mikeyg123 wrote:
Vettel clearly stepped up a level towards the end of the season in years gone past. I fail to see how Vettel not being able to do that this year changes that.
Just to put my own perspective on the debate, I'll tell you why I think Vettel wasn't the one stepping up towards the end of the season and why I think it was Newey: Red Bull are still doing it, and Vettel hasn't driven for them in three years.
If we look at Vettel's years apart from Red Bull, now with a team (Ferrari) not known for their in-season development pace, we see the following picture:
2015: Vettel takes 2 wins from 7 podiums in the first half of the year, and 1 win from 6 podiums in the second half. The second half of the season also contains his only DNFs (one due to driver error), as well as potentially his best performance of the season (Singapore) and unquestionably his worst (Mexico). I don't see any evidence of a step up.
2016: This year is even worse for the step-up theory, with Vettel's results notably tailing off in the second half. Through Germany he took 5 podiums (no wins) with an average finish of 3.7; after the break he took 2 podiums and had an average finish of 4.3, with the DNFs roughly split at 2 in the first half and 1 in the second (none at fault). His best performance was probably either Canada (first half) or Singapore (second half), while his worst was almost certainly Great Britain (first half). No step up here either.
2017: The most recent one in our memories, and the numbers are fairly clear: over the first half, Vettel took 3 wins from 8 podiums with an average finish of 2.4, while after the summer break he took 1 win from 5 podiums with an average finish of 2.7 - he also recorded 2 DNFs in the second half, one of them arguably at fault. I would say that Vettel's best and worst races probably both happened in the first half, being Baku (worst) and maybe Bahrain (best, although this one is less clear).
So in other words, every year Vettel has been at Ferrari his results have been poorer in the second half. The same was true of Alonso when he was Ferrari's lead driver. Meanwhile, Red Bull continues to get stronger in the latter parts of the year with Ricciardo and Verstappen. I think the pattern is quite clear here, and it's not a dig at Vettel: teams with good development improve over the season, while drivers generally do not.