Spinning off in Canada and Japan; screwed-up pit stop in Portugal?
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Crash in Australia too which gave McLaren the Constructors title.
Everyone here knows I’m not the biggest Vettel fan but the sheer number of mistakes he has made this year is completely out of character. I always felt that he was vulnerable under pressure and prone to mistakes but never on the level we have seen from him this year.
Ferrari admittted now that they rolled back the uprades they brought to Singapore and hence why they were more competitive in Austin against Mercedes, so it appears there are multiple errors on both the teams and Vettel’s side. I don’t understand why it took Ferrari so long to realise the upgrade issues. I wrote a post the other day here about the upgrades and suspecting the Singapore ones and that was before Ferrari stated they had rolled the upgrades back (or before I heard about it at least), so how could they not have suspected it with all the data they have? That has cost them the championship along with Vettel’s mistakes. Both team and Vettel must shoulder the blame, they both threw it away but, likewise Mercedes and Hamilton just came alive since Singapore.
And I think Brawn is right, Sebastien is out of sorts:
http://www.espn.co.uk/f1/story/_/id/...titive-ferrari
There’s a mixture of a lot of factors causing this but he must be under immense pressure at Ferrari.
True, something happened to the the Mercedes cars during the race. Probably the race conditions moved away from their race setup from Saturday. I can see that did not help Bottas. But Bottas has been to far behind Hamilton in races with always at least a car between them. If Mercedes is to maintain their lead over the Ferraris, he would need to really step up.
Wow! You guys are a tough crowd!
As opposed to diminishing Mansell's 91 season, I thought it was a mammoth effort to make it a contest for the title.
The only driver in driver who's thrown away a title due to their own clumsiness and underperformance in recent decades is Hamilton, in 07 and 10. You can excuse 2007, but he was in prime position to win 2010 after the Belgian GP. 3pts ahead of Webber (much weaker driver in a team that didn't want him to win, albeit in a stronger car), 31 ahead of Vettel and 41 ahead of Alonso (in a weaker car), and he got overrun by all of them.
This is forgotten though because it was 8 years ago, and doesn't fit the narrative of Hamilton being a precocious F1 phenomenon.
If anything, Vettel's current season reminds me of Hill in 95. After a great start, everything they did afterwards turned to ****. It didn't matter what he did, even if it was the right thing, it was the wrong thing. The only thing that could be done was to wait for the season to end.
Not just that. MB don't have the performance advantage they had from 14-16. Bottas also doesn't have the clout in the team Rosberg had.
You shouldn't need clout in a team if its really a team. If its every man for himself then its not a team. Bottas' role is to back up Hamilton for wins when Hamilton has a problem and to gather constructors points toward the season title. He hasn't done such a great job.
The role of number 2 , as Valterie understood it , began when he fell behind Lewis far enough that there was no chance for him to win , and he duly and dutifully filled the role as best he could .
This time , he couldn't fill the role with no tires at the end .
He didn't fail them . They failed him .
And Lewis as well , as a result .
This was one thing journos always mentioned - during Vettel's four straight titles at Red Bull he was great because he was almost always at the front, no overtaking necessary. When he had to fight for a position his race craft was suspect. I felt that once he join Ferrari he was forced to fight for positions and has gotten better but maybe, just maybe, putting pressure on him is a sure way of dealing with his challenge over the season.