Caporegime
- Joined
- 18 Oct 2002
- Posts
- 33,188
Don't forget that ultimately that just wasn't true, Red Bulls WEREN'T slower in race conditions, just after a certain lead they weren't required to maintain the pace. In how many races in the season did Red Bull qualify miles ahead, start and have a huge gap in under 15 laps, get into complete cruise control, let everyone else wear out their cars, putting in faster laps then those two would try and put in a fastest lap that often blew everyone away without trying in the final 2 laps.
Qualifying theres no real second chances, race, they can afford to ease off, and they did, so many races were cruise control to the point of being embarassing, those that weren't, often caused by safety cars, rain and badly timed pitstops before rain/safety cars, or their own problems, pace wise no one was close to them.
Would be interesting to see how many times they had a lead of say over 15 seconds wiped out by a safety car and then see what difference it would have made to the gap by the end.
I wouldn't use either in the same breath
Last year everyone said Button was insane to move to McLaren, where Hamilton would walk all over him. The gap was no where near as big as everyone predicted, Hamilton is still too aggressive and childish (Look at his interviews and his tyre wear) relative to Button, and Button seems to consistently make the smarter choices - Australia and Monza last year for example
I think Hamilton has great speed, but unless he grows up he'll struggleI'd even go so far as to say Vettel is more mature
(Never thought I'd say that!) When his engine ate itself in Korea he was upset, but said "that's life" and got back on it, but I can't help think if that was Hamilton it would have been the teams fault
See, this I don't really see, Button never really made great choices, he fell into them, largely by being too slow, his early pitstop in one race ONLY happened because he was falling back, if he was gaining or maintaining gap to Hamilton he wouldn't have pitted.
Unfortunately one cars situation isn't the same as anothers and so you can't directly compare. How many times was Hamilton holding onto the back of the Red Bulls, in with a chance of winning a race if they made one mistake, he drove his car on the edge to stay there. Button just wasn't able to be that fast, being that he wasn't often in reach of taking the lead he wasn't pushing on the edge as often, nor did he seemingly end up following people as often or as close as Hamilton, which again makes downforce worse and seems to heavily increase the rate of tyre wear. In a couple of races Button's tyres were in worse condition, I've got a truly epically horrible memory for remembering in what races those were. But I'd be surprised if the "worse tyre wear" was anything other than the situation the cars were in, when Hamilton had better tyre wear(I remember one race where Button's times dropped off worse than Hamiltons) I wouldn't be surprised if Button was following someone around closer and Hamilton couldn't get close to the Redbull's or Alonso.
Same goes for race incidents, one frankly was Webber simply knocking out a rival, another was daft but, again Button far back not much to gain no big risks to take, Hamilton right on the back of leading cars has much more to gain by taking a risk.
Had Hamilton pulled off either move he could have won the title, had Button tried those two moves against anyone at any time in the season he still wouldn't have won the title. Ultimately Hamiltons pace and race situations led directly to worse tyre wear and worse racing incidents.
If you put button and Hamilton on empty tracks, honestly, I think the gap would be huge, again I'll point out Hamilton stuck behind a car losing time with Button cruising around at the same exact pace, but one is being held up, ones on the limit.
I don't know how good Hamilton is, like I said, 3 cars to a team and Alonso, Hamilton, Vettel in one team would be awesome, and give us answers. Button isn't even remotely close to any of them in quality.
haha
