To be fair to Vettel, there were only 2 oppurtunities (in 2010) where he needed to do some overtaking: Silverstone and Spa. In Silverstone he was brilliant, he completely embarrassed Massa aswell. Only bad move was on Sutil (which was overly agressive) In Spa he was awful. Is he a good overtaker? Yes, but not as good as Alonso and Hamilton.
He's a high profile driver, therefore when his overtakes fail, (Turkey, Spa etc) they are heavily publicised. He has been in the fastest (or one of the fastest) cars the last two years so he will of course have less chance to do his overtaking. 4-6th best/most overtaker on the grid, I'd roughly agree with that.
Kubica's the best overtaker for me, he makes it look so easy. Hamilton, Kobayashi and Sutil are up there as well, and I like how Alonso goes about it too, setting people up over two or three corners rather than a frantic lunge down the inside. Vettel isn't exceptionally bad though, like BLS says, his mistakes are high profile (spectacular crashes with Button and Webber challenging for the lead and second place obviously spring to mind). He also seems to have a reputation (like Sutil) of being crash prone, so when an accident isn't his fault he tends to get the blame, such as the collision with Liuzzi in Spa which Brundle put down to "his impetuous nature".
With regards Alonso's overtaking ability, I've always been impressed by the way he engineers a situation. Ok, it doesn't always work (Abu Dhabi 2010 for example), but when he does nail someone, its impressive to see how he was setting them up for a while. It takes a great tactician and psychologist to understand how the driver ahead is thinking, and then great driving to be able to place the car deliberately in order to influence how the driver ahead thinks. Hamilton, Kobayashi, etc do seem to belong more to the school of leaving it extra late on the brakes, sort of a "my balls are bigger" move, which looks impressive, and can come off possibly more frequently, it lacks Alonso's finesse. Seeing as I'm not an Alonso fan, thats quite a compliment from me!
AG, I may have worded that a bit wrong. i didn't mean he had no overtaking ability, it's just it's not brilliant. As others have said, when he doesn't overtake properly, he crashes, but he has had strokes of overtaking genius, like you said, and as does every driver. I think he took more risks at Toro Rosso because he had nothing to lose, like Hamilton in 2009. When he got to Red Bull, I didn't see that many and good overtakes from him, unlike Kubica, Kobayashi and Hamilton. Maybe having such a dominant car has hampered his ability in overtaking. I have seen his races in lower Formula's and he shown he can overtake then, but F1 is much different.
Oh yeah, and how many seconds quicker/slower are the cars meant to be this year, i'm struggling with my predictions of the pole lap time!!
Originally they were predicted to be about two seconds off. But Schumacher was less than 1.3 seconds behind Webber's pole lap at Barcelona last year. I'd say they'll be less than a second behind.
Erm, good question! I've not got a favourite driver per se, but I like (in no order), Kovalainen, Button, Kobiyashi, Kubica, Massa, Webber. Used to be a big DC fan, and the Finns, Hakkinen and Raikonnen. With regards teams, Team Lotus are probably my favourite at the moment. Used to be a big Mclaren fan, and still like to see them do well, and then Williams and Sauber. Sorry of if thats a bit vague/in a lot of depth!
So once Bluebird has added his choice to the poll, Rosberg is the only named driver we don't think has a chance! Well someone is going to be right I think!
wow theres a good mix of predictions. Even Algae got a vote. Ill keep a tab on these predictions and put a poll up for every race. I wonder if our choices will dramatically change after the first race.
if you havnt voted yet, the poll closes after qualifying. after FP1&2 Button and Webber are sitting pretty and its not looking a cert result as we expected yet but all will be revealed
just got online after struggling with internet connection all week, would have said Vettel to win before qualy and obviously not going to change that prediction!
