Qualifying Spanish GP

Quick, tell me another driver this season who is being as consistent this year as RB is. Well, I am waiting. How about for the last four seasons????? RB is much better than people give him credit for. He is vastly overshadowed by MS, as well he should be. How would you like to be driving back-up to the world greatest F1 driver? I don't care who you put in the Ferrari, they could not defeat MS on a regular basis and I am sure they would not support him like RB does. My hat is off to RB, maintaining his composure while being ordered to play in a support role. I cannot wait until MS gets this thing sealed up to see if RB is released to give it all he has and I believe he has some to spare.........

 

He scores points and he does that regularly. But let's not forget the car he is driving. Consistantly being 2nd driver the data shows, but data does not show consistantly 2nd. He is a good driver with a lot of heart. I am sure as most think he is being held back by the team he can at least try to maximize within those parameters. And, no one can argue if he is not maximizing

 

Are you sure? If we take MS's #of wins as our model for "consistency"... let's see how RB does at backing him up...

Let's take 2002 as an example. MS had 11 wins. Did RB have 11 2nds? No, but he did have 9 where he got 2nd or 1st. Why didn't he get more? Because of his car... he had a bunch of reliability problems with his cars that year. People often commented on how lucky MS was... the problems always seem to happen to RB instead of MS.

How about 2003? MS had 6 wins. RB only had 3 2nds or better; but he had 8 podium finishes. In those 5 thirds, if MS wasn't there and RB was going for the wins, then he may have gotten them. As it was, he was just trying to rack up points for the WCC. Going for the safe 6 makes sense given his job is to support MS's WDC and help F win the WCC.

Sounds pretty consistent to me... at least to MS's standards.

 

O.K., this seems to be more difficult than I bargained for. I have looked at the race results for the last four years (since RB was signed to Ferrari) and probably the best way to compare how Rubens is doing is the difference in race classification at the finish line compared to MS. I tossed all the DNFs (Ruben's had more DNF than Schumi) and looked at each driver's classification and subtracted Ruben's position from Michael's from 2000 - 2003. I counted how many times the number was -1 or greater which means Ruben's finished just behind Schumi or ahead of him:
2000 4
2001 6
2002 9
2003 4

And I guess the numbers don't lie, he was on an improving scale and then in 2003 something happened. But considering all the troubles Ferrari had with tires, it was probably the key year for Rubens' to help the championship cause. Ferrari thought Rubens must have done well that he got a 2 year contract extension.

I should add as a Ferrari fan I would like to see more 1-2 finishes and count on Rubens to be there, simply because he's got the quipment. They had 9 1-2 finishes in 2002 and hopefully they can better that this season and none last season (there were 4 1-3 finishes).