planetf1.com

Actually, if it wasn't for strong results from Chrysler Fiat would be in serious financial difficulty now with costs far outweighing income

I think Toby's point is possibly that while Vettel is very good his surge at the end of each year has as much to do with RBR adapting to the rules better than it has to do with Seb learning his racecraft. In fact, if you assume that the car is level relative to its competitors throughout the year then Seb starts to look like a slow developer!

And when you analyse his years at the top, it turns out that his reputation for late surges is not actually that well deserved anyway.

I think 2009 and 2010 were very good years for him which buck the above trend for second half surges. In 2009 he was good through most of the year: Lewis and Kimi outscored him in the second half but his consistency carried over from the first half earned him second place overall. In 2010 Alonso scored the most number of points in the second half of the year, not Vettel, which seems to be the commonly held belief. His run was actually the most impressive of all as he came from a deficit of 47 points (after GB) to within 4 points of the title, compared to a "paltry" 24 point gap for Seb. Seb showed strong nerve in the final race in the face of almost impossible odds, reminiscent of Kimi in 2007, but in all honesty that title owes as much to Alonso / Ferrari throwing it away in the last race as it does to Seb winning it (much like Lewis / McLaren threw it away in 2007). Seb also had a very consistent year, scoring only 14 more points in the second half compared to the first and with one extra retirement in the first half that gap lowers even more.

In 2011 Seb actually had a worse second half than first, as he never finished lower than 2nd in the first half but, shock horror, actually finished off the podium at his home Grand Prix. So in none of the above years did Seb really adapt better than anyone else later in the year, contrary to widely accepted wisdom: generally speaking he was simply more consistent than anyone else. It's only really 2012 and 2013 where he had a noticeably better 2nd half than 1st and that could be pinpointed to two major factors: in 2012 it's been widely speculated that in the second half of the year RBR managed to find a way to unlock extra downforce to compensate for the loss of the EBD, which would partly explain why he suddenly left Mark in his dust after being level pegging at the end of the first half; and all the teams struggled to understand the tyres in the first half of the year, which is why we had seven different winners for the first seven Grands Prix. After the summer break things settled down it was obvious that the RR was the car to beat. Whether that was Vettel understanding things better or the car improving is difficult to say, but without taking anything away from his superb performance past history would indicate that it was the car that improved, since previously Vettel had been all about consistency, as we've seen.

Finally, 2013. As in 2012 Seb had a much stronger 2nd half of the year, scoring a perfect run after the summer break. His first half wasn't poor, exactly, but there's no doubt he upped his game. It could be confidence (although I'm not sure he's ever been short of that), it could be tyres, it could be some development secret. But since 2013 was fairly static rules-wise compared with 2012 I'm not inclined to think Seb needed to adapt to much, unless you count the changed tyre compound, of course. And then he came into his own after they changed the tyres back to the 2012 construction. Which actually implies the reverse of him being more adaptable, since arguably he improved his performance once he was back on familiar territory with the older tyres.

Nowhere near poor. Sebastian was leading WDC standings since second round till the end and already had more than 25 points lead after Monaco before tyres spec was altered.

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eeee

I looked at profits... It's a bit hard to find and compare all the numbers but RBR is doing about €400M/year (net profit), while I find the FIAT group at €1.2B/year.

FIAT, the brand, is losing money, but FIAT, the group owning Chrysler, is doing very well.



Didn't he retire from higher positions too, though? Look here: http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/groups/f1/fo ... -10-years/

If this list is correct he was the only one in 2010 to retire from the lead, 3 times at that, with mechanical failures. Alonso benefitting the most on 3 occasions. 75 points thrown in the bin.



I refer to my earlier comment for this one...



I'm not agreeing with this one. I think in 2013 he was near-perfect all year long. With pretty evenly matched cars (on those tyres at least) he was leading all along.

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Go Vandoorne - Verstappen - Vettel!

Interesting stats, thanks. Yes, but that doesn't detract from my central point which was that Seb didn't do markedly better in the second half of the season - he was equally good in both halves

sorry, don't quite understand this one?

It's not about whether he was leading - I did say he wasn't exactly poor in the first half, which means I thought he was good. It was about the fact that he improved in the second half, which is undeniable since he got a perfect score while he didn't in the first half. I was putting forward my views on why he improved.

I think you may have misunderstood the thrust of my post. It seems to be accepted wisdom that Seb is the second half miracle worker, having a slower start to the beginning of the year while learning and then adapting so that he becomes this superman in the second half, while I'm saying that history doesn't really bear that out. I think Seb has been remarkably consistent almost every year that he has raced and this reputation does not reflect the facts. When he has improved in the second half - to my mind only 2012 and 2013 qualify - it's not necessarily because he has learned better than his opponents: there have been other, to my mind more plausible, reasons for these improvements. Even in 2010 when he came from way behind to clinch the title, when you look beyond the stats you will see that he didn't improve so much as his main rivals dropped off: Seb stayed consistent all year long. So in the end I'm saying that his success has been down to strong all-year performance, not due to adapting part way through the year.

You could be right in that he is consistent throughout a season.



Well, I don't really believe he 'suddenly' left Mark in the dust. Apart from 3-4 races, he had Mark's measure all along. It was just the happenings in Malaysia and Valencia, losing big points, that made it look close between them.

Mark did do well in qualifying (or Vettel less so, depends on the POV) but if I'm not mistaken he stacked up pretty well in qualifying all year long in 2012.



Well that's just it: I don't think he improved. I think the situations did. RBR developed better throughout the season and especially in the summer break, the tyres probably played a role, and competitors stopped developing earlier.
But as far as his performance, I think it was at the same high level all year long. Possibly he left something on the table in Hungary, but that would be it.



Well, it's very much possible and I wouldn't argue against it. Probably 2014 will be a test of this theory.

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Go Vandoorne - Verstappen - Vettel!

I think we're on the same page, here. In my original post I said that Seb's improvement was most likely down to the teams finally understanding the tyres and the extra downforce which the RBR had in the second half of the season, not necessarily down to Seb himself upping the ante:

OK

One more thing about being a hard worker... I find Massa's comments from today really surprising:

http://www.f1times.co.uk/news/display/08502



I believe Vettel spends quite some time in the simulator. Wouldn't this be an example of working with the team (new development), and working for himself (preparing as well as possible for races) in order to learn and get a competitive advantage?

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I was surprised at that, too. I know Kimi hates the simulator but I don't remember the same being said about Alonso. Mind you, I've seen a lot of reports on Alonso starting in the Ferrari simulator this year so I guess he's doing it this year at least.

I don't think Vettel's not a hard worker and he certainly looks driven (no pun intended) to me. But from memory Kimi is the only one who has a reputation for just turning up at the races and I've seen nothing - beyond Seb & RBR's own PR - that suggests Seb works harder than the others. I read a report where Lewis supposedly spent part of the winter driving turbo vehicles to help acclimatise himself to the new engines. Not sure I'd classify that as work exactly but it also shows a dedication to his craft.

Such info would be hard to come by, ofcourse. I do remember some journalists' comments about how he spends so much time at the track, alluding at him being there the most of all drivers. But I don't know how credible that is.

All in all I think people can all work their way. Some will be more at the track, others maybe somewhere else but studying data they took with them, others in the gym, ...

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Go Vandoorne - Verstappen - Vettel!

Haha you think that is being defensive? I'm done.

I apologise if you took offense but to me that sentence did look a little aggressive, yes.

Understood. I long underestimated Vettel. But as you say Vettel was an exceptional driver in the EBD- and that always astounded me (I am not a Vettel fan, so I should say confounded me.)

Not entirely true. The season had an odd number of GP and if you take German GP into consideration (the last 9 vs the last then Seb scored the most points in that stretch despite two retirements. He also won two out of the last three races. He was the strongest driver at the end of the season.



That doesn't represent what happened. Alonso had a very strong stretch between Italy and Korea, winning 3 out of 4 races. He led the points with two races to go with a 25 point advantage over Vettel. Vettel was even better though, winning 3 out of last 4 with the only loss coming in Korea where he retired from the lead due to a mechanical issue. His finish was perfect. Alonso and Webber did throw away their chances through a combination of driver (Korea and Abu Dhabi for Webber, Abu Dhabi for Alonso) and team mistakes, but that's part of what we are talking about. They were unable to finish strongly whereas Seb delivered.



Sure, he was good throughout the year, but it was the finish that was stellar. Three out of his five wins came in the last four races.



Actually, in every season he had a stronger 2nd half, and finished stronger than his competitors so the widely accepted wisdom is correct in this case. 2011 is the exception, but here he had no competition late in the second half and he even gave Mark a win in the final race.



Why do you automatically attribute Seb's improvement as being entirely down to the team figuring things out when Webber did not show improvement? Is it because it's convenient for your argument? No other driver is judged according to this type of double standard: if he wins or gets better - it's the team, if he doesn't - it's his fault. Of course the team works to improve, but somehow Webber never got better, only Vettel.



No it's not just about consistency though of course it's a part of it. Counting up the last 5 GP of the past 5 seasons, Seb has won 15 out of 25 races (and gave away one additional win to placate Mark). There could not be a clearer case of a driver winning precisely when it mattered. These winning streaks were preceded by strong, consistent performances while the team and the driver were working to improve. Things don't come out of the thin air - it's a function of work that was put in, and how well it was done.



He led after the first half - strong and consistent as usual. There is no reason to think that he wouldn't get stronger in the second half regardless of the tire package change. Except of course that he is Vettel, a disliked driver, so any pretext is good to pretend that it was not his improvement, but the team, the car or the rules. There is no question that the team works to improve, and it is largely down to the technical package, but the car doesn't drive itself. As Webber's case shows, RBR car is not that easy to drive fast.

It's splitting hairs, really. Lewis got the same number of wins and more podiums. The point is that Vettel's second half wan't a dramatic improvement on his first half. All in all he had a balanced year.

I covered that, though. The facts remain that overall Alonso scored more points in the second half of the year than Vettel did and by a fair number, too. Again I think you're missing the point in that I was showing that Vettel had a consistent year, not an imbalanced one. Superficially it looks as though he had a dramatic second half but when you look at the points situation he scored 121 points in the first half and 135 in the second half. He also had one extra retirement in the first half so on the face of it he had almost identical halves. Alonso, on the other hand, scored more than 50% more points in the second half of the year (98 vs 154) so clearly had a much better second half (and a better one than Seb), while Lewis, who was leading the WDC after GB, had a comparatively miserable second half by scoring only 95 points after getting 145 in the first half. So Vettel had a consistently good year but was helped by the fact that his rivals were all over the place. This doesn't take anything away from him but debunks the myth (for 2010 at least) that he won by having a great second half of the season and better than all his rivals. He won because he had a great season overall.

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here. I've already said his end of year was reminiscent of 2007. He kept his head but it doesn't change the fact that the whole year was good...

I've already demonstrated that that's just not true so if facts don't convince you I don't know what else will

Sigh. Because it's not consistent with previous years and there are solid reasons I've given which explain the difference. All the teams got more consistent in the second half of 2012 as they understood the tyres: it was a lottery in the first half. And there have been numerous articles written about RBR managing to recover lost downforce (which on its own explains the difference between him and Mark as Mark has famously been unable to take advantage of the extra downforce which the RBR has) which a quick Google search will find. It's not conclusive, but it is a valid explanation. And please show me where in any of my posts I've blamed Vettel for absolutely anything at all. I've been praising him for his superb consistency, which to my mind is a far better attribute than suddenly finding speed halfway through the season. My point is he was always good, not erratic. You should see that if weren't looking for a reason to take offence on Vettel's behalf.

i don't know what part of "superb performance" you take exception to but I guess there's no pleasing some people.

Oh for heaven's sake. Seriously? I've been praising Vettel to the sky and you somehow manage to read that I dislike him and would try to discredit him? I've been trying to give an objective review and backed it up by empirical evidence. Nothing I've said has been to Vettel's detriment but I've just demonstrated that each of his titles has been won because he's been strong all year, not because he's been up and down. You must have a very short memory because there was a lot of talk in 2013 about how Pirelli changing the tyres would benefit RBR before it happened, and hey presto when they did Seb had the best run of his career (which was already pretty strong). Now you may choose to see it that he suddenly, without explanation, found extra reserves he didn't know he had but I prefer to look at the evidence and suggest the most likely explanation. After the summer break he and RBR were unstoppable. Even Mark improved and rarely dropped off the podium. I can't help it if you see that as some kind of attack on Vettel but I suggest you are probably being a little too sensitive on his behalf

Naah... I don't really think so.

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Where I'm going, I don't need roads

The facts are:
2009 - stronger second half, particularly the last 3 races.
2010 - stronger second half, particularly the last 5 races.
2011 - not really relevant because of year long dominance.
2012 - stronger second half, by a large margin, particularly the last 7 races.
2013 - stronger second half, by a large margin.

Sorry, the facts are not going to change. The pattern is very clear - strong performance all year, but generally better as the season goes on, and culminates in the best performances in the last few races.



You keep arguing the opposite case of what you think you are. Using the downforce in an optimal way is precisely a function of learning, unless Vettel was born a racing god, which of course, he wasn't. He got consistently better as his career went on and stats show that he always has a stronger second half of the season, with a particularly impressive home stretch of GPs when he delivers at his best. It could be a coincidence or it could all be down to the team, but it's more probable that both the team and the driver prepare all season long, which tends to yield the best effect towards season's end.



Consistency is there, but there is also the ability to get better as the season progresses. That's the point of contention. Getting better from a good starting basis does not equate to being erratic.



Because the argument is not whether Vettel performs well, he obviously does, but whether he tends to get better in relation to other drivers (and his own early season performance) as the season progresses. The stats show that he does, and the manner in which he finished 2009, and then won the 2010 and 2012 titles (which he would not have won if he simply equaled 1st half performance) is very strong evidence of that.



It's not up and down - it's been a progression from good to better every year.



The tire switch helped RBR, not arguing that, but they became more dominant than in 2012 so obviously it wasn't just the tires. We will obviously never know for certain, but there is no particular reason to think that RBR wouldn't get better last year even without the tire change.



Fair enough.

I find the accepted wisdom to be more plausible than the one you are presenting. The history/stats do not really support either theory per se, but it is rather up to us how to read it. Your preference appear to be that the drives do not learn nor do they improve their understanding of the given situation and thus their abilities to deal with it as the season progresses do not improve. Instead, they all rather drop off. And thus that one guy (Vettel) who keeps consistent (neither improving nor dropping off) sticks out and people mistake that for his ability to learn and improve.

Drivers practice as much as they get the opportunity for, they discus car's and tyres' performances with the mechanics and engineers, use the simulators, analyze their mistakes and shortcomings from the finished races, in short.. work hard outside of the sunday races. And all that, and still no improvement but rather dropping off? I think that it is in people's natural ability to learn more and improve their skills by working hard and trying to. I see no reason why the same can't be said for F1 drivers.

And for some particular reason, it appears that Vettel benefitted most out of that the teams finally understanding the tires. At least, as compared to his teammate.

We can't really have the direct knowledge, can we? We are not in that position. But that Kimi, among all, is being the one driver with the reputation of a not so very hard worker, gives us a hint of that saying "where there is a smoke, there is some fire too". Lewis is not being reputed as a very hard worker either, but some other type of reputation being associated with him. So is, I suppose, with Vettel too. People do talk about his working ethics in particular, more than it appears that they do for the most of other current drivers.

They all are different people, different individuals. Some are more talented that others, and some work harder then others. And some not. Why is Vettel being rumored the way he is? I don't know why, if not for some reason.

It's hard to discuss with someone who's idea of a debate is to do the equivalent of sticking their fingers in their ears and saying lalalalala when presented with the facts. In 2009, by the end of the German Grand Prix Vettel had 47 points, while he closed the year on 84. Even if you split hairs and take the status at the end of GB (9 races into a 19 race season) he was on 39 points. Either way the difference is marginal and the relative performance of the two halves was pretty much equal, however you might want to play with the numbers. In 2010 by the end of the British Grand Prix (10th out of 19) he was on 121 points, while his end of year total was 256. Again the difference is marginal especially when you consider that he had two mechanical retirements in the first half versus one in the second. Although you have conveniently dismissed 2011 as not being consistent with your argument, sorry i meant not really relevant, at the halfway point he was on 216 points, from an eventual total of 392. It's only from 2012 that the differences were significant.

I suspect if you were even remotely impartial you would see things differently, but from your posts it's clear that you view any attempt to look at Vettel's seasons dispassionately as some kind of heresy. There's not much mileage to be gained from discussing with someone like that so I'll leave it there

Fair enough. It's just an opinion, at the end of the day

I disagree strongly about 2013. He was as strong in the first half as he was in the second half. The circumstances improved, which made him stand out more when it came to results. But he drove as well in the beginning of the season.

And I don't mean that in a bad way. I'm a Vettel-fan. I think he was by far the best driver in 2013. Virtually no errors, near-perfect. But all year long, as much in the first half as in the second half.

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Go Vandoorne - Verstappen - Vettel!

I'm definitely with Zoue on this one. I see no evidence that Vettel is always "stronger" in the second half of season compared to the first. By stronger I presume that people mean that he becomes a better driver, as opposed to him working out in the gym and being able to bench press more come August. For those that do believe he improves in the 2nd half, I am very interested in your reason(s) why he might get better. They could comprise any of these:

1. Vettel doesn't try very hard in the first half of the season.
2. Vettel takes half a season to understand the car (i.e Vettel is a slow learner).
3. Vettel takes half a season to understand the tyres (slow learner unless there is a change to a previous years' compound half way through).
4. Red Bull package improves during the season (i.e. it's the team).
5. Red Bull come to grips with the tyres - once again it's the team.
6. Vettel tries harder in the second half of the season (i.e. inconsistent effort).
7. Vettel "appears" better because all of his competitors suddenly become worse.

Given these options I tend to agree with Zoue - that "apparent" 2nd year performance improvements by Vettel have absolutely nothing to do with Vettel, and that he has been remarkably consistent over the course of seasons. Any supposed "improvement" has a lot more to do with the relative performance of the Red Bull and its competitors, and throw in some mechanical luck if you're just looking at points accumulations.

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- 4 victories (Singapore '18, USA '17, USA '16, Mexico '16),
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- 2013 Rookie of the Year
- 2014 Championship 6th position
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I don't think Vettel gets better towards the end either.

2009: some improvement throughout as you would expect being his first season at the front.
2010: fairly consistent throughout, some silly errors spread out across the season
2011: car & driver consistent
2012: big improvement as he had a pretty major blip in performance at the beginning of the year, coupled with Red Bull improving in the second half.
2013: consistent throughout, the car got better toward the end, which allowed Vettel to dominate in a way he couldn't at the beginning of the year.

Then they should have gotten rid of Vettel rather long ago and taken in some reasonably good F1 racer. But they let Webber walk, instead.. And they did not want to take in Lewis, Alonso nor Kimi when those were on offer (Alonso unconfirmed, though). Remarkable.

You mean, Vettel has been "remarkably consistent over the course of seasons" in regard to points 1. 2. 3. and 6. ? It must be so, otherwise he can't be "remarkably consistent" in the performance itself, can he? In other words, remarkably consistent in being inconsistent.

Fair enough?
The subscribers of the accepted wisdom would be, among others, people like Newey, Horner and Webber: the very professional people that have been working closely with Vettel in last 6 years or so. And as such I would rather consider those to be the case of a direct expert perception than but free-flying opinions of forum posters like you or 'purchville', or me.

Prema, I don't understand your harshness here. I think Zoue and even purchville (whom I have disagreed with a lot over the past few years) give very fair and balanced opinions on the matter. And both are full of praise for Vettel - after all, being called "remarkably consistent" is high praise indeed.

Purchville's list of 7 points was clearly not a list of reasons where he believes each one is true - he's merely giving reasons of how a driver could be or seem better in the second half of the season. Then he concludes he believes he has been very consistent. I don't think that's a bad thing.


What I do think is he has shown in a few years that he absolutely doesn't drop the ball come season's end. He remains focused and doesn't crack under pressure.

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Go Vandoorne - Verstappen - Vettel!

I don't recall any of them saying Vettel always had a better second half of the season. It's possible I've missed it.

I'm not forcing you to accept my opinion, so I don't know why you are being so antagonistic or judgmental (which you often accuse others of being) here. You appear to be suggesting that forum posters should not dare voice their own opinions? But you did say in another thread recently that you like to argue just for the sake of it and that seems to be what you are doing now. And as I've said to you before, I'm always happy to debate the points but if that's your aim I'm not interested.

I agree with this. His performances were a little skewed as well by the fact his rivals one by one started to turn attention to 2014 and were putting minimal resources behind 2013 towards the end. Nobody was really trying to catch Red Bull racing up as they had largely stopped the development of their 2013 cars, to turn attention to 2014 once it became obvious Red Bull were running away with.

That's not taking away from his amazing run, but in the second half of the season he was playing with the wind behind him so to speak. First half of the season was a fair bit more difficult for him with tyres, and other teams still developing with the usual rate, he was still superb though.

I did not specify it (so my fault there), but I was referring to that part of opinion of yours that Vettel's sucess is not to be found in his own improvement and ability to adapt as the season progresses. They (Newey, Horner, Webber, others) obviously did not spell it the exact way you did, but the understanding that they consider such to be Vettel's strength and advantage over many other drivers is obviously there. And Webber was quite direct about it, indeed. Your approch was going more into rather that negative side of a false "improvent" of someone being percieved such due others rather underperfroming (or dropping off) and him not so much. Like, 10 people stand on the line and 9 take a step back... and see, the guy infront appears to "improve"..
And 'purchville' understood it so too, agreeing with you, taking it further down where Vettel is not trying hard (at the start of the season) and is a slow learner: just the opposite than you will hear from those professional people that work closely with Vettel.

Othewise, I like the exchange of opinions.

And I never said that I like to argue just for the sake of it. But that sometomes, yes, it may turn up so due to the quality of the current exchanges at the particular instances. If you don't ever argue for the sake of arguing, then that's great and admirable quality.

You understood his post wrong Prema. I think you should read it again.

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People will find negatives where they want to. I've not once been disparaging to Vettel or even suggested that he's been anything other than excellent. When I said that his success in 2010 owed as much to his competitors failing as to his own performance you seem to have interpreted that as being a knock against Vettel but having a bit of fortune doesn't mean that his own achievements need be dismissed. I'm a Kimi fan but I acknowledge that his 2007 title was in part due to McLaren's meltdown in the last two races: Kimi kept his head and drove flawlessly to get the wins but he was reliant on his competitors messing up, too. That doesn't invalidate his achievement. Similarly, in 2010 Vettel had a great year and showed great composure at the end. However, if his competitors had not messed up then he would have not had the title. That is backed by the evidence and I don't see why people should interpret that as a slur. He did better than them, after all.

In 2010 he came from a fairly long way behind to take the win. That's a fact. But what's also true is that he didn't have a surge in performance in the latter half of the year: that honour goes to Alonso. What Vettel did was carry on what he had been doing in the first half while his competitors fell away. This is backed up by the figures. At the approximate halfway point in GB Seb had 47% of his eventual total of points. Alonso only had 39%, while Lewis had 60%. So clearly Vettel was consistent, Alonso improved dramatically, while Lewis had a comparatively miserable second half. And going into the final race Alonso was leading by 15 points from Seb, with Lewis no longer in contention. Vettel drove superbly to take the win but needed Alonso to have a bad result (as Kimi did with Lewis in 2007) and Alonso duly obliged. That doesn't make his title any less deserved, as delivering under pressure is part of what makes a Champion.

From reading your posts I think you feel I'm saying Vettel never improves, which is not the case. What I am saying is that Vettel isn't necessarily the second half specialist that I've noticed people say he is. I think he's a solidly excellent performer all year and his reputation for being better in the second half of the season is not really supported by the evidence. I've no doubt he does hone his racecraft over time and improve year on year but I think that is also true of others. I just don't think he improves noticeably from one half to another and where there have been apparent performance increases there have usually been technical reasons for that.

It was more of a "in jest" comment to be honest. Of course id prefer to see more drivers in the mix but i guess im just a little bored of Vettel winning by miles each year.

Perhaps he can have a year in the midfield and HAM/ALO/RAI/ROS/BUT can fight it out.

Absolutely agree with that

I think the OP needs to change it to, Will Seb struggle in a non dominant car?

Only time will tell, one thing is sure is he does get frustrated when he isn't winning/leading.
As for pressure, what pressure when your car is an average .3 faster then any car on field with still some more to give when other cars increase their pace.

Pressure will be truly shown when he is beaten, when he isn't in a dominant car. There have been moments where he has shown it.

Well according to this the issues with the Renault engine are still a long way from being fixed, so much so that RBR are looking to change supplier for 2015, so it might not be Vettel's year, unfortunately

It's funny to read this as all the points put out above is so wrong don't know where to start correcting them, It got to the point Ted Kravitz had to ask Vettel himself what is it about Asia that gets you going as once he gets to Asia he goes into another gear.

He isn't claiming all those points are his opinion and/or correct. Read his post again.

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Go Vandoorne - Verstappen - Vettel!

'10 Only one errors I remember was Istanbul and at spa accident with Button, if the reliability held up he would have had a season like '11.

'12 there was no bleep in performance rather the Redbull had a bit of problem has it had lost pace beginning of the year and he beat the Mclaren which qualified 7/10th ahead in dis same time he you claimed he had a bleep in performance.

'13 Vettel dominated both halves of the season, apart from China he was on the podium in races he wasn't winning. he had a DNF at Silverstone and was still 25pts ahead.

After stating his options he comes to the conclusion he did quoted above!