Are we seeing a Vettel era?

[mnmracer]

Back to the OP, I think it would be interesting to set some parameters on what constitutes an era.

In my book, an era is an extended period of time in which one (or more) drivers are the main 'protagonist', who is contested by several other coming and going top drivers. For instance, I consider the Schumacher-era to be 1994 to 2006. During this time, Schumacher was always the main, or one of the main championship contenders. Seven times, he succeeded, and several other times others did, but it was always 'driver X versus Michael Schumacher'. That era in mayor lines, will be remembered as "Hill versus Schumacher, Hakkinen versus Schumacher, Montoya/Raikkonen versus Schumacher and Alonso/Raikkonen versus Schumacher".

Depending on how things develop from here on, this could be the Vettel-era, the Vettel-/Hamilton-era, the Vettel-/Alonso-era or the Vettel-/Hamilton-/Alonso-era. It really depends on who are and will stay the main championship contenders over the next couple of years.

However, if Vettel wins two or more championships in the next 3 years, or two vice-championships and one more championship with no one winning both other titles, and he has thus won 5 (vice-)championships in over half a decade, 2009 to 2015 can be considered the Vettel era. Of course this is just one of several scenario's, but I think it gives a good idea on my definition of a drivers era.

[CHT]

I think we should stop talking about Vettel, RB7 and other WDCs for a moment and focus on Webber as a driver and as a team mate. Is he such a lousy driver that he is not worthy of comparing to WDC?

Quite frankly... yes.

There are "only" 5-6 drivers on the grid at the moment that I truly think are WDC contenders (I'm looking at Vettel, Button, Hamilton, Alonso, Raikonnen, possibly Rosberg). Mark Webber is not one of them; Filipe Massa is no longer one of them.

I don't mean to take away from them being good drivers, but this is a situation very much like Tennis at the moment – that there's an absolute elite at the top, and a bunch of wannabes trying desperately to be near them.

To be fair to Webber, I think we should compare his track record with various teammates he had over the years, instead of writing him off just because of 2011.

[CHT]

Back to the OP, I think it would be interesting to set some parameters on what constitutes an era.

In my book, an era is an extended period of time in which one (or more) drivers are the main 'protagonist', who is contested by several other coming and going top drivers. For instance, I consider the Schumacher-era to be 1994 to 2006. During this time, Schumacher was always the main, or one of the main championship contenders. Seven times, he succeeded, and several other times others did, but it was always 'driver X versus Michael Schumacher'. That era in mayor lines, will be remembered as "Hill versus Schumacher, Hakkinen versus Schumacher, Montoya/Raikkonen versus Schumacher and Alonso/Raikkonen versus Schumacher".

Depending on how things develop from here on, this could be the Vettel-era, the Vettel-/Hamilton-era, the Vettel-/Alonso-era or the Vettel-/Hamilton-/Alonso-era. It really depends on who are and will stay the main championship contenders over the next couple of years.

However, if Vettel wins two or more championships in the next 3 years, or two vice-championships and one more championship with no one winning both other titles, and he has thus won 5 (vice-)championships in over half a decade, 2009 to 2015 can be considered the Vettel era. Of course this is just one of several scenario's, but I think it gives a good idea on my definition of a drivers era.

Exactly right.

On track, Vettel is the driver to beat at the moment, and it has been the case since 2010, and it will likely to continue in 2012.

Off track, Vettel are receiving praises from all the great drivers (past and present), commentators, journalist, and Bernie himself.

As for his race craft has anyone compared his performance at ROCs?

[mnmracer]

I think we should stop talking about Vettel, RB7 and other WDCs for a moment and focus on Webber as a driver and as a team mate. Is he such a lousy driver that he is not worthy of comparing to WDC?

Quite frankly... yes.

There are "only" 5-6 drivers on the grid at the moment that I truly think are WDC contenders (I'm looking at Vettel, Button, Hamilton, Alonso, Raikonnen, possibly Rosberg). Mark Webber is not one of them; Filipe Massa is no longer one of them.

I don't mean to take away from them being good drivers, but this is a situation very much like Tennis at the moment – that there's an absolute elite at the top, and a bunch of wannabes trying desperately to be near them.

To be fair to Webber, I think we should compare his track record with various teammates he had over the years, instead of writing him off just because of 2011.

Amen. We're (well, I am) not writing of Hamilton's based of 2011 alone are we?
I'll reply to this more indept later, but everyone seems to forget that this is the Aussie that took a Minardi to 5th place in his first race. That he was considered one of the best qualifiers, putting the Jaguar in places it had no right of being.

[beelsebob]

To be fair to Webber, I think we should compare his track record with various teammates he had over the years, instead of writing him off just because of 2011.

Okay then... He proved to be roughly Coulthard's equal – Coulthard also being an also-ran, though a good one. Was generally beaten by Heidfeld at Williams in '05, in '06 there were too many retirements to tell really.

So... never really coming up against the best drivers until Vettel, and never really doing convincingly well against the middle of the road ones. That puts him firmly as a decent middle of the road driver to me, not WDC material.

[raymondu999]

Agreed. Though he did sneak a Jaguar in Sepang 2004 in P2 on the grid

[Mandrake]

Ahhh soo much hatred and bitterness....

Somewhere 10 pages ago you agreed that the RB7 was maybe the fastest car last season (where I would say that in at least 1/3 of all races the race pace was inferior to other cars, only the qualifying pace was outstanding. And qualy alone is not an indicator whether a car is quick over a race distance or not!!!) but not by a huge margin. Especially not as much as in the Schumacher/Ferrari era.

You will not see a driver blasting through the field with modern F1 cars, they're just too similar at the top. At the same time you won't see an HRT with Vettel at the wheel make it into Q3, they're just too far away from the top and the reliability is up to almost indestructible cars. There are a lot less driver's errors than in the past.

The fact that Vettel never had to make his way through the field is converted into a bad thing for him. Why that? Why not give him credit for achieving the maximum every weekend when all the other failed?

Also, in 2009 with an inferior car Vettel came close to winning the WDC as well...

Vettel has a bloody good car under him, and you need a good car to win championships. But to say he's rubbish and it's all down to the car itself is just disrespectful.

And those who mention Hamilton in this topic as reference are taking themselves out immediately, HAM has yet to prove himself in a car like the Toro Rosso of 2008 and show what he can do with it.....until he's only shown that out of 4 years in a race winning car, he only managed 1 WDC as opposed to Vettel with 2 WDCs in 3 years (and I'm being gentle about 2009 here)!

[bhall]

Ahhh soo much hatred and bitterness....

I take offense to that. A staunch, yet dispassionate, refusal to ignore facts is neither hatred nor bitterness, and I don't particularly like it being portrayed that way.

Civil discourse is run off the rails by such assertions.

I'm very grateful that I was generally oblivious to F1 during Schumacher's run from 2000 to 2004. His apologists were likely completely insufferable. (Within that statement alone, I'll admit there's a lot of frustration.)

[Websta]

So... never really coming up against the best drivers until Vettel, and never really doing convincingly well against the middle of the road ones. That puts him firmly as a decent middle of the road driver to me, not WDC material.

An interesting statistic is that Webber out-qualified his team mate 101 times in 121 races (83% of the time) before he was partnered against Vettel. At the end of 2011, it still stands at a respectable 64%. That's pretty convincing performance against his other team mates.

I do get a little bit annoyed when I see people throw around the "not WDC material" label so flippantly. Webber put himself in a very good position to take the title in 2010 - being a title contender at the final race of the season is close to the definition of WDC material. What exactly does it take for a driver to be "WDC material"? Surely it shouldn't be limited to those few drivers who utterly dominate a season.

He managed to put a lot of pressure on Vettel in 09/10, but has been outclassed quite clearly. They are in completely different stages of their careers though. I expect Vettel to go on to be one of the legends of the sport and hopefully people will remember Webber's performance against him in 2009/2010 rather than 2011.

That's just my opinion though.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Also, in 2009 with an inferior car Vettel came close to winning the WDC as well...

Wait a minute....what happened to the Red Bull revival in 2009? I was at silvertone and christ knows Vettel did not have an inferior car.
They were consistantly the 2nd best team and even come the final 3rd of the season they were the fastest.

Brawn on the other hand had a fantastic car that nearly fell apart with the team sometime being 3rd of 4th fastest car out there at various races in the second half of the season. Buttons start winning 6 of 7 races, and nearly being pipped was about Brawn GPs failure and not Vettels hustling.

I think Hamilton also won a couple of races in a "pig" against that Brawn.

But thats my opinion. No hate just honest to goodness forum debate.

[CHT]

So... never really coming up against the best drivers until Vettel, and never really doing convincingly well against the middle of the road ones. That puts him firmly as a decent middle of the road driver to me, not WDC material.

An interesting statistic is that Webber out-qualified his team mate 101 times in 121 races (83% of the time) before he was partnered against Vettel. At the end of 2011, it still stands at a respectable 64%. That's pretty convincing performance against his other team mates.

I do get a little bit annoyed when I see people throw around the "not WDC material" label so flippantly. Webber put himself in a very good position to take the title in 2010 - being a title contender at the final race of the season is close to the definition of WDC material. What exactly does it take for a driver to be "WDC material"? Surely it shouldn't be limited to those few drivers who utterly dominate a season.

He managed to put a lot of pressure on Vettel in 09/10, but has been outclassed quite clearly. They are in completely different stages of their careers though. I expect Vettel to go on to be one of the legends of the sport and hopefully people will remember Webber's performance against him in 2009/2010 rather than 2011.

That's just my opinion though.

Some luck

[beelsebob]

So... never really coming up against the best drivers until Vettel, and never really doing convincingly well against the middle of the road ones. That puts him firmly as a decent middle of the road driver to me, not WDC material.

An interesting statistic is that Webber out-qualified his team mate 101 times in 121 races (83% of the time) before he was partnered against Vettel. At the end of 2011, it still stands at a respectable 64%. That's pretty convincing performance against his other team mates.

Maybe, but his race results were significantly worse than that.

I do get a little bit annoyed when I see people throw around the "not WDC material" label so flippantly. Webber put himself in a very good position to take the title in 2010 - being a title contender at the final race of the season is close to the definition of WDC material. What exactly does it take for a driver to be "WDC material"? Surely it shouldn't be limited to those few drivers who utterly dominate a season.

You mean, he still failed to capture the WDC in an even more dominant car than the RB7, with a team mate who had a season like Hamilton's 2011? That's not a great accolade.

[Richard]

"WDC material" is a rather absolute category. Unfortunately for some, luck does not go there way and we forget those who came second due to misfortune.

How many remember Peter Collins who was within 15 laps of the WDC in the final race of the season with the nearest rival sitting on the sidelines with a broken car?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Coll ... _driver%29

[Websta]

So... never really coming up against the best drivers until Vettel, and never really doing convincingly well against the middle of the road ones. That puts him firmly as a decent middle of the road driver to me, not WDC material.

An interesting statistic is that Webber out-qualified his team mate 101 times in 121 races (83% of the time) before he was partnered against Vettel. At the end of 2011, it still stands at a respectable 64%. That's pretty convincing performance against his other team mates.

Maybe, but his race results were significantly worse than that.

I do get a little bit annoyed when I see people throw around the "not WDC material" label so flippantly. Webber put himself in a very good position to take the title in 2010 - being a title contender at the final race of the season is close to the definition of WDC material. What exactly does it take for a driver to be "WDC material"? Surely it shouldn't be limited to those few drivers who utterly dominate a season.

You mean, he still failed to capture the WDC in an even more dominant car than the RB7, with a team mate who had a season like Hamilton's 2011? That's not a great accolade.

His race performances were not significantly worse at all - he out-raced his team mates 70% of the time. And we all know the Webber fan boys like to quote how he is the unluckiest driver in recent history. I don't necessarily agree, but he has lost quite a lot of high point scoring positions in the past. That out-qualifying percentage was the highest in F1 at the time which you can't ignore.

If you remember his race wins in 2010, he performed in and controlled them like any recent champion I've seen, especially in Monaco where he was untouchable. Knowing that he has that sort of latent pace and performance makes it all the more frustrating that he does not have it on tap like Alonso, Vettel and Hamilton, but I wouldn't go as far as saying he is just a decent driver because those three drivers are unquestionably among the best the sport has ever seen.

[RB7ate9]

As a several times-mentioned Webber fan, I admitted several times out loud, in a pub, while watching races that he is a good driver, and a fast driver, but can't string those qualifying-laps together in that special way like Alonso, Vettel, or Hamilton when given the chance (such as gaining buffer before pitting) to cement his championship aspirations.

That being said, he is still a great driver that can mix it with the top-level drivers as seen in many successful drives where he has held everyone off as the wunderkind sailed into 30s+ leads. That means Webber can be put into last year's Williams and both impress on the track and help develop it. That means you can't put Chandhok into the RB7 and expect him to keep the gap from Button, let alone Hamilton, Vettel, and Alonso.

If you want to examine Vettel's dominance, give Webber the credit for it is due. Otherwise, I would suggest a different thread for "Webber's ranking as a driver from 2009 - present". On that field, I will gladly do battle.