Raikkonen: Look at performance, not just results

F1 Fanatic Round-up

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In the round-up: Amid doubts over his Ferrari future Kimi Raikkonen reminds people to consider his performances this year, not just his results.

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Raikkonen urges critics to focus on performance not results (Crash)

"People can look at it two ways, they can look that we did well or they can just look at the result."

Ferrari flop Kimi Raikkonen is facing the axe (Daily Star)

"The £10-million-a-year ex-champ protests: 'I still have the speed and the motivation and I'm going to keep on trying.'"

Renault keen to revive young driver scheme (F1i)

"I am a big fan of driver programmes. We had that in the past, but maybe it was a bit too ambitious because we had a lot of drivers."

Bottas: Williams will be 'clever' now (Autosport)

"For sure, we are going to be clever now in the future with what we do."

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Comment of the day

Last weekend’s Caption Competition was one of the best we’ve had for a few months. After much chuckling and deliberation, the winner is Sare:

Once more the Red Bull pit wall decides to get Kvyat out of the way.
Sare

Thanks to everyone who joined in and special shout-outs to @Schooner, @Dave-M, @fullcoursecaution, @Vettel1, @hunocsi and @Coldfly who also came up with very funny captions.

Snapshot

Ferrari test driver Esteban Gutierrez drove one of the team’s 2009-specification F60s in a demonstration run in Mexico City ahead of the return of the Mexican Grand Prix to the calendar in November.

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On this day in F1

Carlos Reutemann won the German Grand Prix on the Nurburgring Nordschleife 40 years ago today. Niki Lauda led from pole position – having set F1’s first sub-seven minute lap of the circuit – but picked up a puncture and fell to third behind Jacques Laffite’s Williams.

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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63 comments on “Raikkonen: Look at performance, not just results”

  1. Ok, Kimi, looking at your performance over the entire year, I’d say that is still pretty awful.

    1. @strontium and if we include 2014 aswell, he’s still in very bad shape!

      1. ColdFly F1 (@)
        3rd August 2015, 8:14

        But what is to be expected? At €22m/year Ferrari pays him a lot less than Vettel.
        It seems they are getting what they pay for :p

    2. @strontium and @fer-no65: please look at facts, Raikkonen faced a lot of bad luck so far this season.
      Australia: a botched pitstop caused his left rear tyre to come loose.
      Malaysia: traffic in qualifying and recovered well in the race to secure 4th.
      Canada: spun at the hairpin probably caused by car probelm.
      Austria: failure in communication to be eliminated in Q1.
      UK: poor tyre choice in mixed conditions
      Hungary: Mechanical failure
      I hope he would have a clean second half of the season though he has nothing to prove because he has been already a deserved world champion :)

      1. @malik He has had a lot of problems, but looking beyond these his performance still hasn’t been there. He has been much slower than Vettel overall. Even in Hungary he was quite a way down the road before he had the problem. He has underperformed a lot even when the car has been there for him.

        1. “Much slower” seems an exaggeration. In Hungary he was a little over three seconds behind Vettel after twenty laps. He’s been a little bit slower than Vettel. He’s also made more mistakes than his teammate. And he’s been unlucky with car issues.

          Granted he’s not been as good as Seb in the first ten races. That’s a high bar – Vettel has been the most impressive driver on the grid in the first half of the season. What Ferrari will know and what we cannot is how much responsibility Kimi had for incidents like the one in Austria. Was that a software glitch, or driver error? If the former they’ll probably keep him, if the latter they’ll probably can him.

        2. @strontium Well, he’s ten years past his peak, so to be near Vettel and occasionally beating him is a good show. Only Alonso is probably still at his peak at 34, while Massa is back near his 2008 best a good few times in the last year. Button has probably lost a little one lap pace, like Kimi, since his 2012 troubles.

          1. If this is the Button after one lap pace lost, there is a problem with Fernando, as he actually looks slower over 1 lap when none of them has mechanical problems.

        3. @strontium Or maybe Vettel is just that good.

          1. “Thus saith the Lord God; repent, and turn yourselves from your idols; and turn away your faces from all your abominations.”

      2. Hm, @malik. But the spin was a car thing, but not something unexpected, and Vettel coped with it fine (different mapping for first lap/outlap) and the communication thing, well, it takes two to communicate, doesn’t it?

        Overall, I think its fair to say that Kimi has shown lacklustre form over the last 2 years with many lows and a few points that could be regarded as highlights. It all depends on how much Ferrari value continuity and a line-up that gells well over having the best 2 drivers they can get in the cars

      3. @malik The fact, like it or not, is that Kimi has never been a match for Seb during this season, and the same happened with Alonso last year.

        I like Kimi, he’s obviously very good, ahd yes, he has nothing to prove at this point. But he’s struggling, to say the least. He was hired back and has failed to do anything compared to his team mate in both years so far.

        The fact of the matter is that he’s never been a match for Seb or Alonso. And there are plenty of guys in the grid that would be doing better given the chance to be in Kimi’s seat. THAT’S WHY he has to prove he’s worthy of the ride, because he can have all the titles and records, but he still has to be fast.

        1. there are plenty of guys in the grid that would be doing better given the chance to be in Kimi’s seat.

          I doubt that there are “plenty” of drivers on the grid who could give Alonso and Vettel a serious challenge.

          1. I agree with that. We’ve been having the same conversation since 2009, when Alonso joined Felipe Massa in Ferrari.

          2. A driver doesn’t need to give Vettel or Alonso “a serious” challenge to perform than Raikkonen is doing now.

      4. @malik Thing is, if Vettel was put in those positions as well you imagine he’d have scored a lot more points…

        1. +1 Well he was in that position last year….

    3. Either way, apart from Button there isn’t anyone else on the grid ready for the step-up to Ferrari. Except for the guys that have already been there and they are not going back. Move on already. Let Kimi drive.

      1. That’s quite a claim.

        In my eyes, Hulkenberg, Grosjean, and Bottas, to name three, look very ready to take a step up. I’d say Perez is also ready too, to join a top team. And let’s not forget another man with three years of experience is Jean Eric Vergne. He has had a year out but we know from the past that a single year out of F1 doesn’t make you slow.

        1. Only Bottas, maybe, possibly could step up at this point. There was a time when Ferrari would only sign a race winner. Those other guys are all flawed, in one way or another, and unknown quantities in a top-team. Very good racers but not top-shelf. With what Williams would want for Bottas, Ferrari would be better served by keeping Kimi for another year.

    4. Did you know that his average finishing position last year matches Felipe Massa’s best results against Fernando Alonso? It’s just that their finish positions were the worst ever!

    5. I don’t think we should forget that Vettel’s been probably the best performing driver on the grid for the first 10 races.

      Did you realize Vettel’s spins in friday practices by the way? He had one in both Malaysia and Hungary. I also remember the one in Australia and maybe China? Had a massive tank slapper sort of thing in Silverstone race in wet part on the lap he overtook Raikkonen. Maybe he copes better. His driving style or throttle application might be better suited to get a handle on those things.

      1. ColdFly F1 (@)
        3rd August 2015, 8:21

        Did you realize Vettel’s spins in friday practices by the way?

        Spin in practice: Smart way to find where the limit is of the car/tyres!

        1. I’m sure people who don’t vote for him as DOTW think he should find the limit without spinning.

        2. @coldfly

          Spin in practice: Smart way to find where the limit is of the car/tyres!

          Heh, nicely put. I wonder where people got the idea from that free practice is supposed to be a performance competition.

        3. @coldfly exactly, that is exactly what practice sessions are for doing. Find the limit, have a few excursions if necessary.

        4. Yeah nowadays I get happy when I see Vettel spin. Makes me hopeful he’s gonna pull something out of the bag.

    6. Now, if you looked at the number of fastest laps, Raikkonen is clearly ahead of his teammate.

        1. Kidding. Obviously, as Vettel says.

    7. I’ll have to disagree for a while he looked the fasted on race pace, that said, as Vettel was on the normal racing strategy his pace might have been compromised.

      1. What are you talking about???

  2. The Ferrari Demo here in Mexico was awesome! It was refreshing to hear a V8 accelerating in its pure form.

    On the other hand, Raikkonen to be honest has only being fast in a couple of races, but it is still way down in performance in comparison to Vettel. But I would put Raikkonen for another year at Ferrari at least, I still think he has potential for a good result like in Bahrain and Spa last year. He is a very good driver and he can still make cracking performances with that car.

    1. V8 demo f1 cars = False advertising, so who wants to join in a class action against Bernie? Hmmmm on second thoughts….. :-)

      1. Ooh jeez, how disappointing is it gonna be when they start demoing the V6s?

  3. I am a big fan of driver programmes. We had that in the past, but maybe it was a bit too ambitious because we had a lot of drivers and no one paid as much as Maldonado does. So we’re going to revive it with a condition that every driver has to pay at least 30 million pounds.

    If only they went back to the days of Kubica, Kovalainen and Jose Maria Lopez…

    1. @fer-no65 I’ll make it simple for them.. simply sign Charles Leclerc and focus on him. Eventually he can partner Grosjean or Vergne etc.

      1. Although, I wouldn’t be surprised if they took on Vaxiviere as well. Ocon would have been a good pick before he joined Mercedes. Maybe Hubert? Arthur Pic? Depends how many French F4 (FR1.6) champions they want to sign..

        1. I was thinking Ocon. As a Mercedes seat doesn’t seem viable for a long while, especially for an 18-year-old, maybe Renault would try to take him and add him to their programme if they bought Lotus and give him some FP1s to start with.

          1. @deej92 Yep, and he was there before Palmer through Gravity, appearing briefly at Abu Dhabi FP1. Thankfully Mercedes could pick him up in the meantime, but they are focussing heavily on Wehrlein. Renault could be a great place to end up in once Pastor moves out.

    2. Maybe Renault shouldn’t dump WRC 3.5 then??

    3. I think the biggest problem with the Renault driver programme last time around was selection – they let the major talent Kubica slip through their fingers while preparing Kovalainen (seen as highly promising at the time, but ultimately not a top level driver IMO) and Piquet Jr (famous primarily for crashing, accidentally or otherwise) for race seats. The Renault cars of 2007-09 weren’t as good as their title winning predecessors, but I’m fairly sure they’d have done better with Kubica in one of the them (imagine 2008 with him in the second R28 alongside Alonso instead of Piquet).

  4. NR: “super news. kids for free. danke hockenheim.”
    I thought he had the child! Not that he’s talking about German GP…

  5. Ah! I’m picked for the caption! Thanks @keithcollantine and everyone !!
    At first it was hard to think a caption for driver cut-outs, then it became obvious when I saw Ricciardo there too… lol

  6. If anything about Ferrari has been consistent is it they are conservative in driver choices and will always take experience above a rookie even when he looks promising. They will always let drivers earn their feathers elsewhere and then hope to let them really blossom with Ferrari. Kimi will stay at least for 2016. They haven’t hired a non-GP winner since Massa and before that they all were either champions or multiple winners.

    1. I think they couldn’t find a like for like after Schumacher.

    2. What about Rubens and Eddie Irvine. They didn’t win before their Ferrari years, did they?

      1. No, they haven’t win until Ferrari. But I think Irvine, Barrichello and Massa were brought in as second drivers to Schumacher.

  7. Going by the average of Autosport driver ratings for the first 10 races, Raikkonen is in 14th place with a 6,6. That’s nothing short of atrocious. He has the biggest gap behind his teammate (-1,7 to Vettel’s 8,3) of all drivers, and also the biggest amount of races with lower rating than his teammate (9).

    I like Kimi, a lot, but there’s no escaping the fact that he’s past his prime.

    1. I think people cannot appreciate drivers like Alonso, Vettel enough and others who come second to them get underappreciated. I don’t think Raikkonen was worse than Massa last year as you would have expected since they were more or less matching each other in Ferrari. And Massa is matching Bottas who is considered “good”.

  8. @keithcollantine Speaking of driver ratings, haven’t you thought of rating drivers after each GP? It would be a great complement to the user-chosen DOTW.

  9. Don’t know if round-up material, but an absurd weekend for the Brazilian Stock Car:

    On Saturday dogs crossed the track during qualy.

    On Sunday it was much worse, first a huge crash that send two drivers to the hospital with light injures, and after the restart children crossed the track forcing the safety car to be deployed.

    1. @paulk That’s one of the most disturbing things I’ve seen on a racing track in a while. Wonder what Barrichello (who races in the championship) had to say about it?

      1. @keithcollantine There’s this instagram post. Translating the important part: “But I have a bitter felling for the way Brazilian motor racing is going. Anyway, today I’m happy no one got hurt…”

        @zekeri I’m positive, check the video. There were more children crossing before that boy but were not caught on camera.

    2. That’s horrible. Are you sure it’s not photoshopped?
      Is there someone up there behind the car? He looks huge?

  10. Whilst Raikkonen’s performances have improved since last year, he is still being massively outclassed by his team mate, and has been for two years now, and he is making a fair few unnecessary errors. Granted, he should have a points total that should be higher than just under half of what Vettel has, but ultimately it won’t be anywhere near what it should be. It is also worth remembering that Vettel has seven podiums this season from ten races (and would probably have had two more if Canada and Austria went better) which includes two wins where he was simply better than Raikkonen as opposed to the single second place that the Finn can boast.

    1. Did he really improve I wonder? His race results don’t compare any more favorably with Vettel than it did with Alonso. Neither the quali difference.
      Quali results go a couple of tenths up or down over seasons among teammates, but race finish positions on the average don’t change that much.
      He looks much more comfortable with the car though.

  11. Vettel comparison is hurting Kimi; Seb is the best driver this year so far; he made only one mistake in Bahrain, otherwise he’s been spot on!

    1. You can even argue that without Vettel, Raikkonen’s strategy in Bahrain might not have even worked. I’m not saying he didn’t make mistake of course.

    2. Yep. Seb’s been a revelation. Don’t know how a guy who’s been driving for 8 seasons and won 4 championships manages that. But anyway…

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