2014 driver review

[rjbetty]

As is maybe now a tradition I will post my driver rankings. Please feel free to add your own, in as much or as little detail as you want.

Bear in mind, I'm busy, haven't even watched the races, but followed online many of them. I haven't got as much time to consider, so please try not to take it too personally if your favourite drivers aren't where you'd like. Unfortunately, someone has to fill the bottom spaces.

I have also included a small rating, up to 10.0 to help give an idea of how I compare them to other drivers. This is by no means definitive, as this is meant to just be a bit of fun.

I have however tried to be as impartial as I can, in the interests of fairness. It is very hard to do.

This season is harder than any others as the major new regs look to have made experience of less use, so inexperienced drivers have been able to compare better than normal.


Ok then...

24.Marcus Ericsson - 3.6
Nice to see a Swedish driver around, the first I´ve witnessed. Wasn´t amazing I´m afraid, like Max Chilton but more crashy. Race pace was alright though and got Caterham's best result this year.

23.Max Chilton - 4.5
A nice improvement over his debut season in every way except the spotless finishing record being spoiled.

22.Esteban Gutierrez - 4.8
Very even with Sutil in qualifying, though this may be to a possible 0.4sec advantage due to being lighter! Even so, improved over last year but maybe not enough. In any case, the car was too poor to tell.

21.Will Stevens - 5.0
Great job in the Abu Dhabi circumstances!

20.Adrian Sutil - 5.4
Sad to say this, cos I do like Sutil, but I think he's the epitome of a standard journeyman PR bland driver. Should have capitalised more on opportunities given his experience since that was what he was signed for. His attitude was the most disappointing though, so to that end, time to be shown the door.

19.Andre Lotterer - 5.8
A German driver from sportscars shining on his debut at Spa, in a striking green car, then retiring almost immediately after the start? Sounds familiar! Great job though.

18.Pastor Maldonado - 5.8
Yup, pretty poor, but surely nowhere near as awful as made out to be. Little went right and he still had fairly good pace when the car allowed. Took his situation with a decent attitude which provides some hope.

17.Kimi Raikkonen - 5.9
Oh dear. Well clearly he's better than this, but I felt he was a bit overrated in his comeback, as I think his speed was actually some way pff the best, though had a fast car. That is understandable after 2yrs in rallying but his consistency and racecraft was mega. This year was poor, but I really do think Alonso was always just better all along. Hopefully he can improve and have a decent send off.

16.Kamui Kobayashi - 6.4
How good is Kamui Kobayashi? Very hard to assess, but he seemed consistent and often outqualified the not terrible Ericsson by big margins so he must have done pretty well. I still feel many others are similar or slightly better, hence being in my very tight midfield again. Beats Raikkonen as he came back from a year out, which is never a good thing.

15.Kevin Magnussen - 6.5
I won´t trust all the other fans hype again - everyone promised another Hamilton, to the point I felt what do I know? They must all be right. I was going to sign Ricciardo for FGP, but because of the hype, chose Magnussen instead! Qualified well, though this strange season saw experience be much less of an advantage for other drivers. People may be expecting too much, since Hamilton redefined what a rookie can do, having had lots of testing that K-Mag never had the chance to emulate.

14.Daniil Kvyat - 6.8
For a 19yr old rookie, what a season! Hard to tell how well he coped after the radio ban though. How do we think he compared to Alonso in 2001?

13.Jules Bianchi - 6.9
A great job to score an 8th place on the road for Marussia, who I felt were wrongly done by being penalised 5sec twice brcause the badly written rule left them no possible way to escape a penalty. Most unfair.

12.Felipe Massa - 7.0
Pretty good, and early on edged Bottas for pace. However his points haul was poor for quite some time, almost costing Williams 3rd in the championship. This did improve but cost him in my standings. Nice podiums though!

11.Sergio Perez - 7.2
An up and down season, scoring a podium was fantastic. Very even with Hulkenberg in races, and generally quite close for pace. Didn´t outqualify him much though and scored much less points, not all his fault though. Inconsistency cost his team the chance to beat McLaren in the points.

10.Jean-Eric Vergne - 7.3
Given JEV was always pretty well matched with Ricciardo, Dan's success reflects well on Vergne too. Often qualified in the top 10, which given a Toro Rosso with a completely rubbish Renault was no mean feat. Grabbed the higest number of points by a Toro Rosso driver under the post-2009 system since Alguersuari, despite losing a stack more with misfortune. Outqualified too often by Kvyat though.

9.Jenson Button - 7.9
Did his best in the final races, scoring good points. However maybe it was too late since he seemed a little demotivated mid-season and had to be admonished by Ron Dennis. This drops him just behind some other drivers and appears to have cost him. Harsh, but that's F1...

8.Romain Grosjean - 8.0
Probably the unsung driver of the season for me. Consistently drove to a high standard and didn´t put many feet wrong in a terrible car, in stark contrast to Maldonado. In a top car, we´d have been fairly raving about him in the manner of say Bottas.

7.Nico Hulkenberg - 8.1
One of the top 8 drivers in F1, started brilliantly making the best use of his car to grab as many points as he could. Faded badly thereafter and outshone by Perez at times. This dropped him just behind Bottas. May have been massively handicapped by weight however.

6.Valtteri Bottas - 8.2
If the Williams had been as bad as last year and Valtteri had driven just the same, few would have noticed. Shame how fickle many fans are. I think he's been incredible given his inexperience. Apparently Frank Williams basically said he has been touched/gifted by God. He also said Bottas is as good as anyone who's sat in his cars (and that includes Senna, Prost and Mansell above others). I rate him extremely highly and expect he can be an all time great with several championships if circumstances allow. Let's see! (btw this is how I felt last year too).

5.Sebastian Vettel - 8.2
Hmmm I don't know if he should be this high, since he didn't improve his season. He seemed to fall out with his team, but don't remember Alonso doing so badly in 2007. Given he is supposed to be the best driver and wasn't changing teams, this was quite poor really. A better driver would have overcome things a little better was my conviction, especially since
Ricciardo was the new guy settling in. However, a bad year for Seb is still a good year for most others, and he impressed me by still always getting the best result he could rather than self destructing, and this was probably key in getting 2nd for Red Bull. Really does need to prove himself (amazingly).

4.Nico Rosberg - 8.9
Much stronger than most of us thought, though I always rated him very highly. I think he surpassed even my expectations. Pole trophy, regardless of his team-mate's circumstances was a feat. Relentless bagging of the best result possible kept him in the fight, though he did have the luxury of being "allowed" to finish 2nd, even a lot, in public perception terms. Don't wanna talk about Monaco and Spa much, except to be fair, Nico was always criticised for being 'too nice and soft' etc. Guess he was just trying to be more ruthless, but maybe going too far at times? Just shows you can't really win sometimes with the public...

TOP 3 TO FOLLOW...

[jens]

Great review, Rj. The exact order of drivers is always questionable, but it can't be far off any sensible suggestions. I am personally tempted to put Button higher, but acknowledge there is some pretty close competition between drivers from 4th to 9th and on top of that they were all driving different cars, so try to compare that!

Button - very consistent and good season, got lots of points and decent 4th and 5th place finishes, beat his rookie team-mate.
Grosjean - took some points for Lotus and beat Maldonado most of the time - basically the best he could do in that rubbish car.
Hülkenberg - another consistent point-machine and beat Pérez.
Bottas - also very consistent, in a very good car got lots of podiums and beat Massa.
Vettel - blew hot-and-cold, in the end got beaten by Ricciardo and maybe lost motivation towards the end.
Rosberg - great qualifying, but got beaten by Hamilton in most races.

Based on this comparison doesn't look good for Vettel, but he and Rosberg also had the best team-mates, from who they got the beating. The other blokes had a slightly lower-class team-mate, who they could manage to beat.

[dj_bytedisaster]

5.Sebastian Vettel - 8.2
Hmmm I don't know if he should be this high, since he didn't improve his season. He seemed to fall out with his team, but don't remember Alonso doing so badly in 2007. Given he is supposed to be the best driver and wasn't changing teams, this was quite poor really. A better driver would have overcome things a little better was my conviction, especially since
Ricciardo was the new guy settling in. However, a bad year for Seb is still a good year for most others, and he impressed me by still always getting the best result he could rather than self destructing, and this was probably key in getting 2nd for Red Bull. Really does need to prove himself (amazingly).

You forget some things:

First of all, the claim that he didn't improve is not accurate He was much stronger in the second half of season:

Belgium: was nowhere, chassis was changed afterwards
Italy: Was faster than RIC, but team gave him an overly ambitious strategy that failed and apologized afterwards
Singapore: Finished in front of RIC
Japan: Finsihed in front of RIC
Sotchi: Finished seconds behind RIC. RIC finished where he started, Vettel made up 3 places (RB generally was nowhere)
Austin: Had to start from pits and was called into the pits after point of no return, no real comparison possible. Collected Fastest lap.
Brazil: No comparison possible. RIC had DNF
Abu Double: No comparison possible as for no apparent reason team took the relatively fresh 6th engine from Austin out and fitted the car with a turned-down pre-Barcelona junk-heap.

It's pretty obvious that the team fucked with him badlysince he announced his departure, but saying he didn't improve is wrong. He was definitely stronger in the second half and RIC didn't look half as dominant as he looked early season.

[jens]

Actually I don't get the impression Vettel was stronger in the second half compared to first half. Just looking back - Vettel was outracing Ricciardo in Malaysia, also in Monaco before hit by car issues. In Canada they were neck and neck before Vettel lost out with strategy games.

The difference is that early in the year Vettel had so many car problems his performance was hard to read, while in the end he had less problems. What is clear is that Vettel didn't perform well in Bahrain, China (early year), Hungary, Belgium (mid-year), UAE (late year) - compared to team-mate anyway.

[rjbetty]

I can't decide who to put no. 1...

3.Daniel Ricciardo
Not much more can be said. Gets 3rd cos I'm not yet sure he's actually better than Alonso and Hamilton yet. His consistency rather than his performance surprised me. He always had the potential to be amazing cos of qualifying 6th at Bahrain in 2012.

[Tazio]

I can't decide who to put no. 1...

3.Daniel Ricciardo
Not much more can be said. Gets 3rd cos I'm not yet sure he's actually better than Alonso and Hamilton yet. His consistency rather than his performance surprised me. He always had the potential to be amazing cos of qualifying 6th at Bahrain in 2012.

Rj, I don't mean to be a an Ish Kabibble, but it is time to pay the piper. Are you prepared to honor the terms of the sig bet that you lost to me?

[rjbetty]

Um ok.

Say... what were the terms?!

[Tazio]

Come on mate we have a sig bet!! Baggie lost one to me and he got to use a very benign sig, because I was feeling benevolent, and he used it all year. I will give youy an opotion. I can give you a benign semi suggestive sig that acknowledges that I whupped you, and you can fly it for a period of not less than the midpoint of the 2015 a F1 season, or I can spank you with a good one that you would only have to fly for like preseason testing, and the first 2 races. Or as rather unique solution, you could be my agent for securing me at leas an "honorary" membership to the Anglo - Mafia if Fred gets that ride with McLaren.... That is very important to me "brotha-from anotha' motha'"

[heliocastroneves#3]

In fact, at the end of the season, Maldonado and Grosjean were pretty close to each other and a couple of times Pastor just beat Romain, which is a good thing since Romain is already driving for Lotus a couple of years. Romain is overrated and Pastor underrated.

[Tazio]

Come on mate we have a sig bet!! Baggie lost one to me and he got to use a very benign sig, because I was feeling benevolent, and he used it all year. I will give youy an opotion. I can give you a benign semi suggestive sig that acknowledges that I whupped you, and you can fly it for a period of not less than the midpoint of the 2015 a F1 season, or I can spank you with a good one that you would only have to fly for like preseason testing, and the first 2 races. Or as rather unique solution, you could be my agent for securing me at leas an "honorary" membership to the Anglo - Mafia if Fred gets that ride with McLaren.... That is very important to me "brotha-from anotha' motha'"