planetf1.com

I'm wondering how many 19 year olds have been placed in the 3rd fastest car in F1?

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PFI Pick 10 Competition

2013: 5th Place

2014: Currently 1st

Vettel only scored points on his debut thanks to his team mate's hydraulics failing, let's be honest. He was in the 3rd fastest car and he only beat the likes of Fisichella's Renault (he'd been thumped by Kovi that weekend), Wurz's Williams, Davidson in a Super Aguri and Button in a terrible Honda. The rest aren't even worth mentioning. I'm pretty sure Rosberg retired from a points scoring position late in the race that elevated Vettel into the final points place too. Not only that but Vettel was lucky he didn't take anyone out when he outbraked himself into T1 on lap 1.

So in all he was lucky to get a point, on speed he'd have been 10th most likely. It was a solid debut, but not great.

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1994 1995 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 Get well soon Schumi.

No one call anyone a moo-pickle...

Agree, Vettel is a great driver but his debut he was not up to speed when he first entered F1.

Nick out qualified him by 0.7 seconds. About 1 second slower than you would expect and he had a lot of miles under his belt int he car too.

But, being harsh he was literally a boy.

I thought Kubicas debut was Monza, now I have checked I am wondering why he is on the list. Monza was a great drive though.

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I'm not sure about Vettel having tonnes of time in the car looking back. On Wiki it's only got him down as having been test driver for BMW Sauber for 7 races, and I imagine that would be the usual FP1 only programme, so that would only amount to just over 10 hours in the car before his debut.

Edit: Forgot in 2006 you could run a third driver on Friday, so that would be both sessions, but all the same.

Ricardo Rodriguez was 19 when he drove an F1 car for the first time and put it on the front row at the 1961 Italian Grand Prix. Ricardo was only a tenth behind pole man and team-mate Wolfgang von Trips and well ahead of Richie Ginther and Phil Hill in the other two works Ferrari 156s.

However the 156 wasn't the 3rd fastest F1 car that season. In the 8 races it scored 6 poles, 4 fastest laps and 5 wins and Ferrari drivers finished 1st, 2nd and 5th in the World Championship - so I reckon it was that year's fastest car by a distance.

Schumacher had half a days testing at Silverstone having never driven a F1 car before, then he made his debut at Spa, a track he'd never driven before and he became an almost instant star and got poached by Benetton for the next race, thats something that stands out.

Vettel's debut was unforgettable and Kubica impressed the more the previous season for BMW under identical conditions, but he's not on the list.

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PFI Pick 10 Competition

2013: 5th Place

2014: Currently 1st

Reading that i can see why Rodriguez got included

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PFI Pick 10 Competition

2013: 5th Place

2014: Currently 1st

What about my favourite driver, Mr Johnny Herbert, 4th in his first ever race?

The OP's 'best debut' list (not Balibari's, he knows far more than the compilers) and posters views/criticisms, shows how complex F1 racing is.

The quality /speed of the car has to be taken into account. Debuts like Andretti's, Hamilton's, Baghetti's, Jacques Villenueve's were all in top-rate cars. This does not detract from them as drivers or from what they did; it just highlights how much easier it is to make a name in a top car, than in a backmarker.

The poster who mentioned Johnny Herbert's debut (apologies for not remembering who) is quite right; how much more difficult that must have been, when he could hardly walk, than fit/healthy drivers in top-rate cars.

Bare results often hide real comparables. What I like about such threads is that so many facts are posted, that most of us did not realise or have forgotten.

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This..

I think the headline writer overstepped by calling it a "top 10" list as the article itself merely calls it a look back at ten standout replacement or debut, both good and bad.'

What I took more from the list is that some very significant figures in the sport debuted without a triumphant finish that might have annointed them as 'the next great thing' as well as the fates not being too kind to them in their debut as a full-time or replacement driver since it was following up Bruno's replacement debut at Lotus Renault.

Also that many of the debuts listed weren't so different in terms of results from others not listed by drivers who faded away to be easily forgotten. So its usually a mistake to put too much into a starring debut or write someone off because there were no points at the end of that 1st race day.

But I know its also fodder around here for proof of someone being unfairly slightly or wrongly over-rated. But I did note that the writer didn't make a point of trying to describe it as the 'top 10' or '10 best' and that it was just the headline writer who seems to have gotten carried away by calling it a 'top 10' which is pretty predictable for ESPN as it seems the network believes EVERYTHING must have a ranking attached and can't just be a list. Can't just talk about 5 random players or 5 random teams or 5 random events, they must be quantified in some order even if they aren't. (Of course, its also why the network ignores so many sports because they don't fit into some 'top 5'.)

About Vettel, I always remember this quote of Ascanelli (it's on wikipedia, quoting from there):


I also wouldn't really take his debut race as one of the best debut races ever. According to the above quote, in 2008 he found something that worked and that made him the driver he is now.
So he might have started as a good-but-not-the-best driver, and afterwards he was able to step it up.