[Official] Driver of the Race - Malaysian Grand Prix

[Purist]

I went for Grosjean, but only just, over Bianchi. He had to get by some front-running machinery, and even passed his team mate, who started four places in front of him. Finally, Romain gained those five total spots, and didn't even get mentioned in the race thread for any kind of antics.

[bjohnsonsmith]

I felt that the Vettel/Webber and Hamilton/Rosberg business somewhat detracted from the race, so I looked further down the field and thought Bianchi stood out; he get's my vote.

[Tourer]

Webber for mine - not because of the team orders thing but because he excelled in the first lap or two & then was able to pull away from his team mate as needed throughout the race - right up until he backed off under team orders of course.

[Wet marshal]

Team orders...................make me "yawn"

We want racers

[GTRMagic]

Originally Posted by FordCosworthPanoz

Mark Webber, the highest finishing man in today's race.

Yep ^^

[deeks6]

GTRMagic gets it right a couple of times a year ... this is one

[Razzzor]

I have issue giving it to Webber, because he wasn't really the fastest on the day. He only got the lead because of Vettel's utterly retarded decision to pit before everyone else and end up in heavy traffic. Perhaps he thought everyone was going to come in on that lap, but it cost him several seconds.

From then on he was really just following team orders in maintaining the tyres and not closing within 2 secs of Webber, who in that third stint was very slow. Everytime it came to pitting, Webber came in first so always got the advantage, until that final time when Vettel got the one lap overlap and closed right up. What do you do when RB are telling you to maintain a 3 sec gap to your team mate - how the hell do you pass when you're not allowed to catch up and Webber pits first?
And it disadvantages you so much that you then lose out in the overlap to Hamilton in the pits as well.

In that respect I can understand Vettel being frustrated by the end of the race, and his pass on his team mate was well and truly hard fought. Webber was fighting just as hard to keep Vettel behind.

So I think Vettel was the better driver on the day. It's just a shame he had to go and do that pass after he'd been told not to, it ruined what would have been a pretty good victory.

Looking at their lap times (including once Vettel was in the lead) he was well and truly faster than Webber. But I'm not going to give it to either them. Vettel's pit strategy was completely off, and the pass was not on when you're told to cruise.

Rosberg drove well, but still didn't beat Hamilton even with Hamilton's pit miscue.

Perhaps Hulkenberg was the standout performance, only 5secs behind Kimi at the end.

[Neil22]

Gave it Massa for having a good result even with the stupidest team orders ever issued. What is wrong with Ferrari this year?

[Notso Swift]

Webber mainly because of his first couple of laps
But Mr White (Bianchi) was pretty impressive, probably just booked a seat up the grid for next year

[Grandpa_Rob]

Great drive Webber deserved better imo.

[steve_r]

Cant vote for Vettel because he screwed over his teammate.
Cant vote for Webber, because despite all the fuss, at the end of the day his teammate beat him in the race.
Cant vote for either Mercedes driver, because due to fuel and team orders we don't know who drove the better race out of the two.
Could possibly have voted for Button, who might have ended on the podium.

I went for Grosejean - for beating his teammate fair & square.

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by steve_r

Cant vote for Vettel because he screwed over his teammate.
Cant vote for Webber, because despite all the fuss, at the end of the day his teammate beat him in the race.
Cant vote for either Mercedes driver, because due to fuel and team orders we don't know who drove the better race out of the two.
Could possibly have voted for Button, who might have ended on the podium.

That's pretty much how I felt about voting for DotR.

[John Turner]

Well since the obvious candidates - Webber, Rosberg, Massa, who all drove really well seem to have been adequately catered for in the poll, I AM going to vote for JB. Hope that Macca continues to improve, but it was still a bit off the pace and he did well to hold down 5th until the error, not of his making, in the pits!

[Greem]

Maldonado, because nobody else has.

[Bononi]

Yeah ! Maldonado is da man !

[werner]

Who grabbed pole-position by almost a second?
Who has overtaken on the track for second ánd for first in the last stint?
Who makes al the headlines, and makes this forum almost explode?

Love him or hate him, is has never been easier to pick the driver of the race.

[davyboy]

There are a number of ways of looking at this team orders thing. Was Vettel wrong to disobey the team ? From Vettel's perspective, the answer was obviously no. From the team's perspective, the answer was obviously yes. From everybody else's perspective, the answer can only be no too because we want to see a race not a contrived procession.

Given that, and the fact that Webber made it extremely difficult for Vettel to get by, you have to say that Vettel was driver of the race [from our point of view]. If you're on the Red Bull payroll, you'd say it was Webber. Seems we have quite a lot of Red Bull employees signed up to 10-10ths here

[pauln]

That's one heck of an assumption you're making there.

[Peter Mallett]

The Button and McLaren thing is worth keeping an eye on. Recognising that times were much closer in Malaysia, Button still managed to move up the grid and his times in the race were pretty consistent. If they can do that in a week far from home, the next race after some more development engineering is going to be quite interesting.

I feel that a vote for Webber would be on the basis of sympathy and voting for Vettel goes against my sporting instincts. So I need to look elsewhere for stand out drives. Hulkenburg springs to mind, as does Vergne. I think Kimi and Roman were way off the pace this weekend.

So that reallly only leaves two, Bottas and Bianchi. I voted for Bianchi last week and he did pretty much the same again this week. Bottas on the other hand is in a Williams that appears to be an absolute disaster, but significantly he failed to hit anyone or a gravel trap and was running ahead of his team mate for most of the race.

So Bottas it is.

[Bononi]

Originally Posted by werner

Who grabbed pole-position by almost a second?
Who has overtaken on the track for second ánd for first in the last stint?
Who makes al the headlines, and makes this forum almost explode?

Love him or hate him, is has never been easier to pick the driver of the race.

I heard the same about some other driver in the past...

[stripedcat]

I gave it to Webber. He did make the right pitcall for changing to intermediates and probably should have one the race. I think that Nico probably deserves runner-up and Lewis a well deserved third place.

As for Vettel, yes, it was ruthless, but hey, I suppose that is sometimes how you win championships. Can't say that it sits comfortably with me though.

[Purist]

I think ruthlessness became the deciding factor (or at least one of them) once reliability retirements became a rarity.

[JeremySmith]

Mark Webber for showing he has class and for not punching Sebastian Vettel on the nose ..

Jules you made a great drive today !

[Bononi]

The poll shows who is the true winner...

[davyboy]

Here's an interesting take on things. I was trying to explain the background behind what happened on Sunday to a 'lay person' last night. My friend asked me this... Is it a bit like the head coach of Jamaica telling Usain Bolt to let Yohan Blake win the 200m so that he would be in better shape to win the 100m himself... as all that mattered was that Team Jamaica came away with two golds ? I said yes, that's essentially what it was... but that he needed to understand that because the teams had millions vested in their F1 campaigns, the on track driver battles had to take a back seat to the team result... whether that be contrived or not. In that case he said, there shouldn't be such a thing as a drivers championship, only a teams championship.