Ok to avoid any arguments flaring up I admit this is merely my personal opinion and not fact and this is not meant as a dig at Vettel or Raikkonen. For me the top 4 drivers in Formula 1 in no particular order are Vettel, Hamilton, Alonso and Raikkonen. Where I place them is with Alonso and Hamilton as joint best with Vettel a tiny bit behind. Kimi Raikkonen however is hard to place for me, having spent 2010 and 2011 rallying. I will be the first to admit I did not expect his comeback to be so succesful, oh I expected it to be better than Schumachers for a whole raft of reasons but it has completely blown Schumachers out of the water. It's like he was never away, its the Raikkonen from his McLaren days. In my opinion he has been the joint most consistent with Hamilton in 2012 having not made any mistakes, he has the most point scoring finishes of any one and has completed every race lap of the year - the only one to do so. Lotus is being outspent by the top 3 teams http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/103767 and is visibly falling away in the development race yet Raikkonen remains on the podium in the standings after 2 years out and having had steering issues bogging him down in the early season. So for me without him IMO it is Alonso and Hamilton as joint best (too hard to pick between them) with Vettel the smallest of margins behind. I don;t know whether I would place Raikkonen behind Vettel, pretty much equal or up with the top 2. Where do you place Raikkonen in comparison to Vettel? On a side note, how good does 2013 look now Red-Bull: Vettel ferrari: Alonso McLaren: Button Lotus: Raikkonen Mercedes: Hamilton
Kimi has always been difficult to place for me. I wouldn't say he's ever been the best driver on the grid. Not with Schumacher, Alonso, Lewis and Vettel around the same time as him. He's top 4 at the moment though. When I have a bit of time I'll go through year by year.
I won’t disagree with your top 4, but I would add Button in as my top 5 of current drivers in F1. But for me I would say that on current form I would place Alonso and Vettel as the top 2 drivers, with not much to separate them. I think Alonso races better but Vettel is faster over 1 lap. If Vettel can get to the front he is almost impossible to beat. Next up I would put Hamilton, then Raikkonen and then Button, I would say they are close to each other, but for me they are in that order. Button is the interesting one, as if everything is right he is fantastic but he has more trouble driving around problems than the other top drivers. For me next year will be interesting for a couple of reason. Mercedes will have Hamilton and Rosberg, I would expect Hamilton to destroy Rosberg in every department and I’m looking forward to see how he can develop the car. McLaren will have Button as there lead driver, and if they can get the car working for him and develop as much as they have done in the past, Button could end up being WDC.
Until this season I have to say I didn't rate Raikkonen as highly as some. I felt he inherited his championship in 2007, fell far short of the mark in 2008 and was dreadful in 2009, saved only by Massa's injury. I will not deny that he is one of the best drivers on the grid on his day. Unfortunately to play devil's advocate there are very good reasons why he's not involved in the championship battle. Yes, the team went the wrong route on development in the second half of the season - but Kimi didn't help his cause with his frequent poor qualifying performances in the first half of the season. I'm not a huge fan I'm afraid.
Alonso>>Seb>Lewis>Kimi*>(Webber*+Jenson) Seb and Lewis are very close in ability in almost every area, but I just give it to Seb for his leadership skills and immense dedication to keep pushing like hell with himself and his team, and that he still hasn't peaked yet. * Regardless of the car in the earlier parts of the season Kimi IMO has done very well to be 3rd atm and has slowly but surely got stronger and stronger. Yeah Romain had him on qualifying, but Kimi has the measure of him now and is creaming him now the car has fallen behind. Next year he will be better now he has a understanding of the newer tracks and the Pirelli's, if Lewis or Seb have a poor year he will overtake them IMO if he continues to progress at this rate. *Webber a tiny, tiny bit ahead of Jenson as he can make a bad and ok cars work Jenson cannot, but Jenson can do a slightly better job in a fast car race pace wise which gets the big points but Webber without I doubt would do the same job Lewis is doing with Jenson on qualifying as that is one of his weakest area's and with a season like this you need to do well in qualifying.
100% percent agree with the Webber Button comparison. Can also see what your saying with your rankings
I might be a bit biased as a Kimi fan but I think he is as good in the races as the 'big three' and streets ahead of Webber and Jenson purely because he is more consistent than them (both Webber and Button are very susceptible to having Jekyll and Hyde style seasons) What worries me with Kimi is that he does not seem to have the electrifying Qualifying pace that he had earlier on in his career, this has undoubtedly cost him in my mind at least two victories this season even three if you count Valencia. This is one reason why overall I think he has to be placed behind Vettel and Hamilton in particular. Lastly, while in the field this year he has made some great overtakes and has shown great racecraft I can't help feel that he has been tentative when mixing with the big boys in wheel to wheel action this year, if you look at Bahrain the general consensus was that he should of just stuck one up the inside of Vettel going into turn one when he was at his quickest. Also in Valencia while his battle with Hamilton was intriguing I could not help feel that Kimi at times made things at bit easy for Lewis when he kept choosing to try to go round the outside (we saw this in Korea as well), he only overtook Lewis once his tyres were shot and by that point the chance for the race win had gone again. So in terms of consistency and his ability to manage his pace during a race I still think that he is one of the best, but he seems to have lost some of the electrifying one lap speed that he used to have particurly when he was at McLaren
I agree with this but I wonder if his lack of speed may be down to the car. I know he has complained that he simply couldn't get any more from the car when he needed it.
He has the potential to be the best again, just wait until he gets the right car. He got off to a slow start this year, but it seems he is extracting more from the Lotus than Romain now.
Is this a joke? he's had the class of the field in terms of machinery for the last few years, finished behind Button last year, and is in 4th this year, he can't even make a superb car work well. as for Kimi, too much an out and out racer for the tactical nous needed, his poorly judged overtake of Massa yesterday being a point in question. Would like to see him in a car that gets developed during the whole season. Wonder how the seaosn would've panned out if the FIA hadn't banned their pre-season innovation.
What I meant was that even when the car was good his qualifying let him down, Hungary being the prime example where Grosjean got second and Kimi only qualified 5th, before Kimi came alive during the race but ultimately was denied the race win due to not qualifying high up enough
Each to their own Miggins, Jenson this year was nowhere when the car lost it's bendy floor that Jenson was found fighting with backmarkers or Torro Rosso's +. At least Webber was giving Seb a run for his money when the car wasn't fantastic at the start of the season, this is why I always considered the RBR duo stronger then the McLaren duo not because of talent of Seb and Lewis but how well each of their team mate does. Jenson for the duration of the mid season lost McLaren the WCC this year against RBR who both just kept on pumping out the points in any car performance. Webber could beat Jenson 17/20 of the GP's with a bad car and only score 5-10 points over the whole season. Jenson would only need those 3 GP's with a fantastic car to overtake Webber in the points while he would likely stay in the same performance window. He can also qualify higher than Jenson on more than enough times like Lewis does, he makes his Sunday's easier unlike Jenson who makes it harder for himself than it should actually be. Webber I believe is a safer person to rely on than Jenson in a season like this.
Ron Dennis said that Kimi would literally take off like a rocket after he won his first race. So I'm a little disappointed.
Alonso & Vettel Hamilton Button & Raikkonen Webber Thats my opinion anyway. I think Alonso and Vettel are the kings of the sport at the moment. Alonso just always seems to extract the maximum and is Mr Racecraft on the grid at the moment even though i get the impression Seb may be slightly quicker (at least over one lap) so they come out fairly equal. Hamilton is on his own because although he has the raw ability of the top two i doubt he can put together a season in the same way. His attitude can also be questionable at times. Button and Kimi have the same problem that the days on which they are supreme do happen but dont come around often enough. Questionable qualifying (more so from Button, but consider Kimi is being compared to a rookie), Raikkonen is a little overhyped ,he should probably have won a race this year and i dont think he's quite as good as the top 3, but still more that capable of a championship in the right car. Webber is just the best of the rest. A good driver but not a great one. In 2010 he bottled the title. Vettels reliability gave him a big chance and he blew it. This year he started well up until Britain but has not looked like winning a race since and has been pretty poor to be honest. Its works against him to have such a good teammate but then so does Button and since 2010 they've both won 7 races. Not really good enough given Webber's better equipment.
I never really was overly impressed with Kimi tbh, he has done one thing though, he's shown that being out of F1 for a few years doesn't affect your driving at all.
[h=2]" Where do you guys rate Raikkonen when compared with Vettel? " [/h]– I rate Vettel more highly.
