I was talking about his exhuberant driving style, his taste for oversteer and drifting all over the place, etc ...
Even then we see how poor Vettel was at wheel to wheel and there is surprise now over his time at Ferrari being weak in such situation. Vettel is not a good wheel to wheel racer. Without RedBull he never wins a title.
There are in fact many drivers who are not very good at wheel-to-wheel racing, but are very fast and get some results. But they will avoid banging wheels, and get intimidated by driving too close to an opponent. They are not too good at resisting an attack, or making a daring pass. If they have a good car, they will try to qualify well, go ahead and lead the race, but they are not so good fighting in the middle of the pack Damon Hill was one of them, so is Bottas, I find, and Vettel is too, but there are more. I don't know if it's self-preservation, higher ethic, lack of racecraft or simply fear to make contact, but they do exist.
Vettel made the situation work for him he has 4 titles. He would not have survived stronger team mates. He did not survive Charles or Ricci. RedBull hired a driver with 1 win vs 4 titles. Vettel was never a consideration. His career is over. Unless Clone Aston surge to amazing capability. Yes that can happen. Vettel to me makes poor emotional based critical decision, not considering the contact that could occur. We saw this at Ferrari 17-19 consistently.
And without Renault Alonso never won a title. Ferrari wasn't upto it. Webber was a tough competitor, Vettel held his own in battle and was ultimately faster than MW. Bottas is considerably weaker than both. He often seems to fall asleep during races, which in the Mercedes is criminal. George and Lewis deserve the seat.
After Pironi died in the powerboat accident, his expectant girlfriend gave birth to twins which she named Gilles and Didier. Gilles Pironi, an engineer at Mercedes AMG Petronas since 2014, was on the podium at this year's British Grand Prix to receive their constructor's trophy. Legendary stuff. Best, Sammy
Yes. "he raced wheel to wheel with Webber" made me laugh. He spun out after racing wheel to wheel with anybody is more like it. In his last year at RB I talked it down to a loss of motivation, but in reality it was the beginning of the decline. He was always weak in wheel to wheel racing. A spin at the bus stop in Spa comes to mind, classic case of somebody who can't do wheel to wheel racing. There were many others. But at RB it didn't matter because he is super fast in qualifying, puts his car on pole and wins from there. Exactly like Hill did. This one trick pony deal got them both WDCs but in wheel to wheel they suck/ed.
Vettel’s problem is that every time he finds himself in an emotional situation, he’s incapable of handling it. The race alone in the lead kept him from that. In retrospect, he signed with the most emotional team : Ferrari. Casting mistake.
Never looked at it from that angle but you might have a point. Funny. His loss of emotional control was blatantly obvious in Baku.
Not a way to act with 4WDC and millions per year in 'salary' to drive a car. Not save life etc. Drive a car. Ferrari should have removed him earlier.
I read that Binotto told Vettel apparently before the first race that this was his last season. If they already knew back in February, why didn't they recruit a replacement right then and there?
You can wax poetic all you want about Bottas. Gilles was a racer. Bottas is a butler. To say Gilles wasn’t a team player is flat out wrong. He could have disobeyed team orders and tried to pass Scheckter in Italy, but chose not to.
+1 And also, what's a successful career? Surely every single seat driver end goal is to race in F1..and when you get there, it's to win a championship? If that's the case Bottas is consistently underachieving. Yes, so are the other 18 chaps...but none of them have a WDC capable car.
LOL For years the MS fan crew told us that winning races and championships is the ultimate measuring stick and justifies the means. Suddenly that's no longer the case?
RedBull driver system is broken Since Daniel Ricciardo, a widely accepted member of F1’s elite group of drivers, left the team Red Bull has not come close to having a similarly competitive replacement alongside Verstappen. It ended up picking a driver it has never really seemed to want – Pierre Gasly – and then binned him after half a season. The replacement was a driver Red Bull dropped eight years ago and only picked up when it ran out of other drivers – Albon. Then when Red Bull had to face up to that driver not being good enough, it didn’t go back to the original Ricciardo replacement – who is now a race winner in Red Bull’s sister team. And it had no other drivers in the pool to turn to because the other driver in the second team – Daniil Kvyat – was also a Red Bull Racing reject. So it has signed an ‘outside’ driver for the first time since hiring Mark Webber in 2007 and the team’s 2021 line-up will be the first since Webber’s final season in 2013 that hasn’t comprised a pair of Red Bull junior team graduates. It’s important to note that Albon has benefitted well out of Red Bull’s inherent driver confusion in the Verstappen era. He is also not a driver Red Bull nurtured for many years than gave up on after one bad season: Albon was dropped eight years ago and only ever made it to F1 in the first place because Red Bull had run out of proteges and needed to parachute in two previous rejects, Albon and Kvyat (having already tried Brendon Hartley), into Toro Rosso. Changing drivers was necessary not because Albon is a lost cause but because it’s vital for Red Bull to work out if he was really the problem. After all, he ended up replicating Gasly’s struggles before him So Albon was lucky to get his F1 chance, and even luckier to be handed one of the four most competitive seats on the grid with his call-up to Red Bull. But it would be too flippant to dismiss it as a case of ‘easy come, easy go’. The Verstappen team-mate saga, which Albon’s fate became wrapped up in, is the product of years of Red Bull confusion. And Red Bull needs to make sure Albon is the end of its recent messy cycle. Opting for Perez is a chance to put the senior team back on an even keel and give the young driver programme a chance to regroup, with Yuki Tsunoda having a year at AlphaTauri alongside Gasly, and Juri Vips and Liam Lawson racing in Formula 2. https://the-race.com/formula-1/albon-a-victim-of-the-same-red-bull-mess-that-got-him-to-f1/
The system isn't broken, they just don't have the right driver. With all the data that Red Bull collects on their drivers in all their teams, they presumably know that exchanging Albon for Gasly is utterly pointless and not yield in the change they need. Otherwise they'd have made the swap already. Neither Albon or Gasly can handle the RBR car. Hiring outside driver is the only option they realistically have. It's a 1 year deal so if it doesn't work out, they can re-evaluate Albon/Gasly for 2022.
How do you call that system not broken? The fact that they only can choose between rejects, double rejects or triple rejects (Kvyat anyone?) shows their strategy has failed. Ultimate cop-out is to hire externally, because the reasons they rejected Albon/Gasly on today, won't be very different 1 year from now. They already put all their eggs in the Verstappen-basket, the real evaluation will be whether the 2022 will finally be competitve for the title. If there is a seat at a better team, Max will be gone & they will have no talents to follow up on that.
