's probably been the difference between Vettel and him this year. It also doesn't help that he's older and more used to other kind of vehicles.

Regarding Piquet, I said the following on the Renault lineup thread. But nobody really wants to discuss about Piquet there.

Piquet has been outqualified lately by about 2-3 tenths. When the R28 was able to get 7th to 10th, this meant not only missing Q3, but being easily 6 positions behind your teammate. In order to compensate this, Piquet had to be fueled heavily. Some folks have noted how the R28 was a worse car on fuel than on fumes. Couple then a difficult car with lots of knife-racing (don't be fooled, people at the back of the grid race as hard as anybody) and you necessarily get involved in more incidents. Note how when Piquet has got into Q3 his race has gone so much better. He was pretty good in Hungary, and could have even got Kimi in Fuji had he not gone out for a trip. He was also fast in France and his rain-pace in Silverstone was also fine. Let's not forget Germany, although I'm not sure he could have beat Alonso without the safety car.

I believe that Piquet is able to mantain a good pace with a heavy car. It's also possible that Renault engineers trust him to shave a couple of tenths off his qualifying performance. If next year's car is easier to drive (it should! slicks plus less small apendices should naturaly produce this!), Nelson could develop into a good solid driver, although probably not stellar.

Vyselegend disagrees on the R28 being worse with a heavy fuel load in the latter part of the season. I'll have to agree with him, but only since the introduction of the new rear suspension in Spa. That suspension really helped traction and tire endurance.

EDIT: I'm still undecided about Nakajima. He has glimpses of speed, but sometimes he's very far from his teammate. I don't know if that's because Rosberg is a true ace (could be), because in some races Nakajima excels (could also be) or because Rosberg's performance still varies from ace to solid (could be tood). In short, undecission about Nico effects my view of Kazuki, who did show some glimpses of very good raw speed in GP2.

[Spencifer_Murphy]

But is Glock A True Rookie?

He has raced in F1 before this season.

No he's not a TRUE rookie, but then neither is Nakajima (he started the Brazilian GP 2007 for Williams)

[ISLAMATRON]

But is Glock A True Rookie?

He has raced in F1 before this season.

No he's not a TRUE rookie, but then neither is Nakajima (he started the Brazilian GP 2007 for Williams)

Then neither was Vettle last year.... they were all rookies, 1-2 races dont make that huge a deal, they probly gained more experience over winter testing. Gllock had how many F1 races a couple years ago? maybe 1? and how much have the cars changed, and how many times have the qualifying procedures changed since then. Glock is obviously a rookie, as in Nakajima, as is Bourdais.