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The more I race against people in sim racing or in real life, the more I think that there is a special kind of talented driver who is one of the most consistently fast out there... up until they are near another car. Then they forget everything they know about driving. It's frankly disturbing to see. They go full amateur hour, missing brake marks, locking up, sliding all over the place, coming up/down the racetrack like it's Sunday, and barely drive in a straight line. Then once past, they'll get surgical again and take off never to be seen again. I hate those guys.

A Top 10 list of Jarno Trulli's overtakes.
....
Can any one ever recall Trulli actually passing any one?

Nope

Top 10 Trulli Trains anyone?

Vettel had some good races coming from other than the first row, but generally, they are not wins. It looks like he does better starting from the pits than from row 3.

But this brings a question to my mind. How many drivers have won 2 or more races outside the first row in this decade and how Vettel compares to them?

Verstappen's fine, even brilliant when he is behind, overtaking someone

When he's in front and defending, he's a liability and until he causes an accident that is Webber/Heikki 2010 style, he won't back down or ever think he is in the wrong

That confidence he has it usually an asset, but it can be dangerous too

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He almost did at Spa when he chop blocked Kimi when Kimi had DRS. That could have been an aircraft crash.

Or how about the day after Hubert's crash he goes into Eau Rouge with wheel damage after going full iRacing into La Source almost taking cars out.

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Out of quarantine boredom, I've been watching some of the random season reviews I have on my hard drive and a couple nights ago I watched the 2013 review. Yes, it takes talent and skill to keep that top level of driving going each week, but so did others that year. Vettel had A LOT more luck with reliability especially compared to Webber. Also he was fuckin dick, for no reason, to Webber too. After watching that, I'm no longer surprised by how he treated Leclerc at Ferarri.

Verstappen's defending does worry me, but his actual pace is impressive. Albon and Gasly look miles away, and they are not bad drivers. I wasn't a big fan of Verstappen when he first joined F1 (and there are still moments where he can be frustrating), but I'm surprised at how good is becoming.

Vettel is more of a mystery. There is no denying his speed at Red Bull and Toro Rosso. If it was all about the car, Webber would have picked up one or two titles during their time together, because Webber was still a quick guy. Also, Vettel would not have won at Monza for Toro Rosso. It may have been a decent car, but there were quicker cars behind him.

My possible theories are:

- Vettel is an incredibly fast driver, but has a huge weakness when it comes to wheel to wheel racing. Therefore he's prone to too many incidents, unless he starts from pole.
- He was a great driver, who has now passed his peak. Whilst he's not that old, he did start very young. Maybe he peaked too soon and it's been downhill since Red Bull.
- Regulation changes (Turbo engines, bigger cars with more downforce) have not suited his driving style well.
- Vettel and Webber are two highly overrated drivers who benefitted from an amazing car (I disagree based on Webber's previous seasons in F1, but it's a possibility).

I'd say first two are most likely.

Switching to Ferrari probably didn't help either. Doubt he gets the handholding he got at RBR there.

imagine Vettel driving a GTE car at Le Mans, any lapping attempt by the LMPs would raise the thrill at the track

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Motorsports trend for 2024: climate change ruining races everywhere

Vettel has always been the number 1 at Red Bull. No matter what mistakes he made, no matter how great Webber was, it was always Vettel who was treated as the star of the team. That must have hurt Webber a lot. So yes, Vettel won 4 titles and Webber none, but it's not all thanks to being that much better than Webber. Turkey 2010 made that absolutely clear. Webber had about as much chance as Irvine or Barrichello at Ferrari.

The hit at la source was hardly his fault, I put more blame on Kimi who turned in as if there was nobody near him. And I don't know if he realised how much damage he had before going into Eau Rouge.

FOUND ONE

My hypothesis is that at a certain point he lost confidence (perhaps it has been eroding since Singapore 2017, or fell of the cliff after Germany 2018) and never managed to get it back.

My impression is that he is still fast (in his poorer recent form there aren't many times you can say he was really slow) but too error-prone, like you would expected from a younger and less experienced driver. And there was a particular race he was slow that was Germany 2019 - while the track was wet, he was battling with Kimi and Gasly and too far away from the other top drivers, and I believe pushing harder in the wet requires a degree of confidence he seemed to lack at that time.

I totally agree Kimi was careless at La Source, but Max was reckless by pushing a damaged car at Eau Rouge.

100% this. Most of the driver comparisons or arguments about how 'X driver is overrated based on Y race/season' that people make are probably explained by a driver's confidence in themselves or their team. When Vettel believed he was the star and had the team behind him, he was a different person and a different level of driver. Spoke a lot more confidently, got a lot more fired up over the radio, and made Ferrari look like they could actually win a championship, which at no point in the past 11 years have they deserved. But once the '18 championship started coming undone with team and driver mistakes and the Leclerc hire was announced he started coming to pieces and just looked a much more dour guy. It's a human trait; not sure about you guys but I've definitely gone from jobs where I felt invincible because the right things were around me to jobs where I felt like a complete idiot doing the exact same things.

There are very few drivers that are immune to this and seem to have a completely unshakable belief in themselves; I'd list Alonso as one. I wouldn't put Hamilton or even Schumacher in that category though.

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Re: Vettel, I'd say this much:

- Obviously I'm a Webber fan, so disclaimer there

- I didn't post the article to say "lol Vettel was shit", although it's true that he has never won from lower than 3rd on the grid, which must be fairly unprecedented out of all the multi-world champion drivers in F1 history. But I've never bought the hype, and Autosport has been guilty of it for years, back to when Edd Straw was calling him the next Senna in about 2011. There was always something about the way that a lot of journalists wrote or spoke about Vettel that just rankled with me - I think they felt the need to sell him as much better than he was, and it always seemed disingenuous

- It's a poor article. Vettel's best drives were probably the ones where he didn't win - he's had a few where he has come through the field, like Abu Dhabi and Brazil in 2012 and Germany last year, so focusing on some lights-to-flag wins from when he had the best car doesn't do him justice in the same way that picking out a load of wins from 2002 and 2004 wouldn't do Schumacher justice

- How good was Vettel? I'd say he was always a cut below Lewis and Alonso. What we saw at Red Bull in the early 2010s was the equivalent of if Hill, Villeneuve or Hakkinen had had a longer run at it in Newey cars than they actually got - where they only had one year in a dominant Newey car, Vettel got 4. Yes, it requires ability to be that good to keep delivering consistently, but everything was stacked in his favour

- Comparing to Webber, I think 2010 is key. Webber was the better driver for 2/3rds of the season, because the car suited his driving style more with the way the exhaust-blown diffuser was set up. However, I remember reading a year or two later that around halfway through the season, they changed the setup of the EBD and Vettel was suddenly faster. The implication - especially when you have the context of Horner and Marko blaming Webber for Istanbul when it clearly wasn't his fault, and Mark having the new front wing taken off him for qualifying at Silverstone - is that that was done deliberately to help Vettel. To me, that says everything about how that team was operating. What I found out recently was that Webber had to actually write to Dietrich Mateschitz after Istanbul to explain what was happening in the team because he had no idea and he was very apologetic when he found out. It partly explains why Mark stayed for 2013 even though he had the offer to go to Ferrari with Alonso (along with Mateschitz's loyalty after his cycling accident)

- Even with all that shit happening, and hurting himself in another cycling accident, Webber still nearly beat him and they were always ridiculously close in qualifying that year. Mark was very quick over one lap so that tallies with Vettel being similar. But after 2010, in my mind, it does look like the politics of the team start to sway more and more towards Vettel and Mark loses motivation to fight back. The only glimmer he had was in the first half of 2012. The thing that always struck me was that Vettel was stronger on the Tilke circuits while Mark tended to be better on the traditional circuits. The Red Bulls tended to be designed more around the Tilke circuits and those with high speed corners which is why they always came on strong at the end of seasons, particularly after the likes of Korea and India got added to the calendar - that's why I lost a bit of interest in 2012, because it always felt inevitable that Vettel would come through in the end with the tracks suiting his car

- For me, it all started unravelling for Vettel when Ricciardo came into the team. For the first time, he was up against another Red Bull programme driver (OK, if you want to be pedantic, Liuzzi was as well but he was on the way out) and I guess he suddenly found he no longer had the political advantage in the team, as well as having a mediocre car for the first time since he'd joined Red Bull. Though I had always been a Vettel sceptic, Ricciardo beating him was the moment where I lost any feeling that this guy had the potential to be elite. Ricciardo will most likely now forever be in the Robert Kubica Memorial Category for Drivers Who Never Had The Chance To Prove How Good They Were, but in my mind he's very good while also not on Lewis or Alonso's level. Given that he was able to beat Vettel over a season in his first year in a top team...that doesn't look great for a four-time world champion. After that I think he lost the last vestiges of mystique he had built up and no one feared racing him. I do think Ferrari kept Raikkonen on alongside him for so long because if they had put someone young and motivated in, it would've blown the illusion to smithereens - and that's exactly what happened last year

- Tl;dr - I think Vettel was good but was only ever as good as his car, and benefited massively from Adrian Newey and internal politics at Red Bull

Verstappen hit Kimi when all 4 wheels were off the track: Yarp? Are we talking about the same incident? The one I have in mind is Spa 2019, where Verstappen was on the inside. On his left: cars. On his right: kerbs and concrete wall. Ahead of him but on the left: Kimi. Verstappen brakes late. You could argue if he braked too late, some will say he did, some will say he didn't. They arrive at La Source, Kimi turns in and goes for the apex as if nobody's there. Which is not a smart thing to to at Spa, in the first lap, at La Source. You know there are over 10 cars behind you all over each other. By the time they contacted, Verstappen and Kimi were next to each other, Kimi didn't check his mirrors. To me, Kimi could have left more room. I checked the footage, and Kimi did have enough room on his left to make a wider line through the corner.

If your only argument is that Verstappen had all wheels of the track, in an attempt to avoid Kimi, then replace all kerbstones with brick walls.

Car infront has right of way when the car behind has the narrow apex.Yarp 2? You don't go into La Source hoping that everyone else will get out of your way. The most important rule in racing should be: avoid contact. Turn in hoping that the one next to you who is braking as hard as he can, will brake that little bit much harder so he can stop and not hit you as you turn into him, because you had a wheellength advantage? Good luck claiming that you were in front as both of your races are ruined, or go that bit wider to avoid it.

Verstappen driving a damaged car into Eau Rogue, as fast as possible, Yarp 3? Verstappen was driving at reduced speed, knew he had damage but didn't know how much. After the contact, his suspension broke. At that time, he couldn't see how bad it was. When accelerating on the straight, the wheel held on. It's physics. Only at the first corner, the turn to the right on Eau Rouge, it turned out he couldn't steer anymore. Again, he was driving at reduced speed. He was passed by Kimi who had just flew in the air and whose suspension could potentially have been in worse state than that of Verstappen. Yet he takes Eau Rouge at normal speed, passing Verstappen and getting hit by him again because only there Verstappen realised he couldn't steer.

There was a lot of blame on Max at Spa, but I also thought that Kimi could have given a bit more space. It wasn't a reckless move.