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With the season complete the following facts are evident:
- VER suffered 7 DNFs in the first 14 races for a very disrupted start to the season but with a clean run since Malaysia has scored the equal top points with Hamilton, scoring two 1st places, a 2nd place, a 4th and a couple of 5ths.
- Over the full season VER finished on the podium 4 times out of 13 finishes (31% of the time) and had an average finishing position of 4.23 for average points of 12.9 per race.
- RIC suffered 6 DNFs with a cluster of 3 in the last 4 races.
- Over the full season RIC finished on the podium 9 times out of 14 finishes (64% of the time) and had an average finishing position of 3.43 for average points of 14.3 (ie outscoring VER by 1.4 points per race over the full season).
- RIC’s podium percentage is remarkable in the 3rd best car and is comparable to VET (13 podiums out of 18 finishes for 72%) and HAM (13 out of 20 finishes for 65%) and BOT (13 out of 19 finishes for 68%) and well ahead of RAI (7 podiums out of 16 finishes for 44%). This stat probably best highlights RIC’s strength of realising most of car’s potential on Sunday.
- In the 7 races VER & RIC both finished, VER won 5 – 2, outscoring RIC by 91 points to 87.
- In qualifying head to head, there was a clear advantage to VER by 13 – 7 with an average gap of .135 (excluding where one or other of them failed to set a representative time because of equipment failure or crash). Interestingly, at the start of the year and at the end of the year they were much better matched (up until the 9th race in Austria they were 5-4 in VER’s favour and in the last 5 since Japan they were 3-2 in RIC’s favour). It was the stretch from Silverstone (where RIC went out of Q1 with turbo failure) through to Malaysia inclusive where VER won the qualifying battle 6-0 (but worth noting in this period, in 3 of those qualifying battles the difference was no more than 5 hundredths and in 1 RIC had suffered turbo failure and went out in Q1).
- Over the full season in 2017, RIC outscored VER by 200 to 168. Even if VER had one less DNF (so they both had 6) and managed to finish first in that race, he still wouldn’t have beaten Dan in the points table. This follows their time together in 2016 where RIC outscored VER by 220 to 191 in the races they were both in the same car. Looking at the 2016 results compared to 2017 suggests that VER is improving (he was outqualified last year by 11-6 with an average gap of 0.228 and outraced last year when they both finished by 9-7 and a total of 14 points)
All of this suggests to me that these two remain exceedingly closely matched but looking at the trend from last year to this year, and VER’s underlying pace, I can see why Red Bull have chosen to build the team around him going forward.
RIC remains my personal favourite and I will continue to point out that he has beaten VER in 100% of the seasons they have been in the same car (unless of course VER manages to beat him for the first time next year)
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