Mark Webber & Jenson Button over 2010 - the verdict

[ell66]

webber was more impressive than button in terms of pace, not only did he have his weekends such as monaco and spain where he was clearly faster, but on many occasions only a tenth or less seperated him and vettel.

jenson on the other hand was out qualfied by upto half a second on a regular basis and i honestly cant pick one race that he was faster then lewis.
they were similar in china and germany but thats it.

[raymondu999]

I believe that Jenson has also been the only top driver and championship contender to make 0 mistakes. He had very small and very few mistakes, like braking too hard too late into the hairpin at the end of the straight in the race in Shanghai (he went straight off but managed to recover still in the lead)

[Raptor22]

I believe Jenson did the more impressive job against his team mate.

This belief is borne out of the facts that Jenson was racing against a previous world champion whereas Mark was racing against a young up and coming driver yet to mature and cement himself in terms of driving style, politics, team etc, Yes Young Master Vettel is very good at a great many things but he is still on the steep part of th learning curve, whereas Mr Hamilton is closer to the top of that learning curve.
Secondly, Jenson did not have a perfect car. Well it was certainly less perfect than the RB 6 that Webber found himself in.

Webber has alsways shown speed. He has never shown consistency of that speed. Sure he was always quick in 2010 but his quickness always seemed fragile and he had to rely on destabilising tactics to maintain some sort of ascendency over Sebastian.
Jenson on the other hand, actually performed a class act in 2010 alongside Lewis and although I am still not a fan of his, he has gained a few notches on my popularity poll.
Jenson simply played a better team role, and made the most of what he had, even when it was difficult for him to handle (the car)

[raymondu999]

And Mark has bedded into the team a long time ago, while Jenson is very new. In fact relatively speaking (in their 2010 teams, versus their teammate) Mark is the "old boy" and Jenson is the "new boy"

[marcush.]

I think Webber did better than expected this year and did rise to the opportunity .somehow it seems he is a bit afraid of bagging a title..he had it in hand and let it slip.
Jenson on the other hand came as the reigning champ into Lewis Hamiltons backyard...a team essentially his family affair.to fit in there not creating friction and controversy ...hats of to his approach and it worked out quite well not many points behind the boss ...who would have thought this was possible.Almost everyone was opinionating towards him being destroyed by Hamilton not only speedwise but points as well.We can conclude Hamilton has a bit more in the bag in terms of raw speed but really thats about it what separates them in terms of results over the course of a weekend or a championship.Hamilton will have the edge in Q and maybe in pulling spectacular moves but Button will rarely drop the ball.

[ringo]

Webber did better.
Button was the reigning champion with ten years experience, he's no new boy.

Webber did what no one expected from him. Button did what no one expected from the reigning champion; he go destroyed by his teammate, and didn't even get a glance at the WDC.
Webber kept the dream alive; as much as i think he has no discipline, he really stepped up to the plate.
Vettel can't sleep on Webber. Hamilton can get a full night's rest knowing he can whoop Jenson any day of the week.

[donskar]

In terms of performance compared to teammate, Webber did better, much better. And he is not too old to be WDC. Button did not embarrass himself, but he cannot compete with Hamilton on speed alone.

But speed alone does not always win. I wonder how much Vettel and Hamilton might have learned from their more experienced team mates. Hamilton might have learned a bit of racecraft from Button -- how do drive just fast enough, preserve the car, preserve the tires and still win (the Phil Hill / Alain Prost approach). Not sure what Vettel might have learned from Webber

[ringo]

Hamilton didn't learn race craft from Button.
His race craft was always pretty good. Tactics and craft are 2 different things.
He learned some tactics from Button and maybe how to be more aware of others.

Hamilton displayed more craft this year than Button did. We've seen it in races like Spa, China, Canada, Hungary, Japan (driving on a broken gear box) too many examples to count.
Craft is how you drive the car. Tactics is how you manage your race outside of the car, such as pitstops and tyre gambles.

The faster and more skillful driver would do well sticking to his own race craft than following the guy his beats 75% of the time.

The same goes for Vettel. His race craft is pretty much how it should be for his style. Lead from the front and push until it's no longer neccessary.
Following Button or Webber wont help him; he and Hamilton apply their speed in the best way they can this year, that is why they dominated this year.

All 4 drivers have pretty much different race craft. And I would disagree that speed does not always win. Speed is King, it always wins; every single year we see this.

[raymondu999]

Talking of race tactics, has anyone noticed how Alonso seems to have a developped a Prost-like habit in that he manages the car and tyres for the first 50 laps or so then lets loose in the last 10 laps? Korea and Bahrain really stand out in the mind.

[lolzi]

Talking of race tactics, has anyone noticed how Alonso seems to have a developped a Prost-like habit in that he manages the car and tyres for the first 50 laps or so then lets loose in the last 10 laps? Korea and Bahrain really stand out in the mind.

I don't really remember that, but in general all the drivers have been driving much more "economically" since refuelling was banned - and wasn't Bahrain the race where Vettel had problems while leading?

[raymondu999]

Yes it was. However Alonso seems to have started showing a tendency to just manage his tyres for the first few laps then let loose in the last 10 laps. He did that with a string of fastest laps in both Korea and Bahrain.

[ell66]

webber fared better than button in my opinion. the margins between himself and seb in qualy were minisucle! often 1 tenth or less, sadly he allways seemed to be on the wrong side of it.
jenson got destroyed, and his comments allways baffle me. Like when he said he got the max out of his car in qualy at singapore, well how about your team mate, 4 tenths quicker with the same car

the margins were pretty large, bahrain, spa, singapore, silverstone, hungary, brazil, abu dubai...he was massivly off lewis's pace.

an intresting fact that ant davidson brought up during the last race of the year was that aside from petrov, no body else on the grid spent as much time behind there team mate though out the year.

i like jenson, but he got badly beaten this year. 26 points behind, depsite lewis losing over well over 30 from reliability issues and being smashed off the road by webber twice, and i think its fair to say he got pretty screwed in terms of strategy by the team and poor pitstops way more often than jenson.....australia for example.

in my mind hamilton and alsonso are still the top dogs.

[marcush.]

i do not see it like that.Button was delivering .and he was at the taillight of his "Superior" teammate more often than not.He is not quite as quick as him but he is a very close second.
Vettel is first in the championship ..webber only 4th.Webber had also a lot of races were he lost out badly to Vettel .the one thing really diffewrent is he had a phase when he was the quicker of the pair at RedBull for whatever reason.But he was behind at the start and at the end of the season.

[ringo]

i do not see it like that.Button was delivering .and he was at the taillight of his "Superior" teammate more often than not.He is not quite as quick as him but he is a very close second.
Vettel is first in the championship ..webber only 4th.Webber had also a lot of races were he lost out badly to Vettel .the one thing really diffewrent is he had a phase when he was the quicker of the pair at RedBull for whatever reason.But he was behind at the start and at the end of the season.

That's the thing. He stepped up, and it almost seemed as if he was schooling Vettel until Korea happened. Webber is much closer to Vettel than Button to Lewis, much much closer.

[WhiteBlue]

Webber is not quite as good as his points result versus Vettel makes him look. If you add the reliability points to the gap it should 77 points and not 14. This is considerably more than the gap between Hamilton and Button who enjoyed comparable reliability.