The curious case of Sebastian Vettel

[raymondu999]

Having that said, i feel his performance this year stems from him trying just a little too hard in a car he doesnt feel comfortable with.

Montoya seems to feel the same way https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/mont ... l/4540756/

[NathanOlder]

What Schumacher did with Ferrari still is unrivaled- as a mather of fact, Hamilton is ‘driving’ Schumacher’s car at Mercedes- as Hamilton ‘took over’ what Schumacher ‘started’.

Hamilton has never have to built a team up from scratch ‘himself’.

Hamilton still needs to drive the car though- so nothing negative about him, just to be sure you guys understand.

I totally missed the time Schumacher run the team, signed key personnel, designed the car. You have the season reviews from those years , I must have missed it.

Come on man, what a load of BS. The 2013 Mercedes would/could be directly linked to to Schumacher, but remember Nico was there too, Nico was the future at that stage. Schumacher only took over Jenson's Brawn, so is Button the real hero here,or who was with Jenson... Rubens. Who was with Michael at Ferrari...... Rubens. Clearly its Rubens who was the guy running the team, Michael just drove the car Saying that Hamilton won his titles in is a Schumacher Car would mean the 2009 Ferrari was a Schumacher car and that was a pile of trash. Also the 96, 97, 98 Benettons weren't contenders, so is Schumacher to blame there. Hell, while were at it, the 1992 Jordan only scored 1 point, your philosophy would mean Michael shares a percentage of the blame for that!

x 1000

[PlatinumZealot]

Vettel simply ran out of talent and is overdriving to try to make up. When you are a hot head on track amd overdrive you makd mistakes.. Simples.

[Just_a_fan]

What Schumacher did with Ferrari still is unrivaled- as a mather of fact, Hamilton is ‘driving’ Schumacher’s car at Mercedes- as Hamilton ‘took over’ what Schumacher ‘started’.

Hamilton has never have to built a team up from scratch ‘himself’.

Hamilton still needs to drive the car though- so nothing negative about him, just to be sure you guys understand.

Total tripe.

Schumacher's car, the car he made apparently, never allowed him to beat his team mate, Rosberg. Indeed, Rosberg beat Schumacher by nearly twice as many points in two of the three years they were together. And all whilst driving Schumacher's car too. Wow, what a guy. Hamilton then used "Schumacher's car" to beat Rosberg 3:1. But he's only able to that because of "Schumacher's car" apparently.

Schumacher didn't build Ferrari in to the winning team of the early 2000s. Brawn and Todt did that. Schumacher used the cars that team built, along with unlimited testing and bespoke tyres from Bridgestone, to dominate F1. Of course, his team mate was also contractually bound to be number 2 to him - don't forget that little snippet.

But yeah, Schumacher did it all on his own!

[LM10]

Vettel simply ran out of talent and is overdriving to try to make up. When you are a hot head on track amd overdrive you makd mistakes.. Simples.

I don't think that someone can run out of talent. By getting older, drivers might lose proportions of their fitness, reflexes, risk tolerance etc.
Having said that, I think that Vettel's problem is none of those. In my opinion, it's a combination of not having a car meeting his style (+ lack of adaption) and the will to win at all costs, hence his overdriving. His will to prove/win won't decrease as the pressure at Ferrari keeps on increasing year after year. A Ferrari team which hasn't won a championship for over a decade is surely the last place you want to be, if you want to have a pressureless working ambience.

It was the best thing for Leclerc that the team declared him number 2 driver. This put all the pressure on Vettel and off Leclerc.

[Just_a_fan]

I wonder if Vettel's problem is that Ferrari just haven't given him a car he gets on with. He seems to like a car that can accept early throttle application - exactly what the RedBulls delivered with their exhaust augmented diffuser. With that design, the key was to rotate the car early then get on the throttle quite hard, the immediate downforce production with the exhaust then gave great traction and helped kill the rotation of the car. Vettel has had several spins when pushing hard in corners, suggesting he's simply asking for more than the rear can give him. That suggests that he reverts to type when trying hard. Of course, 99% of the time he can catch the rear but occasionally it just goes too quickly and the spin is the result.

This apparent inability to adapt is his driving weakness - hence my earlier comment about being a one trick pony. That he sometimes throws his toys out of the pram, is a general human weakness.

Of course the funny thing is we're comparing drivers etc and claiming one is "rubbish" compared to another. If these were wines, we're comparing €1000 bottles and talking as if one is a €5 bottle, when in reality one is a €995 bottle, another is a €1005 bottle. Both are hugely better than most will ever be.

[PlatinumZealot]

Vettel simply ran out of talent and is overdriving to try to make up. When you are a hot head on track amd overdrive you makd mistakes.. Simples.

I don't think that someone can run out of talent. By getting older, drivers might lose proportions of their fitness, reflexes, risk tolerance etc.
Having said that, I think that Vettel's problem is none of those. In my opinion, it's a combination of not having a car meeting his style (+ lack of adaption) and the will to win at all costs, hence his overdriving. His will to prove/win won't decrease as the pressure at Ferrari keeps on increasing year after year. A Ferrari team which hasn't won a championship for over a decade is surely the last place you want to be, if you want to have a pressureless working ambience.

It was the best thing for Leclerc that the team declared him number 2 driver. This put all the pressure on Vettel and off Leclerc.

Wasn't Vettel the "baby schumi" that develops cars from mere dogs into fine tuned rocketships? He has been at Ferrari for 5 years now, so his "driving style" inputs would have favoured the target design balance for the Ferrari cars over the years. I don't think Vettel finds the car not suited to his style at all. It's just that LeClerc can drive the car closer to the edge.

We saw Kimi spinning ALOT in the previous Ferraris and we know Kimi is driver who loves playing with oversteer... so to me, it's definitely how far can you take it to the edge and that is what LeClerc is able to do better.

[digitalrurouni]

I think Fernando summed it up very well.

https://youtu.be/jYOM0v6ajRE

Whoa. Brutally honest. Damn I miss Alonso. Not the disgruntled Alonso in McLaren but the Alonso when he was in Ferrari. Team killer blah blah whatever he may be he is missed on the grid and if he ever announced he is coming back, F1 would get a lot more viewership that is for sure.

[Zarathustra]

I totally missed the time Schumacher run the team, signed key personnel, designed the car. You have the season reviews from those years , I must have missed it.

x 1000

https://youtu.be/heluNNhV1Dg
01:20..

Looking forward to hearing from you again.

[digitalrurouni]

I totally missed the time Schumacher run the team, signed key personnel, designed the car. You have the season reviews from those years , I must have missed it.

x 1000

https://youtu.be/heluNNhV1Dg
01:20..

Looking forward to hearing from you again.

Never seen that interview before thanks for sharing!

[Wynters]

I totally missed the time Schumacher run the team, signed key personnel, designed the car. You have the season reviews from those years , I must have missed it.

x 1000

https://youtu.be/heluNNhV1Dg
01:20..

Looking forward to hearing from you again.

Thank you for the link, very interesting.

I note that he says 'so they done a good job' when talking about running the team, getting key personnel and putting them in the correct position in 'the gearbox'. He goes on to imply that he didn't get the credit he deserved from people external to the organisation, but that's a long way from saying that he built the entire team from scratch. Schumacher was a great driver who undoubtedly contributed significantly to Mercedes' development, but that non inconsiderable contribution is just that, a contribution.

It suits the ridiculous driver-centric narrative drivel that is spewed by PR gurus, that a driver is the entire team, single-handedly carrying them on their heroic shoulders from last on the grid to first, but it's not reality in the modern era. I'm sure there's a slightly more recent one (suggestions welcome), but the only one that springs to mind is Bruce McLaren. Financier, designer and driver, building the team up from scratch.

As for Vettel, he's a great driver in a team that I don't think suits him and in a car that clearly doesn't suit him. I can't think of many drivers who could make that situation work and, by the looks of things, it's only going to get harder for him. I actually feel sad for him, much as I did for Alonso in his final few years.

[NathanOlder]

I totally missed the time Schumacher run the team, signed key personnel, designed the car. You have the season reviews from those years , I must have missed it.

x 1000

https://youtu.be/heluNNhV1Dg
01:20..

Looking forward to hearing from you again.

Whats an interview just after the summer break in 2013 got to do with, lets say the W09?
Just how much input do you honestly think Michael had in the W05, genuine question, as earlier you basically said its Michaels car.

[Edax]

It suits the ridiculous driver-centric narrative drivel that is spewed by PR gurus, that a driver is the entire team, single-handedly carrying them on their heroic shoulders from last on the grid to first, but it's not reality in the modern era. I'm sure there's a slightly more recent one (suggestions welcome), but the only one that springs to mind is Bruce McLaren. Financier, designer and driver, building the team up from scratch.

Yet the opposite view that the driver just drives the car that the engineers built I also find lacking.

Take the williams for instance. Probably they ran all the simulation numbers and the windtunnel figures and they though over summer that they had build a pretty good car. That is until they put a guy behind the wheel. And maybe it would be a good car if you have a driver with nanosecond reaction times and near perfect control. In the real world it isn’t working.

Racing at this level is the interaction between a very skilled driver and a set of very skilled engineers. And the more precise a driver knows to tell what the car is doing and what he wants it to do, the easier it becomes to tailor the car. All the horsepower numbers, grip levels, downforce levels are as good as the interface with the driver.

Perhaps it is less so than in the past now that the simulators have gotten so good that they can run parallel development with test drivers, but I still think the drivers ass is the most valuable sensor on the car ( certainly the most expensive ).

And as asses go I think Vettel is one of the more valuable. He can help built a car.

The only thing with Vettel is he isn’t good with pressure. That was maybe less noticeable when he had a car that would just disappear over the horizon. But the incidents have always been there.

[Zarathustra]

I totally missed the time Schumacher run the team, signed key personnel, designed the car. You have the season reviews from those years , I must have missed it.

x 1000

https://youtu.be/heluNNhV1Dg
01:20..

Looking forward to hearing from you again.

Whats an interview just after the summer break in 2013 got to do with, lets say the W09?
Just how much input do you honestly think Michael had in the W05, genuine question, as earlier you basically said its Michaels car.

It’s about putting the right people into the right places- as Schumacher did ‘beautifully’ explaine himself.

Last but not least- good to see you didn’t ‘block’ me, you are under the influence.

https://youtu.be/P8Q5j9kXT_o

[NathanOlder]

Of course its important to put the right people in the right place. Todt did great putting Michael in the car, and putting all the other employees in there roles. Its more Todts Ferrari than it ever will be Michaels