Vettel vs Ricciardo 2014

[FrukostScones]

Maldonado's record at Williams is better. He won a race.
Question the guy's competence by all means, but not his record.
He leads 40 odd laps, got a defacto pole and held off Alonso for alot of the race and its a fluke?

yes a fluke. No team had any idea how to make the tyres work consistently. It was setup 'pot luck'. Simple

........

no (check his qualy stats from 2012 (like (1)2,2,3,3,4,6th), and MAL bashing is seriously off-topic here.

he is maybe dumb, will never learn from his mistakes, has zero race craft but given the right circumstances is really fast and will win again...

[Vettel Maggot]

Comparing Maldonado and Webber isn't fair on Maldonado. Webber is so far ahead of Maldonado it is not even funny. Maldonado lucked out for one race in his career, Webber won at Monaco multiple times when he was an old man. Maldonado has done nothing since that win besides damaging cars, finishing behind his team mate and writing cheques to fund teams.

Vettel drove a solid race today, nothing spectacular. He over took cars on newer tyres, pretty standard, Ricciardo did the same thing in Bahrain I think it was. He even finished ahead of Vettel that day. Ricciardo just cruised around for 3rd today, you could tell by his 3% less fuel use.

[johnsonwax]

This was a good result for Vettel. Granted, 28s adrift of his teammate doesn't exactly look like a dominant drive, but moving up from 15 to 4 is nothing at all to sneeze at. That's a seriously good drive in and of itself, and was worth quite a lot to the team. Staying ahead of Ferrari is damn near all they care about at Red Bull these days, and Vettel delivered.

I don't think RB is going to catch Merc, but it's looking more like nobody else may be able to catch RB.

[rayden]

Ricciardo is a monster, don't be fooled by that smile.
Have spoken to a few people at RB and they don't think he's a no 2 at all - They think he is the real deal.

Good to see Seb get his head around the car finally. Should be a fantastic battle between these two now.

[PlatinumZealot]

Well he had his head around the car in Malaysia didn't he? We really need to see these two in a straight fight on track to see if Vettel is really slower than Ricciardo or not.

[iotar__]

Maldonado's record at Williams is better. He won a race.
Question the guy's competence by all means, but not his record.
He leads 40 odd laps, got a defacto pole and held off Alonso for alot of the race and its a fluke?

yes a fluke. No team had any idea how to make the tyres work consistently. It was setup 'pot luck'. Simple.

[Another example of failure of forum ranking.]
1. Fairy tales about "random" results which were in fact somehow constant when it comes to tyre management and even transferred into 2013 - Lotus the best example, Red Bull opposite direction, good example of how random it was was the fact who lost and who benefited from ultra conservative tyre choices in the second half of the season

2. Then Maldonado fluked Valencia qualifying with pot luck set up, made a mistake but should have been in front of Hamilton in third
Then Maldonado fluked Spa qualifying with pot luck set up
Then Maldonado fluked Singapore with pot luck set up (he was very unlucky with retirement running 4th(?))
Then Maldonado fluked Abu Dhabi with pot luck set up
And several other races before and after 2012 season, like Monaco 2011, even with horrible Williams in 2013 he had several excellent GPs. Or maybe you blinked when it all happened?

[NathanOlder]

the only injustice here is a race seat for a promising young driver is blocked by money.

Not at all, If Pastor didnt take his money their, it would probably have wiped out Grosjean's chance. So Pay Drivers are needed, without him Lotus were gone, Grosjean and Pic would have no team and Maldonado would be out too. So its not all bad.

[Cam]

the only injustice here is a race seat for a promising young driver is blocked by money.

Not at all, If Pastor didnt take his money their, it would probably have wiped out Grosjean's chance. So Pay Drivers are needed, without him Lotus were gone, Grosjean and Pic would have no team and Maldonado would be out too. So its not all bad.

I hear you, but I disagree and I think this would actually help F1 by forcing it's hand (some pain for gain). Lotus is here only because Maldonado brought copious cash. Let's not delude ourselves here. He's not any teams first pick for performance. If Lotus had closed, along with Marussia or more (due to no driver supplied cash), then we would have had global headlines and the sport would of had to face the harsh reality facts. As a result, we might of actually had some real reform - which in-turn leads to quality drivers given the opportunities they deserve and the fans seeing, finally, the best drivers in the best cars. Instead, we have teams surviving just on driver morphine drips, taking up bed space. It's a shame for everyone.

Ricciardo's not there with his bags of millions. He's there because he's good. Just as Vettel is. This is what makes the matching so great. 2 drivers head to head based on skill alone. Anyone detracting from what Ricciardo is bringing Red Bull, simply does not understand that. It' sone of the only reasons I'm watching F1 this year.

[SGeorge]

I rate Ricciardo, he is doing fantastically well. I want to see him beat Vettel, but it needs to be a close run thing - otherwise there will be continual talk that it was only because Vettel didnt get to grips with the car.

Nonetheless, I can see this year being a serious issue for Vettel's legacy - much the same as with Raikkonen if he doesnt step up (which he seems to be)

[MOWOG]

The last time Vettel got a new chassis mid-season, he waltzed away with the WDC. And he clearly had a heck of a race in Spaind driving the "new" car. As much as I like Riccardo and think he has done a superb job with a car that we all thought might not even FINISH the race in Australia, Vettel now seems set to restore order in the Red Bull garage.

Things could be a lot more interesting for Ricky Bobby going forward.

[JimClarkFan]

The last time Vettel got a new chassis mid-season, he waltzed away with the WDC. And he clearly had a heck of a race in Spaind driving the "new" car. As much as I like Riccardo and think he has done a superb job with a car that we all thought might not even FINISH the race in Australia, Vettel now seems set to restore order in the Red Bull garage.

Things could be a lot more interesting for Ricky Bobby going forward.

It is easy to have a heck of race when you have a car which is 0.5 seconds quicker than the cars you are passing. Webber proved that endlessly in the past 2 years.

The best relative performance gauge is your team mate and in every race both have finished this year, Ricciardo has lead the bulls home.

However the season isn't over, lets wait to the seasons end before we start making grandiose statements. What we can say however, is that with the first quarter of the season over, Ricciardo has looked the better of the two drivers.

[NathanOlder]

The last time Vettel got a new chassis mid-season, he waltzed away with the WDC. And he clearly had a heck of a race in Spaind driving the "new" car. As much as I like Riccardo and think he has done a superb job with a car that we all thought might not even FINISH the race in Australia, Vettel now seems set to restore order in the Red Bull garage.

Things could be a lot more interesting for Ricky Bobby going forward.

It is easy to have a heck of race when you have a car which is 0.5 seconds quicker than the cars you are passing. Webber proved that endlessly in the past 2 years.

The best relative performance gauge is your team mate and in every race both have finished this year, Ricciardo has lead the bulls home.

However the season isn't over, lets wait to the seasons end before we start making grandiose statements. What we can say however, is that with the first quarter of the season over, Ricciardo has looked the better of the two drivers.

Totally agree. Its a crying shame that we have to wait 2 weeks between races! Why cant we have a race every week Bernie! Maybe a week off to change continent.

[alexx_88]

Quite interesting: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/05/1 ... formulaOne

(Reuters) - Red Bull denied reports on Wednesday that Formula One world champion Sebastian Vettel's early season struggles were due to his car having a crooked chassis.

[Shakeman]

It is easy to have a heck of race when you have a car which is 0.5 seconds quicker than the cars you are passing. Webber proved that endlessly in the past 2 years.

The best relative performance gauge is your team mate and in every race both have finished this year, Ricciardo has lead the bulls home.

However the season isn't over, lets wait to the seasons end before we start making grandiose statements. What we can say however, is that with the first quarter of the season over, Ricciardo has looked the better of the two drivers.

A lot is being made of Vettel going forward in the Spanish GP but commentators are seem to be ignoring he was out of position at the start and he pitted more than the others giving him newer rubber than the cars he was passing. He had a massive performance advantage to those around him and it would've been quite strange if he hadn't moved through the field like he did.

I'm looking forward to Vettel vs Ricciardo with no excuses, no issues in a straight fight for 3rd.

[iotar__]

Quite interesting: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/05/1 ... formulaOne

(Reuters) - Red Bull denied reports on Wednesday that Formula One world champion Sebastian Vettel's early season struggles were due to his car having a crooked chassis.

I don't believe it, self fulfilling prophecy by Red Bull (announcing chassis problems before checking) didn't work ?

Imagine how incompetent Red Bull would have looked like, all this complaining about Renault and it turns out they can't manufacture straight chassis . Accident damage? OK but I don't recall one big enough - so pretty much the same plus uncomfortable establishing precise moment when Vette's "problems" had started. Pity we won't have a chance to learn how much made up chassis problems cost him in tenths of a second not morale.