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Grabthaw the Hammerslayer

Is It Me Or Is Vettel Looking Ordinary....?

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I get what you guys are saying but...

1) All a driver can do to make a difference is lose less speed than another driver would. A driver will always drive the car at some percentage below 100 of what the car is fully capable of being driven by a Skip Barber National champion some non-existent perfection in a theoretical world where a program could flawlessly operate the car.

2) Alonso, Vettel, Hamilton, Räikkönen, etc. are so evenly matched. There is little difference the top drivers make over each other. And there's little separation between them and other talents. Build good teams around any of these guys, give them good people to work with, design cars as fit to their driving style as possible, I can't think of anyone on the grid who wouldn't do well. You can interpret that as they're all stars; I say they're all ordinary, given that they're humans. They have a skill that's not very ordinary, but we all have a skill, we all have "it" in something, so that doesn't make them terribly special just like anyone else isn't terribly special for his or her talent.

Vettel didn't become ordinary. He isn't looking ordinary. He is ordinary. He always was ordinary. They're all ordinary in F1 because they all have the same special talent of driving racecars (and that doesn't mean there aren't better drivers than others, but it does mean that statistical success, given that success is such a fluke, can be emulated by any of those drivers in the right situation. Vettel's not in the right situation with his current car). Everyone's ordinary.

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So is his driving better or worse than it has been at other times?

I have no idea. I doubt it has gotten worse. I just don't think the Red Bull gives him what he needs.

Still curious about qualifying, though, and why he's been behind Webber.

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... Wound-Up Kimi :)

Don;t really see the difference between Vettel's comments and Kimi's. Vettel called NK a vegetable, Kimi called Hamilton an idiot. Both were calling the other person incompetent, which they both were.

Like Kimi' said, at least he crashes at 300 kph. Hamilton can;t even make it out of the pit lane without running into someone.

As for NK, he is not a great driver to begin with. Of course he is in F1 so he at least knows how to drive a little bit. Then put him in the slowest car by not just a little bit but by almost 5 seconds a lap and that is what happens. NK job is not to race, when you are that far back your only job is to fill the grid and then during the race his job is to stay as far away from everybody else as humanly possible on a 23 meter wide track. An yet he still finds a way to be in the wrong place at the wrong time twice. Of course at a certain point there is nothing he can do.

I think button chose a bad spot to try and overtake him. And as far as I remember the pass was for position so no fault except from Button. But with Vettel it was NK fault. He is being lapped. The rules say to GTFO the way when you are being lapped. NK was LAST, he was not fighting for position, he could have, and should have slowed down and just let everybody past. I know that is not what a racing driver does but the position he is in means he has no other choice. Vettel has every right to be angry. Vettel was in front of NK and retaking the racing line.

I think this whole thing shows HRT should just not be on the grid more than anything else.

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I get what you guys are saying but...

1) All a driver can do to make a difference is lose less speed than another driver would. A driver will always drive the car at some percentage below 100 of what the car is fully capable of being driven by a Skip Barber National champion some non-existent perfection in a theoretical world where a program could flawlessly operate the car.

2) Alonso, Vettel, Hamilton, Räikkönen, etc. are so evenly matched. There is little difference the top drivers make over each other. And there's little separation between them and other talents. Build good teams around any of these guys, give them good people to work with, design cars as fit to their driving style as possible, I can't think of anyone on the grid who wouldn't do well. You can interpret that as they're all stars; I say they're all ordinary, given that they're humans. They have a skill that's not very ordinary, but we all have a skill, we all have "it" in something, so that doesn't make them terribly special just like anyone else isn't terribly special for his or her talent.

Vettel didn't become ordinary. He isn't looking ordinary. He is ordinary. He always was ordinary. They're all ordinary in F1 because they all have the same special talent of driving racecars (and that doesn't mean there aren't better drivers than others, but it does mean that statistical success, given that success is such a fluke, can be emulated by any of those drivers in the right situation. Vettel's not in the right situation with his current car). Everyone's ordinary.

Point 1 is true enough, and your last paragraph is probably just a matter of perspective or semantic arguments. But point 2, bah! There may only be a small difference between the top drivers but even that is still enough to be massively important, and that's even more true when you compare them to drivers further down the grid. Humans and chimps are genetically very close but the end result? A big difference (except in Maldonado's case of course). Watching too many Richard Dawkins videos on Youtube has influenced that poor example.

Anyway, F1 is measured in small differences on the clock, and the result is decided by lots of small human differences adding up, the driver being the final part. F1 is increasingly more competitive (i.e. the teams are closer than ever) and as a result, those differences become even more important! Yes, quite a few drivers from the grid could win a title with full team support and a strong enough car (although probably not as many as we think without a ridiculously dominant car), but what point does that make? It supports an argument that the cars matter more than the driver, an obvious point, and that the drivers are all very talented, another obvious point, but it doesn't do anything to refute the fact that different drivers can make an important difference to a team under the normal circumstances of F1, where many of the teams are very close. All of which is backed by the fact different drivers get paid different amounts, some teams/drivers always praise other drivers, every none top team would kill to have an Alonso in their car, etc. So while I agree with the initial observation, I can't make the same step you do from that to another position, which seems something like "the differences are small, therefore, they don't really matter that much".

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Don;t really see the difference between Vettel's comments and Kimi's. Vettel called NK a vegetable, Kimi called Hamilton an idiot. Both were calling the other person incompetent, which they both were.

Like Kimi' said, at least he crashes at 300 kph. Hamilton can;t even make it out of the pit lane without running into someone.

As for NK, he is not a great driver to begin with. Of course he is in F1 so he at least knows how to drive a little bit. Then put him in the slowest car by not just a little bit but by almost 5 seconds a lap and that is what happens. NK job is not to race, when you are that far back your only job is to fill the grid and then during the race his job is to stay as far away from everybody else as humanly possible on a 23 meter wide track. An yet he still finds a way to be in the wrong place at the wrong time twice. Of course at a certain point there is nothing he can do.

I think button chose a bad spot to try and overtake him. And as far as I remember the pass was for position so no fault except from Button. But with Vettel it was NK fault. He is being lapped. The rules say to GTFO the way when you are being lapped. NK was LAST, he was not fighting for position, he could have, and should have slowed down and just let everybody past. I know that is not what a racing driver does but the position he is in means he has no other choice. Vettel has every right to be angry. Vettel was in front of NK and retaking the racing line.

I think this whole thing shows HRT should just not be on the grid more than anything else.

The fault was Seb's on this one. The crucial thing is that he was not blocked at all, he was getting past NK just fine, but just misjudged his return to the racing line. If he'd waited a matter of seconds he would have been through without incident, and nobody would have said anything about NK's driving.

Until you can see that you will also not see the difference between his and Kimi's comments :lol: But, not only was KR in the right and Vettel wrong, but KR was much less emotional than Vettel about that particular error from Hammy, he even brought his own error from a previous race when criticising Hammy. A sure sign of rational thinking rather than an emotional outburst. If you want to see Kimi wound up:

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And how many other top drivers do you think could have done what he did there? He made quite an important difference to that photographer I'm sure you'll agree. Nothing beats this though:

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If you allow me to keep being Alonso-centric :) (I liked the neologism!) here's an article form that Lewis Fanboy Site known as Planet F1, granted Pete Gill is more a Schumi fan than a Lewis fan, but in any case the unlikeliest of places to find any kind of appraisal to what Alonso means to a team:

http://planetf1.com/race-features/7627742/Conclusions-From-Malaysia

To better understand the incidence of a driver it is good to remark that the important thing is not "Alonso won in the rain". First, because races in the rain tend to produce unexpected results so these are the kind of races where "PDLR won in the rain on his HRT" would not be that hard to imagine. Usually, once you get the lead in a wet race you have a massive advantage against the rest with clean air and no spray from the car ahead, etc. Second, this was not your usual race in the wet, which are generally races with rain falling more or less consistently throughout the whole event. This had ramatically changing conditions from wet to dry in very unpredictable tires. It was a real challenge to all the drivers but it still needs a fairly amount of luck from your side and misfortune from the other teams side.

But the important thing is that, even if you consider Alonso "lucking into" another win, the fact remains that Alonso REGULARLY lucks into whatever best result you could imagine. No other driver does that. Lewis was unlucky, Vettel was unlucky, Perez was unlucky, Jenson was, in a way, unlucky, Schumi, Senna...doesn't matter. It is always Alonso one of the guys that best capitalize on these events. This could have benefited the Force Indias, with better cars, or the Mercs, or Massa, or the Williams, or Webber...nevr happens or only once in a blue moon.

That's the difference.

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The only thing I have ever seen Vettel do that was verging on interesting was overtaking Alonso on the Curve De Grande @ Monza 2011. To see him throw the toys out the pram after Malaysia did not surprise me at all, though it was surprising to see him lose it so early in the season. I thought it would take a few races to sink in that he is not half as good as he thought he was.

So basically for me he has always seemed ordinary and nothing special and not deserving of either of the WDC titles he has.

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Welcome to the forums volatilis. In my opinion Vettel, and all the others that won a title within the rules, is a deserving champion. He may not be as good as others think, he may have been lucky being at RBR with Newey... All that is arguably but he's a deserving championship winner.

If you allow me to keep being Alonso-centric :) (I liked the neologism!) here's an article form that Lewis Fanboy Site known as Planet F1, granted Pete Gill is more a Schumi fan than a Lewis fan, but in any case the unlikeliest of places to find any kind of appraisal to what Alonso means to a team:

http://planetf1.com/...s-From-Malaysia

To better understand the incidence of a driver it is good to remark that the important thing is not "Alonso won in the rain". First, because races in the rain tend to produce unexpected results so these are the kind of races where "PDLR won in the rain on his HRT" would not be that hard to imagine. Usually, once you get the lead in a wet race you have a massive advantage against the rest with clean air and no spray from the car ahead, etc. Second, this was not your usual race in the wet, which are generally races with rain falling more or less consistently throughout the whole event. This had ramatically changing conditions from wet to dry in very unpredictable tires. It was a real challenge to all the drivers but it still needs a fairly amount of luck from your side and misfortune from the other teams side.

But the important thing is that, even if you consider Alonso "lucking into" another win, the fact remains that Alonso REGULARLY lucks into whatever best result you could imagine. No other driver does that. Lewis was unlucky, Vettel was unlucky, Perez was unlucky, Jenson was, in a way, unlucky, Schumi, Senna...doesn't matter. It is always Alonso one of the guys that best capitalize on these events. This could have benefited the Force Indias, with better cars, or the Mercs, or Massa, or the Williams, or Webber...nevr happens or only once in a blue moon.

That's the difference.

Alonso is a virtual 4xWDC winner. I know he's won only two but he's fought for it up to the last race many times, in many and very different circumstances, different cars and teams, etc.

He's a survivor. They all are survivors in F1 but he's the survivor. He's been shot with a silver bullet a few times.

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So basically for me he has always seemed ordinary and nothing special and not deserving of either of the WDC titles he has.

And how, by definition, does one "deserve" a WDC title then?

You don't win a championship by "deserving" it - you win it by...err...winning. The maths is the maths and history will show that over the 2010-2011 seasons, Sebastian Vettel scored the most points. That's good enough to say he "deserved" it for me.

There I was thinking the points system was fair. But, obviously, you have different ideas? He didn't cheat, there was no controversial incident like many other former champions have on their CV, so...

Please tell me who you think deserved the championship 2010-2011 and whilst we're at it, who deserves it this year?

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Hi Volatilis, welcome to the forum! Always nice to have new opinions. Most of mine are prefabricated as part of my agenda. :P

I don't think anyone deserves anything. But I do think people earn things. You score the most points, you earn the title. Would someone else have won the title if they were in that car over Vettel? Yeah, probably all of them could have if they were Red Bull's number one and the car was suited to them. But they weren't in that car so Vettel earned the accomplishments.

How you want to value those accomplishments, however, that's up to you.

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Oh I use a totally different scoring system to the FIA. :)

For example, I deducted points for poor driving, crashing into team mates, pointing fingers and naming your chassis after prostitutes.

In 2010 I would have given the title to Webber or Alonso. In 2011,most likely to Button.

For me, there are always going to be deserving and underserving champions in sport and in life. Seb lucked into it, in my opinion and just does not display the skill set of other better drivers.

I am not a fan of Alonso for example, but wow, did he impress me this past grand prix. I can watch him drive and say, you are very very skillful. I watch vettel and think, you have the best car.

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Oh I use a totally different scoring system to the FIA. :)

That's all we really need to know...

btw welcome Volatilis

For example, I deducted points for poor driving, crashing into team mates, pointing fingers and naming your chassis after prostitutes.

and this is just sad man...

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:lol: I think it's pretty humorous, actually, and suspect a bit of tongue-in-cheek going on.

I like the last part of the post, really. While I think every champion earns the championship, I don't think you need to value every champion equally, and there's no substitute for just watching a driver and saying "hey, that impressed me." I've had one of those moments with Vettel, and I will be the first to say that I missed well more than the majority of the races 2009-2011 when he was probably doing some very impressive things (I saw more of 2009 than 2010, and more of 2010 than 2011). Anyway, that moment was his overtake on Lewis Hamilton at Brazil 2008. Just to have the audacity to do something that had major championship implications at the time, and to do it well, to not crap his pants and say "oh it's Hamilton he's the contender don't hit him don't hit him oh **** I hit him." I mean, maybe I just liked that because it benefited Massa at the time...but...whatever.

And no, that doesn't contradict what I've said in the past, it's just too murky to explain how some drivers impress me and some don't but they're all ordinary...but it makes a ton of sense to me! :P

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Oh I use a totally different scoring system to the FIA. :)

For example, I deducted points for poor driving, crashing into team mates, pointing fingers and naming your chassis after prostitutes.

In 2010 I would have given the title to Webber or Alonso. In 2011,most likely to Button.

For me, there are always going to be deserving and underserving champions in sport and in life. Seb lucked into it, in my opinion and just does not display the skill set of other better drivers.

I am not a fan of Alonso for example, but wow, did he impress me this past grand prix. I can watch him drive and say, you are very very skillful. I watch vettel and think, you have the best car.

:lol: I like it.

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That's all we really need to know...

btw welcome Volatilis

and this is just sad man...

C'mon Brad, that one was very funny. :lol:

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Speaking of Prostitutes - Road Trip to Ontario , Anyone ?

Fun in Ontario, Canada

HEY Y'KNOW ONTARIO'S A GREAT PLACE BUT ALL THESE TEMPTRESSES AND EVERYTHINK LIKE THAT, Y'KNOW THAT'S WHY ALL THESE AMERICAN COLLEGE GUYS LIKE TARANNA, LET'S GO ENOUGH ABOOT THAT AND DON'T YOU TALK.

http://tinyurl.com/cez6vxp

Oreos are better in Canada than anywhere else, too.

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Speaking of points, am I the only one that loves the FIA's system? You can't lead the points without winning a race. It's just impossible now. That's a good thing. I think it's the best points system in all of racing. The only better alternative would be to have the fans vote one driver out of the championship each week (1000 point bonus for all the drivers who advance); the winner of the race gets immunity from being voted out.

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C'mon Brad, that one was very funny. :lol:

:lol: Can't wait to see what he comes up with next, so we can accurately assess how delusional he is... that post sounded awfully serious

Speaking of points, am I the only one that loves the FIA's system? You can't lead the points without winning a race. It's just impossible now. That's a good thing. I think it's the best points system in all of racing. The only better alternative would be to have the fans vote one driver out of the championship each week (1000 point bonus for all the drivers who advance); the winner of the race gets immunity from being voted out.

Eric, you can't turn everything into a Survivor series... Formula 1 Grand Prix Survivor just aint sounds cool man...

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Speaking of points, am I the only one that loves the FIA's system? You can't lead the points without winning a race. It's just impossible now. That's a good thing. I think it's the best points system in all of racing. The only better alternative would be to have the fans vote one driver out of the championship each week (1000 point bonus for all the drivers who advance); the winner of the race gets immunity from being voted out.

If Perez had won, would Hamilton not be in the lead on points without having won a race?

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:lol: Can't wait to see what he comes up with next, so we can accurately assess how delusional he is... that post sounded awfully serious

Eric, you can't turn everything into a Survivor series... Formula 1 Grand Prix Survivor just aint sounds cool man...

You need to unplug your anal retentivness please. :)

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