Verstappen to Red Bull!!!

[Ranger]

He did get his ass handed by

a) the team, which stole his potential victory at Canada (and apologized afterwards)
b) the car which kept breaking down while RIC's didn't. Even Marko admitted that and that says a lot.
c) the fact that they had to change the chassis three times throughout the year.
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.

2014 Red Bull Statistics:
Qualifying: Ricciardo 12 - 7
Race finish: Ricciardo 11 - 3
Laps ahead: Ricciardo 483 - 448
Points: Ricciardo 238 - 167

Even accounting for reliability and racing incidents that isn't really that close.

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. .

Be that as it may, that would put Ricciardo ahead of Raikkonen on current form, well ahead of Webber when he was Vettel's team-mate (Mark admits this).

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.

He beat the reigning 4-time World Champion in the same car, which was not a championship winning machine.

Sometimes I think you believe that no one is better than Vettel, and create your reasoning from there.

For the record, Ricciardo's 2016 results:
Australia: 4th
Bahrain: 4th
China: 4th (after getting a puncture when leading, then dropping back to 17th)
Russia: 11th (after Turn 2 incident that wrecked his race)

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. Long story short: Being handed your ass and having a bad season are not the same thing.

There is no other meaningful comparison between Ricciardo and Vettel in the same car, bad season or not.

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.

Kimi Raikkonen hasn't driven a great race since 2013 when Grosjean was his team-mate.

He is easily the most overrated and overpaid driver on the grid.