131 replies to this topic

[SpartanChas]

If I was a **** F1 driver, boy would I have some fun on this forum.

I was a fan of Esteban in gp2. Might have been moved to F1 too soon but he's not doing too bad, though I can't remember the last time I actually saw him on screen. Hopefully he'll be here for a couple of seasons to get a decent chance.

[jals99]

Esteban is doing good job this year -some mistakes, but not much - Grosjean crashed a lot more last year. The problem is Nico can extract 150 % from Sauber in quals. In practises they are close , 1-2 tenths between them usually, but then in qualifying Nico suddenly can find a lot more. It proves Nico is outstanding qualifyer, and not Esteban being a bad driver. In races his pace is close to Nico, but Nico sometimes can score after good starting position.
And junior formulas proved Esteban is better driver than Kamui. He won GP3 from first attempt, while Kamui was only 8th in F3, then 4th in second year. Esteban managed 3d place in GP2 in second year, Kamui was only 16th, and teammate Valsechi beat him comfortably. I do not like all this Esteban abuse from Kamui fans, they should look this statistic before сriticising Esteban. May be Kamui did better in first year, but he was better prepared after many kms of testing in Toyota through years, for Esteban it is a lot harder with testing restrictions. And Kamui's first teammate- De La Rosa is not Nico. Esteban needs time. Sauber should give him second year, and he will prove signing him was not a mistake.

Edited by jals99, 07 August 2013 - 21:31.

[XOR]

they should look this statistic

sry they prefer watching brilliant overtakes

[pingu666]

kamui was way more exciting.
he did go from "only there because hes japanease toyota bankrolled rubbish driver of anominity" to more exciting than hamilton in a instant, really.

and im in two minds on waiting for someone to perform and devlop. thats reasonable, on the other hand, its f1, perform, no if buts or maybes, perform.

[scheivlak]

He's a decent-but-not-great driver thrown a bit quickly into F1 against a superb-but-slightly-underrated team-mate, in a **** car. That's not really the position you want to be in to build your reputation.

Wouldn't completely rule him out on still making it to have a decent career, but that qualy gap to Hulk has been very damning. Shame, he looked proper promising when he first showed up in the lower ranks of the ladder.

Spot on.

I expected quite something from him, but so far it hasn't materialised.

Don't forget that the race speed of both Sauber drivers -Nico as well as Esteban!- isn't always easy to determinate because they are so often in some kind of traffic/midfield struggle situation.

Edited by scheivlak, 07 August 2013 - 22:06.

[Jimisgod]

Lower rank performance means **** in F1.

Otherwise Frentzen would have thumped MSC.

[Thomas99]

He isn't all that bad, it's just he isn't good enough to warrant a seat with all these talented young drivers (da Costa, Frijns, Magnussen etc.) in search of one, and guys like Kobayashi on the sidelines. He's done less than Bianchi and Bottas and even VDG. I think he might mature into a decent midfield driver, but guys like that (Jamie A.) are not needed or missed in this F1 world.

Da Costa has done nothing to warrant his hype.

[Kyo]

you got no clue bout Frentzen... no clue!...

Lower rank performance means **** in F1.
Otherwise Frentzen would have thumped MSC.

Anyone care to explain? I'm really confused now.

[Kyo]

Well... I'm pretty damn certain Bianchi would be doing better. Don't forget these lads have all been team-mates of each others in F3 for ART, albeit at different stages of their learning process, so we do have one point of reference albeit not super reliable. Bianchi was considerably more experienced, but absolutely ran circles around Esteban there.

I'm not so sure how you can be so certain.

Like you said, Bianchi was considerably more experienced, and their results before F1 are pretty similar too.

[Sin]

Anyone care to explain? I'm really confused now.

Frentzen was the bestest of the best and you can say what you want to prove otherwise I won't believe you
*teenagerhood memories*

[MikeV1987]

I can't imagine any other rookie doing any better in his situation to be honest, he's entered Sauber at a very difficult time. At least Bianchi has a lot of milage under his belt.

[Kyo]

Frentzen was the bestest of the best and you can say what you want to prove otherwise I won't believe you
*teenagerhood memories*

I will say nothing then!

[jals99]

kamui was way more exciting.
he did go from "only there because hes japanease toyota bankrolled rubbish driver of anominity" to more exciting than hamilton in a instant, really.

and im in two minds on waiting for someone to perform and devlop. thats reasonable, on the other hand, its f1, perform, no if buts or maybes, perform.

Esteban could also be exciting - like in Barcelona

[Jimisgod]

Hard to defend him now. Hulk in 3rd vs. his abysmal 17th.

 

Sauber probably ought to have held onto Kobayashi.

[Disgrace]

If they fancied not racing at all, perhaps they should have.

[midgrid]

As much as I'm a fan of Kobayashi, that would surely have resulted in the team going under by now.

Edit: snap!

Edited by midgrid, 07 September 2013 - 13:39.

[Raikkonen94]

So embarrassing to see Gutierrez that far off. I didn't expect him to beat Hulkenberg, but he is not even close. I wonder what Frijns could do in that car, instead of Gutierrez or maybe Sirotkin next year..

[Jimisgod]

Which doesn't say much about the sport.

 

"Carry this dead weight in one of your cars if you want to survive financially"

[jals99]

He was good in all practises, something just went wrong in qual, and Nico did unbelieveble job, he extracted 200% from Sauber today, such things were impossible for Kobayashi

[noikeee]

14 places difference in the grid to your team-mate in the simplest track in the F1 calendar - where differences tend to be smaller - doesn't look great indeed.

 

It's weird, he should be getting better now not worse. As others said he did well in free practice so maybe something was up with his performance today that prevented him from showing his full ability.

[Wander]

He was good in all practises, something just went wrong in qual, and Nico did unbelieveble job, he extracted 200% from Sauber today, such things were impossible for Kobayashi

Were they? I remember him starting 2nd at Spa.

[jals99]

Were they? I remember him starting 2nd at Spa.

Sauber form was a lot better last year

[SamH123]

I was just thinking Gutierrez had turned a corner, having watched practice (he looked pretty strong vs. Hulk) but then he qualifies about 14 spots behind his teammate lol

 

I still think GUT is far from the worst driver on the track

[ensign14]

Hard to defend him now. Hulk in 3rd vs. his abysmal 17th.

On a reversed grid basis, he's done much better.

[Seanspeed]

Which doesn't say much about the sport.

 

"Carry this dead weight in one of your cars if you want to survive financially"

F1 is expensive. 

 

I guess you just found out?

[olliek88]

Jeez, Steve must be feeling a tad hot under the collar. Nico is a fantastic driver but 14 places behind your team mate on a circuit that only has a handful of corners is pretty awful. 

 

As other's have said, Frijns would be in that car next season in a perfect world, sadly as we all know F1 is far from perfect.

[coppilcus]

F1 is a tough and raw business indeed... Last race Gutierrez drove awesome and the fight between Maldonado, sutil and DiResta was the best of the season so far, the next weekend you're nowhere...

I agree he arrived to F1 one year earlier... and it's costing him deeply.

[Collective]

What do you make of these words? He is basically saying the team messed with his setup from P3 to Q...

“It really was a surprise, we tried to have a good qualifying session improving lap by lap, but since the very beginning we just did not have the speed we expected, we didn't take that step forward from practice to qualifying and that affected our result, I lost 10 downforce points.
“It even is a little faster with the straight and that definitely makes a big difference but still that is a communication between me and the engineers, we simply cannot make that kind of mistakes and we'll see how it will affect our race”, said the Mexican.
Gutiérrez explained how this downforce reduction affected in qualifying.
“That means you have less downforce on the corners, which means less grip, the balance of the car changes on the rear and the front and it's not ideal, it can be good if it is only on the wings but that reduction can be generated in many different ways; you can compromise your race for 150 kilos of fuel at the start, fuel can make the car too low, which could destroy the floor.
“It takes a lot and obviously that doesn't make us look good in qualifying, we've been wanting to take that step and we see we simply need a good communication to avoid this kind of things and if we are taking the risk we have to take it together with my team mate”, he remarked.

[deepsouth]

I think we need to acknowledge a few things here.

 

First, Gutierrez got knocked out of Q1 with a time only .9 of a second off pole. His teammate's time was a fair bit better, but I don't think Gutierrez embarrassed himself. And another thing, Gutierrez was quicker than Bottas, who everyone seems to think is a magnificent talent (despite being regularly outshone by Maldonado, who people don't seem to rate). For me it doesn't add up.

 

Second, Hulkenberg is one of the strongest drivers on the grid, is he not? He's got a good amount of experience under his belt and a heap of natural talent, and it's showing. So naturally he's going to beat his rookie teammate, especially when said teammate is having to contend with a difficult car in his first season (easier to deal with when you're experienced).

 

Third, I believe Hulkenberg himself admitted that he was surprised by his performance in Q3, so that exaggerates the gap between him and Gutierrez. If Hulkenberg hadn't pulled a miracle lap out of the bag he probably would have been down at the bottom of the top 10, more accurately reflecting the Sauber's true pace.

 

And lastly, as a few others have mentioned, we see in practice in particular that Gutierrez is more than capable of matching Hulkenberg, even being quicker on occasion. So the pace is definitely there, he just needs to work on delivering when the pressure is on during quali. Personally I think Gutierrez is a promising young talent who deserves his place on the grid for a good few seasons at least.

 

 

 

 

[Eff One 2002]

there are so few seats in F1 compared to the '80s (39 cars in 1989!)
There are many other examples of drivers who did get the time to develop over many years and were able to develop themselves in to solid midfield drivers: Dereck Warwick, Eddie Cheever, Alex Caffi, Stefan Johansson, etc...

The lack of F1 teams / seats these days doesn't only mean that drivers get less time to develop, it also means that less drivers get a chance in the first place and that lots of talent is wasted.

 

You make a good point and F1 would be in a much healthier state if we could get back to something like this as I have been saying for many years now. It was also a lot more interesting when there were more entrants than there were grid spots available because you didn't have the exact same cars on the grid at every event. These days for drivers it's more cut-throat than ever and if you aren't good right away, you're more often than not out on your arse.

Edited by Eff One 2002, 08 September 2013 - 01:29.

[Mendel]

I´m guilty as charged in thinking negatively about Gutierrez and his apparent performance. Duly noted, give the kid some time.

[ensign14]

Monza is a misleading guide of driver talent sometimes, getting the right slipstream makes a huge difference and that's not really linked with skill so much as nous.

[Anderis]

I see people overreacting quite a bit. Esteban is not the first driver to be outqualified by his team-mate by that margin. It happened also to many other drivers, some of them rated quite highly. Hulk was outqualified by Rubens by around a full second in 2010 in Abu Dhabi and China. Kobayashi qualified 9 places behind average de la Rosa in Hungarian GP in 2010. Even WDC Button was outqualified by over a second by Hamilton and lapped in the race last year in Canada. These things can happen in F1, especially for inexperienced drivers, but also to much more experienced, Button is an example.

 

People ignore the fact Gutierrez is running quite close to Hulk in most of recent races. Closer, than di Resta was by most of the second half of the last season. He is definetely not embarassing himself.

[Ferras]

It wasn't that bad today.

[Anderis]

I've analised Gutierrez' race performances compared to Hulk this season and I came to the conclusion, that he has to be the most underrated driver on the current grid. I can't agree with anyone who thinks he is not an F1 material. Just look at this:

Belgium: finished 1 position and 12 seconds behind Hulk despite DT.
Hungary: Hard too judge, they were on different strategies and Gutierrez retired in the middle of the race. There wasn't much between them during first couple of laps. Just 3 seconds after 10 laps while Gutierrez was on harder tyres.
Germany: finished 11 seconds behind Hulk
Great Britain: finished 7 seconds behind Hulk.
Canada: when Hulk retired, was running just around 5 seconds in front of Gutierrez
Monaco: finished less than 1 second behind Hulk.
Spain: Beat Hulk and set the fastest lap of the race. He pitted just one lap later than Hulk for his last time, so it's not like he had that much advantage for setting FL. Hard to judge where would Hulk have ended without collision, but it was not going to be a domination over Gutierrez certainly.

 

So that's basically 7 races in row he was always going to finish less than 15 seconds behind Hulkenberg.

 

And then look at di Resta in second half of the last year:

Brazil: Di Resta crashed out when he was more than 30 seconds behind Hulk, who even had DT.

USA: Di Resta finished 50 seconds behind Hulk.

Abu Dhabi: Hulk crashed on lap1 so nothing to judge pacewise.

India: Di Resta finished 28 seconds behind Hulk.

Korea: Di Resta finished 39 seconds behind Hulk.

Japan: Di Resta finished 32 seconds behind Hulk.

 

So it looks like Gutierrez was doing recently better job than di Resta in second half of the last season by some margin. So calling him not an F1 material and the worst driver on the grid is not understandable for me and I think some people just remember one or two of his crashes and the fact he was dominated by Hulk in quali on occassion and don't bother to check that it was actually close between them in the races and it's quite respectable performance as for rookie. It looks like if you would've paired Gutierrez with di Resta for 2014, it's quite likely Esteban could even beat Paul, so it's not fair to criticise Gutierrez as much as some do.

[apoka]

Interesting view. I think it's a bit biased, since Di Resta was worse relativ to Hulk at the end of last year compared to the first part and the qualy stats are also worse for Gutierrez. Nevertheless, it shows that he could still be a good driver and doesn't lack that much race pace. It will be interesting what he can do in his second year - likely against a different team mate.

[Anderis]

Of course di Resta was better qualifier than Gutierrez is, but if you look at race results, it doesn't hurt Esteban that much to qualify lower. Maybe it would matter more in better car, but still, he is just a rookie and it's hard to expect him to be a complete driver at this point.

 

I've used second half of the last season for di Resta on purpose. Hulk started 2012 season a bit rusty, because he didn't participate in any race for over a year then. It's not the case in 2013, so I think Hulk's 2013 performances are closer to the second half of the 2012 season rather than to the first half, so it's better comparison. Nonetheless, it shows it's not written in stone that 90% of current grid would've beaten Esteban in the same car. Whatever the reason is, he is closer relative to Hulk than di Resta was at the end of last year.

[deepsouth]

Excellent performance from Gutierrez there. There were some fist pumps directed at my TV when he set his last lap in Q2.

[sennafan24]

Made me eat my words today, very good job.

 

Brundle mentioned he has a lot of confidence in Singapore and was decent in FP2 there last year.

Edited by sennafan24, 22 September 2013 - 00:19.

[Disgrace]

It's good news to see him starting to do well. I'm sure that be would be able to score points if the car enables him to do so next year, he deserves the opportunity.

[Collective]

Huge relief that Q2 lap! Great job! Race pace has been good for him and Sauber, but the midfield is tight, so let's see. But kudos for now for sure, that was great.

[Wingcommander]

Well done, Steve! 

[Collective]

Well, we had been seeing some good qualifying, or some good racing, but for some reason or another it wasn't coming full circle for Esteban. Today was a breakthrough. Great start, solid drive all around, and kept Rosberg in check at the end. Good stuff from Esteban here.

[RAGE12463]

He's shown 1-lap pace since the break. Glad he has a full race put together under his belt now. 

[Farhannn15]

Good job by Guti today

[Lights]

Nice race for him. He must feel like "6 points, how is this suddenly so easy?"

 

Fact is the Sauber clearly improved, Hulkenberg has been fighting around P5 for many races now and finally Gutierrez is getting the hang of the car as well. Still 20 seconds behind his teammate though, not brilliant.

[Jackmancer]

Really happy he got the points today - I wonder if it'll be enough to retain the seat next year, Sauber with two inexperienced drivers?

[Anderis]

I always knew it was going to end up like this. Esteban was pretty unlucky not to score a single point in the last couple of races, but it's finally the race when everything went right for him and the result is a solid point-scoring finish.

 

I really hope he is on the grid next year. I think he deserves a second season.

[dreamer]

Good job today! More points to come in the future

[Wander]

Gap to Hulk was similar to what it's been, this time there were no cars between them. Signs of improvement are there, though.