brought to you by TJ13 provocateur-in-chief Fat Hippo
Felipe Nasr, the bane in every TV commenter’s life, since there’s also Felipe Massa, who just sounds the same, has the distinction of being voted Driver of the Weekend for the first GP of the season. In TJ13’s poll the Brazilian rookie gained an impressive 41.77% of the readers’ votes as he brought home his Sauber C34 in fifth place. Considering that the Brazilian had been signed up to a non-existent seat last year solely for the fact that he had potent sponsors affiliated with him, one could be forgiven for thinking that Nasr would be just another pay driver, but the Brazilian proved that he has the racing mettle to back it up. After a – literally – pointless season, Sauber scored a healthy harvest of points just two days after the ridiculous spectacle presented by their team principal. If nothing else, the brutal drubbing he administered to his hopeless team mate Marcus Ericsson shows that Nasr is far from being in F1 on monetary merit alone.
In a very distant second we have Lewis Hamilton at 11.3%, who did exactly nothing to deserve as much as a mention as he merely trundled along at half throttle with nothing but a hopelessly broken German to worry about.
In third place we have baby Max at 10.8%, who held on to the pace quite well despite starting on the harder compound. Unfortunately the Dutchman’s pram caught fire after switching to the option tyres. All in all, however, not too bad a showing for someone who’s barely old enough to understand what what girls are for, other than competing for the shovel in the sandbox.
You picked a fine time to leave me loose wheel
with four knackered wheel nuts
and points in the field
I’ve had some bad times
Lived through some sad times
But this time takes ice cream to heal
You picked a fine time to leave me loose wheel
Lament of an unknown Finnish citizen, 2015
Behind young Max we have the scarlet clad duo of Räikkönen and Vettel, who are only separated by 0.8%. There was not much to differentiate between the two buddies in red, but despite his blisteringly fast laps on the second set of options, Kimi was always going to lose out due to the slower two-stop strategy. In the end it was all academic as his car developed a habit of shedding wheels, but there is no doubt that both drivers of the Gestione Sportiva were closer to their best that they had ever been last year.
We leave the minor scorers to the consideration of the interested reader, but it is worth mentioning that last year’s hyped hero Danny Ricciardo got not a single vote, maybe reminding some that a driver is only as good as his car and team.
Isn’t it Baby Felipe vs. Felipe Baby? Humorous explanation of the results, Herr Hippo.
Felipe Baby = Felipe Massa
Baby Felipe = young Felipe = Felipe Nasr
Why should only commentators be confused? 😉
Can see Herbert getting that wrong on a consistent basis, LOL!
I really don’t understand how Max got a higher ratings than Sainz Jr. especially when he was getting spanked.
until he binned it in quali he looked better, and he started race on Medium tyres. His Medium stints looked pretty good and would have been epic watching him run fast laps on soft tyres.
That and we get a lot of Belgians, LOL!!
Hahhaha
Well then are you able to explain how drivers who never got close to even turning a wheel rated higher then some of those who did 🙁
Fortis96 you raise a good point; though Max’s drive was solely on the medium compound tires, if one analyzes his stint and the various performances of other drivers, Max was not that good in comparison to what others did on mediums, nor to the performance of his young team-mate Sainz.
It’s not surprising that Max underperformed because his instructions were to just finish the race (aka be conservative, and don’t toss into the barriers). While it was good that he did what he was asked, it was certainly NOT the drive of the race.
Haha I can make stuff up, but looks mostly like we got spammed by the Manor fan club and Bottas and Magnussen points for good effort and bravery respectively, LOL!!
Voted Magnussen for making the weekend entertaining… 🙂
Felipe is the nephew of Amir Nasr. That guy has owned teams in several categories. I remember his team used to win everything in Formula 3 Sudamericana in the 90’s. Felipe isn’t the regular pay driver. He was probably trained since very young with a lot of resources to his disposal thanks to his uncle. He is a good driver. Add to that that his uncle has excellent relationships with sponsors… not a bad combination, a good driver that also brings money to teams.
“but it is worth mentioning that last year’s hyped hero Danny Ricciardo got not a single vote, maybe reminding some that a driver is only as good as his car and team.”
Still hippo feels for his hero seb being beaten by Colgate boy.
Well, all the people who were consumed with Schadenfreude and sang RIC’s praises last year seem to have abandoned him quite quickly. He’s hardly mentioned anymore. Neatly showcases the mindset of some “fans”.
you mean they turned on him as quickly as you did on the “hoeplessly broken german”?
Well, if you would just stop baiting me endlessly for a minute and watch the post-race coverage from Melbourne you’d see that Rosberg as resigned himself to the #2 status. He had no self-confidence whatsoever.
If he has resigned himself to that status then what we are going to endure throughout the year is the two Mercs lapping with 1 to 2 secs gap and 30+ secs to the next car. Hopeless season. Sprinkle some rain bernie. Lets have 2007 back
Yes, FH raises good points about Ricciardo’s performance being overlooked.
His RB11 was saddled with a motor that was down on power so he did drive well to finish up in 6th.
Mr. Horner made clear that RB weren’t able to map any decent driveability to the motor, so Ricciardo was forced to drive around very poor power delivery issues as well.
I mention this only because there is a good chance that some of the major driveability problems may be solved quickly, hopefully for Sepang. Given all that Ricciardo had to do to turn a decent lap in Melbourne, the RB11 may be a car that soon surprises some folks.
Most Excellent song parody, FH! Reminds me of this:
http://www.gocomics.com/the-bent-pinky/2014/09/12