mds wrote:
jammin78 wrote:
Brazil... well he capitalised on his three teammates and Schumi, made a mistake or two on the opening laps, but still had a decent showing. By no means a bad race, but not the mark of a legend, certainly not proof of being good under pressure.
For me this race was exactly that: proof of the fact he copes with pressure extremely well.
Taking the incident with Senna as a given (it was a racing incident, it happened, it had to be dealth with), there were two possible outcomes: choking or excelling. OK, he was let through by a few cars, but that doesn't negate his pace in the wet was really, really great and he didn't make a single mistake after L1 T4. He drove like he had nothing to lose when he had everything to lose. On top of that, there were lots of things going on/wrong:
- the SC allowed Kobayashi to take a pass on him on a then dry track
- the SC allowed Alonso to be near the top-3 again
- malfunctioning radio
- pit stop, wrong tyres fitted, so lost lots of seconds
- very slow pit stop
Even with all of this, he just coped and was fast and faultless.
It's very true that the rain helped him - on the dry it would probably have been mission impossible. But isn't coping with rain a mark of the greats? Weren't all Alonso fans hoping for rain the week before?
He made up 8 seconds on Alonso and Webber in 7 laps, while passing backmarkers. Even accounting for the fact he was let past by a few cars, that's still a great performance in my book in conditions of which everybody always says the impact of the car diminishes greatly and the driver becomes key.
Ah yes, forgot about the dodgy radio and pit stop, haha my bad! If it hadn't been for the rain I think he'd of floundered, but you're right, coping with rain is a mark of a great driver. To be fair to Seb he did very well in Brazil, I just don't see it as one of the great drives, I've seen better drives from him where he hasn't made any mistakes. I know the word is overused with Vettel, but he was lucky that the rain negated his damage somewhat, that he had a few cars not hold him up (he would've got past Schu etc anyway, they just saved him a little time and effort I guess) and the safety car did bunch the field up a little bit for him. But, the safety car did the same for everyone else, including Alonso, who failed to capitalise, and had a driver gunning for him as well. Both drivers were lucky given how manic the race was, Vettel just came away with the prize, and Alonso another bridesmaid

All in all, Vettel had both good and bad luck in his corner in Brazil, and I suppose he did handle the pressure a lot better than I would have previously expected (Hungary, post-Valencia, Turkey 10 etc), so I can see your points mds. Everything that could happen good and bad seemed to happen!
I don't count the race as an epic Vettel race... just as an epic race in general.
