Are we seeing a Vettel era?

[bhall]

This conversation cannot go forward objectively if there's disagreement about just how good the RB7 was. That points to a fundamentally different interpretation of reality from which there is no logical common ground.

RB7 was a world-beater. 18 poles, 12 wins and 10 fastest-laps in 19 races suggests it cannot be judged otherwise.

(I beg of you to please believe me when I tell you that downplaying RB7's capability is annihilating your credibility.)

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

I agree with mnmracer on the fact that th rb7 was not as dominant as cars like f2004, f2002, mp4-4 or fw14b.

Not much in that.

Besides, if you have a car faster than you you can only hope for consistency and reliability as you'll never beat them on pace, and the RB7 was the vast majority of the time the fastest thing out there.

And what happens when Ferrari and McLaren take points off each other? There is no possible way of mounting a challenge especially when your team mate has been neutered by Mateshitz and Horner.

We should all accept 2011 for what it evidently was, a season dominated by a driver with a crushing car advantage.

[mnmracer]

This conversation cannot go forward objectively if there's disagreement about just how good the RB7 was. That points to a fundamentally different interpretation of reality from which there is no logical common ground.

RB7 was a world-beater. 18 poles, 12 wins and 10 fastest-laps in 19 races suggests it cannot be judged otherwise.

I explained to you how it should be judged otherwise. By your reasoning, if next year the McLaren takes 'only' 10 poles, but with a 2-second advantage, and is 0.1 second behind pole in the other races, it's not as dominant a car as the RB7.

I beg of you to please believe me when I tell you that downplaying RB7's capability is annihilating your credibility.

So what's your take on all the insiders that have pointed out last year that the McLaren has been the faster car at several races? Something that has never been said about competitor's cars in other dominant-car years.

[beelsebob]

This conversation cannot go forward objectively if there's disagreement about just how good the RB7 was. That points to a fundamentally different interpretation of reality from which there is no logical common ground.

RB7 was a world-beater. 18 poles, 12 wins and 10 fastest-laps in 19 races suggests it cannot be judged otherwise.

I explained to you how it should be judged otherwise. By your reasoning, if next year the McLaren takes 'only' 10 poles, but with a 2-second advantage, and is 0.1 second behind pole in the other races, it's not as dominant a car as the RB7.

Why? is it your assertion that this is a dominant car? In that case, we agree – the RB7 was dominant! This is pretty much exactly the behaviour it exhibited – at high downforce circuits it had a clear near 1 second advantage; at traction circuits it was pretty much as quick as anyone else, if not marginally quicker.

So we agree – the RB7 was utterly dominant.

[bhall]

I think I'm really just going to have to let this one go. I can't wrap my head around something that looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck nevertheless being called a moose.

[shelly]

Personally I disagree. For me RB7 was the best car, but did not have a big margin as others in the past.

I agree with mnmracer also on the double weight applied to Vettel/Webber and Alonso/Massa.

I think everybody including me has a bias, that leads to opposite conclusions on stories we do not have full information about.

I find it interesting that much of the energy in this never ending loop is provided by Alonso, who seems to cause strong like/dislike feelings in people, and the desire to find "evidence" for rating him higehr/lower than Raikkonen(using Massa as benchmark), Hamilton (using the 2007 season) or Vettel (there is no reference, so it comes to comparing f150etc vs rb7 and Massa vs Webber).

Nice thing is that button is usually out of these discussions - there is no Alonso Button duality.

[mnmracer]

For one, the RB7 is not a second faster than the McLaren. The season average, the RB7 was only 0.16s faster than the McLaren. On average; the McLaren, by many, was deemed to be faster at several races.

But then explain to me, how can a car be considered dominant, when a skilled and experienced driver like Mark Webber (stop trying to make him out like an amateur) could not have won the title in it, narrowly beating out a 'sub-par' Ferrari?

The 2011 championship taking Vettel out of the equation:

1. Button: 322
2. Webber: 309
3. Alonso: 303
4. Hamilton: 273

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

For one, the RB7 is not a second faster than the McLaren. The season average, the RB7 was only 0.16s faster than the McLaren. On average; the McLaren, by many, was deemed to be faster at several races.

But then explain to me, how can a car be considered dominant, when a skilled and experienced driver like Mark Webber (stop trying to make him out like an amateur) could not have won the title in it, narrowly beating out a 'sub-par' Ferrari?

The 2011 championship taking Vettel out of the equation:

1. Button: 322
2. Webber: 309
3. Alonso: 303
4. Hamilton: 273

You really think by taking Vettel out the equation that Webber wouldnt beat Button?

[raymondu999]

I think mnmracer's adjusted standings are done at the race level - making everyone who finished below Vettel move one spot up; rather than just deleting Vettel from the final standings

[bhall]

For me, this conversation is somewhat evocative of Barry Bonds and his pursuit of baseball immortality.

For those unfamiliar with him, he's a former baseball player who displayed exceptional talent in nearly every aspect of the game. He was an excellent player, and from the very beginning, his career accomplishments put him on a trajectory that was bound to make him a consensus choice for the Baseball Hall of Fame. (That's no small feat. Hall of Fame voters are notoriously picky about who they elect for enshrinement.)

But, that wasn't enough for Bonds; he wanted it all, to be considered the best ever. So he took steroids, and his performance became otherworldly, and popular opinion of him skyrocketed accordingly...until, inevitably, he got caught.

Now people just wonder why being considered among the best wasn't good enough for him. How did he get so overcome with vanity and greed that he needed to be the best?

Why do Vettel's accomplishments need to be given even more value than their already considerable worth? And is that praise worth the mental gymnastics and disposal of objectivity required to give it?

I think hero worship has an awful tendency to become very unhealthy.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

I think mnmracer's adjusted standings are done at the race level - making everyone who finished below Vettel move one spot up; rather than just deleting Vettel from the final standings

Its an illogical comparison.

Red Bulls psyche would have changed to supporting Webber and extracting everything from him rather than the now miraculously disappeared Vettel.

How can you adjust for that?

[mnmracer]

It's not an exact science so yes, Webber could have also won it, but it does very clearly show that the RB7 in itself is not dominant. Formula One teams perform at such a high level that being the number one or number two driver does not make for a difference of 5.5 race wins in points (not even considering the actual race wins).

In a dominant car, the fight for the championship is not taken to the last race, as even the best-case-Webber-scenario would have been.

Vettel's detractors often attribute his success to the Adrian Newey-designed cars, but Stewart points out that "you need somebody to drive it".

"His achievement in winning back-to-back titles has been extraordinary and should not be dismissed or diminished on the grounds of him having what has generally been the fastest car.

"You can only race what's in front of you and Seb has produced the goods week in, week out, making a world class team-mate in Mark Webber look average at times."

Vettel put down a performance similair to the dominance of the MP4/4, FW14B, F2002 and F2004, in a car that was simply not as dominant. In a dominant car, a driver of Webber's caliber would have performed much better, no matter how much you try to make him look like an idiot.

Vettel is not a god, but saying he was anything else than outstanding in 2011, is undervalueing his accomplishments.

[markc]

Wasn't Webber's issues last year primarily attributed to the tyres? To support my point: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/14073647
An internet search for "Webber 2011 tyres" gives quite a few results.

[mnmracer]

Wasn't Webber's issues last year primarily attributed to the tyres? To support my point: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/14073647
An internet search for "Webber 2011 tyres" gives quite a few results.

He's been bitching about it quite a bit, yes, but it doesn't explain everything. In relative performance, the difference between the two was not that much greater than in 2009, so it's not a sudden thing.

[raymondu999]

Part of it was. Webber was punishing the tyres too much under compound load if memory serves