2010 Formula One season [Huge update on page one]

Slash schreef:
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> i hope Sutil gets replace, he deffinately didn't
> do a good job, when he had the chance he put the
> car on the wall or kept making silly mistakes,.
> same with Buemi but he's a rookie
> Grosjean was another disgrace, he spun on all the
> races, he just emulated Piquet, no need to waste
> that 2nd seat there


To be honest, give Grosjean a break, that Renault was probably the worst car at the end of this season, even Fernando couldn't get it into q2 at Abu Dhabi, that says ALOT. Give the guy a better car and it could be a whole other story, so I would like to see him given another chance in a hopefully better performing Renault.

True, Grosjean didn't look incompetent this year as much as looking like a guy who'd been thrown in at the deep end. He was clearly aware he lacked experience and was overcompensating by trying too hard.

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I think you should treat him just like you did with Piquet, to be honest. Grosjean took others out and when he couldn't, he sure looked like he tried his best. Yuji Ide's 1st lap in Melbourne made him look like a WDC compared to Grosjean's 1st lap in Spa.

Guimengo schreef:
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> I think you should treat him just like you did
> with Piquet, to be honest. Grosjean took others
> out and when he couldn't, he sure looked like he
> tried his best. Yuji Ide's 1st lap in Melbourne
> made him look like a WDC compared to Grosjean's
> 1st lap in Spa.


Difference is that Piquet also drove the Renault at a time that the car was actually quite capable of getting points, also you drama queen, Grosjean hit Button, boohoo, first lap accident, can happen to anyone.

[edit: reaction to Gui's post]

After a poor GP2 season, can you imagine the pressure in trying to impress Briatore on your debut with the best driver in the world as your teammate? The obvious thing would have been to just make sure you don't make silly mistakes, but pressure affects people in different ways. You don't know how you'd react in that situation - you'd like to think you do (we all did at various stages of our lives), but throw you in at the deepend, and you'd be shitting bricks.

The problem with Piquet wasn't that he had a poor start, but he continued to be poor race after race.

Grosjean hasn't been much/any better in 2009 than Piquet was in 2008, but I don't think it's fair to judge his debut driving under Flavio.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/09/2009 10:10PM by gav.

Fernando said in an interview before Abu Dhabi that the Renault was pretty much the worse car for most of the season and his team mates should not be judged compared to him as he has a lot more experience. Which I think is a valid point. Piquet had a whole season in a decent car, where Grosjean has had half a season in a poor car. Grosjean has a lot of pressure on him to perform and that´s led to him making mistakes. The flip side to that is Kobayashi, who has had the pressure and delivered well. He seems to have a more of a Kimi attitude towards life. Grosjean has made a lot of silly mistakes, but so did Massa when he first started and look at him now.

I think Sutil is the one to watch as the 'new' Massa. Rusty and loose on the edges, but given agood scub, he could likely come out trumps!


Jenson drives it like he owns it; Lewis drives it like he stole it

airefresco Wrote:
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> Fernando said in an interview before Abu Dhabi
> that the Renault was pretty much the worse car for
> most of the season and his team mates should not
> be judged compared to him as he has a lot more
> experience. Which I think is a valid point.
> Piquet had a whole season in a decent car, where
> Grosjean has had half a season in a poor car.
> Grosjean has a lot of pressure on him to perform
> and that´s led to him making mistakes. The flip
> side to that is Kobayashi, who has had the
> pressure and delivered well. He seems to have a
> more of a Kimi attitude towards life. Grosjean
> has made a lot of silly mistakes, but so did Massa
> when he first started and look at him now.

Agreed, 100%. There are a lot of similarities between Grosjean and Massa there. He's making the same kind of mistakes Massa did at first, and for the same reasons.
Think we should wait till we see Grosjean in a situation where he's got more of a level playing field, and see how he goes then. In any case, he's had a real baptism of fire this season.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/09/2009 11:24PM by EC83.

The only time Grosjean looked properly bad to me was Brazil. He was so out of his depth that he was creating passing places that aren't normally passing places. The rest of the year he has driven like a rookie in a terrible car - which is all we should expect.

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gav Wrote:
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> Hill was 31.

that's what happens when you try and do some quick maths late at night

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X (@ed24f1)

gav Wrote:
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but I don't think it's fair to
> judge his debut driving under Flavio.

And in that respect I dont think its fair to judge Piquet's performances under Flav. He must be the worst (ex) team-boss to drive under.

I think what really bugged me about the rookies this year is that there didnt appear to be any improvment in performance from anyone... Buemi was up and down IMO (either pretty quick or just as slow as his team-mate)

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"Trulli was slowing down like he wanted to have a picnic" LOL

And in that respect I dont think its fair to judge Piquet's performances under Flav. He must be the worst (ex) team-boss to drive under.

Well nobody else has ever been that far off there team mate under Flav, and Flav didn't cause Piquet to stick it into the scenery every week. Well..maybe one of those weeks, but hey.

Buemi was up and down IMO

Everyone was up and down. The grid was so close that when your car had an off-week you dropped like a rock through the standings - but when your car had a week where it suited the circuit, suddenly you looked like a driving god. The best examples of that are Toyota and BMW.

The thing which is bugging me about the rookies being judged like this is they are coming into F1 at the point where it is at its most competitive and where the standards are the highest. At no point in F1 history have the cars, drivers or teams all been as good as this. The drivers are also coming in with little or no testing, but people are judging them to higher standards than rookies have been in the past, despite the the disadvantages they have had.

Jaime Alguersuari has come into F1 as the youngest driver ever, with no testing, and having never even ran a GP2 race. He has qualified within the grid comfortably at every race (as in, never been a significant amount of time off of the back of the grid), in what is the worst prepared car on the grid, and yet he is getting criticised for not performing well enough.

Go back just 10 years and you are looking at drivers who not only had as much testing as the team could afford, but performed significantly worse than any of todays rookies. Drivers like Zonta, Pizzonia, or even rubbish like Rosset and Takagi. These drivers would get utterly destroyed on todays grid, yet most of them managed to hang about in F1 for several seasons. Yet we are ready to write off a drivers career now days if they don't pull out epic performances from day 1, despite the disadvantages they are being placed at?

People need to start being much more realistic in there judgement of rookies. The expectations now days are ridiculous.

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> Everyone was up and down. The grid was so close
> that when your car had an off-week you dropped
> like a rock through the standings - but when your
> car had a week where it suited the circuit,
> suddenly you looked like a driving god. The best
> examples of that are Toyota and BMW.

An even better example of that may be Force India.

chet Wrote:
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> And in that respect I dont think its fair to judge
> Piquet's performances under Flav. He must be the
> worst (ex) team-boss to drive under.

I specifically said debut. It would get easier each time your drove - you'd adapt to that pressure. I'm not saying you should be that much in the first place, but start at rock bottom and have a flat line to the end of your time with that team shouldn't be the case.

I also said Grosjean had that flat line - I'm not defending him in the slightest - I expected more, for him to rise above his GP2 season - but to specifically pick out his debut for what was a pretty simple rookie mistake wasn't right in my eyes.

DaveEllis Wrote:
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> People need to start being much more realistic in
> there judgement of rookies. The expectations now
> days are ridiculous.


Yes, that's true, and that lesser judgement should probably be extended to Badoer then as well. Although he had done testing, as far as i know, there is no record of him doing ANY competitive racing for 10 years. Alguersuari would only have been karting at this age. Compounded by the fact the F60 was very hard to learn, and the field was so close, his performances were probably judged a little too harshly. The circumstances of his return were arguably even more difficult than the other rookies.

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X (@ed24f1)

I don't think Badoer was being judged too harshly. He had numerous massive advantages over drivers like Alguersari. He knows the car inside out, and helped develope it. He has had countless miles of testing. He has had several seasons worth of racing experience. And as bad as the Ferrari was, it was far better than the STR. Yet he couldn't even attach himself to the back of the grid, whilst the rookies were at much more of a disadvantage and managed to get inside the grid.

Badoer was rubbish back in the 90s, and 15 years of running around Fiorano was never going to improve him.

An even better example of that may be Force India.

Force India started at the back, made a leap forward then stayed mid-field, that is why I didn't mention them.

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Yeh, as an example Kimi in qualifying for the 2001 Australian gp, he qualified 13th 2.1 seconds away from pole, now if you would be that same 2.1 seconds away from the fastest guy in Australian qualifying this year (All be it q1, q2 or q3), you would have been dead last in all of the sections of qualifying. So yes the cars are better and all, but there is also much less room for error, if Kimi in 2001 would have been another 8 tenths slower he would still have been 13th, if Jaime would have been another 8 tenths slower he would probably be dead last in every gp, practise session or qualifying. Anyway, with manufacters moving out it could be back to the days again with big gaps, pay drivers and maybe a 107% rule?

DaveEllis Wrote:
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> I don't think Badoer was being judged too harshly.
> He had numerous massive advantages over drivers
> like Alguersari. He knows the car inside out, and
> helped develope it. He has had countless miles of
> testing. He has had several seasons worth of
> racing experience. And as bad as the Ferrari was,
> it was far better than the STR. Yet he couldn't
> even attach himself to the back of the grid,
> whilst the rookies were at much more of a
> disadvantage and managed to get inside the grid.

I don't think it was a massive advantage. Firstly, he hadn't driven this year's car. Sure he had the advantage of having countless laps in F1 cars, but I think that experience is outweighed by the lack of competitive racing. Its one thing to trundle round Fiorano or Mugello with no pressure or expectation, but Alguersuari, even in the junior formulae, would be used to having to perform to further his own career, and to win championships. I think that it was this racing environment that left Badoer with little hope of performing at first.


DaveEllis Wrote:
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> Badoer was rubbish back in the 90s, and 15 years
> of running around Fiorano was never going to
> improve him.

He wasn't that bad in the 90s (certainly better than quite a few others), he was just stuck with a lot of bad cars and made some unfortunate career choices - as well as some of his bad luck, in particular Nurburgring 1999.

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X (@ed24f1)

EC83 Wrote:
> Agreed, 100%. There are a lot of similarities
> between Grosjean and Massa there. He's making the
> same kind of mistakes Massa did at first, and for
> the same reasons.
> Think we should wait till we see Grosjean in a
> situation where he's got more of a level playing
> field, and see how he goes then. In any case, he's
> had a real baptism of fire this season.


Massa impressed everybody with his speed the minute he was on the car
he made mistakes but everybody knew he was a really fast driver

Grosejan was moveable chicane in Brasil and made a lot of mistakes, silly mistakes and he hasn't shown any sign of deserving a second chance

Alguersari deserves another chance, no doubt, he is 19 and he cope very well with the car, he crashed only once and showed some decent speed

Sutil should't thou, he has experience, he had the car and he failed to score important points for the team (exept Monza)

DaveEllis Wrote:
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> Go back just 10 years and you are looking at
> drivers who not only had as much testing as the
> team could afford, but performed significantly
> worse than any of todays rookies. Drivers like
> Zonta, Pizzonia, or even rubbish like Rosset and
> Takagi. These drivers would get utterly destroyed
> on todays grid, yet most of them managed to hang
> about in F1 for several seasons. Yet we are ready
> to write off a drivers career now days if they
> don't pull out epic performances from day 1,
> despite the disadvantages they are being placed
> at?
>
> People need to start being much more realistic in
> there judgement of rookies. The expectations now
> days are ridiculous.

Dave the problem was grooved tyres, they're so different to slick that it was the hardest thing to cope with for everybody, Zanardi, Montoya (thou he debuted in a good car back then) daMatta, and pretty much anybody had problem coping with that

Ferrari had weight distribution problems with KERS and everything and that could've made it the hardest car to drive out there, but nowadays with the slick tyres, the only thing you have to do is pretty much set up the car and drive it to the limit, like Fisichella once said.
changing your driving style because of the tyres is not one big issue noawadays, that's why we, as i include myself in that list, expect better from rookies compared to the past



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/10/2009 06:48PM by Slash.

I rather think it is due to the smaller teams dissapearing the last few years, engine development being frozen and other engines allowed to catch up with the fastest engine developer and the removal of all kind of flaps for this season, which (I think) make the car aerodynamics quite abit more simplistic.