IDrinkYourMilkshake wrote:
ElevenTenths wrote:
In my opinion, it's very difficult to take Ferrari seriously in their bid to catch Mercedes if they cannot put a driver in the second Ferrari that is capable of challenging, pushing Vettel and keeping him honest. Vettel's brilliance notwithstanding, the caveat from the RB years was that Vettel either had a dominant car (2011,2013) or perhaps too compliant a teammate. Ferrari made a good assumption that Vettel, being the most successful driver should lead their campaign. However on the basis of 2014 Vettel most certainly was not the "fastest" driver nor even the "best of the rest", if you consider how Ricciardo sometimes made him look pedestrian. Surely Ferrari need to put a hungry driver such as a Ricciardo or Verstappen in the second car to establish what their leading edge driver performance really is?
Even though Vettel is my favourite driver, I absolutely agree. There's no objective proof that Vettel is better than Alonso was, or is even better than Ricciardo,
but we CAN show proof that Alonso was better due to the HUGE margin he had to Raikkonen, and Ricciardo easily beat Vettel. Who's to say Vettel wasn't at his best?
I personally believe he did underperform in 2014, but Ferrari should at least test him. For or we know, and I'm being the Devil's Advocate here, is that Vettel is 0.4 seconds a lap slower than Hamilton, which would mean the vast gap to Mercedes is mostly driver-related.
And FFS, Ferrari should stop acting like they need a Lead Driver who is also their meditation coach/manager/unifier/saint. Get a fast driver, and hire an effing Manager/Motivation coach/Guru for the motivation and leadership that it always seem to need. Ferrari is my favourite, but them always insisting that the Driver has to be like a benevolent king is so much BS. A driver is one employee out of 700. He needs to be able to drive fast, set up the car well, work with the engineers. He's not a motivational speaker!
Edit note: I had misread/misunderstood ElevenTenths' quote within.I still agree with the general concept that Vettel needs some stiffer competition at Ferrari, but not with the "
but we CAN show proof that Alonso was better(than Vettel) due to the HUGE margin he had to Raikkonen" bit.
1st. AFAIK, Vettel beat Kimi in qualies by the same margins(if not greater) as Alonso beat Kimi a year earlier, and probably the only reason why Alonso inflicted a heavier defeat to Kimi was the fact that with the same margins, in 2014 the chances of other cars getting in between Alonso and Kimi were far greater compared to the 2015 season when Ferrari was comfortably 2nd.
2nd. With Kimi always complaining about the drivability of the 2014 Ferrari while repeatedly stating that the 2015 Ferrari was much more to his liking, a heavier Kimi defeat in 2014 from Alonso was to be expected.
3rd. Another thing that might have given an advantage to Alonso was that Kimi jumped into a car geared more towards Alonso`s liking, while Vettel probably jumped into a car geared more toward's Kimi's liking.
There can be many proofs why Alonso could be better than Vettel... using Kimi as a measuring stick simply isnt one of them IMO. If anything, it might lean towards proving quite the opposite.