zeph wrote:SeijaKessen wrote:
Guess who has the other two largest margins of victory?
Alonso.
Hockenheim was 6.9 seconds and his win in Valencia was 6.4 seconds.
Fair enough. But in both cases Vettel fell back, in Valencia retired because of alternator, in Hockenheim demoted because of illegal overtake. Subtract the 20s penalty and the difference is 3.7 seconds. But you're right that no car looks outright dominant this year. I just get the feeling that the Ferrari is not as good as Alonso's results make it look.
Vettel's misfortune at Valencia is sort of pointless since had the alternator not gone, we have no idea what would have happened the remainder of the race. It's an assumption that he would have won the race and maintained his lead. But what if he happened to crash off at some point in the race? If Vettel doesn't get the 20 second penalty at Hockenheim --he doesn't try to make that overtake on Button-- who knows if he would have made up as much time to Alonso since he still would have been fighting to overtake, and he may have lost plenty of time. We'll never know one way or another had circumstances been different.
I don't think the F2012 is a great car by any means, but Ferrari did enough to get the car driveable for at least Alonso. It still has tire wear issues, but it's nowhere near as glaring as the W03. Among the legitimate top teams, I'd say the F2012 has the worst tire wear of all the cars. The blown tire strategies at Canada and Silverstone didn't help things at all.
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On a side note, we haven't done the race yet, but I'm usually wrong so I'm not holding my breath.
