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Raikkonen might never admit to those thoughts. He has never been openly reflective to the public.
On the face of it, this dog of a Ferrari has exposed Raikkonen's weaknesses or Alonso's strengths, whichever way you want to look on it. And if the 2015 Ferrari is any good, it will mask these weaknesses and strengths of Raikkonen and Alonso respectively.
Vettel I would say has been flattered by his cars for the past few years.
Personally, I never thought he was that good to begin with, because in any weekend during the Red Bull era where RBR had the equal best car with another team, it was very, very rare that Seb would win. Almost all the time, either Hamilton or Alonso beat him if the cars were close in performance.
Case point: Turkey 2010, Belgium 2010, Singapore 2010, China 2011, Canada 2011, Germany 2011, Monaco 2012, Canada 2012, Silverstone 2012, Germany 2012, United States 2012, Monaco 2013, and Hungary 2013.
In each of the 13 races above, Red Bull were equal best with another team - and on every occasion - Seb was beat by another driver.
Granted there were some weekends where Red Bull was not a clear best car and he managed to pull off a win (Spain/Monaco 2011, Bahrain/Singapore 2012, Germany 2013). However, in general those weekends are highly out-numbered by the amount of times Seb did have the best car yet failed to capitalize on it.
That's the way I separate driver performance from team performance is by looking at the cases where there is no clear best car on the grid, and note which drivers excel and which ones fall apart in these circumstances.
As opposed to Vettel, by the majority of Lewis Hamilton's wins are when his McLaren/Mercedes were not the sole best car on the grid.
Case point: Hungary 2007, Monaco 2008, Belgium 2008 (that was a win and you know it), Hungary 2009, Singapore 2009, Turkey 2010, Belgium 2010, China 2011, Germany 2011, Abu Dhabi 2011, Canada 2012, Hungary 2012, United States 2012, Hungary 2013.
That's 14 out of 27, over half.
Vettel on the other hand, has at best 10 out of his 39 wins which were won when RBR wasn't the clear best car.
we had discussions about cars tailormade to drivers preferences on purpose.
In a short timescale scenario this is called car setup in medium long term scale it is brake system characteristics , steering layout and what have you in terms of car architecture that may help one driver much more than others .
I don´t know if anyone of you guys ever experienced a sudden failure of an important system driving a car at the limit .Or the thing doing something you did not expect which is then of course degrading you the pilot to passenger status ....this is most disturbing and you can bet it is disturbing to a drivers confidence also in formula 1 .
So there is no objectivity in comparing drivers overall talent and try to decifer from the car . So many factors come into it -seb has really deserved to win those 4 titles and think about Webbo who failed to match or better him much of the time . Driver talent is also to be in the right car at the right time +being on the right side of the garage as well .
Andres125sx wrote:I wonder how close are Raikonnen thoughts to that Irvine quote
In all Fairness, I think Raikonnen seems to be suffering with the new cars a bit similar to Vettel, though maybe not as bad.
I called it 'operating window' in another Thread since I think every Driver has his personal operating window where he is able to exploit the potential of a car. Vettel seems to have a rather narrow window. Raikonnen probably as well. They might be quick as hell inside that window (which was definitely the case with Vettel when EBD worked perfectly) but struggle heavily outside. That is what I think happens with Vettel and to some extent Raikonnen at the Moment. The Driver with the widest operating window is probably Alonso. That is probably what exacerbates the Situation between Raikonnen and Alonso. Motivation seems to be another factor with Raikonnen. This guy can be quick if everything suits. But it is not a given, unlike Alonso.
Hamilton is probably somewhere in between. He has a naturally good basic pace but can also be thrown off a bit by things which don't suit him, e.g. last year's brake feeling saga.
Saying Ricciardo is a much better driver than Vettel is similar to saying Rosberg is a much better driver than Hamilton. Because both are leading a teammate in points while the teammate has had more retirements. There will always be some luck involved, either in retirements or retirements of others or in having a car that suits you, or by being in the team that made a dominant car this year.
The only way to cancel out luck a little is to look at a longer period. To then compare the "best car advantage" you have to compare to the teammate.
Strangely, it looks like Vettel is the most criticised driver while scoring very high on both metrics. 4 consecutive years cannot be down to bad luck of Webber or good luck of Seb. And he totally obliterated Webber, much to the contrary of for example Hamilton who is behind Rosberg at the moment. Yet there are much more people commenting how Vettel "got lucky" while Hamilton is the driving god that just is very unlucky to only win a single championship.
henra wrote:
Hamilton is probably somewhere in between. He has a naturally good basic pace but can also be thrown off a bit by things which don't suit him, e.g. last year's brake feeling saga.
My understanding is that one of Hamilton's key weapons is his ability in the braking phase. Last year's brakes didn't give him 100% confidence in what he was getting each time he braked. So he lost one of his key performance areas.
If you are more fortunate than others, build a larger table not a taller fence.
Andres125sx wrote:I wonder how close are Raikonnen thoughts to that Irvine quote
In all Fairness, I think Raikonnen seems to be suffering with the new cars a bit similar to Vettel, though maybe not as bad.
I called it 'operating window' in another Thread since I think every Driver has his personal operating window where he is able to exploit the potential of a car. Vettel seems to have a rather narrow window. Raikonnen probably as well. They might be quick as hell inside that window (which was definitely the case with Vettel when EBD worked perfectly) but struggle heavily outside. That is what I think happens with Vettel and to some extent Raikonnen at the Moment. The Driver with the widest operating window is probably Alonso. That is probably what exacerbates the Situation between Raikonnen and Alonso. Motivation seems to be another factor with Raikonnen. This guy can be quick if everything suits. But it is not a given, unlike Alonso.
Hamilton is probably somewhere in between. He has a naturally good basic pace but can also be thrown off a bit by things which don't suit him, e.g. last year's brake feeling saga.
In all fairness, I completely agree with everything you said here
But that´s only the explanation for Raikonnen´s perfomance this seasson, let´s say his excuse For a driver of his talent this situation must be quite frustrating. Imagine when he´s asked by Ferrari crew about his perfomance compared to Alonso...
NTS wrote:Saying Ricciardo is a much better driver than Vettel is similar to saying Rosberg is a much better driver than Hamilton.
Only that Rosberg is not scoring 56% more points than his team mate
I really don´t know what to think about Vettel....
When he won his titles I thought he was not that good, it was his car. Obviously he´s a very good driver but, to the point of deserving 4 titles and equal Alain Prost being the 3-4th driver with more titles ever? No way, specially when we saw how dominant was Red Bull all those years. He´s very good, but the main merit should go to his car.
The start of the seasson to me was the confirmation, his team mate beating him "easily"
But now I have some doubts, because Ricciardo is proving to be a really good driver, fast, consistent, agresive, he overtakes too easily... So now I really don´t know if Vettel is not that good, or if he´s having problems with his car and his team mate is so good he looks slower than he really is...
Really, I don´t know, Ricciardo is impressing me lately and the comparison is not that easy
Ricciardo had a tougher time with Vergne that he currently has with Vettel. Does that mean that JEV would've had no problem beating Vettel? I don't think so. I think judging two drivers side by side, even in the same car, needs to take into account a lot more than what happens over half a season. Let's wait until this time next year to say something about Vettel and Ricciardo. Personally, I think they are both good drivers, but not stellar ones. Ric was good in the Torro Rosso, but he didn't seem amazing, so it's more likely that a very good car, coupled with the fact that his teammate is a 4xWDC is making him look so impressive right now, rather than him making a huge leap in driving ability, exactly as the same time as he changes teams.
Regarding Seb being the master of EBD, you really can't say that, except if you're comparing him to Webber. All the other drivers had nothing to be masters of, their EBD was virtually missing compared to RB's.
alexx_88 wrote:Ricciardo had a tougher time with Vergne that he currently has with Vettel.
Don´t think so, the scoreboard was 20 vs 13 points for Ricciardo, what means he scored 53% more points than Vergne, now it´s 56% more than Vettel, virtually the same.
And that´s because of Canada where the car was fast and Ricciardo suffered some problems including a grid penalty because of a box-exit infringement, there Vergne scored 8 points, more than a half of his total points. If it´s not for that race Ricciardo would have destroyed Vergne, the french scored at three races only, while the aussie at seven, more than double
To me it´s a lot more important the consistency than the best overall position, that only depend on the car or the number of cars that don´t finish a particular race.
alexx_88 wrote:Ricciardo had a tougher time with Vergne that he currently has with Vettel.
Don´t think so, the scoreboard was 20 vs 13 points for Ricciardo, what means he scored 53% more points than Vergne, now it´s 56% more than Vettel, virtually the same.
That´s only counting the last season. First season Vergne actually beat him in his first year.
16-10 in points first season.
30-29 is over the two seasons in collected points. A slight edge to Ricciardo.
"If the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of divine reward, then brother that person is a piece of sh*t"
I think it's fair to compare the 2013 season up to the point when Ricciardo was determined as Webber's successor. And that's right before Belgium. In that case, Vergne had retired twice as many times with technical issues (4 to Ric's 2), but was still outscoring Ric 13-10. That's quite impressive in my book. Also, when not retiring, his average finishing position in the same period was 10th, compared to Ric's 13.5
alexx_88 wrote:Ricciardo had a tougher time with Vergne that he currently has with Vettel.
Don´t think so, the scoreboard was 20 vs 13 points for Ricciardo, what means he scored 53% more points than Vergne, now it´s 56% more than Vettel, virtually the same.
That´s only counting the last season. First season Vergne actually beat him in his first year.
16-10 in points first season.
30-29 is over the two seasons in collected points. A slight edge to Ricciardo.
Fair enough, didn´t check 2012 seasson
But I guess evolution matters too, and Ricciardo progression has obviously been better. You want young drivers improving each seasson, not doing worse than previous one
I guess that must be the reason Ricciardo is driving a RB while Vergne continue at STR
For a driver of his talent this situation must be quite frustrating. Imagine when he´s asked by Ferrari crew about his perfomance compared to Alonso...