47 responses to “Driver of the Weekend: 2015 FORMULA 1 GULF AIR BAHRAIN GRAND PRIX”
Kimi’s back. Working well with Vettel and the Ferrari team. Anyone else noticing his newly voiced frustration with traffic holding him up.
This will be the first one that little max doesn’t win.
Clearly the #FlyingFinn is back!! He did great managing his tires and this is his favorite circuit.
Tough one.
Kimi put on the best offensive drive.
Bottas held off Vettel for like 20 laps, putting on a defensive display.
But the guy that squeezed the most out of his car, was Ricciardo.
If the definition of “best drive” is to get 100% out of the car you have, blowing the motor in the last 200 meters is surely taking your equipment to it’s absolute limit, and deserves mention.
Kimi got my vote though. Even though he really didn’t pass anyone, his pace in the second stint, and the teams tire strategy made for some real excitement there at the end.
Who knew before this weekend started I would be leaping off my couch and cheering for a Ferrari. Strange times.
The engines are supposed to do 5 races. Blowing one part-way though its life is pushing too hard, not taking the equipment to the limit!
Well, it would be if he didn’t have a Renault behind him – as it stands he was lucky to make it off the grid…
This is one of those seasons where it is hard to tell if Mercedes has fallen back or if the rest have made a step up.
Clearly that has to be Hamilton, other than topping FP1&2 and not getting the fastest lap of the race, he pretty much dominated the entire weekend.
So maybe the question should be changed to….
Who was the driver of the race?
Maybe, but it IS the race that counts. To me, it’s also about ‘making the best of the weekend’ – which kiimi did.
Well then the wrong question is being asked.
Well, for you we have to change the question to, ‘who was second best after Lewis’.
Reading is fundamental hippo, try it sometime
nah, I despise unnecessary effort
One gets the impression that’s the question you set yourself.
🙂
How bout the huge effort hulk did in that sh*tbox of his…
In that case the question isn’t opinion, you just give points for each session and whoever gets most wins.
Lewis should top every session and win as he has the fastest car. The point of this question is who outperformed their machinery and did better than they should have.
That doesn’t preclude Lewis from being voted best but just because he was fastest in the fastest car doesn’t automatically mean it is him.
Again the question that was asked was…
“Who was the driver of the weekend?”
The operative word being weekend. I did not disagree that Kimi may or may not have been the driver of the race (my vote would go to Massa). So the driver of the race and the weekend are clearly 2 separate things, hence my comment.
I don’t see the correlation between me pointing out that fastest in the fastest car doesn’t necessarily mean best and you mentioning Kimi and Massa.
As I pointed out below, we don’t know the circumstances in quali – it could be that one driver in particular (I mentioned Kimi just because he was the subject of discussion, it could be any driver) set his car up for the race but still qualified well and was then able to go on to do well in the race.
Maybe another way to put it is that the race is the culmination of the weekend. Practice and qualifying for the slower teams will involve work to maximise their result in the race. This may not necessarily show up in headline times.
Again, being the fastest in the fastest car doesn’t necessarily equate to the best performance.
The problem we have here Mr Fortis (by the way are you a fan of the watch brand? or has it other meaning?) is that you should be judging performance on driver not machinery. Looking at Mercedes, they had a very clear performance advantage over the weekend. That said, the stand out performances in qualifying came from Hulkenburg and Vettel, both of whom put their cars ahead of faster machinery. In the race? Well clearly Mr K Raikkonen of Finland did an incredible job to take a car which is evidently considerably slower and split the Mercedes cars. If anything, the distance between the two Mercs shows that on race day Rosberg (who we all know isn’t really that good) was close to LH, suggesting LH didn’t perform at his optimum. Kimi clearly did on race day, but not in qualifying.
On that note I award driver of the weekend to Jenson Button 🙂
I concur, on a dollars per race lap basis Button was clearly best driver. In fact, his value to McLaren was such that it cannot be calculated mathematically.
No it’s not relating the watch brand, it rather has a more personal meaning.
Kimi for sure.
It has to be Nico. For the first time in living memory, he overtook 2 cars in a race. Cars almost equal to his own, being driven by 2 former world champions.
With drs with the best car.
Against Vettel who is well known for being hard to overtake even when in a poor car…
Not with drs and a 10 to 15 kph advantage.
Max for sure!
Just kidding. Where are our Dutch friends today? Fair weather voters?
Kimi is back indeed. Loved the comment he made over the radio when he was chasing Vettel. Something along the lines of “I’m faster than him, but I guess I’ll try to pass him” (rather than ask his wall to have Vettel move over). T-shirt material.
Are you now chastising the people who previously voted for Max (not necessarily Dutch) for not being blind fan boys? If they had voted for him, you would surely moan about that. So you just seem to have an ax to grind.
— looking for ax…nope, no ax in sight—
I made a comment last week that Dutch readers appeared to take over the polls whenever he had a decent (but not spectacular) drive and Hippo shared some of the site metrics which showed a significant spike in readership and voting from NL after races even when he was, IMHO, just decent. That is all.
Raikkönen, without a doubt, superb race from him and was in the right place to capitalize on Rosberg’s brakes going off. Who knows, one or two laps more and he would have taken a victory for himself ! Of course, Hamilton is driving beautifully but you would expect him to do that in a car that can fight at the front, so today is a par weekend for him even if par means winning.
For me it’s a tie between Kimi and nico. I think Nico passed a Ferrari 4 times on track. Shame that his brakes gave at the end. Special mention should go to fred trundling in that machine for the entire race and drove on despite being overtaken by so many novices on the long straight.
I feel driver of the weekend and driver of the day should have very different results here!
Agreed.
Were Raikkonen a faster qualifier, he would have been challenging for the win.
Pretty well a shoe in for driver of the race, but Hamilton monstered qualifying as well as driving a fault free race.
Rosberg for ‘most improved racing’ ?
Just a supposition here, but what if Kimi had compromised qualifying pace for a better race car? If that were the case, would that not change how his performance was viewed?
“Just a supposition here, but what if Kimi had compromised qualifying pace for a better race car? If that were the case, would that not change how his performance was viewed?”
it would. but the general pattern of kimis mediocre qualifying performances suggests that this wasn’t deliberate.
Unless Kimi always goes for race pace….
By the way, I’m not defending him here, I’m just raising the point that things might not always be as they seem.
@ Stephen – re: ” … supposition here, but what if Kimi had compromised qualifying pace for a better race car? … ”
Kimi raced this time just as he did in China, except that this time he did his middle stint on mediums was particularly good as he was matching or bettering Rosberg’s and Vettel’s times on their softs.
p.s. I understand why Merc decided to bring in Rosberg early for his first stop to cover Vettel, but don’t understand why they didn’t do the same for the second stop.
I had this thought too, but after first round of stops not only did Vettel get Nico, the both of them almost got Lewis. I think that they decided to protect P1 from Vettel at the expense of P2, especially given Rosberg’s ability to get back round Seb. Makes sense from a WCC point of view.
It’s possible, but I don’t buy it.
Unless he (or Ferrari) actually claims that, unlikely, I think, as anijs points out.
Judge,
A small observation. Alonso’s number is 14. It appears as 20
How long do they give Kvyat? He’s far less experienced than DanR, but he’s not doing so well, is he? Lower expectations on the STR guys this year being rookies, but I’m not sure they ready for the leap to the main team either.
Maybe RBR will quit in a huff if their drivers aren’t good enough either?
To be fair, a lot of his problems have been car / engine rather than driver. Plus, he has very little F1 experience.
Not that this has stopped RB from dropping drivers in the past.
Don’t the still have Buemi on the books? And JEV is probably readily available – whether he’d come back in to the fold after the way they dumped him is another matter of course.
And all the Dutch will promote max to the red bull. If there is one thing we’ve learned, there are more drivers than seats.
As a Dutchman I would not want Max to go to Red Bull next year. He’s doing great, especially for a 17 year old with only a year of racing experience in cars, and a little bit better than what can be expected of a normal rookie who had some solid first 3 races but not anything more than that. And I know I’m a bit alone in this in the Netherlands and I’m continually pointing my fellow country men to the pitfalls of making a hero out of him too soon (because of the simple reason that the Dutch can be very vocal when one of them does alright but they can be just as vocal when it’s clear that they are not going to be in the top, just ask any Dutch F1 fan about their opinion on Albers or Doornbos). And even if he performed the rest of the year as well as he did in Malaysia I would still be cautious of promoting him to a top team already (Vettel and Hamilton seem to be doing fine after being thrown in a top team so soon but still). An extra year in the midfield doesn’t hurt a F1 driver.
If “driver” and “rider” are functionally equivalent in the context of motor racing then it’s Valentino Rossi – with no competition.
Thank goodness for MotoGP: Racing!
Kimi’s back. Working well with Vettel and the Ferrari team. Anyone else noticing his newly voiced frustration with traffic holding him up.
This will be the first one that little max doesn’t win.
Clearly the #FlyingFinn is back!! He did great managing his tires and this is his favorite circuit.
Tough one.
Kimi put on the best offensive drive.
Bottas held off Vettel for like 20 laps, putting on a defensive display.
But the guy that squeezed the most out of his car, was Ricciardo.
If the definition of “best drive” is to get 100% out of the car you have, blowing the motor in the last 200 meters is surely taking your equipment to it’s absolute limit, and deserves mention.
Kimi got my vote though. Even though he really didn’t pass anyone, his pace in the second stint, and the teams tire strategy made for some real excitement there at the end.
Who knew before this weekend started I would be leaping off my couch and cheering for a Ferrari. Strange times.
The engines are supposed to do 5 races. Blowing one part-way though its life is pushing too hard, not taking the equipment to the limit!
Well, it would be if he didn’t have a Renault behind him – as it stands he was lucky to make it off the grid…
This is one of those seasons where it is hard to tell if Mercedes has fallen back or if the rest have made a step up.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=exGFB5bejc8
For the Kimi lovers out there 😉
Do you know what he said that was bleeped out?
I think its: I’ve made f-ing mistakes
Based on the question being asked…
Who was the driver of the weekend?
Clearly that has to be Hamilton, other than topping FP1&2 and not getting the fastest lap of the race, he pretty much dominated the entire weekend.
So maybe the question should be changed to….
Who was the driver of the race?
Maybe, but it IS the race that counts. To me, it’s also about ‘making the best of the weekend’ – which kiimi did.
Well then the wrong question is being asked.
Well, for you we have to change the question to, ‘who was second best after Lewis’.
Reading is fundamental hippo, try it sometime
nah, I despise unnecessary effort
One gets the impression that’s the question you set yourself.
🙂
How bout the huge effort hulk did in that sh*tbox of his…
In that case the question isn’t opinion, you just give points for each session and whoever gets most wins.
Lewis should top every session and win as he has the fastest car. The point of this question is who outperformed their machinery and did better than they should have.
That doesn’t preclude Lewis from being voted best but just because he was fastest in the fastest car doesn’t automatically mean it is him.
Again the question that was asked was…
“Who was the driver of the weekend?”
The operative word being weekend. I did not disagree that Kimi may or may not have been the driver of the race (my vote would go to Massa). So the driver of the race and the weekend are clearly 2 separate things, hence my comment.
I don’t see the correlation between me pointing out that fastest in the fastest car doesn’t necessarily mean best and you mentioning Kimi and Massa.
As I pointed out below, we don’t know the circumstances in quali – it could be that one driver in particular (I mentioned Kimi just because he was the subject of discussion, it could be any driver) set his car up for the race but still qualified well and was then able to go on to do well in the race.
Maybe another way to put it is that the race is the culmination of the weekend. Practice and qualifying for the slower teams will involve work to maximise their result in the race. This may not necessarily show up in headline times.
Again, being the fastest in the fastest car doesn’t necessarily equate to the best performance.
The problem we have here Mr Fortis (by the way are you a fan of the watch brand? or has it other meaning?) is that you should be judging performance on driver not machinery. Looking at Mercedes, they had a very clear performance advantage over the weekend. That said, the stand out performances in qualifying came from Hulkenburg and Vettel, both of whom put their cars ahead of faster machinery. In the race? Well clearly Mr K Raikkonen of Finland did an incredible job to take a car which is evidently considerably slower and split the Mercedes cars. If anything, the distance between the two Mercs shows that on race day Rosberg (who we all know isn’t really that good) was close to LH, suggesting LH didn’t perform at his optimum. Kimi clearly did on race day, but not in qualifying.
On that note I award driver of the weekend to Jenson Button 🙂
I concur, on a dollars per race lap basis Button was clearly best driver. In fact, his value to McLaren was such that it cannot be calculated mathematically.
No it’s not relating the watch brand, it rather has a more personal meaning.
Kimi for sure.
It has to be Nico. For the first time in living memory, he overtook 2 cars in a race. Cars almost equal to his own, being driven by 2 former world champions.
With drs with the best car.
Against Vettel who is well known for being hard to overtake even when in a poor car…
Not with drs and a 10 to 15 kph advantage.
Max for sure!
Just kidding. Where are our Dutch friends today? Fair weather voters?
Kimi is back indeed. Loved the comment he made over the radio when he was chasing Vettel. Something along the lines of “I’m faster than him, but I guess I’ll try to pass him” (rather than ask his wall to have Vettel move over). T-shirt material.
Are you now chastising the people who previously voted for Max (not necessarily Dutch) for not being blind fan boys? If they had voted for him, you would surely moan about that. So you just seem to have an ax to grind.
— looking for ax…nope, no ax in sight—
I made a comment last week that Dutch readers appeared to take over the polls whenever he had a decent (but not spectacular) drive and Hippo shared some of the site metrics which showed a significant spike in readership and voting from NL after races even when he was, IMHO, just decent. That is all.
Raikkönen, without a doubt, superb race from him and was in the right place to capitalize on Rosberg’s brakes going off. Who knows, one or two laps more and he would have taken a victory for himself ! Of course, Hamilton is driving beautifully but you would expect him to do that in a car that can fight at the front, so today is a par weekend for him even if par means winning.
For me it’s a tie between Kimi and nico. I think Nico passed a Ferrari 4 times on track. Shame that his brakes gave at the end. Special mention should go to fred trundling in that machine for the entire race and drove on despite being overtaken by so many novices on the long straight.
I feel driver of the weekend and driver of the day should have very different results here!
Agreed.
Were Raikkonen a faster qualifier, he would have been challenging for the win.
Pretty well a shoe in for driver of the race, but Hamilton monstered qualifying as well as driving a fault free race.
Rosberg for ‘most improved racing’ ?
Just a supposition here, but what if Kimi had compromised qualifying pace for a better race car? If that were the case, would that not change how his performance was viewed?
“Just a supposition here, but what if Kimi had compromised qualifying pace for a better race car? If that were the case, would that not change how his performance was viewed?”
it would. but the general pattern of kimis mediocre qualifying performances suggests that this wasn’t deliberate.
Unless Kimi always goes for race pace….
By the way, I’m not defending him here, I’m just raising the point that things might not always be as they seem.
@ Stephen – re: ” … supposition here, but what if Kimi had compromised qualifying pace for a better race car? … ”
Yes, if that was true, but Kimi said he underestimated the grip available:
http://www.espn.co.uk/f1/story/_/id/12715899/ferrari-kimi-raikkonen-says-pushed-more-qualifying
“There was more grip than I expected, afterwards its easy to say I could have pushed a bit harder in certain places but I wasn’t sure,” Raikkonen said.
Kimi raced this time just as he did in China, except that this time he did his middle stint on mediums was particularly good as he was matching or bettering Rosberg’s and Vettel’s times on their softs.
p.s. I understand why Merc decided to bring in Rosberg early for his first stop to cover Vettel, but don’t understand why they didn’t do the same for the second stop.
I had this thought too, but after first round of stops not only did Vettel get Nico, the both of them almost got Lewis. I think that they decided to protect P1 from Vettel at the expense of P2, especially given Rosberg’s ability to get back round Seb. Makes sense from a WCC point of view.
It’s possible, but I don’t buy it.
Unless he (or Ferrari) actually claims that, unlikely, I think, as anijs points out.
Judge,
A small observation. Alonso’s number is 14. It appears as 20
How long do they give Kvyat? He’s far less experienced than DanR, but he’s not doing so well, is he? Lower expectations on the STR guys this year being rookies, but I’m not sure they ready for the leap to the main team either.
Maybe RBR will quit in a huff if their drivers aren’t good enough either?
To be fair, a lot of his problems have been car / engine rather than driver. Plus, he has very little F1 experience.
Not that this has stopped RB from dropping drivers in the past.
Don’t the still have Buemi on the books? And JEV is probably readily available – whether he’d come back in to the fold after the way they dumped him is another matter of course.
And all the Dutch will promote max to the red bull. If there is one thing we’ve learned, there are more drivers than seats.
As a Dutchman I would not want Max to go to Red Bull next year. He’s doing great, especially for a 17 year old with only a year of racing experience in cars, and a little bit better than what can be expected of a normal rookie who had some solid first 3 races but not anything more than that. And I know I’m a bit alone in this in the Netherlands and I’m continually pointing my fellow country men to the pitfalls of making a hero out of him too soon (because of the simple reason that the Dutch can be very vocal when one of them does alright but they can be just as vocal when it’s clear that they are not going to be in the top, just ask any Dutch F1 fan about their opinion on Albers or Doornbos). And even if he performed the rest of the year as well as he did in Malaysia I would still be cautious of promoting him to a top team already (Vettel and Hamilton seem to be doing fine after being thrown in a top team so soon but still). An extra year in the midfield doesn’t hurt a F1 driver.
If “driver” and “rider” are functionally equivalent in the context of motor racing then it’s Valentino Rossi – with no competition.
Thank goodness for MotoGP: Racing!
Is that a poll option?