F1 Most liked posts in thread: F1 - 2013

To my mind Romain looked like the happiest camper up on the podium. I know Seb was over the moon, but Romain was even higher.

 

I'm happy no action was taken against Alonso. Just hard racing.

I wondered if that hurt when he went over the curbs at full chat, guess it did. Hope he makes a speedy recovery.

 

Just a guess Steve why the rollie eyes, if Lotus's gain is Sauber's loss, that would seem to be the seat open that Massa might get...

PS: Hope things are OK, glad your back!!

 

I have a theory about why Heikke is doing so well in that Lotus. He has been driving his tail off in the Caterham, maybe driving harder than many that are in the front of the pack. He is in a decent car now & he still is driving that hard. Just my crazy thought.

 

Wow! Hard to believe that's even possible.....

It was a great race. BTW.....especially from 2nd on back!

 

There was a lot of grousing and griping over this years season, but I thought it was terrific - not so much for some of the teams but overall.

And I'm glad I was watching when Seb got his record setting number of wins - we saw history being made this last 4 seasons, and just as we speak of Senna, Prost, and Schumi others will talk of Vettel, and we were here to see it!

Next season will bring a whole new set of variables, and the time is ripe for another team to step into the limelight and no one really knows who it will be, but if the engine's are reasonably close in HP, I would not bet against Red Bull continuing their success. Vettel the second half of this season was on another plane of performance compared to even his teammate - no reason why he won't continue to improve and grow, if anything he's really just hitting his stride.

I'm looking forward to 2014!

 

Great season indeed! Looking forward to next year. Hope there will be a fight for first place. :wink:

 

He will be missed!!

 

To be fair, Kovalainen has done more than 100 F1 races since 2007, though only 2 were this year.

I don't think anyone knows the answer to the Vettel-Alonso question. I have been very impressed with some of Alonso's drives this year, showing true grit when things weren't going his way, but as Vettel hasn't been in that position, who knows if he would have been as impressive?

 

Hard to compare, who knows if the Red Bull car would have been as good if it had been built around Alonso or if the Ferrari would have been better if it had been built around Vettel....

Both are dang fine drivers.

 

Hard say who is better really. When you make it to F1, you've hit the pinnacle of driving fast. In order to make your car go fast, however, the driver has to work very closely with the designers and the engineers to maximize whatever to get the car to respond better. In 2013, the Redbull made a noticeable upgrade in performance after the break. That means, to me, team and driver worked very closely and hard together. Up until then, the top 2 to 4 teams were very close.

I think Lotus did a good job of attempting to keep up with the Redbulls, but frankly, Ferrari looks like they packed it in and left Alonso in a lurch for the rest of the season. The fans should have been booing Ferrari, not Vettel.

Reports of Vettel staying in the garage into the night to help the mechanics pack up their equipment before going out to celebrate their win as a team tells me Vettel participates in the team and is not just the driver. Even after a breakdown of his car, Vettel stayed after the race to help figure out what happened.

As for Alonso, he made some magnificent starts of races, and maximizes what the Ferrari can give him. I would say they are both pretty even in skill, with Vettel, perhaps working a bit harder to understand the car he is blessed with and working to improve it throughout the season. Alonso, being frustrated with an underperforming car, gave us a great season with what he had.

As for the Malaysian GP, I felt Vettel passed Webber because, if he didn't, he was in danger of being passed by Hamilton. Hamilton was within 1 second behind Vettel outside of the DRS zones. Within the DRS zones, Vettel sped up and got close to Webber to avoid being passed. After Vettel made the infamous pass on Webber, everybody backed off. Webber needed to go a bit faster and I'm sure Vettel would have let him stay in the lead. Frankly, if you turn down your engine and expect to be gifted the win after only halfway through the race, I agree with Vettel, you don't deserve to win. You've ripped off all the racing fans who spent big money to watch a Formula 1 grand prix race.

My opinion (if that matters to anybody) is that Vettel won because he worked harder than anybody else and took the necessary risks to gain that advantage. The second half of the season, did anybody else notice how well he preserved the tires. He was the only driver to have an extra set of tires to start a race with. He got 13 laps off the supersofts in Korea, where everybody else was getting 5 laps in practice. In Brazil, he was the only driver to go out with slicks (in the rain) in FP1 and got valuable data for the team, and still managed have the 3rd best lap time.

I'm usually an underdog supporter. I would like to see Caterham move up the rankings and perhaps Sauber and Williams become more competitive with the top teams.

I look forward to next season...

ostcount

 

I think that this belongs here...


[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg2cz_83a_U]McLAREN TOONED Episode 12 A GLITCH TO FAR (FULL HD) - YouTube[/ame]