the points gap at the end of 2017 between LH and SV was 46 pts.
SV retired from Singapore (accident) and Japan (spark plug).
So of course he could have won the title in last year's car.
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the points gap at the end of 2017 between LH and SV was 46 pts.
SV retired from Singapore (accident) and Japan (spark plug).
So of course he could have won the title in last year's car.
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An honest quote! That as you say is how you win titles!Originally Posted by Rishu
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I am the biggest Seb fan, but he did a major mistake back in Hockenheim, yes it is worth some of the bashing. But we have to look at the future, I see Vettel these days more prone to mistakes as in 2011-2013.Something must have clicked, or driving a Ferrari is really hard and gives every driver major pressure, much more as driving a RBR or Mercedes. Some people dont understand this.
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Any other driver could overtake 2 second a lap slower cars in that Merc, other drivers can manage 40 laps as well, not to mention that Vettel is regarded as the king of tyre management, he could have extended it even more.
Not always, you can grab opportunity, you need to work hard as well. Like Abu Dhabi 2012 and Brazil 2012, Vettel was dead last in both races at the start but his recovery under title pressure was one of the most extraordinary recoveries in the history of Formula 1. Hamilton could have proved what he is made of in 2010, 2011 and 2012 when he had excellent cars, what he did achieve? Was owned by Vettel and Alonso.
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You can tell that Hamilton wasnt mature enough back in 2010,2011, but now he is a whole new guy, he doesnt make big mistakes in the race anymore and this might bring him the title. Would love to be proved otherwise of course.
The crashes from Hamilton in Singapore, Monza were the races when he lost the title in 2010, Seb nearly lost it because of Turkey 2010, Spa, and Alonso lost it because of SPA 2010. In 2012 Alonso lost the title because of his crash with Kimi at Japan 2012, and Seb nearly because of Malaysia 2012, but otherwise they were both great that year. In EBD year 2011, Seb was the only driver that exploited the amazing rear grip of the car, he was unstopable with EBD, Webber was nowhere. And yes Mclaren in 2011 was nearly the faster car than RBR, but Seb was making the difference. The V8 mashines were much more to Sebs liking as the V6 (TURBO). The same can be said for Alonso.
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This gives a false impression Alonso and Vettel were equally great that year. Ferrari was much slower than Red Bull yet Alonso came within three points of snatching the title? Seb got a DT in Spain for speeding under yellows, post-race DT for overtaking off-track in Germany and DT in Italy for pushing Alonso off track. He was also outqualified by Webber in nearly half of the races (despite usually holding a big gap on his team-mate and Mark struggling on Pirellis since their introduction). Hamilton was better than Vettel as well that year, largely avoiding mistakes and having only his two or three off-pace weekends, like Spa where he tweeted his team's telemetry.
In 2010 every contender made mistakes.
I would say both Vettel and Alonso are doing just as well with V6 as V8.
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Well without alternator failure from RBR with Seb onboard in 2012 when he lost 32 points in Valencia (while leading the GP and Alonso won it) and again at least 10 points, it wouldnt be even close that year. Ferrari was very reliable that year, RBR not.
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What is going on with Seb?? why isnt he being favored and babied like louis is by FIA?
its obviously his fault the car was so unreliable second half of the season and couldnt fight on power circuits last year, he built the car that way obviously
hockenheim 2018 / China 2018 : Never forget how quick Ferrari can lose it all, be humble.
Positivity doesn't win you championships, whining about people being negative makes you blind!
lol ignore the bitter old cows ;-)
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Seb is just fine, everyone makes mistakes. Remember how Michael binned it in Monaco 1996 from pole on the 1st lap in the rain?
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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Alonso crashed from lead in Canada 2005.
FERRARI FOREVER
i just love (sarcastic) how Hamilton can go in pitlane see that Kimi has so cuts across the grass and carries on (surely he has gained an advantage over kimi by doing so) and stewards say is not gaining an advantage?
FERRARI In F1 =
has the prestige and passion for Motor Racing that is unrivaled
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https://twitter.com/sebvettelnews/st...41193618579457
Sebastian Vettel catching a fly during the post race press conference, and then proudly showing it off to Lewis Hamilton
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its not even a conspiracy anymore, they are blatantly helping mercs and hamilton stop Seb and ferrari.
at the end we usually forget how unfair fia and race decisions were and look at the points and sadly people will blame seb like usual
hockenheim 2018 / China 2018 : Never forget how quick Ferrari can lose it all, be humble.
Positivity doesn't win you championships, whining about people being negative makes you blind!
lol ignore the bitter old cows ;-)
Registered User
I am following this forum for a while, now i made an account and i want to say something:
Sebastian is an amazing driver, the best on the grid: he is fast, is is passionated and he gives good feedback to the team.
Of course he made mistakes in France and Germany, but with Hamilton we would not even be in the position to fight for a title.
Every driver makes mistakes.
The only thing that Seb wants is al title with Ferrari, following his hero Schumacher.
Think about 2015, he was the only one who give Merc a challange
2016 was a bad year for the team but he keep working hard and that payed of in 2017, where we had a good car but Merc was better...
This year we have a good car but no luck, yes Seb made mistakes and yes the team made mistakes, but we have a amazing car we can still win.
I am 100% sure that Seb will do everything to win the title, he is a Ferrari fan just like us.
Seb is the only driver that can bring a title to Ferrari because of his speed, passion and his will to work hard just like Michael. yes he is not as good as Michael but nobody is as good as him.
I see people calling Sebastian a bad driver, not good enough for Ferrari, Telling that Kimi is much better and people saying we need toxic drivers like Ham or Alonso
It hurts me to see that we are calling such an amazing driver and person as Seb that kind of things
Sorry but i needed to write a message
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Well yeah, he didn’t gain an advantage. But that’s neither here nor there. Hamilton was indeed found to be in breach and was subsequently punished with a reprimand. The most common punishment for this type of infringement.
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For us tifosi, it’s very hard to recover from the major snafu at Hockenheim that can only be attributed to him. We had a major chance to be convincingly ahead of the dark force and Seb blew it. He smashed our dreams. During the grievance period many things could be said, some totally unjust. Seb is a great driver, among the best but he must remain focused and humble.
Salut Gilles
Well had he pitted he would have probably not won, so yeah he did gain an advantage.
Forza Ferrari
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I don't understand the point of 'reprimands'. They are obviously meaningless to teams and drivers.
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+1000
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Lots of other drivers didn’t pit either. It’s not mandatory to pit during a safety car. Ferrari could have stayed out too if it was such an advantage and they would have been within their rights. What’s your point?
Salut Gilles
Who said it was mandatory? Ferrari did stay out did you watch the race?
Forza Ferrari
Full Member
Hmmm, ok then....explain this then please
IMG_8665.JPG
Drive it like you stole it!
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They can not explain it. Their arguments were those of a monkey at best. It would be better if a mistake has a certain penalty, not less or not more. This gives space for interpretation and in what I consider a heavier breach of "the law" they gave a reprimand, meanwhile giving a 5 sec penalty for nothing much.
Tifoso since Gilles!
Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton have traded the points lead five times in 12 races so far in 2018. For all the griping about a 'boring' season, only two years have produced more swaps at the top at the same point in the campaign - 1986 (seven) and 2012 (six).
Even with Hamilton carrying a 24-point advantage into the August break, this could be one of the closest world championship battles we've ever seen. And the closer the battle gets, the more significance every little incident and error assumes.
Both drivers have great strengths, but the small weaknesses, the tiny chinks in the armour, are just as likely to decide the destiny of the world championship. Neither is bulletproof, no driver can be, but based on recent evidence Vettel is the championship protagonist with the most clear Achilles' heel.
For the vast majority of the time, Vettel drives beautifully, with a vibrant and attacking style, while off-track he is diligent, with great attention to detail. Where things can change is in times of extreme stress, sometimes leading to errors in critical moments.
In the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, he attempted to pass Valtteri Bottas for the lead at the late restart, locked up over the bump on the inside line and went off. That dropped him down the order, although he recovered to fourth due to Bottas's puncture, which makes it a potential 13 points lost (Vettel would have inherited the win) had the move not ended in an off-track moment. In the French Grand Prix at Paul Ricard, he misjudged the level of grip into the first corner and hit Bottas's Mercedes. A par finish from where he was would have been was third, but instead he finished fifth. Five points lost. In the German Grand Prix, he made what he rightly characterised as a tiny mistake with a big impact as he slid off while leading the race. That was a mighty 25 points lost.
All told, that adds up perhaps to 43 points squandered, and that's before you factor in the resulting gains for Hamilton, given he was behind Vettel in two of those races at the moment in question.
By contrast, Hamilton has avoided such unforced errors. There have been mistakes he's not been punished for - such as the lock-up in Baku that forced him to compromise his strategy - but a combination of minimising errors and some good luck mean those errors haven't hurt him so much in terms of points.
This is why Vettel's unforced errors, ones that have a decisive impact on his race prospects, could prove to be his key weakness in the fight with Hamilton.
In isolation, all three of those mistakes are perfectly explicable. They are small misjudgements of the kind it's a surprise drivers don't them make more often. But given they've come in relatively quick succession from Vettel, it's fair to draw the conclusion this is his key weakness in the fight with Hamilton.
Vettel's unforced errors could prove to be his key weakness in the fight with Hamilton
The same thing applied last year. Vettel's two big mistakes - swiping Hamilton under the safety car in Baku and then moving over on Max Verstappen and Kimi Raikkonen at the start of the Singapore race - were different, but both showed he can crack even though the Baku clash didn't cost much.
Vettel tends to rapidly box away such errors when he takes responsibility for them (the Singapore start remains a point of disagreement), and he has reacted well to this year's small blunders - in that regard he tends to recover more easily than Hamilton does. But he will know better than anyone how costly they've been.
On the positive side, it's inevitable errors happen in elite sport. What matters is how they are responded to. Although two of Vettel's errors have come in the past five races, there's no sign of him getting into a negative spiral where one blunder follows another.
The great challenge for any athlete in these situations is to understand and learn from the mistake, but not let that influence what they do. If you make a mistake in one corner, you can't make up for it in the next - only ensure you reset and get 100% out of it.
Hamilton, by contrast, has done well to eliminate such blunders from his game. But while he hasn't squandered points with momentary lapses this year, he has given away points through overall pace - or the lack thereof - and there are times when struggles to get the car working seem to have a compound effect on his ability to get the most from the car.
This was particularly the case early in the season in races such as Bahrain and China. More recently, the Canadian Grand Prix - a race Hamilton basically owns - went poorly by his lofty standards.
"There's parts of my performances this year that are not perfect," Hamilton admitted ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix. "Last year, I was great in qualifying, this year it's been an area that I'm constantly trying to work on. The starts were more consistent last year. So, there's always areas.
"I relate it to golf. One day, when the driving is perfect the rest of the game sucks. Then I go and practice the rest of the game and the driving sucks but the rest is good.
"I do take a lot of pride in being a perfectionist and not making mistakes, but nobody's perfect and with the pressures we're under, I really work hard to position myself mentally and physically that I'm the last to crack.
"My dad has always said I'm the latest of the late brakers - if I'm alongside someone I'm going to be the one to brake last. That's how I try and position my mind mentally as well. It's not easy."
The capacity to make countless calculations as the variables change rapidly is arguably the most vital for any racing driver, and this is where Vettel very occasionally struggles with overload, while Hamilton thrives.
It's a similar story in wet conditions, when Hamilton has the advantage not just over Vettel but the whole field. He's won the last nine rain-influenced grands prix, which doesn't include the Hungarian Grand Prix where wet qualifying was critical to his race victory.
Vettel isn't bad in the wet, far from it, but either the Ferrari is a worse car in the wet or he isn't quite as remarkable in those conditions as Hamilton.
There's no disgrace in that given Hamilton is unquestionably one of the best of all time in such conditions. Doubly so given Vettel won his first two grands prix in rain-affected races, the first his legendary win for Toro Rosso at Monza in 2008.
If the pattern continues, it will be a fascinating battle to the end of the year. One of these traits will likely be the overwhelming reason for one driver or the other winning, or rather losing, the world championship.
One of these traits will likely be the overwhelming reason for one driver winning or losing the title
If we set aside errors and look at who most consistently extracts the most out of the machinery, then the balance swings from Hamilton back to Vettel.
But comparing relative performance of drivers in different cars is fraught with risks. Firstly, you have to judge the overall pace of the car - and on average Mercedes and Ferrari are within 0.022% of each other on average performance. That's two hundredths of a second on a 90-second lap.
Then you have to decide where you place the team-mate performance. Vettel is bossing it at Ferrari, outqualifying Kimi Raikkonen on all but one occasion and, on average, is three-tenths of a second faster. At Mercedes, Hamilton is only 7-5 ahead of Bottas and is 0.275s clear on average.
Is Vettel being supreme because he's bossing Raikkonen, or does Hamilton have a stronger team-mate? It's probably a bit of both, but it's much easier to point to weekends where Hamilton has struggled to get the maximum potential out of the car than Vettel.
In keeping with the longstanding private criticisms from those who have worked with Hamilton, he does have occasional off days when things don't quite come together. But when everything is right, which is very often, he will get everything possible from the package.
It is much more difficult to quantify a points loss to being a bit below par than it is to a specific incident. But Bottas has finished ahead of Hamilton three times, which is conclusive proof the result was not maximised.
Vettel tends not to have weekends where he gets too lost with the car. Where he has the advantage is that he's an outstandingly good driver at working progressively through the weekend and hitting the mark when he really needs to.
That's played a key role in the tendency of Ferrari to make a bigger step than its rivals from Friday to Saturday. It also reflects the strength of the team as a whole - a Ferrari team that, arguably, has probably been the most impressive this season.
It can also be argued that the Ferrari is an easier car to get working. So, the question then is how much of that weakness is down to Hamilton? He's more accomplished technically than the unfair caricature, but Vettel does have an edge there.
And while Hamilton goes into the summer break on a high, it might only take one difficult weekend where Mercedes has difficulties to put him back into a spiral of struggle - although he did point out after Hungary that Mercedes tends to get stronger as the year goes on and it's not impossible he will take the championship out of Vettel and Ferrari's reach in the second half of the year, just as he did in 2017.
But given things are so close, there's even the possibility 2018 could claim the outright record for number of changes in championship lead in a season. The record was set in 2010, when Fernando Alonso, Felipe Massa, Vettel, Jenson Button, Mark Webber and Hamilton exchanged first position nine times.
Most changes of lead in a championship season
1 9 - 2010
2 8 - 1986
3 7 - 2012
= 7 - 1997
5 6 - 1999
= 6 - 1983
7 5 - 2018
= 5 - 2008
= 5 - 2007
= 5 - 1980
= 5 - 1974
Ferrari has had the faster car on seven occasions this year, with Mercedes quicker five times. One of Ferrari's races was Monaco, where Red Bull set the pace. But that does suggest that Ferrari should continue to have a qualifying, and therefore track position, advantage.
Once Vettel is up front, he's a master of controlling a race. And there's every chance he could get himself back into the points lead early in the second stage of the season. Then it will be back to small margins. There are wildcards - such as the weather and questions over reliability at Ferrari, which let it down last year.
There is also a potential Hamilton weakness that has not been exploited properly since the days when he was paired with Nico Rosberg, who was able to get under Hamilton's skin in a way Vettel has yet to do.
While there is some aggro between Mercedes and Ferrari related to suspicions about the latter's battery configuration, and Hamilton has occasionally let slip that he buys into those concerns, Vettel has yet to attempt to mine this seam as he searches for a way to even up the fight.
What we are seeing is a potential battle for the ages between two brilliant drivers
He's a clean racer, but anything you can do to impact your rival's mindset negatively - provided it's within the rules - is part of the game and perfectly legitimate. Something to think about over the break.
This is what could make the second half of the season so thrilling - with every race, the stakes and the pressure rise.
What we are seeing is a potential battle of the ages between two brilliant drivers. And when that happens, who really cares who wins? It's all about enjoying an epic contest between two all-time greats.
Avanti Fer, Avanti !
24 points is nothing, we have the trump card- fastest car. Now all Seb needs to do is, avoid silly errors
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And give Kimi a car that will help get him on the podium again and again. His driving is great for a while now.
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Kimi is doing well, but I would love to see him got that one step further and get a win.
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The problem for Kimi is that he got the strongest possible teammate, Kimi can drive the race of his life but still tough for him to beat Seb.
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well he did finish ahead of Seb five times this year.
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The strongest possible team mate that can't beat his #2 driver? Unless of course it's close and team orders tell Kimi to let the strong man pass. That one step further is not allowed @ Ferrari unless the strong man is making mistakes and is no where near the front. A Kimi , Max team and Ferrari would be so far ahead of Merc, lewis would retire before 100 poles. The car @ Ferrari is no longer an excuse! WCC is for sure in reach as long as Kimi's points count also!
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