Spanish Grand Prix 2014, Catalunya - Race 5/19

[robbiemc]

There has always been a lot of negativity towards Button on these forums, what's he got to do? Realistically a drivers benchmark can only really be to beat his teammate.

Every single year the comments are the same: 'Button will be destroyed/humiliated/emasculated' by his new team mate, but that never happens. People expected Hamilton to utterly destroy him, but that really wasn't the case at all.

Drunkenmiester even stated after the Austrailia qualifying that Magnusson is 'humiliating' Button, but that's obviously not happening. Why all the hatred?

I will agree that he's consistently pants at qualifying, and that's just not good enough.

 

[Duff-Man]

I rate Button fairly highly actually... He's not the best at qualifying, but he's generally quite consistent in races. His biggest weakness seems to be a relatively inflexible driving style - he needs the car to be set up 'just right', or he struggles. The absolute top drivers seem to be able to perform in a much wider range of conditions.

Driver skill is a tricky thing to nail down, since every driver has a different car, and different styles suit different drivers. Vettel, for example, was clearly the master of the "blown diffuser, rear end glued to the track through corners" type setup, but is much weaker in the current configuration.

BUT, sticking my neck out, I would say that (in my opinion):
- The very top drivers right now are Alonso and Hamilton. For me, these two are in a class of their own.
- At a level just below these two I would say that you have Vettel, Raikkonen and Rosberg.
- Below this I think you have a number of drivers such as Hulkenberg, Ricciardo, Button and maybe Grosjean who are also pretty good.


Button is a solid performer, but he isn't getting any younger and will inevitably start to fall further down the pecking order as time goes on. I think he's still a good fit for McLaren for another couple of seasons, but if they're serious about making a title challenge next season then they *need* to be getting a driver from the top two tiers; i.e. Alonso, Hamilton, Rosberg, Kimi or Vettel. Out of these five, who could they possibly get? Maybe Kimi will fall out with Ferrari (again), and maybe Rosberg will get sick of seeing Hamilton's tail-lights, but apart from that I don't see any movement happening. And if McLaren have another poor season next year, they will struggle to attract any of the top drivers.

 

[Deleted member 651465]

Jenson for driver of the weekend.

 

[rubberduck]

If a driver isn't able to claim the championship (as neither Button and Hamilton were able to do as a team at Mclaren) then the next most important thing to them is race wins. I'm sure both of them would rather finish 4th in the championship and claim 4 wins in a season than finish 2nd in the standings but with just 2 wins (for example).

I think when Lewis realised he wasn't in contention for the championship he took the 'all of nothing approach' and went all out for the race win and was prepared to risk a DNF with some aggressive (and sometimes rash) driving rather than nicely in the points. Jenson on the other hand would happily settle for a podium and wouldn't risk doing stupid stuff to try to force things.

I think Lewis got more race wins than Button during his time at Mclaren and he would have had more but he must have lost out on 4 or 5 due to unreliability or mistakes by Mclaren... Thats not to say Jenson didn't have some issues but it always seemed than Lewis got his bad luck when he was either leading a GP or in a position to take the win.

 

[RoboCod]

Jenson for driver of the weekend.

Get a grip. Driver of the year already!

 

[deuse]

4 wins in 5 races, with the non-win being a reliability issue no fault of his own.

Yeah, he needs to get to grip with this car ASAP. He's struggling.

Yeh he is....A LOT. two more races and I think he will have better race pace.

 

[deuse]

Jenson for driver of the weekend.

OK. Lets hear the punch line

oh oh I get it. Button only got lapped once by Lewis this race

 

[robbiemc]

Blimey, Button gets more hate in here than for Maldonado. Pretty tragic way to treat the most recent British World champion..I really don't get it.

 

[trickycurve]

Yeh he is....A LOT. two more races and I think he will have better race pace.

I'll give you this most recent GP, but Malaysia and China? He demolished everyone in those two races. Bahrain wasn't as bad as Spain - the SC made that race artificially closer. If the SC never came out, Rosberg would have [possibly] only been on Hamilton's gearbox for the last few laps and it wouldn't have been anywhere near as close, but he wasn't as visibly quicker than Hamilton back then as he was compared to Spain. Heck, I'd even wager the difference is exaggerated because of the differing tyres they were on.

Hamilton's doing fine, particularly if you do claim him not having got to grips with the car fully. Imagine what it'll be like when he does.

 

[Duff-Man]

Yeh he is....A LOT. two more races and I think he will have better race pace.

Monaco, maybe. At Canada - no chance.

Canada is probably Hamilton's best circuit, and it's one of the few circuits where fuel conservation will play a major role (probably only Canada and Monza by the way things have panned out so far). We've seen already that Hamilton's driving style uses a few less kilos of fuel, so he'll have a further advantage there.

Barring any incidents I think Hamilton has Canada in the bag (...famous last words!). I think Rosberg will be strong in Monaco though, and it wouldn't surprise me to see him win there.

 

[Duff-Man]

Blimey, Button gets more hate in here than for Maldonado. Pretty tragic way to treat the most recent British World champion..I really don't get it.

There's a difference between being "hated" and being "somewhat overrated".

The dislike for Maldonardo is universal, so there's not much to discuss. Jenson seems to be a bit of a polarising figure though. As I said above, I still rate him in the top ten drivers, but not in the top five. Others may disagree one way or the other.

 

[deuse]

Hamilton's doing fine, particularly if you do claim him not having got to grips with the car fully. Imagine what it'll be like when he does.

Lewis was saying how he needs to get the car sorted out as Rosberg is getting better race pace then him.

Monaco, maybe. At Canada - no chance.

Canada is probably Hamilton's best circuit, and it's one of the few circuits where fuel conservation will play a major role (probably only Canada and Monza by the way things have panned out so far). We've seen already that Hamilton's driving style uses a few less kilos of fuel, so he'll have a further advantage there.

Barring any incidents I think Hamilton has Canada in the bag (...famous last words!). I think Rosberg will be strong in Monaco though, and it wouldn't surprise me to see him win there.

I can't wait for Canada. I also think Hamilton will be epic there.

 

[Skeeter]

Blimey, Button gets more hate in here than for Maldonado. Pretty tragic way to treat the most recent British World champion..I really don't get it.

Its fueled by a few members cherry picking or manipulating stats constantly in their effort to maintain there view that he's the best driver ever, rather than an actual hatred for him.

And as for that "points over 3 years" BS stat, it took Lewis to have a catastrophic season, likely his worst ever, for Button to be able to beat him. Using an average over 3 incomparable years is as worthless as when arknor used to only pick races where Schumacher beat Rosberg when comparing the drivers.

 

[robbiemc]

And as for that "points over 3 years" BS stat, it took Lewis to have a catastrophic season, likely his worst ever, for Button to be able to beat him. Using an average over 3 incomparable years is as worthless as when arknor used to only pick races where Schumacher beat Rosberg when comparing the drivers.

I think that's a little harsh on Button, he was second in the 2011 championship after all.

 

[robbiemc]

James Allen has quite a good, balanced run-down of the Lewis - Jenson years.
Bearing in mind that most people expected Lewis to destroy Jenson, I think he faired a lot better than anyone could have imagined. Here are some hard stats - I'm not making any comment, but here they are:

Qualifying
Faster qualifying time: Hamilton 44 / Button 14
Poles: Hamilton 9 / Button 1
Front rows: Hamilton: 23 / Button 9

Races
Wins: Hamilton 10 / Button 8
Podiums: Hamilton 22 / Button 25
Points finishes: Hamilton 45 / Button 47
DNFs: Hamilton 13 / Button 8
Best race result (inc DNFs): Hamilton 32 / Button 26
Ahead in two-car finish: Hamilton 24 / Button 13

Championship
Overall points: Hamilton 657 / Button 672
Seasons finished higher in standings: Hamilton 2 / Button 1
Highest championship placing: Hamilton 4th (2010, 2012) / Button 2nd (2011)

 

[Duff-Man]

Faster qualifying time: Hamilton 44 / Button 14

Ahead in two-car finish: Hamilton 24 / Button 13

Seasons finished higher in standings: Hamilton 2 / Button 1

Without trying to manipulate the stats to any particular end, these are the three statistics that show direct head-to-head comparisons. Total race wins and overall championship points are somewhat biased by the quality of the car at the time (can't generate as many points / wins / poles in a poor car even if you dominate your team-mate etc).


I have to admit, when Button moved to McLaren I was one of those that expected Hamilton to "destroy" him. I gained more respect for Button seeing him go head-to-head with Hamilton and hold his own (in races if not in qualifying). It's hard to assess their three years together objectively without concluding that Hamilton had the better performance overall, but Button held his own for sure.

I think perhaps the biggest factor is that Hamilton is still largely improving, whereas Button is not. Aging is a cruel thing - just look at Michael Schumacher's Mercedes years.

 

[robbiemc]

Duff-man, your analysis seems spot-on (nicely balanced too)


Jenson is oldest of current F1 drivers at 34 (same as Kimi)
Lewis is 29 (which always surprises me - he appears/acts much younger somehow).

I don't have time to go through all the years, but interested to note that Prost won his last championship aged 38 (I think).

 

[Skeeter]

Button didn't do a bad job at all, but claiming he did a better job than Hamilton simply by looking at the 3 year points total is a misguided blinkered view.

A single extra DNF can make a massive difference. This year shows that. Up until this weekend looking at the points alone you would say Rosberg was outperforming Hamilton.

 

[robbiemc]

Button didn't do a bad job at all, but claiming he did a better job than Hamilton simply by looking at the 3 year points total is a misguided blinkered view.
.

But surely you can see why it's such a divisive stat - what do the teams care about most? Points.

 

[Skeeter]

But surely you can see why it's such a divisive stat - what do the teams care about most? Points.

Is there an average points per finish stat?

Edit: Hamilton 14.4, Button 13.4

The whole results set is skewed by the 5 additional DNFs for Hamilton.