Caporegime
- Joined
- 18 Oct 2002
- Posts
- 33,188
Winning in the first year doesn't mean they couldn't have done better. Ultimately I think this matters most when the car is less good. I don't think the difference is massive, but when drivers can change multiple settings for multiple corners in a race these days, it does make a difference. If you're at Mclaren and have 3 brake bias settings, and at Merc have 10, then you both have a new car that corners differently, you have different brakes, you have a different straight line speed and different tyre wear. It's going to take a few hundred, or thousand corners before you get a feel for which setting to use at which stage of a race on which type of corner.
The whole "this car was built for driver X so is almost completely impossible for driver Y to use" is rubbish. What a driver prefers and what a driver gets are different. But even if the car is exactly what you wanted, it still takes some getting used to, every driver says this, every technical guy, everyone.
I mean you have three different settings, you HAVE to do 3 laps and try the same corner with the different setting each time. This is simply fact, if someone knows the difference between those settings already, they are 3 laps up on you. Of course, first lap, cold tyres, second lap, warmer tyres, third lap, if a qualifying run, maybe the tyres are already going off. So realistically you need to do an entire run on the one setting, the do another run on the other setting and feel the difference. Then factor in how the lap feels if you change setting for every corner, then how does the car react in the wet, at high fuel, at low fuel, on softs, on hards. This can't possible be instant knowledge and can only come from time spent driving, nothing else.
0.01 here, 0.01 there, 0.001 somewhere else, every lap, for a 70 lap race. It's not massive, but it's a difference, it adds up and it takes time to get the absolute max out of a car. That 2/10ths a lap wouldn't make a difference if Vettel was new to that RBR, but would make a lot more difference to the Mclaren or Merc of this season.
Can you name me another driver who had Massa as a team mate, or had a team mate who allowed his no.1 driver to pass him so many times this season?
As for another driver who had more than double the points of his team mate..... Vettel for one?
I would say Vettel compared to Webber was a far bigger gap than Alonso to Massa, because Massa almost never had a race winning capable car, Webber absolutely did. Likewise Massa has a couple races that weren't lucky, he got hit a couple times and a tyre blow up.
I think the comparison to team mate is pointless though. Driving on at full speed with a wing stuck under your car and taking yourself completely out of the race for literally no reason at all, on the first freaking lap was one of the biggest blunders of the entire season frankly. It was beyond stupid, the outcome was a foregone conclusion, and he didn't put his race at risk once, on the straight before the pit entry but ignored the pits and went flat out down the start finish, and ended his race.
Sorry but, most brain dead move of the season for me goes to Alonso, hence me not believing he had a good year. Couple that with an attitude at more than one race like Monaco where, in a procession of a race with almost no over taking and no real ability to overtake, he had a brain fart moment and lost a place due to sheer carelessness. Throw in that he's gained quite a few points by having his team order Massa out of the way and I would hardly call it a great year for him.
EDIT:- balls, the stupid comparison website hasn't got the last two races in the numbers for some unknown retarded reason so. Vettel was 1 point shy of having double Webber's points.
I don't dislike Hulk, but the Sauber was clearly better in the last 6-7 races. I think Gutierrez being quite so utterly terrible actually made some people think Hulk was doing way better than he was.
Hulk had a car that was just genuinely pretty fast in qualifying later in the season, got higher up the grid and used the fast straight line speed to hold people up in a few races for some pretty good finishes. I don't think as you say, any of the races were spectacular. Sauber just got together a good qualifying/high speed package and used it to their advantage.
Sauber particularly second half of the year sorted out two key things, traction and straight line speed(and both go together pretty well), made Hulk extremely hard to pass, nothing more.
I think Di Resta, with plenty of dodgy tactical qualifying decision(seemingly most by the team but some by him) coupled with not great quali speed meant that car started further down the grid but did very well in races. But for 5 or 6 dnf's in a row(I genuinely can't remember how many were his fault and how many were car/other drivers, I think 1-2 were his fault, the rest not?) he would have quite easily beat the Sauber and more on driving style and overtaking than the "get out front and hold everyone up" method.
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