Ricciardo vs Vergne ( vs Raikkonen)

[Teretonga]

Originally Posted by m355y

I could see Vergne in a Lotus when Kimi leaves or something, and doing quite nicely for himself. His future isn't necessarily at RB especially having been passed over (wrongly, for me) for the RB seat in favour of someone who he's outscored two seasons in a row. Vergne is a brilliant racer, and when he's confident and hooked up he's up there with Ricciardo in qualifying as well. Consistency on Saturdays is his only issue and moving away from the pressure of the Red Bull programme could be the making of him. He's definitely proved more worthy of a long term place in F1 than Buemi or Alguersuari.

I still think too much is being put into the fact that Vergne has outscored Ricciardo. When you analyse the scoring on a race by race basis you find that too often they have actually finished one behind the other with Ricciardi simply following Vergne home in half the races rather than racing his team mate or trying so hard he took him out....
Then look at the races where the points were gained and in a few races where Vergne scored points Ricciardo retired or had another problem. In very few of them did Vergne resoundingly beat Ricciardo and Ricciardo had his measure in as many as when Vergne beat him.

So for me it simply means that the two of them are closely matched and Ricciardo got the nod for reasons that the team knew about and preferred him.