Ok we know in 2011 the top 3 teams each had a driver who underperformed the varying degrees, how would you rank the top 3 teams underachievers in 2011? Mark Webber 3rd in the championship in the dominating WCC car, absolutely blown away by his teammate this year. Struggled all year to get to grips with the pirrelis, but is naturally slower anyway. He has also tended to start the races a few seconds after everyone else. On the other hand he got a fair few podiums and got that award for the most fastest laps. Lewis Hamilton 5th in the championship in the 2nd best car, his worst year. Struggled to make the tyres last long enough at some tracks, got into way too many crashes/incidents, many involving Massa, got lots of penalties, had bad race tactics, and frankly had lots of bad luck. Seemed to be something going wrong with him every weekend, his personal life also seemed to have a big effect. On the other hand it seemed like he would at least beat his teammate for the 1st half of the year which can't be said for the other 2, his 3 wins were very good, he got the only non red-bull pole position and was fantastic throughout the whole korea weekend. Felipe Massa, 6th in the championship in the 3rd best car. More a case of Felipe who? Only noticable for crashing with Hamilton a lot, got decimated by his teammate, a mere shadow of his 2008/9 self - he will never recover from being hit round the head with a brawn. He was generally slow, both in qualifying and in racing adn completely under the radar. Did not achieve 1 podium all year. His one saving grace was he was generally really good at race starts. Podiums: webber - 10 Hamilton - 6 Massa - 0 pole positions: Webber - 3 Hamilton - 1 Massa - 0 fastest laps: Webber - 7 Hamilton - 3 Massa - 2 wins: Hamilton - 3 Webber - 1 Massa - 0 Percentage of teammates points: Lewis Hamilton - 84% Mark Webber 65% Felipe Massa - 46% My opinion 1st: Lewis Hamilton 2nd: Mark Webber 3rd: Felipe Massa
Does this have to be from the top 3 teams? Otherwise Perez and di Resta are worth a shout. And there was no clear number 2 at Toro Rosso, so they did pretty well!
probally none of them drove particulary badly - no world class driver has a talent bypass inbetween the 4 months of the last race of 2010 and the first race of 2011 , certainly not 3 of them all at the same time , they were beaten fair and square by better team mates , this is a human thing and happens in every sport be it F1 , football , boxing , cricket , tiddly winks or whatever , one human being will allways have a quicker mind and be better suited at playing there chosen sport than another human being , webber was beaten by a team mate that has taken every aspect of his racing to a higher level and is absorbing knowledge like a sponge as he gets older , hamilton was beaten by a team mate that is more intelligent in the car and is better suited to the format of non refueling , and massa was beaten by somebody that is just plain quicker and a better all round driver than he is --
I'm not saying they weren't beaten fair and square by their teammates, I will say its longer than 4 months for Massa
I agree with certain aspect of this... Clearly the drivers that placed #2 in the top 3 were quite resoundingly beaten by their teammates, but all for very differing reasons in my opinion. Vettel/Webber. Vettel was absolutely phenomenal this season. He has gained acres of confidence since becoming WDC and barely set a foot wrong all season. There is no way that Webber was ever going to beat him. On saying that though, Webber was eclipsed so much by Vettel after a pretty damn good 2010 that you have to wonder what happened. I'm not convinced that he had the same level of support from the team as Vettel and was quite possibly relegated to #2. In 2010, RBR were ALMOST a textbook example of how to throw away a championship and I believe that they took the events of last year and quite rightly put all their focus behind Vettel. This might explain Webber's drop off from 2010. I certainly don't blame RBR for employing a tactic like that... It makes perfect sense when looking to win and it's a logical thing to do in putting all your effort behind the young quick driver. Button/Hamilton. This year I really do think that Hamilton drove poorly. Personally I think this was down to a couple of things. I think he saw Vettel romping off in to the distance and in some ways this made his driving a tad more desperate. In order to make it through the field, he maybe didn't engage his head fully and tried to make a few moves stick that were just never going to come off. With the tyre/fuel changes and his possible urgency, there were occasions where he didn't quite make the most of his opportunities and maybe took a bit too much out of his rubber early on. Button being better on his tryes maybe a myth and there may be examples of where they pit at the same time, but in general Hamilton had probably seen the best of his tyres long before Button did. Button Had a great season though and had some brilliant drives... but had Hamilton learned a little more composure, then I think he could have dusted Button off. He has to do it next season or questions will be asked. Alonso/Massa. I really don't know what to say about this pairing... Alonso had some great races and I wish he's been able to notch up a few more wins for Ferrari. Maybe next season will be the year for Alonso to add that third title that seems so long in coming. Let's face it, the car was never top drawer but I think he took 10 podiums and 1 win as well as being 1 point shy of Webber. Compared that to Massa's best finish of 5th and the gulf between the two is enormous. I really like Massa, but this year has been appalling for him. I still believe that returning from his accident to find Alonso has team leader is something that he has never gotten over. I'm pretty sure that Ferrari have all their weight behind Alonso, but even that doesn't explain the enormous gulf between them. Even the team have asked him to shut up and up his game. Sadly, I just don't see him in that car by mid season of 2012.
Good post Bhaji. First things first, Massa's been ****e. I'm not even going to attempt to discuss his season and he's certainly been the worst of the three. It's pretty close between Hamilton and Webber. Hamilton was closer to his team mate, but Webber has a better team mate. They both had up and down seasons, Hamilton more so than Webber. Hamilton put in some memorable performances, notably at China and Germany, but Webber had some good performances also, in China and a great pole lap at Silverstone. I think Hamilton put in more bad performances than Webber, but he won three races to Webber's one in a worse car, so Hamilton gets the nod from me.
