planetf1.com

Just flicked onto the PF1 homepage (apologies for this, I just wanted to check if Kobayashi had found a seat...) and saw the featured article was a quote from JEV saying he's happy with his season. So I checked the results and it appears JEV has scored 16 points to Ricciardo's 10. More importantly, JEV finished 8th 4 times and Ricciardo's best finish was 9th, albeit with 5 point scoring finishes.

Under the 2003-2009 points system, Ricciardo would have scored nothing at all while JEV would have points on the board. Given these facts, why does Ricciardo seem to attract so much praise on here with JEV less so?

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Official Kamui Kobayashi Fanboy

Ricciardo seems to edge JEV, even if points say otherwise DR seems to have improved more too

i think DR was unlucky to not score more points than JEV though JEV was very unlucky in Singapore

also i think both drivers deserve much praise for scoring points in such a cruddy car

Probably because Ricciardo came with a hype, and Vergne was just one of those drivers from lower series. That is all a matter of human perception.

Of course Vergne was better than Ricciardo, but to some people that sounds like a blasphemy. Probably because we have more people from Australia than from France in this forum. That's no dig to Aussies, its natural to sheer up for your countryman.

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The end is near

From what I can see, Ricciardo is better on Saturday (by a considerable margin) but Vergne appears to edge it on Sunday.

Sunday is all that counts at the end of the day.

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"I am a believer, but I start each Grand Prix with 195 liters of fuel behind me," he explains. "I don't rely entirely on God, I rely on Prost."

Daniel actually drove better than JEV for most of the season on race day, he was just unlucky not to find himself in more points paying positions when he needed the points.

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Driver Instructor & Test Driver

i must admit i am biased

how many points did DR lose and how many points did JEV lose? i know both were in points scoring positions and had bad luck

From actually watching them and not just relying on stats. Ricciardo has easily handled Vergne in qualifying. At the the start of the season it was by ridiculous amounts but Vergne didn't have as much experience. As the season continued on, the gap closed and Ricciardo was mostly winning by small when he got on top. There are a couple of times when Vergne, even in the second half of the season has seemed out of sorts in qualy. It reminded me of Button quite a bit.

Early in the season ironically it was Ricciardo that made the bigger mistakes in the race. And he didn't really capatalised on the magic he produced in qualy. Part of it was not having as many fresh sets as Vergne and not understanding the tyres but even without that his consistency wasn't there compared to Vergne. Ricciardo also had trouble balancing aggressiveness and risk in the race early in the season. After a few mistakes he became a little overcautious for a long period. Compared to someone like Maldonado who kept his aggressiveness and although Maldonado had more incidents, he retained his seat because it made his speed more obvious. Vergne on the other hand seems much more at home in the race and has put together some races better than I would have expected for some one with so little experience and also having to deal with the Pirellis. He seems quite well measured in the race. Few mistakes, able to take positions if he is faster than the cars in front. Solid defense without fighting cars that he cannot keep behind without losing heaps of time. He has definitely driven the races with the maturity of someone who has already had a couple of seasons in F1.

That said, over the season Ricciardo improved his racing more than Vergne improved his qualifying. And that may be telling, because they both have to improve and but on different things. And the one that can sure up their weaknesses is the one that is going to shine. Still too early to call for now.

Probably a good idea to stay away from the word "luck" for a while. It's completely overused in F1, almost every post is about Schumi Alonso Hamilton Kobi Button etc etc bad luck. They're all had bad luck at some point in the season, and some luck in others.

I'd bet the STR pair benefitted from luck to gain points positions as often as not.

For me both are fairly ordinary, but Ricciardo I've been perhaps more disappointed with as some have mentioned he came in with much hype but neither have really had a stand out drive that other rookies have had in past seasons.

The problem for both and indeed any driver on the Red Bull young driver programme is that now they seem totally fixated on finding the next 'Vettel', which to me explains why they sacked both Alguersuari and Buemi. They do not seem interested in having 'decent' drivers the seem fixated on getting the next 'star'.

Will Buxton wrote an excellent blog on this recently pointing out that someone of Vettel's talent and growth is a once in a generation kind of thing and that Red Bull's policy is basically wrong, but I fear I may of drifted slightly off topic so i'll stop!

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Support: Kimi Raikkonen, Lewis Hamilton, Jenson Button, Heikki Kovalainen
Respect: Alonso, Schumacher, Newey
Not so keen on: Vettel, Di Resta, whoever decides to red flag when it rains in F1

I think both are good drivers. Ricciardo is easily better at quali but has awful starts and tends to have less race pace than Vergne. I would still take Dan rather the JEV though. He really has done some amazing work in quali this year so he has good fundamental speed

that is true they both gained an enormous amount of points due to luck and i agree luck is thrown around too often in formula one

honestly out of everything in formula one i am excited to see how they both go next year, depends very much on the car too though but imo both have talent its just neither have capitalised on it quite yet

i really hope the STR is a good car next year, at least a car that can consistently score points

To me, it seems pretty clear that currently Ricciardo is the better qualifier whereas Vergne is the better racer of the two. Both have 2013 to improve on their weaknesses, even though both have already done so.

STR would need a bit more pace to make the competition better though. If Vergne can improve his qualifying, like he appeared to be doing towards the end of the season, he could turn out really good. As could Ricciardo, if he can keep his speed over a distance. Both have shown promise this far, we'll have to see what happens.

@OP: Sunday points aren't the sole indicator for drivers race day performances.

JEV deserves credit where credit is due. He is well ahead of his team mate who came in with plenty of hype and was being hailed as the next in line to become Redbull prodigy.

In the end if you look from it as a total outsider without bias, both were little bit anonymous on track and only thing i remember from races is JEV having brainfade in valencia and how both cars went out of their way to let Redbulls pass. No standout performances that will make you turn heads like some other young drivers have produced this year.

Agreed - These two are really racing each other to replace Mark Webber when he retires at the end of next season (if he does), not for constructors points for STR. If their 2013 season is similar to this season, Dark Helmut will be forced to look elsewhere and consider all options for Mark's seat. I'm expecting things to get a bit heated between these two next year, especially if Mark announces his retirement mid year and every man and his fat girlfriend is rumored to be replacing him.

For two drivers who were driving a car that didn't receive a single update after Valencia (Round 8 of 20), I think the both of them did a solid job - especially Ricciardo scoring in almost 5-consecutive races if not for a fuel line failure through the parabolica on the final lap at Monza.

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