Sauber: Best F1 car of 2012?

[Blaze_409]

http://formula-one.speedtv.com/article/f1-helmut-marko-2012-sauber-best-car-on-grid/
Marko is either trolling or he is trying to keep oogling eyes off his Red Bull...

The Sauber is de facto *not* the best car on the grid.

 

[daan]

Completely unrelated to the Hungarian GP, so moved out to its own thread.

 

[Peter.]

More publicrap from Helmut Marko. He has got to be the paddock's own little troll.

 

[Ardius]

Is anything Marko says ever worthy of discussion? He's basically just like Bernie except he only holds a position of power in a team a lot of people seem to care little about.
I mean, I think people are silly for taking Bernie's words so seriously all the time but at least I can understand people for listening just because he is in quite a powerful and influential position.

But Marko is really a nobody as far as F1 goes. The only people who should care about what he has to say or do are Mark Webber fans or the rare Toro Rosso fans.

I'm not sure whether to take Marko seriously anymore. I know with Bernie that most of what he says isn't what he genuinely believes, but what he knows will get F1 in the news and talked about - publicity is money for him.
But Marko seems to genuinely believe what he says. But what he says is so completely idiotic that surely a guy who is meant to be in charge of Red Bull's young driver programme should know better?!?

 

[Peasantslayer]

The Lotus is the best car, ask Nelson Piquet Junior and Jacques Villenueve They actually think that the 2 Lotus drivers are underperforming and the car is so good that it's making them look better than they actually are. It does seem odd that a driver that has came straight out of rallying and a driver who does appear to have quite an aggressive style are way better than everyone else on the tyres.

 

[Ardius]

Well good old Jacques is a controversial guy (who I really respect a lot and even sometimes agree with some of his view points...but sometimes he just has it completely wrong) and Piquet Jr lost all respect long ago.

You can't get good results without a good car but a good car doesn't drive itself. Personally I always think people are just getting into a maze of confusion when they try to pick apart and decide whether results are because of the car or the driver.
Its the overall package that gets the results.

Funny that at the start of the year when Raikkonen was struggling with power steering people blamed him for not being adaptable and too demanding. Now he's delivering people are saying its all the car. To me that says that Raikkonen is driving just fine and the overall package has evolved both from car and driver. Kimi has blown the cobwebs off and got the team and the car understanding what he wants. And the car has obviously found more pace through the season, especially as we go to hotter races.

I also think a good indicator of when you know your drivers are extracting all the pace from the car is when both drivers are very close in laptimes. I mean possibly there is an argument that 2 slow drivers could run similar laptimes but personally I think its pretty unlikely both Raikkonen and Grosjean are slow.
I can't think of one example where a team had 2 drivers who clearly were both slow. Usually one is much faster than the other. I can think of quite a few that were even. Some of them are on the grid today and funnily enough 2 such teams are mentioned here (Sauber and Lotus).

People basing their opinion on Grosjean being slow from 2009 always seem to forget that actually Romain was pretty close to Alonso in qualifying near the end of the year. Much closer than the great Piquet Jr. Sure he wasn't consistent and made a lot of mistakes but he was a rookie. Mr Piquet made lots of mistakes, didn't show much pace and didn't show any sign of improvement in his second season. Grosjean has shown a huge sign of improvement.
Thats not just the car.

 

[DK]

I can't think of one example where a team had 2 drivers who clearly were both slow.

Not even HRT?

 

[Ardius]

Pedro isn't bad and he's always got the measure of Karthikeyan by a few tenths at least - sometimes up to a whole second! While Pedro has never really covincingly beat a super-quick teammate, he's usually been on pace. I don't consider him slow at least.
Liuzzi wasn't slow just really inconsistent.
Senna usually out-paced Chandhok and Yamamoto by several tenths to a second as Pedro is with Narain. While Bruno has been a bit slow most of this year at Williams, his problem wasn't speed at Lotus last year or at HRT.

If anything, the smaller teams tend to throw up bigger differences between teammates because they usually have a lack of parts and usually split strategies and take bigger gambles.
So its harder to read these teams and also harder for teammates to be close in laptime.

 

[GTPorsche]

Obviously the Ferrari driven only by Alonso is the best car this season.

I mean.. it's leading the championship.

 

[Alex.]

Whatever car Alonso is driving is the best car of the season.

 

[bzking23]

Whatever car Alonso is driving is the best car of the season.

even the ferrari of 2011, or the renault of 2009?

 

[HeXoSKEL3t0n]

Well good old Jacques is a controversial guy (who I really respect a lot and even sometimes agree with some of his view points...but sometimes he just has it completely wrong) and Piquet Jr lost all respect long ago.

You can't get good results without a good car but a good car doesn't drive itself. Personally I always think people are just getting into a maze of confusion when they try to pick apart and decide whether results are because of the car or the driver.
Its the overall package that gets the results.

Funny that at the start of the year when Raikkonen was struggling with power steering people blamed him for not being adaptable and too demanding. Now he's delivering people are saying its all the car. To me that says that Raikkonen is driving just fine and the overall package has evolved both from car and driver. Kimi has blown the cobwebs off and got the team and the car understanding what he wants. And the car has obviously found more pace through the season, especially as we go to hotter races.

I also think a good indicator of when you know your drivers are extracting all the pace from the car is when both drivers are very close in laptimes. I mean possibly there is an argument that 2 slow drivers could run similar laptimes but personally I think its pretty unlikely both Raikkonen and Grosjean are slow.
I can't think of one example where a team had 2 drivers who clearly were both slow. Usually one is much faster than the other. I can think of quite a few that were even. Some of them are on the grid today and funnily enough 2 such teams are mentioned here (Sauber and Lotus).

People basing their opinion on Grosjean being slow from 2009 always seem to forget that actually Romain was pretty close to Alonso in qualifying near the end of the year. Much closer than the great Piquet Jr. Sure he wasn't consistent and made a lot of mistakes but he was a rookie. Mr Piquet made lots of mistakes, didn't show much pace and didn't show any sign of improvement in his second season. Grosjean has shown a huge sign of improvement.
Thats not just the car.

This +1 👍

Sums up all of what I wanted to say.

Can't people understand it isn't just about the driver/car only, but also many other things (strategy/pitstops/reliability etc), as a whole that contribute's to their performances?

Maybe that's why these kind of drivers like Piquet Jr. And J. Villenueve had to eventually leave F1 under poor circumstances...

The Lotus is the best car, ask Nelson Piquet Junior and Jacques Villenueve They actually think that the 2 Lotus drivers are underperforming and the car is so good that it's making them look better than they actually are. It does seem odd that a driver that has came straight out of rallying and a driver who does appear to have quite an aggressive style are way better than everyone else on the tyres.

I think that the Williams and the Sauber this year fit under this category IMO. Flashes of strong pace marred by various problems (not saying that their drivers aren't competent, but they could have had slightly better results)

 

[lbsf1]

The Sauber is possibly the best car if you take team budget into account. There was a huge article on it in racecar engineering and some of the innovations on the car and how it is designed for efficiency is right up there with the McLarens and Red Bulls, this is quite an achievement for Sauber considering their sponsorship.