Red Bull

Because a designer can only do so much. How else does a car keep evolving succesfully? Not luck. Positive feedback. That's why MSC got so far as he did.

Agree about MW.

 

I'm sure Seb is a good driver, but I really do believe that the quality of the RB has made him look far better than he really is. For me, the best driver on the grid at the moment is Fred, not because he is driving for Ferrari but because he has constantly shown an ability to take an under performing car and make it competitive (including when he was at Renault).

Michael has the same ability but hasn't been able to replicate that at MB, maybe because the gap is to big or maybe he's lost his edge; but either way I think Seb has taken advantage of having the best car & team on the grid behind him; and full credit to him to doing that. Webber has the same package but couldn't capitalise as well as Seb.

As Montoya recently said in an interview when asked if Michael had lost his edge .. "put him in a Red Bull and we all know what the answer would be".

 

he did great with the crappy torro rosso, and now he's doing great with the top class red bull. but you're saying he's simply being flattered by his superior car? per MS, errr, Montoya who? MS needs to try and beat his teammate first, how bout showing up in the MB, never mind the theoretical bs. "if so and so were in the red bull..blah blah blah"

 

serious question: have you seen any races other than the ones from the past year and a half?

 

That doesn't explain where he is at now, or how Alonso got handed a dog of a car this year.

 

Seb won in the Toro Rosso on a wet track. The same rules do not apply. That being said, he did remarkably well but he has never been in Alonso's position or Hamilton's position where the car is almost but not quite there yet still challenge at the front. Webber has always been a mid-pack driver at best who I would rate at the same level as Barichello yet Webber is a great fighter in the RB and I guarantee his reason for not winning this season has nothing to do with his race driving, but his qualifying. So far, we know Vettel is a fabulous qualifyer, great in the rain when the car is setup for it, and as far as passing is concerned I believe the era of real passing has left us so I cannot really tell yet. We may know somewhat better once the RB is a #2 or #3 rated car and Vettel has Hamilton or the like as a teammate.

 

As the great Ayrton Senna said, "if the machine is not an extension of your body then nothing will be right". And that is exactly what's going on with Michael. He has flashes of brilliance in this car under certain circumstances, but in all the car is still crap. Find me another teammate on the grid who found .300 on their teammate during qualifying in one sector. The answer is zero. Schu pulled a 25.8 while Nico had a 26.1 during Q3, and Nico had a clean lap and had never broken 26.0 all week. So it's flashes of brilliance followed by let-downs due to tiny mistakes from an sub-par car, yet still with his mistake at the last turn in S3 he was .009 off Nico. I wouldn't say Schu has lost anything especially with what happened in Canada and he is certainly performing 100% better than last year.

 

Since rain is the great equalizer, Vettel proved his mettle in Monza and the naysayers are silly. His 2 second places this year are the result of a strategy error and a pace car ruined farce although he did make a mistake. Yes a good car is important but then I guess MS was of average talent also. Curious to see who will be the first to beat seb in a straight fight (same number of pit stops, no pace car, etc.) Coming changes to ebd will PERHAPS close the gap.

Isn't it funny how more often than not the fastest drivers often find the best cars?

 

I'll never get that attitude. Even if it's obvious who's going to win, I have always found it fascinating who's coming 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc and trying to work out how and why. That's certainly happened every race this year, despite having a pretty good idea who was going to win within a few laps...with exceptions, of course.

 

Yes and no:

I did get bored out of my mind in the Schumacher-dominating-with-Ferrari years. Mostly because that was the only "show" in town at that point. The cameras were constantly on the leading Ferrari(s) and there was no DRS and no instantly degrading tires and the field wasn't bunched together as much. Plus there weren't another 2 or 3 top caliber drivers around.

Today we have all these things and so it is still interesting to see what's happening behind Vettel.

Or to put it differently: Valencia was probably as close to one of Schumacher's 2004 victories in terms of sheer boredom (a comparison even the press picked up on). But I think that was an exception this year mostly down to the boring track and no weather surprises.

 

My sentiments exactly.

 

Thanks.

Seriously, I think we are getting here very close to the center of the issue:

Are the Vettel victories as boring as the Schumacher victories in 2004?

If the answer is no (because of the reasons I mentioned), then we'll see more of that.

If the answer is yet, then I can see the FIA coming up with some drastic rule changes.

But we're not there yet and we also have to keep in mind, that this is only year 1 of total domination. Last year, it was still an open chase to the finish line. TV viewership will not instantly go down. With Schumacher at Ferrari it took several years of total domination for the viewership to drop of significantly (it was more like a steady decline). So I can well imagine that the FIA will leave Vettel and RB alone this year but might already be planning some hoopla rule change for next year.

 

Great stuff there! I have a feeling we won't see any significant changes in the order until 2014 when new engines and all new rule exploitations are found. Until then it will be a Red Bull fest with everyone copying unless RB gets a different #2 driver but I seriously doubt they will as the car is so good it's just not necessary.

 

i think the OP is Lewis Hamilton.

 

2009.

 

RB5 was the dominant car by the end of the season. Seb had 4 wins and Webb had 2 and they place 2nd and 4th in the drivers standings. Webb fought for his wins with bloody knuckles IMO. Seb was more a product of his qualifying once again. Meanwhile Ham and Zo had some of their worst seasons ever.....

 

Well I blame the crap choice of tracks for boring races.

Still saying that, I still don't think Vettel would be in any different position on good over taking tracks, maybe at Monaco he might have been beaten, so maybe one win less.

I do have some faith in Todt, I want to believe he won't sink to Mosley's level and subscribe to Bernies show fixing stunts.

In fact I don't think he cares so much for Bernie.

I don't think this season is boring, I do want Vettel to get challenged more and more, trouble is, Hamilton Alonso Button ect will rob points of each other now, so Vettel is sitting pretty.

Vettel is a great driver with a fantastic car, with more than one weapon in its excellent design, and you can't take that away from the RB crew.

 

The Toro Rosso was a piece of crap when Vettel was driving. That was the best season Toro Rosso ever had and they actually beat Redbull in the points that year. The minute Vettel left to go to Redbull, Toro Rosso was back to where they had been. In 2009 was Vettel first year with Redbull and they were not great until the end. Newey had been with team for a while and same with Webber.

 

There are no two ways about it, the European Grand Prix at Valencia on Sunday was relatively lacklustre and there will be a lot of comments this week about how boring Formula 1 has become.

But the facts are that there has not been a dud F1 season since 2004 and this certainly isn't one of them.

We have been spoiled by the championship shoot-out of last season and even more so by the sensational first seven races of 2011, which, with the exception of Valencia, have all been thrilling regardless of Sebastian Vettel's domination.

Valencia was the least exciting race of the season so far. But I can remember several seasons of F1 when we would have been celebrating a race in which the top three were covered by a handful of seconds for most of the race, where the second and third-placed drivers kept swapping positions, and the midfield action was frantic until the final corner.

ANDREW BENSON'S BLOG
It looked relatively close for a while in Valencia, but the suspicion remains that Vettel is going only as fast as he needs to a lot of the time

The Valencia Street Circuit, as it is officially called, has never really been a big hit with drivers and fans. It nominally has 25 corners but many of those are simply curves. There's not a truly fast, high-lateral-force corner, the track is more point and squirt on the throttle, with eight traction zones which punish the rear tyres.

I have commentated on each of the five races there and I still struggle to immediately identify the corners on much of the track. It is all swoopy curves and identical walls.

The supporting GP2 and GP3 races tend to be wild and exciting there, largely because there are so many incidents and wild overtakes.

These are young bucks driving for their career in identical cars in the remote hope that they will make the final leap into F1, just as the likes of Lewis Hamilton, Nico Rosberg, Kamui Kobayashi and Vitaly Petrov have done.

In the more structured 24-car world of F1, with the best drivers and engineers, it is often calmer, as we saw on Sunday.

The DRS drag reduction rear wing overtaking aid had two activation zones on the two long back straights of the 3.3-mile layout, and like many I was concerned that overtaking would be too easy. It wasn't.

There was a cracking move by Fernando Alonso on Mark Webber using DRS, along with several others. Considering there have been a total of 13 race passes in the previous two years that must be considered a success in some ways.

The track temperature was up at 47C and before the race I heard the words "it's all about the rear tyres" several times, and so it proved to be.

Up front, Vettel was playing his usual smart hand of going just fast enough, and no more.

Best race so far - Webber
He has found a style and rhythm with the Pirelli tyres that team-mate Webber is just latching on to. Meanwhile, Alonso is beginning to evolve the Ferrari and his driving style to take the challenge to Vettel.

Webber has definitely found some form again and he held second initially. But, with easily the best start/launch combination, Ferrari were running a comfortable third and fourth, and as expected were also being pretty kind to their rear tyres.

Alonso threatened to challenge for the lead when he passed Webber but never quite had the pace and had to settle for a solid second. Like several other drivers he is confirming the apparently inevitable and conceding the championship. And that's from Mr Eternally Optimistic himself.

It was a relatively miserable day for McLaren and Mercedes.

Hamilton would pit, then fly around the track at great speed until his rear tyres quickly cried enough. He managed a solid fourth but there would be no heroics or controversy from him. The race missed his attacking style as the traction zones and long straights seemed to hurt his car.

Jenson Button in the sister McLaren had a poor start and lost out to Nico Rosberg's Mercedes.

By the time Button was past he was 12 seconds off the lead and proceeded to have a very lonely afternoon. Sixth place was his reward and he was pretty downbeat after the race.

McLaren drivers demand upgrades
Rosberg came home seventh, which is all that car was going to achieve. After his impressive race in Canada, Michael Schumacher in the other Mercedes had a clumsy front wing busting contact with Petrov - again - and would finish 17th.

Probably the drive of the race was by Jaime Alguersuari, who delivered eighth place in his two-stopping Toro Rosso. Sauber's Sergio Perez stopped only once on his way to 11th place, which looked crazy but was ultimately successful. Although he didn't score any points, which a two-stop strategy may well have remedied.

For only the fourth time in F1 history all the starters finished the race, and it was the highest ever number of finishers at 24.

Reliability is certainly spectacular now but this of course stops any race surprises. What it does do is create loads of traffic for the leaders to negotiate and we saw many waved hands in anger through the race.

Surprisingly, it is only the second time that Vettel has completed the pole, fastest lap, and victory hat-trick in his F1 career.

He now leads the championship by more than three victories, with a 77-point advantage. He could join David Coulthard and me in the commentary box for the next three races and still be leading the championship at the Belgian Grand Prix at the end of August.

"That's what we're talking about," as the 23-year-old German often says over the radio. With all due respect, I would prefer to be talking about something else at Silverstone for a change.

 

I was just being sarcastic and I have not missed a single race in 31yr's.

 

Ha ha. That was a good one.


Few final thoughts:

- There's no single-sport athlete who is the best at every aspect of the sport; therefore, a winning combination is enough to be the overall best, be it a tennis player or race-car driver. So even if Vettel is not the best at passing, for instance (he's still excellent), he is the OVERALL BEST DRIVER of the grid right now, period. We saw him in the rain, where the car wasn't an issue: he put 3 seconds in a lap on Alonso and everybody else after every restart... with everybody in the same fresh tires. And he's the best at many other aspects of driving too.

- With respect to being the best driver ever, or if he's great, or just good, it doesn't really matter what opinion somebody has of him. The simple truth is all other drivers on the grid right now are worse than him . Nobody questions a tennis champion saying he had a better racket.

- With respect of the car, if Vettel wasn't around, nobody would be saying RB has a superior car because all of the top teams would be having poles and wins. Just remove Vettel from the results and you'll see what I'm talking about. Vettel makes the car look good folks. Until you have a robot that could drive ALL cars exactly the same way, you'll NEVER know how much the car contributes, and that's a fact. Is the RB one of the best cars? You bet. But is it the reason Vettel is winning? That sounds like sour grapes to me .

- If RB was seconds faster than the competition, then it'd be fair to call the other cars 'dogs', like it's the case with the lesser teams. But a few tenths at best difference is definitely within the range of driver skill IMO. Again, remove SV and the RB car is within the top pac. And Webber is a level-1 driver. Not a top level-1, but a level-1 nonetheless.

- Finally, on the Schumacher dominating years with Ferrari, it wasn't mentioned many attribute that in part to Ferrari manipulation/control over F1. I don't know if it was true or not because wasn't following F1 back then, so feel free to comment on that. My point is RB certainly doesn't have any of that right now (on the contrary), so they're winning fair and square.

 

I disagree on all points. The car truly is that good. I'm not discounting Vettel's driving as much as you think. He's good, but our scale regarding how good does not and has not existed. Webber was always a sort of a bottom driver yet RB has made him look massively better than he is. Vettel is very good but he does not have a teammate anywhere near the level of the team but RB knows it's not necessary because the car is so incredible. Mclaren, Ferrari, MB all must have great drivers because their cars are just not there. Stick Vettel in with Ham or Alonso and I do believe we will see Vettel's true colors because for now Vettel is a pit bull being put against a kitten. I'm not saying he will perform poorly, it's just we will have a more clear idea of his abilities.

 

LOL at some of these comments. Vettel is a fantastic driver, one of the best in the field. Point, blank, period.

 

What he said.

Victory in the POS Minardi in Monza was the eye opener, the first RB victory confirmation that it was no fluke and the first WDC cemented his reputation as one of the best. The second WDC will make him member of a very elitist club of multiple WDCs.

However I have the feeling he will go further than that and match at least Lauda/Senna, potentially getting close to Prost's record.