Vettle is a good driver but having a good car is 80% of the success I think.

http://jalopnik.com/red-bull-may-hav...olo-1442585020

But that's for every driver. The worst car doesn't usually win the championship.

Vettel has a good car but 30 seconds better? Some of that time we have to give the credit to Vettel. He doesn't make many mistakes. F1 is about best car/best driver combo. It's not Indy or NASCAR where all teams buy the same off the shelf car from Walmart and slap a Chevy or Ford sticker on it. That form of racing is about the driver and who drafts the best and isn't crashed out. There is a fan base for that.

F1 is about the technology. The constant changes throughout the season. It's about the teams that can read between the lines of the rule book, and it's about the drivers that can drive the most advanced race cars on earth. That's why I like it. It's as much about the team as it is the driver. Red Bull and Vettel are doing their jobs. Every other team isn't. Newey is pushing the boundaries, which BTW, will eventually spill over to other teams. If you are a technology fan and a racing fan, F1 is the best sport in the world.

^^This

Any motorsport that isn't a spec class has a large base in team/car development. The driver is just as big of a deal though. Where is the whining about Schumacher and is 7 titles when Ferrari had the best developed cars?

At the end of the day, the F1 constructors/drivers championships are always and have always been car and driver dependent. Vettel is very consistent and makes the changes in driving that his engineers tell him to better than anyone else (outside of the "slow it down" command that he never listens to). I think he takes much more flak than he should. I honestly think if you put any other driver in the sister redbull car, Vettel still comes out on top.

Let's face it, Button wouldnt be WC if brawn didn't cheat with double diffuser for the first half of the season until the rest of the teams caught on. He's just a top mid pack driver.

Nobody likes domination, unless it's your guy. Most people were OK with Schumi winning because he was in the fan favorite's car. If Adrian Newey and Seb were working for Ferrari I don't think you'd hear the same amount of whining. Some but not as much.

And without turning this into a NASCAR vs F1 argument, but NASCAR has the same "problem". Jimmie Johnson won 5 in a row, had a couple 2nds and a 3rd in the mix, and will probably win this year again. He has the best crew chief and is backed by an elite team (Hendrick). Nobody likes him, nobody (outside a few media guys) acknowledges we're watching the best driver/crew chief/team combination ever. There's a handful of other guys who are consistently winning races but none of them work with their chief as well as JJ. And like Vettel, there are 3 other guys using basically the same equipment as JJ, and none of them are anywhere close to as consistently good.


Indy car is basically a spec series, but if you think NASCAR cars are "off the shelf" you should probably look into it a bit more...

I didn't mean to turn this into a NASCAR/Indy debate. I am biased. I don't have an ounce of respect for driving in circles. But people can enjoy what they like and many do. My dads a huge NASCAR fan. Even has the NASCAR flag in front of his house. And I talk crap to him every time I see him. Lol I call his racing "hillbilly" racing he calls F1 a bunch of "arrogant" foreigner racing. I tell him those "arrogant foreigners" have a better command of the English language than his American NASCAR drivers. Lol but it's all in good fun. One aspect of sports is the crap talking.

Back to F1. I'm fairly new to it. I use to watch it on and off if it happened to catch it changing channels but never knew the drivers. Then I happened to catch a speed channel clip of Vettel winning his first championship and the finger thing intrigued me. He does it backwards to how I usually see it. Then his raw emotion on the mic hooked me I watched everything since. So I'm not a true bandwagon fan because I didn't know he would be this good. I didn't even know how the championship thing worked. I just thought the kid was a cool guy. Something about him seemed "special". Little did I know he would go on to dominate like he has.

I just ordered a Vettel personalized plate for my Evo. Lol

As far as red bull. Watch the YouTube videos they made on building the car. You can see why they dominate. It doesn't matter if they won every race by a minute, they would still be looking for ways to win by 2 min.

I watch all forms of auto racing. I know them all well to some degree

If you think Nascar is simply running in circles w/modestly talented drivers, you may be wrong.
Personally feel they are among the best drivers, especially those that came from the dirt series

Most of them today are also very good road course drivers. I think Mr. Vettel would have a hard time competing at a top level in Nascar (would take him years to learn)

^ i've seen f1 drivers go to nascar, not so much the other way around

Frank Williams wanted desperately to sign Jeff Gordan after he and Montoya did that seat swap back in 2003. Obviously that never happened though.

And look how hard it was for JPM to adapt despite being a very high level driver in F1 and Indy.

How does the driving style of vettel and his future teammate compare? Is rb aiming for two similar drivers for team success?

Agreed.

I think I did a good job not posting most of the season, whaddya guys think?

LOL @ Vettel and RB getting boo'ed at a lot of venues.

Red Bull basically had to promote one of the junior drivers to validate their junior driver program. Ricciardo is nowhere near the driver Vettel is. I also don't think they would want to ruffle Vettel's feathers by putting a very popular(winning) driver alongside Vettel. Ricciardo will be a serviceable teammate. With Vettel's constant success ricciardo will only have to finish in the top ten most races for the team to continue leading the constructors race. I highly doubt he will be even close to webbers record in the car.

Riccardio is better than MW at starts... so there's that.

I'm so glad LMPs do rolling starts!