Verstappen to Red Bull!!!

[TorqueCurve]

I couldnt believe it when I first read about the switch, I cant imagine how Kvyat will be feeling when he starts the next race back at Torro Rosso. Hope he can pick himself up although I am not sure he has the pace to be a WDC in the future, with that in mind Redbull made a good shout. Mad Max looks like he could be a bit special and he has so much time ahead of him, will be really interesting to see how he does against Danny, I don't think he is any faster than Sainz but he is that much younger that by the time he is the same age as Sainz he will probably a good step faster.

[The Black Knight]

AS I said, it was a bad season and in no way comparaböe to how Vettel drove in 2013 and again 2015. It seems people look only at the points and not how it came about. In that regard Lewis was humiliated by Button in 2011 and lets not forget that over the entire three years Button and Hamilton were at McLaren, Button scored more points too. Boy, that guy must be hopeless...

Hamilton outscored Button 2/3 years they were teammates together. And Hamilton has won a race with every car he has driven in F1, so clearly not as useless as Vettel. Vettel had the second best car on the grid in 2014 and still couldn't win a race while his teammate won 3. But yes, 2011 was a whopper for Lewis considering his very high standards but at least he had the courage to stay and fight the next year, to come back and beat Button. That showed character, unlike Vettel who just tucked tail and ran whimpering to Ferrari rather than facing up to the challenge of taking on the faster Ricciardo.

[dj_bytedisaster]

Hamilton outscored Button 2/3 years they were teammates together. And Hamilton has won a race with every car he has driven in F1, so clearly not as useless as Vettel. Vettel had the second best car on the grid in 2014 and still couldn't win a race while his teammate won 3. But yes, 2011 was a whopper for Lewis considering his very high standards but at least he had the courage to stay and fight the next year, to come back and beat Button. That showed character, unlike Vettel who just tucked tail and ran whimpering to Ferrari rather than facing up to the challenge of taking on the faster Ricciardo.

That shows how much you know about F1 - the words 'nuff anything' spring to mind. Lewis stayed at McLaren because he had nowhere else to go. You saw in 2012 how quickly that changed when he took the first offer he got. Vettel had publically stated when he was still at Toro Rosso that the ultimate goal was to get into a Ferrari seat. In 2014 he had an offer and he took it because a performance clause allowed him to accept Ferrari's offer.

What I really laughed loudest about was mentioning Lewis Hamilton and the word character in the same sentence. You can't be serious. The only one with less character is Alonso, and that guy took part in race fixing and blackmailed his team. Granted, Lewis' deliberately lying to the stewards and the press at Melbourne 2009, leaking team telemetry data and leaking details of a confidential meeting in Spa '14 might look a bit pale in comparison to Alonso's list of transgressions, but attesting him character is a bit rich, especially when you say a man with one more title than Lewis and Multi21 as the only real blot on the vest has none.

[The Black Knight]

That shows how much you know about F1 - the words 'nuff anything' spring to mind. Lewis stayed at McLaren because he had nowhere else to go. You saw in 2012 how quickly that changed when he took the first offer he got. Vettel had publically stated when he was still at Toro Rosso that the ultimate goal was to get into a Ferrari seat. In 2014 he had an offer and he took it because a performance clause allowed him to accept Ferrari's offer.

What I really laughed loudest about was mentioning Lewis Hamilton and the word character in the same sentence. You can't be serious. The only one with less character is Alonso, and that guy took part in race fixing and blackmailed his team. Granted, Lewis' deliberately lying to the stewards and the press at Melbourne 2009, leaking team telemetry data and leaking details of a confidential meeting in Spa '14 might look a bit pale in comparison to Alonso's list of transgressions, but attesting him character is a bit rich, especially when you say a man with one more title than Lewis and Multi21 as the only real blot on the vest has none.

Lets take Vettel's transgressions and, actually, there have been many, it amazes me how blinkered you are. But since you mentioned it, lets take Multi21. Vettel had no problem threatening his own team RBR with legal action when he sent them a solicitors letter in the aftermath of Multi21. That shows him to have less character than Alonso. At least in Alonso's case, he actually was at war with his own team at that time. Vettel, on the other hand, had it nice and cushy. And as soon as it gets a little rough, of course, he throws the toys out of the pram and threatens his team that had brought him so much success.

You know, I'll be the first person to state that Lewis's past is less than rosy. But the thing I admire most about him is always his ability to come out and say that he was wrong and made a mistake. Taking the telemetry data leak (you'd swear he had secretly sold TBs of data to a rival), or Melbourne 2009. He came out and took ownership of his mistakes and carried on. That is what real character is, it's admitting when you make your mistakes because, at the end of the day, we will all screw up from time to time. Character is not wetting diapers and calling a solicitor like Vettel did. As for Spa 14, whether it was confidential or not, he did what he had to do to put a cheat in his place. I've personally no issue with this. He played a cheat at his own game and then used that edge to obliterate Rosberg for the remainder of the year.

I've never witnessed Vettel admit when he did wrong. Take Turkey 2010 where he was clearly wrong and didn't admit it. Narain Karthikeyan in Malaysia 2012 where your boy had such character that he showed a fellow driver the finger after Vettel himself cut acrosss Karthikeyan and caused a collision., Kvyat this year in China, which was just a racing incident, and then tries to bully Kvyat in the aftermath. In none of these situations, or any other which I may have forgotten about, have I ever seen Vettel admit fault and he definitely hasn't shown character in any of them. All these just point to a person whom just likes to get things the easy way and always has done. That's why he left RBR, not because it was his dream to go to Ferrari, he could have gone to Ferrari any time he wanted. He just wanted life the easy way again and not have to face Danny, which exactly sums up his F1 tenure to date. Easy!

I'll give him credit for what he has achieved in Ferrari last year. It was the first time he nearly impressed me. Given that, I'm actually not sure how much of that was him being great, or simply looking great beside a very average and over-rated Kimi Raikkonen. Either way, Ricciardo still whipped his ass in a straight fight.

There's no doubting Vettel is a fantastic driver, although definitely not near the top of the current crop, but he's also a whiny little bitch!

[N4D13]

I'm not a moderator, but right now I'm feeling inclined to remind you people that this thread is supposed to be about the Verstappen-Kyvat swap. As much as the Vettel v. Hamilton argument is interesting, I would personally appreciate it if we could stop it from resurfacing in pretty much every long thread in this forum.

[Garry Walker]

He did get his ass handed by

a) the team, which stole his potential victory at Canada (and apologized afterwards).

Stole? No. Ricciardo made better use of his strategy and was faster when it counted.

b) the car which kept breaking down while RIC's didn't. Even Marko admitted that and that says a lot

PB had 3 car related retirements during 2014. So did Ricciardo, if we count him being DSQ at Australia.

c) the fact that they had to change the chassis three times throughout the year.

And every time they changed it, it didn't make any change difference in his performance - Ricciardo was much faster all the time.
Besides that, changing your chassis is quite normal and not indicative of a issue.

d) he went into the season with a massive mileage deficit as he also had the majority of mechanicals during the abysmal winter tests and RIC got the entire Bahrain test with Vettel not running at all.

Facts are still your worst enemy.
There were 3 pre-season tests in 2014.
One at Jerez and two at Bahrain.
At Jerez Ricciardo did 10 laps, PB did 11 laps.
At Bahrain, altogether, Ricciardo did 148 laps. PB did massively less, massively. He did exactly 147 laps. So a grand total difference of exactly 0 laps over 3 tests. Of course, it was not an ideal test period for them, but it should have been more than enough. Actually, Ricciardo was the one who suffered more, because he was new to the team.

There is no doubt that Danny got used to the different characteristics of the car quicker than Seb, but the picture is massively skewed by the fact that Vettel's year was like Lewis' start to 2016. He had all the bad luck in 2014. If you look at the second half of the 2014 season, you'll see that there wasn't much in between them.

Pacewise, Ricciardo was much faster pretty much all the time. The only races in 2014 where Ricciardo was not better were Malaysia and Brazil. It was his racepace that was clearly superior to that of his teammates and that stayed constant in whole of 2014.

RIC is good, but he is not championship material, because he lacks the consistency. He is brilliant in one race and rather anonymous in the next. He was looking good in 2014, but a year later, against Kvyat he looked distinctly beatable while Vettel was back to his old self.

The only reason PB looked better in 2015 than in 2014 was because he had a weak teammate. If you look at his actual performances, he made plenty of errors and plenty of bad weekends. When your teammate is Alcohol Kimi, who was massacred in 2014 by Alonso, then beating him is not exactly difficult. If his teammate in 2015 had been Lewis, Ricciardo, Alonso - you would have seen exactly the same as in 2014. A total beatdown on PB.
Also, let's not forget that according to rumors, Ricciardo was besting the best times vettel did in the Red Bull simulator already in 2013...
As for Ricciardo not being championship material? In the Red Bull from 2009 to 2013, he would have taken 5 titles.

People seem to forget that the great Ayrton Senna once barely beat Berger by a single point. There were only five races in 1992 in which both Maccas finished and Berger finished higher than Senna in three of them

You need to check your stats.
When both of them actually finished the races, it was in favour of Senna 3-1.
Besides that, the difference is that in 1992 Berger rarely had the measure of Senna in speed, neither in qualifying nor in races. In 2014, Ricciardo had the measure of his teammate in speed pretty much all the time.

Long story short: Being handed your ass and having a bad season are not the same thing. Kimi Räikkönen was handed his ass, first by Alonso then by Vettel, but looking at 2015 you can easily see that Seb hadn't forgotten how to drive. He had just inherited Webbers car

No, he inherited a weak teammate, just like in 2013. The only time he had a teammate who was competent, he was destroyed.

And let's not forget the infamous 2011 season when Button ended 2nd in WDC and clearly dominant over his now three times world champion teammate. According to Button himself, this was the best season he had in all of his career.

In 2011, LH was actually not lacking in pace, but was lacking in brains. Maissvely different from Red Bull situationin 2014.

AS I said, it was a bad season and in no way comparaböe to how Vettel drove in 2013 and again 2015. It seems people look only at the points and not how it came about. In that regard Lewis was humiliated by Button in 2011 and lets not forget that over the entire three years Button and Hamilton were at McLaren, Button scored more points too. Boy, that guy must be hopeless...

The only difference is that in 2013 and 2015 PB had a teammate who was completely out of his depth. The first time he met a quality teammate, he ran away from the challenge.

That shows how much you know about F1 - the words 'nuff anything' spring to mind. Lewis stayed at McLaren because he had nowhere else to go. You saw in 2012 how quickly that changed when he took the first offer he got. Vettel had publically stated when he was still at Toro Rosso that the ultimate goal was to get into a Ferrari seat. In 2014 he had an offer and he took it because a performance clause allowed him to accept Ferrari's offer.

What I really laughed loudest about was mentioning Lewis Hamilton and the word character in the same sentence. You can't be serious. The only one with less character is Alonso, and that guy took part in race fixing and blackmailed his team. Granted, Lewis' deliberately lying to the stewards and the press at Melbourne 2009, leaking team telemetry data and leaking details of a confidential meeting in Spa '14 might look a bit pale in comparison to Alonso's list of transgressions, but attesting him character is a bit rich, especially when you say a man with one more title than Lewis and Multi21 as the only real blot on the vest has none.

Yet, nothing quite bests threatning to sue your own team like your hero did.

[Zico]

Garry, can I rent your sig space? Was thinking if something like..

"Super Seb, 4 time WDC, simply the best driver in F1 history... or maybe it's Fernando"

A case of Kool-ade be enough?


On a serious note and back OT.. I think we have something quite special in Max and he can only get better. His ability to soak up the huge pressure he was under, turn it round and actually thrive on it in Spain suggests to me that he has enormous potential. What do you see?