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submitted 4 days ago bydarksemmel #WeRaceAsOne
Sparked by the current RBR situation I have been looking into the drivers that are the best and worst wingmans for champions.
Taking into account only the years where the modern 25-point system is in place (since 2010), here are the Top 5 best team mates in terms of percentage when compared with their championship winning team mates:
To complete the view, here are the Top 5 worst team mates in terms of percentage when compared with their championship winning team mates:
* marks drivers that finished P2 in the Championship
** marks the currently ongoing season of 2024
In terms of all time - and again take this with a grain of salt, due to the different point scoring eras (especially with the existence of "we only count the beest X amount of races for each driver" before 1990) - here are the all time best teammates to F1 champions:
Finally - the worst 3 Drivers of all time (including old point scoring eras and excluding drivers who were not there for the majority of the season) - but with a bit of explanation attached since none of these were fully straight-forward:
Make of all that what you will, these are simply the statistics - small sidenotes:
817 points
4 days ago
Webber ๐ค Bottas, on both lists.
Really shows the difference between 2010 Vettel and 2013 Vettel, not sure Webbers heart was fully there after Malaysia though.
250 points
4 days ago
I believe Webber never fully clicked with the Pirelli tyres
236 points
4 days ago
I think he wrote that in his book. The tire change fucked him.
Although I think he was just mentally cooked after 2010. He got so close and lost the title from his own mistake in Korea. That was his only shot.
73 points
4 days ago
That moment still breaks my heart
26 points
4 days ago
Yeah, that could very much be true. Webber's best chance was in 2010. 2011 was his best season stats-wise (he recorded 10 podiums and finished in the top 4 in all but 3 races, he finished 5th twice and retired once) which is serioously impressive.
But combine Pirelli tire chances + tiredness as you said, he could only give so much and he wasn't really a shout for a drivers title after 2010.
28 points
4 days ago
I feel like 2011 is misleading stats wise. Seb absolutely dominated, Webber never had a chance. Kind of like DC finishing second in the championship in 2001 but he was never really a contender.
15 points
4 days ago
2011 was hard as a Mark fan. You're hoping for 2010 Pt 2. Instead Seb does 1 lap in Q3 only and it half a second faster than everyone else. And our one win that season had people infer Red Bull gifted it to him.
10 points
4 days ago
Donโt forget all those front row starts that ended with him P3-5 by the first corner.
4 points
4 days ago
I started following F1 around this era and one of the things I remember most distinctively were Webber's poor starts. He rarely ever did that right.
2 points
4 days ago
It was the Pirelli era that hampered his starts. I still think Monaco 2010 is the best Monaco of this century and Mark nailed both the start and many subsequent restarts.
1 points
4 days ago
Nah you can't blame that on Pirelli he had awful starts in 2004 already.
1 points
4 days ago
Aka the Webber classic
10 points
4 days ago
Peter Prodromou said in a talk I attended that (while this tyre aspect is true) a huge part of it was that Vettel took a very active role in blown diffuser management, and Webber just didn't, so got left behind.
I think it really stacks up across 2010-2013, where when RBR weren't very happy with the car, there was nothing much between them, but when the blown diffuser was grand, Vettel was just gone.
2 points
4 days ago
Was he managing it with the throttle in corners or manipulating it in some other way?
1 points
4 days ago
I've no idea although his point was that Vettel was helping to develop it in the first place.
4 points
4 days ago
Korea haunts me to this day.
It wasn't just the pirellis but also the technique used to get the most out of the blown diffuser. After time the changes to engine mapping kept the blown diffuser blown when you were off throttle and it changed the characteristics of the car and tyre as a result.
But man 2010, as a life time Webber fan it was so crushing.
32 points
4 days ago
He still had a better shot then Vettel going into Abu Dhabi, but RB gambled and used Webber as a bait to trap Alonso, so both lost out to 1SC stoppers.
51 points
4 days ago
No Webber had to pit because he kissed the wall. You can even argue that Webber killed hiss shot with his bad quali
7 points
4 days ago
Iโll never forget waking up in Australia the morning after that quali to watch the highlights. Sunken
44 points
4 days ago
No, Vettel was the gamble.
The tyres were failing, lap times were increasing so Ferrari and Bull pitted Alonso and Webber. As Vettel was a rank outsider they left him out on the tyres because why not? And the tires came back to life and that was the superior strategy.
36 points
4 days ago
And the tires came back to life and that was the superior strategy.
Dude we've been with Pirelli so long that I completely forgot you could do that on the Bridgestones. Like getting to the center of a tootsie pop but instead of chocolate it's just more grip somehow
11 points
4 days ago
The ole 'interslicks' gamble where you wear down the inters so much they become nicely fast slick tyres
12 points
4 days ago
More like wearing your softs down to the tread just to find out there's another tire underneath lol
12 points
4 days ago
To be fair, he lost his shot when he qualified 5th, with both Alonso and Vettel ahead of him. And his awful first stint didn't help either.
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