Kingshark wrote:I'm going to stick my neck out here: Rosberg is the fastest man in F1 over 1 lap in the dry.
The reason to why I specify dry weather, is because rain is a bit of his weakness.
Rosberg's beating Hamilton 10-9 in dry qualifying as teammates, but in the wet he is 6-1 down.
I also think that he is faster than Vettel and Ricciardo (two other worthy contenders).
Naahhh... He's the best student of the sport. I think he's a good learner, but left to his own devices to put in a hot lap i don't think he's naturally quicker. He has been using an iterative process of hamilton's data to pin point where he's slower.
If he sees where hamilton brakes later or turns the car in a certain way, then he's going to throw caution to the wind and copy it. That's what we are witnessing. If he is to repeat that many times with changes in car weight and tyre conditions i don't think he's going to pull it off. So i wouldn't put it down to natural speed. His advantage is in his analytical skills.
And this is why he can't go much faster than Hamilton when he does outqualify him.
He knows the bench mark, but he doesn't know how to go beyond that. So we will see a few of these hundreths Q3 everytime he beats Lewis.
Saying that, he got pole by a few hundreths, and that's with a Hamilton Error. Hamilton error free beats Rosberg by 2 to 5 tenths.
So until you have a situation where both put in their best laps then maybe you have an argument.
Button himself has had some decent qualy sessions against Lewis, even when Lewis has made no apparent error. I'm yet to see that with Rosberg. He's fast no doubt, but not faster than Hamilton.