Ricciardo vs Vergne ( vs Raikkonen)

[Schumaster]

"To be fair, I don't think we saw enough to judge Sorensen vs Stanaway. But the little we did see Sorensen clearly had the edge."

We didn't see much of Sorensen v Stanaway in FR3.5 but the previous season they were both racing in the 18-race German F3 championship. Stanaway: 13 wins, three 2nds, one fourth and one fifth; Sorenson 2 wins. It was more than clear who had the edge!

[bella]

mmm, i think just looking at it in black and white is a bit... simplistic. it wasn't just one guy doing better than another in exactly the same car. resources, etc.

but it was a very classy season from stanaway. especially when he turned up and spanked in the gp3 race at spa. don't get me wrong, i'm sold as far as his talents go, particularly with his run of championship wins but come on, be a bit realistic.

[Razzzor]

Yeah Sorenson had some bad luck as well. But actually if you follow Richie Facebook, the only real mistake he made last year was hitting the wall at Monaco. The rest were mechanical.

Actually, here's all his quotes from his Facebook on each round. This is part of why you can't compare him to Sorenson when they were team mates, too much went wrong, he didn't have one proper race without issues.

And if you look at the practise sessions, of the four he took part in since he didn't do a lap in Monaco, he was 2nd, 4th, 2nd, 1st.


Race 1 Qualifying
P4 in qualifying, was P1 on first set of new tyres, but didn't improve enough on the second set and didn't time to too well with traffic so got bumped back down to fourth. Disappointed not to have got it together

Race 1
engine shut down on grid, no idea what happened just lost power, we will have to wait until we get the data to see what went wrong, didn't even get out of my grid box, terrible way to start the championship. Anyway, lets focus on tomorrow and try to grab some points.

Race 2 Qualifying
messy qualifying, will start the race in 11th. had traffic on every lap on new tyres and then at the end when i had clear track the tyre peak had finished, to add to that we have an identical problem to what my team mate had yesterday so I'm down on power and loosing on the straights.

Race 2
loosing 5km/h down every straight due to an engine problem so was loosing about 0.8sec per lap compared to my team mate, had no pace whatsoever

Still went from 11th to 6th though.

Race 3 Qualifying
Disappointing qualifying, was still learning circuit right up until the end.
This time was his fault, he threw it in the wall in the only and only practise session, so his very first lap at Monaco was his qualifying lap. That must have been daunting.

Race 3
Started the race today 15th, made up a few spots on the opening lap, was running 10th before the throttle pedal jammed on and as a result smashed straight into a wall at one of the chicanes. Looking forward to Spa next weekend.

Race 4 Qualifying
Qualifying this morning, on my 2nd flying lap i came through turn 7 and somebody must have gone off just before because i came through and there was dirt all over the circuit, was like hitting ice, slid off the track and ended the session in the wall. For causing red flag i will have to start the race from the back of the grid, will just try my best to come through as much as possible.

Note This was after being 0.3s clear of everyone in P1 and 2nd in P2 after having to lift out of his final lap because of a yellow.

Race 4
had a pneumatic air pressure failure on the warm up lap, so had to be pushed back into the pit lane before the start of the race. Spent half of the race making repairs, and then went out at the end of the race to get some mileage. So, in 4 races we've had 4 technical failures, about the only thing thats been consistent so far this season!

Race 5 Qualifying
wet qualifying this morning, had again an air pressure failure so missed the first part of the session, needed it to get up to speed, then during the session had 2 flying laps, last one was my quickest lap but was heavily compromised by 2 cars and ended up 17th. Things are not going very well at the moment. Let's see what we can do in the race.

Race 5...
No comment on that one, but we know how that went. He was moving up the field though.

[Schumaster]

Originally Posted by bella

mmm, i think just looking at it in black and white is a bit... simplistic. it wasn't just one guy doing better than another in exactly the same car. resources, etc ... come on, be a bit realistic.

Welcome to a brave new world of motorsport where observing results over a season in a competitive championship series is being "simplistic"!

Interestingly, the New Zealand Herald today reported on Stanaway's tests last month with Aston Martin Racing:

"In recent testing, the Kiwi driver was quickly on the pace and after only four laps was matching or beating far more experienced drivers in a car he had never driven before at a track he had never seen before.

"He was phenomenal as he always is when getting in a car for the first time," said his mentor, Maurice O'Reilly.

"After a couple of laps on old tyres he was on the pace.

"And when they put new tyres on he was faster than Bruno Senna after four laps.

"Within another 10 laps he was only a hundredth of a second slower than Pedro Lamy.

"After that the team was on the radio asking him to slow down."

[bella]

Originally Posted by Schumaster

Welcome to a brave new world of motorsport where observing results over a season in a competitive championship series is being "simplistic"!

sorry, i think you've selectively read my last posts. i'm a huge fan of his talent and abilities. the excerpt you posted from the local newspaper actually agrees with what i have been saying - that he can extract a seriously quick time from a car regardless of just about everything. but that article also backs up another thing i said about him - that he's a "win or die trying" kind of driver. you can get away with ragging a f3 car for a whole race, you can even do it in fr3.5 to a degree but you absolutely couldn't do it in gp2 and he'd be sunk in f1. i know that test was as much about proving something to himself as it was to other people, hence the laptimes but sometimes you have to be sensible.

speak to his engineers, particularly ones who have worked with the serious guys in europe as well. they'll be able to explain it far more eloquently than i can

Originally Posted by Razzzor

Yeah Sorenson had some bad luck as well. But actually if you follow Richie Facebook, the only real mistake he made last year was hitting the wall at Monaco. The rest were mechanical.

i was there... i remember actually one of things that's admirable about him is that he's completely honest about things. he still has that racing driver selective vision thing though

his mistakes were in the way he handled it. i can totally understand that because until this season he hadn't had a bad season, nor had he been alongside a teammate who brought it to him quite so spectacularly. but there are drivers of a similar age and similar experience who had issues all the time last season but didn't at all let it get to them. it did with richie, and that was kind of clear on the track. that's why he's so different to marco, and why the pair of them were so interesting to have alongside each other in a team. but i already said that

i really hope he can learn to control and moderate his talent because he is one of the quickest out there full stop.

[Schumaster]

Stanaway may well be a "win or die trying" type of driver but if that's a sin, then most of the great names of F1 history are similarly guilty. I think what's being suggested here that Stanaway is youthfully reckless and that's simply unfair. In Adac Formel Masters in 2010 he won 12 of 18 races, 5 x 2nd and one DNF; the next year in German F3 13 wins from 18 races, 3 x 2nd, 1 x 4th, 1 x 5th ... that sort of finishing record does not suggest recklessness! Right from when he started in junior formulas in NZ the story's been much the same - sensational speed and dependability.

[bella]

nope, not suggesting he's youthfully reckless at all. but his talent, in its current format is incompatible with f1. and if that's where he's aiming, then it's quite obviously going to need sorting out. you quite rightly point out that some of the most successful drivers in f1 in the past have had the drive the wheels off approach, but in the modern f1 it's far far more difficult to drive like that. if we assume the current trend of tyre and car management is going to continue past the new engines then it's going to be very difficult to convert his absurd pace into results and wins.

again, like i say, you can rag the wheels off a f3 car, and certainly the formula masters car too. but you can't do that to a f1 or gp2 car. it's not about stuffing it in the wall, it's about wasting tyres.

it's really not as simple as waving results around. you can do the same with robin frijns too, but next to some of bianchi's performances it was pretty obvious that he's still a bit of a rough diamond for f1. and in the context of the rest of the field, it was clear that something's not quite there yet too for stanaway. until his accident the question was whether he could use it as a motivation in the right way and not start to try too hard when the car *did* work. it's a totally different situation when things are going wrong to when they're going right. and from that it's different again when it's going wrong through your own doing, and wrong because the car isn't working. you don't know how good a driver really is until it's going wrong.

which is what we're seeing with the toro rosso boys this and last season. perhaps that's a drawback of red bull making sure their junior guys get all the best opportunities. they don't get many opportunities to see how they cope when the times are bad. though maybe they do if you factor in the huge amount of pressure they seem to be under.

[Razzzor]

Well it's a lot easier to slow down to manage the tyres, than it is to speed up. I'm sure anyone that drives a bit too aggressively will be able to smooth their style out a bit. All the F1 drivers have, it seems.

[cmk]

I don't really agree with that. Webber still chews his tires relative to the field, and few seemed to be able to do what Perez did when it came to massaging them in 2012. Sure, everyone is pretty good, but that's what you'd expect at the pinnacle of motorsport. It doesn't mean there aren't differences between drivers, and it doesn't mean those differences don't contribute substantially to a driver's success.

[bella]

we seem to have got substantially off topic

[OZ_HCR32]

Dan could get some cam era timein the race. Be interesting if he can hang around the dull end of the top ten

[JeremySmith]

Originally Posted by Razzzor

Well it's a lot easier to slow down to manage the tyres, than it is to speed up. I'm sure anyone that drives a bit too aggressively will be able to smooth their style out a bit. All the F1 drivers have, it seems.

I am sorry I am new here, is this the tyre thread?

[Razzzor]

Verge certainly hasn't helped himself with that rubbish, 7th vs 16th seemingly without any confirmed issues with the car.

[wolfhound]

Vernge to be ahead of Dan by lap 15?

[MCWB]

Given the tyres, I'd say odds-on! Still, it's where they are on lap 56 that counts.

[chunterer]

Vergne had handed Dan his backside in the first 2 races, but this weekend it was emphatically the other way around!!

[deeks6]

I don't think there is a great deal between these two and was starting to think that JEV was a better racer but Dans drive was the best performance by either of them for the duration so far.

[GTRMagic]

Originally Posted by deeks6

I don't think there is a great deal between these two and was starting to think that JEV was a better racer but Dans drive was the best performance by either of them for the duration so far.

Surely that was an Aussie consipracy, getting Mr Webber to knock Mr Vergne out of contention so Mr Ricciardo could keep sailing in the point scoring positions...

[OZ_HCR32]

Originally Posted by chunterer

Vergne had handed Dan his backside in the first 2 races, but this weekend it was emphatically the other way around!!

Thats a pretty big call when you consider that Dan has had two mechanical issues that ended up causing him to retire.

One spot diff in quali in Aus. Vergne didnt even make it out of Q1 in Malaysia. Neither driver would have got close to points in Malsyia if Force India had not have had wheel failures.

But in China Dan was there on merit. Vergne looked solid and a chance of a point but the dive bomb from Webber is claimed to have knocked around the pace of his car.

Either way, continues to be an interesting match up. You have to think whoever shows the best with strong race finishes is going to factor into the thinking more than someone that bags a few tenths and ninths?!?

[AussieTimmeh]

It's interesting because in all races this year, one or the other have had some sort of issue. I was stoked to see Ricciardo finish highly in China of course as an individual result but hard to know where Vergne would finish. There's no doubt Vergne is a fast racer but he really has issues in qualy.

Of course we'll never see either do a Vettel and win in a Toro Rosso due to the rule changes since the Toro Rosso was a Ferrari engined equipped RBR, but it's a good little sub-plot to the season that I enjoy watching (like the FI drivers too).

[Trev Campbell]

I think Jenson Button summed it up after Q2 when he was told over the radio who was in the top ten "Ricciardo, Wow"

[Zen]

Great weekend from Ricciardo...........lets hope for more to come

[chunterer]

Originally Posted by Trev Campbell

I think Jenson Button summed it up after Q2 when he was told over the radio who was in the top ten "Ricciardo, Wow"

Figures. In his mock surprise DJ tones no doubt.

Button was desperate to get ahead of Dan in the early going as well as keep Vettel behind, judging by the continual brake lock ups!

Riccardo did a great job getting those points even after having to pit for a new wing.Although I guess they just incorporated that into the tyre strategy?

[m355y]

Great job by Ricciardo, one of them needed to step up and really assert themselves well over the other and Vergne needs to respond now. Interesting that the Chinese GP performance came just as JEV was starting to inch ahead, too. Well timed from Danny.

[gomick]

Good drive by Dan, unlucky for JE - both those boys couldve got points China...