Drivers’ championship
Position | Driver | Points |
1 | Sebastian Vettel | 392 |
2 | Jenson Button | 270 |
3 | Mark Webber | 258 |
4 | Fernando Alonso | 257 |
5 | Lewis Hamilton | 227 |
6 | Felipe Massa | 118 |
7 | Nico Rosberg | 89 |
8 | Michael Schumacher | 76 |
9 | Adrian Sutil | 42 |
10 | Vitaly Petrov | 37 |
11 | Nick Heidfeld | 34 |
12 | Kamui Kobayashi | 30 |
13 | Paul di Resta | 27 |
14 | Jaime Alguersuari | 26 |
15 | Sebastien Buemi | 15 |
16 | Sergio Perez | 14 |
17 | Rubens Barrichello | 4 |
18 | Bruno Senna | 2 |
19 | Pastor Maldonado | 1 |
20 | Pedro de la Rosa | 0 |
21 | Jarno Trulli | 0 |
22 | Heikki Kovalainen | 0 |
23 | Vitantonio Liuzzi | 0 |
24 | Jerome d’Ambrosio | 0 |
25 | Timo Glock | 0 |
26 | Narain Karthikeyan | 0 |
27 | Daniel Ricciardo | 0 |
28 | Karun Chandhok | 0 |
2011 Brazilian Grand Prix
tflb1 (@)
27th November 2011, 17:51
It won’t really reflect well on Force India if they drop a driver who finished ninth in the championship.
BBT (@bbt)
27th November 2011, 17:59
Why? Teams have dropped WDC drivers and drivers allot higher finishers than that…
Should Sutil stay…. probably.
Tommo N7 (@tommothfc)
27th November 2011, 18:01
@tflb1 As @BBT said, teams have dropped drivers who have finished higher, e.g Williams dropping Hill, the world champion in 1996. It’s been expecting that Sutil will move, and I hope he does, Hulkenberg is deserving of a seat.
Fer no.65 (@fer-no65)
27th November 2011, 18:08
Di Resta still impressed more than SUtil did. So did Hulkenberg last year. So it’d not be a mad move if they sack Sutil in the end.
tflb1 (@)
27th November 2011, 18:47
That’s completely subjective. In fact I think Hulkenberg was distinctly unimpressive last year.
Tommo N7 (@tommothfc)
27th November 2011, 21:49
@tflb1 He put in many decent performances, quite good for his rookie season. Sutil’s not exactly done anything special in the 5 years he has had in F1 – this season was his highest finish, and it wasn’t exactly impressive, especially as di Resta outshone him many times, in only his first season.
tflb1 (@)
27th November 2011, 22:06
Well, for me Sutil has been one of the stand-out drivers of the second half of the season.
Eggry (@eggry)
27th November 2011, 17:53
It’s shame that it might be much piercing battle for 2nd. F150 was still suffered from tyre temp, Button failed tyre choice but he had enough gap to Alonso, Webber, and Webber was too far behind to target 2nd.
suka (@suka)
27th November 2011, 18:53
You’re looking at Alonso when thinking about F150degrees, but you really should more often look at Massa to evaluate the F150 chances for any kind of battle except the first lap of every race….
Tommo N7 (@tommothfc)
27th November 2011, 17:59
Shows how poor Renault have been this last half of the season. Despite Heidfeld not competing in 8 races, he was only 3 points behind Petrov. If there was another race, odds are Force India would have came 5th.
Also, seeing how far Massa is off Alonso really shows how poor Massa is. A lot closer to the Mercedes than the top teams, time for him to move on.
AndrewTanner (@andrewtanner)
27th November 2011, 22:25
@TommoTHFC It depends on what sort of driver Ferrari want. Do they want an inter-team battle where the drivers can take points off each other or someone who will obey team orders and support their number 1 driver when required?
Tommo N7 (@tommothfc)
28th November 2011, 18:13
@AndrewTanner That’s the issue, so far Ferrari have been happy to have a distinct number 1 & 2. I believe that the best drivers should be in the best teams, for example like at McLaren. At the end of the day, they need a decent 2nd driver so they can actually challenge in the Constructors. Massa just isn’t up to the job.
Reay
27th November 2011, 18:17
Agree. Massa shud move on. He is no where near Alonso all year long. Time for him to move on. Give Alonso a team mate who can push him harder.
As for Force India, can’t see why they shud drop Sutil or any of its drivers. They are both very good. Put any one of them in the Ferrari and I bet they’ll be a lot closer to Alonso than Massa ever was.
Mercedes, Roseberg is a great driver actually. Michael is a legend. Mercedes needs him. He can still pull it. Showed some flashes of his old self this season. Hell, Formula 1 needs him. Notice how F1 gets more interesting with him around?
infy (@infy)
27th November 2011, 18:22
Although it’s not smart to have a driver taking points off your main man, because then there is the chance that your two drivers would finish second and third in the WDC.
Rather put all your weight behind the driver who is overall better over the course of the year, than the one who can some times do well.
suka (@suka)
27th November 2011, 19:03
Although I agree with your point of view, which is the general practice with F1 teams(slightly less at Mclaren) but even when it is needed for the number 2 driver to back up the number 1, Massa proved to be incapable.
@Reay, I don’t think anyone can push Alonso harder than what he’s shown this season…
Adam Tate (@adam-tate)
28th November 2011, 0:04
Alonso ended this season with more points than last season, with fewer wins and an inferior car, that is the hardest he has ever pushed. Massa did not hold him back in the least. Alonso is self motivated.
As to the criticism of Massa, wait and see what he does in 2012. I think he took longer than most to adapt to the pirellis and last season was hardly good for his morale. A good winter off and he shall bring podiums if not wins again, provided Ferrari don’t mess up the new car.
Alain (@paganbasque)
28th November 2011, 14:29
Absolutely true Reay. When Schumacher is racing you can expect everthing, a great start, brilliant battles, collisions, mistakes or excellent movements. He sumarizes what is good and bad in F1, this is the reason to consider him as a icon and a spectacular driver.
1 of the 3
27th November 2011, 18:33
Adrian Sutil was brilliant all weekend and am very happy to see him in 9th overall. Finishing ahead of both Renaults and both Mercedes in this race must be a huge satisfaction for him. So that leaves him behind the top 3 teams. No one on here has ever given a good explanation for why he needs to go. All anyone ever says is stuff like @Fer no.65 said above which is totally subjective and nothing more than an opinion.
My questions to those who dislike Sutil as a person are still what exactly is Adrian Sutil supposed to do, and where this season was he supposed to finish in a Force India (ahead of Schumacher and Rosberg for example)?
I say Well done Sutil for being 1st of the midfield!
Adam Tate (@adam-tate)
27th November 2011, 19:22
Agreed. Sutil is a good candidate for driver of the day after such a great race. He legitimately passed Rosberg on track and looked fantastic. If he doesn’t have a drive for next year it will be a real shame.
Raveendhana (@raveendhana)
27th November 2011, 18:55
fI rob Fernley said which goes like this
“We have three very talented drivers and we need to make sure the one that is going to be disappointed has the best opportunity to position himself and that’s our priority”.
so i think FI have already decided hulk gonna replace sutil, and they want to take their own time of announcing it, they have stuck back to their old december date just around christmas.
Fixy (@)
27th November 2011, 19:02
So sad to see Alonso lose 3rd position. 4th is still better than expected at the start of the year.
Adam Tate (@adam-tate)
27th November 2011, 19:18
Remarkable consistency in the midfield, Force India score 1 more point than they did last year and Sauber score the exact same as last season with 44!
Williams lost a LOT of ground, and STR, made a huge leap forward.
McLaren scored one point less than RedBull did last year, and Vettel alone scored more points than Ferrari!
What an incredible season.
JamieFranklinF1 (@jamiefranklinf1)
27th November 2011, 20:01
I think it’s a real shame that Force India just missed 5th place. Despite the two podiums at the beginning of the season for Renault, I think Force India were more deserving of it, considering their considerable improvement in the second half of the season.
I find it strange how at the front it is Red Bull vs McLaren vs Ferrari, and then in the midfield (especially towards the end of the season) it was Toro Rosso (Essentially the Red Bull feeder team) vs Force India (of whom has a technical partnership with McLaren) vs Sauber (who use a Ferrari engine and a number of drivers who come from Sauber are either in the young driver programme or go to Ferrari, aka Massa, Raikkonen and Perez).
Entef (@entef)
27th November 2011, 21:46
Strange how Webber has a slightly disappointing year, but if he had his 2011 point tally he would have won the 2010 title, when he supposedly had his best year and managed 3rd.
Adam Tate (@adam-tate)
28th November 2011, 0:11
Yes, the point totals are very telling.
Button, Webber and Alonso all scored more points than Vettel did last season.
If you look, Ferrari were only off their 2010 point total by 21 points. That’s not a lot.
It just shows how much Vettel and RedBull iself upped their game.
RedBull scored 154 more points than they did last year! It’s a scary pattern; The RB5 had 6 wins, the RB6 had 9 wins, and the RB7 got 12!! That rate of improvement is incredible. Though it’s worth mentioning the RB6 could have had just as many as the RB7 if it weren’t for car failures.