Will you watch F1 in 2016?

[zako85]

Schumacher, Fangio, Alonso and Prost I count among the all time greats. I can't say the same about Vettel, unfortunately, given his whipping from Danny Boy last year. People can excuse it all they want but it was a whipping. I can't think of any other "great" driver in his prime that got whipped like that. And there's no doubting Vettel is a great driver but is he amongst the all time greats? Maybe! I guess we'll see in time.

There are several examples of very fine drivers having one bad season.

Senna in 1992: Highly inconsistent. While driving arguably the second best car on the grid and with three victories, he finished WDC only in 4th spot, allowing Schumacher with just one win to clinch 3rd and Patrese also with one win to clinch 2nd, and finishing only one point ahead of his teammate, Berger.

Hamilton in 2011: Got embarrassed by Button, who managed to finish second in WDC.

I think the main problem Vettel had in 2014 is that he lost the fancy aero toolkit he was used to race with since 2009. Ricciardo came in with a Toro Rosso background, whose car probably was not so reliant on the aero diffuser effects the previous year. Confused and with car having incredibly bad reliability since the very testing part of the season and with significantly less hunger than Ricciardo, Vettel had probably subconsciously written the season off specially with his Ferrari plans already in place.