Is Sebastian Vettel Crumbling Under the Pressure of Being a Ferrari Driver?

This is not true:

It didn’t stop there, though. At last weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix, Vettel had a bad start off pole position. Max Verstappen and Kimi Raikkonen both got much better starts and were alongside Vettel almost instantly. Realizing this, Vettel veered all the way across the track, pinching Verstappen in between both Ferraris. This caused a massive collision, ending the race for all three drivers.

Sebastian got away with it, too. The stewards deemed it a racing incident.
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Seb might have seen Max but he didn't see Kimi. The mirrors are not 50cm wide. If he wanted to cause chaos, he would have gone straight into Lewis in the first corner. It was a race incident. One that may have cost him the championship.

Apart from this, I think the article is interesting.
 
I reckon its losing what he has over Hamilton that would make him crack.

The chance of beating Hamilton 5 - 3 in championships, suddenly seemingly out of reach, not impossible, but a lot harder. I think he's enjoyed his top spot within the current drivers, maybe even now he's scared of being eclipsed.
 
It's an interesting question.

Vettel is a four-time world champion. Regardless of any other factors, that's a difficult feat and you've got to have some significant ability to achieve it.

His mistakes are pretty easy to count. He had a couple of incidents as a Toro Rosso driver, a couple in 2009, a couple in 2010 (running into Webber, spinning into Button) - they started calling him "The Crash Kid" in that season - but then it's literally just punctures* and mechanical failures until Ferrari.

Since Ferrari he's picked up 12 penalty points for driving standards - behind only Magnussen (and we all know what his fellow drivers think of him) and the utterly hapless Daniil Kvyat. Until Kvyat beat his record, Vettel was the only driver to accumulate nine penalty points in a single 12-month period, racking up two at Silverstone, two at Malaysia and two at Mexico in 2016**, then three at Azerbaijan this season. He's had more on-track contact with other drivers in 2016 and 2017 than his entire career to that point.

That's a four-time world champion who, after five seasons of comparatively little incident, has suddenly picked up worse driving habits than anyone apart from someone who his fellow drivers have called "the most unsporting driver" and a guy who was demoted a team for being cack.

The two this season are extraordinarily out of character. Sideswiping another driver is reprehensible enough, but doing so under safety car conditions is inexcusable. The move at Singapore - which I agree wasn't a deliberate attempt to take anyone out - was just a stupid lapse of judgment where he went to cover a line after a bad start and didn't expect to find two cars there. And Singapore is a non-Mercedes track - if he hadn't made the move and finished third (or second, once Ferrari switched them), he'd be back in the lead of the championship again.

Why is he making so many bad calls in the last two years for someone who has made so many good ones for so long?


And after all, Ferrari isn't just any team. Even when Ferrari sucked, everyone wanted to drive for it. The fervent ardour of the Tifosi is, as Hamilton pointed out on the podium at Monza, something else. They'll support the drivers even if they finish last and second last. It's a lot of pressure. Especially if one of your childhood heroes is Michael Schumacher... You're at the team your hero helped turn team back into a dominant outfit for so long, you won four successive titles four years ago and could have equalled him by now.

It is weird to see Vettel banging wheels, hauled before the stewards and retiring from races in shards of carbon-fibre, but it's happening a lot more these last two years.
zzz_pt
This is not true:

Seb might have seen Max but he didn't see Kimi. The mirrors are not 50cm wide. If he wanted to cause chaos, he would have gone straight into Lewis in the first corner. It was a race incident. One that may have cost him the championship.

Apart from this, I think the article is interesting.
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I read it as he'd realised he'd had a bad start and went to cover the line, not he realised Verstappen or Raikkonen were there and went to force them up against the wall.

He did kinda get away with it though. Had that been Kvyat, Magnussen or Grosjean, they'd be getting two or three penalty points. Although he very much didn't get away with it in that his title challenge is in a considerably poorer position as a result. Perhaps the FIA felt that was punishment enough, or that penalty points or grid penalties would affect the championship even further.


*Some caused by him clearly running four-wheels off the circuit, but denying he had, naming no Spa-Francorchamps
**For dangerous driving, and not for the radio message "You know what – here is a message for Charlie: ‘**** off. Honestly. **** off.'". Clearly a man not under pressure...
 
-acts like Germans are the only naughty-boy nationality in F1.
-ignores that it was Verstappen, not Danny, that pissed Seb off in Mexico
-pretends Vettel veered into Max, who veered into Kimi, and not some another way around

It's not just clickbait guys, this is.... advanced clickbait. :lol:
 
Sounds to me like he's really fast but on a few occasions makes some stupid decisions and is kind of a jerk at times. So just like basically any other top F1 driver, then.

He got a virtually identical start to Verstappen though. If anything he was pulling farther ahead but he decided to do the Schumacher Squeeze without considering that Kimi might have been on the inside. Stuff happens, and this time it gave another guy with a similar history of occasionally forcing people out of the way, getting into incidents, making mistakes, and whining & ranting about things a nice fat lead in the championship race... for now.

He has had a bit of a bad run(for him) for the last year or so for whatever reason.
 
Kurei
-acts like Germans are the only naughty-boy nationality in F1.
-ignores that it was Verstappen, not Danny, that pissed Seb off in Mexico
-pretends Vettel veered into Max, who veered into Kimi, and not some another way around

It's not just clickbait guys, this is.... advanced clickbait. :lol:
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Not advanced enough to get me to bother to look though it. ;)
 
Famine
I read it as he'd realised he'd had a bad start and went to cover the line, not he realised Verstappen or Raikkonen were there and went to force them up against the wall.
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Really?

It didn’t stop there, though. At last weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix, Vettel had a bad start off pole position. Max Verstappen and Kimi Raikkonen both got much better starts and were alongside Vettel almost instantly. Realizing this, Vettel...

So the word "this" is not referring to what's immediately before (max and kimi bing along side Vettel) but to what's written 2 sentences before? I find it strange to be honest. I'm not a native English speaker but in Portuguese that wouldn't make sense, and generally speaking these type of situations are common to both languages.

It's not a big deal, but it might read as how I've read and I'm sure Calvin could have written it in such a way that would avoid confusion.

He did kinda get away with it though. Had that been Kvyat, Magnussen or Grosjean, they'd be getting two or three penalty points. Although he very much didn't get away with it in that his title challenge is in a considerably poorer position as a result. Perhaps the FIA felt that was punishment enough, or that penalty points or grid penalties would affect the championship even further.
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Sure. But that's how F1 has always been. Front runners don't get the same treatment as drivers from smaller teams or rookies. All the top drivers currently in F1 have the befenit of the doubt when something happens during the race where they're involved.

Being more general on the topic of penalties though, I'm of the opinion that a lot of fans have been asking for penalties way to often (and quickly) in the last couple of seasons or so. There's a touch or a crash and the first thing we read or listen to is who should get penalties and how and when.
 
Perfect example of a great driver but a little man, history will remember the latter, I hope the flash of glory was worth it.
 
F1 is crumbling and losing fans with Mercedes domination, let's not kid ourselves Mercedes has already won there 4th straight drivers/constructors title. Mercedes shaped these engine regs and are dominating with them. F1 needs to change the regs fast.
As a Hamilton fan (but not a fan of his team) and one of vettels harshest critics, it doesn't change the fact that if F1 wants to keep viewers it needs a title fight, and ONE incident with SIX races left has all but ensured Mercedes title in most people's eyes, that proves too much domination. People will say 'ah but F1 was always like that' but it's now 2017 with F1 in new owners hands and wanting new fans it needs to evolve. Systems and an effort need to be put in place as ensure it isn't one sided like it is, it's been a bit of a con to think Ferrari had a real chance this year most of it was down to Mercedes mistakes(headrest for example) just look at the qualify performance of the merc.
Let's remember Mercedes had these engine in planning when the regs were up for change and they also pushed the no testing ban, knowing they had th jump on everybody
 
No, but he's no longer in a far superior car to the rest of the field so his super-aggression, swiping at race starts and allergy to track limits will not work as well.

You're going to make more mistakes if you go from unparalleled best car to not best car.
 
F117a
F1 is crumbling and losing fans with Mercedes domination, let's not kid ourselves Mercedes has already won there 4th straight drivers/constructors title. Mercedes shaped these engine regs and are dominating with them. F1 needs to change the regs fast.
As a Hamilton fan (but not a fan of his team) and one of vettels harshest critics, it doesn't change the fact that if F1 wants to keep viewers it needs a title fight, and ONE incident with SIX races left has all but ensured Mercedes title in most people's eyes, that proves too much domination. People will say 'ah but F1 was always like that' but it's now 2017 with F1 in new owners hands and wanting new fans it needs to evolve. Systems and an effort need to be put in place as ensure it isn't one sided like it is, it's been a bit of a con to think Ferrari had a real chance this year most of it was down to Mercedes mistakes(headrest for example) just look at the qualify performance of the merc.
Let's remember Mercedes had these engine in planning when the regs were up for change and they also pushed the no testing ban, knowing they had th jump on everybody
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Wrong Merc didn't shape them, Renault did. Merc invested and put the time into the project with great detail and long working hours. And in the end they came ahead. When Renault was wasting time with a later start, and finances, Merc was at work and poached plenty of lead designers to make sure this came about. They got a highly rated, WDC driver that is arguably the best driver in the past 10-12 years of F1. They revamped their aero team and department, and took the chance to win big in a new era of F1.

Ferrari was too busy arguing for different regs and didn't develop an engine fast enough, and those early engines they did make weren't up to spec it could be said, but they quickly fixed that and got with the program, and aren't that far from Merc in regards. Renault have never seemed to fully get it figured out, and expected almost a repeat of the V8 era when they also weren't good. But hey people forget their history so it's not a surprise that the easy answer is to say, "Mercedes made this all happen, so no way anything will change". Only thing they made happen was hard work in regards to a new form of F1. There have been many groups that did this, McLaren did it with the first turbo era. Williams did it with the 3.5 era and active suspension. Ferrari figured it out with the V10 era, RBR did it with the formation of the new aero rules in 2009 to 2013. That is how F1 has worked and probably always will work.

Also F1 while in new owner's hands, has nothing and remember this, absolutely nothing to do with the technical aspect and regards to how teams fight on track. The FOM is and always has been a method of how that entertainment is displayed. The FIA controls the most critical part and essentially the part you take issue with. So if you want to place blame do so toward the FIA, but realize this is an open formula competition and not a spec series, and what has made F1 the greatest series many times is that aspect along with the drama.
 
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Akmuq
While I agree with you, the arguments you make imply that you did read it.
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Even though I didn't. I clicked on the thread, saw the title and commented based on that. I couldn't tell you a sentence they wrote in there. For all I know, it could have been a completely different topic in the base article.
 
jake2013guy
No. These articles are garbage clickbait and I refuse to read them.
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I am so glad this is the first thing I read when I came straight here to write a similar sentiment.

@GTPNewsWire I am going to make a point of not clicking any further articles that start with questions as a general point.

I have watched GTPlanet grow over the past ten years since my joining and have always been happy with the steady improvements made, but this latest spat of clickbait-tier headlines is a huge turn off and to me, suggests GTPlanet might be taking a step too far into the also-ran news category.

EDIT: Maybe I spend too much time here and the majority of un-offensive news article titles get drowned out as white noise. My post is grossly exaggerated as a quick look back shows far more positive titles than negative.

While I did overreact, I will humbly ask that this not become a trend and articles like these do not become more popular.
 
Snaeper
I am so glad this is the first thing I read when I came straight here to write a similar sentiment.

@GTPNewsWire I am going to make a point of not clicking any further articles that start with questions as a general point.

I have watched GTPlanet grow over the past ten years since my joining and have always been happy with the steady improvements made, but this latest spat of clickbait-tier headlines is a huge turn off and to me, suggests GTPlanet might be taking a step too far into the also-ran news category.

EDIT: Maybe I spend too much time here and the majority of un-offensive news article titles get drowned out as white noise. My post is grossly exaggerated as a quick look back shows far more positive titles than negative.

While I did overreact, I will humbly ask that this not become a trend and articles like these do not become more popular.
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Good to hear I'm definitely not the only one with the same feeling. I hate Clickbait headlines and it's one of the reasons I hate BuzzFeed and now DriveTribe and WTF1. They're usually Clickbait headlines to garbage content and from guessing from the title, this is no different.

I know it's ironic that I'm keeping this at the top of the forum by posting about the Clickbait but when they look in the forum, they'll see it's really about something else.
 
HamiltonPlanet strikes again. :lol:👍

Wont comment other than the fact i'd rather compare Ayrton Senna to Vettel and Schumacher as Ayrton was also pretty ruthless. Hamilton is more of a cold headed calculator. 👍

All of them very very talented. Thats a fact. Period. :cheers:
 

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