Vettel's loss in 2009 is no better than Hill's in 1994 or 1995. They both had little experience. Its just that Hill only got 1 year to redeem himself while Vettel's car continued on for half a decade.
I disagree about ’95. Completely.
Hill started that season mentally broken down. I
understand why he was mentally broken, but I can’t
accept it from a top-shelf driver (I almost said “tier 1 driver” but then I just started laughing hysterically). He shouldn’t have allowed ’95 to happen (he did bounce back in ’96, but that was with Schumacher effectively out of the picture).
That’s at least one area where VET has gotten Hill covered. Sure, VET has had it more easy than Hill overall, but he
was – for example - spun out of contention for the title in Brazil, only to come back and take what was his. Of course his car made it easy from a mathematical point of view (it being the fastest and all that), but the head still needed to do all the hard work. And it did.
Anyway, all this because my belief that SEB has had it way too easy during his rocket ship years as opposed to Hill, which is the point that needed to be made in the comparison with DR (
because I’m not the one taking this off-topic , I’m doing this in the context of the VET-RIC thread). Let me explain:
VETs’ titles were mostly ‘delta-cruising’. That’s not a dig at SEB, ~everybody~ was delta-cruising, it’s just that the SEB/RB combo was exceptionally good at it. I mean, just look at the number of spins of all the drivers during the Vettel-years, including the pay-drivers (you may have to exclude MAL for any of this to make sense). I made a quick calculation on the back of a coaster, rounded up to the nearest integer, and came up with ‘0’. During the “Hill-years”, even Schumacher was regularly spinning left, right and centre. Cars also broke down. Often. Imagine that. (OK, this is a little bit easier to imagine if you’re following HAM these days, or VET, but I digress…)
Then out the woodwork comes one DR, and he starts beating SEB. With quite some consistency. Suddenly, VET no longer has it easy, and so far he’s not responding all that well, even making uncharacteristic driver errors (though he is brutally honest in his public assertions on his current relative performance). And now we’ll have to wait and see how he copes. Maybe he’ll turn out to be better than Hill after all ;)… He could start by being better than Daniel.