if you ask me I would tell you that Kimi lottssss better than Massa.. :D
but hey.. it's not only me who say that..
ask crash dot net.. and they will answer you the same...
here they are..
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Friday, November 28, 2008
Head to Head Kimi Vs. Masa
Kimi compare to Massa..
if you ask me I would tell you that Kimi lottssss better than Massa.. :D
but hey.. it's not only me who say that..
ask crash dot net.. and they will answer you the same...
here they are..
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if you ask me I would tell you that Kimi lottssss better than Massa.. :D
but hey.. it's not only me who say that..
ask crash dot net.. and they will answer you the same...
here they are..
Top 6th Driver by Crash.net Pooling
yang tersisa dari race season 2008..
as you know my beloved driver only took place on the third of the championship title.. but at lease he tried.. :D
terusss... Crash.net ngadain pooling, and again FM cuman jadi runner up.. hehehehe..
here's the detail...
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Top ten F1 drivers: 6th - Kimi Raikkonen.
Fri 21 Nov, 12:29 PM
Kimi Raikkonen takes sixth place in your vote for the top F1 driver of the year.
After asking you to vote for your leading drivers from the 2008 Formula 1 World Championship season, the time has come to start the countdown to the driver you voted the top star of 2008.
Over the next ten weekdays, we will be revealing the top ten in reverse order, with the winner being revealed on Friday, 28 November.
More than 45,000 votes were cast in the F1 poll, with each driver's average score out of ten then being calculated to decide the winner.
F1 Driver of the Year - Sixth place:
Name: Kimi Raikkonen
Team: Ferrari
Car: Ferrari F2008
Wins: 2
Podiums: 10
Pole positions: 2
Fastest laps: 10
Championship points: 75
Championship position: 3rd
Kimi Raikkonen developed into something of an enigma in 2008. His celebrated 'Ice Man' persona frosted over so much that many were left to wonder if his desire to scrap and to win had cooled off altogether. For much of the season, indeed, it seemed as if Kimi had left the building.
Entering the campaign as the reigning Formula 1 World Champion, Raikkonen was in most observers' eyes the favourite to repeat that success, but he did not so much surrender his crown with a fight as practically cast it away, apparently uninterested in defending the title that he had battled so hard and so greatly against the odds to claim the previous year.
The Finn started proceedings off well enough, with triumphs in two of the first four races, the runner-up spot in Bahrain and pole position in Barcelona seeing him leading the drivers' standings early on. What's more, a record-equalling ten fastest laps proved that the scintillating raw speed for which Raikkonen has become famous was still there - somewhere, at least, but seemingly only when it was too late.
After his initial flourish, however, the 17-time grand prix winner's momentum stalled to such an extent that he even went backwards, and a catastrophic error in running into the back of the Force India of Adrian Sutil in the closing laps at Monaco would in hindsight prove to be the beginning of the end of his challenge.
Raikkonen found himself on the receiving end of just such a catastrophic error himself when Lewis Hamilton clattered into the back of him in the Montreal pit-lane during the Canadian Grand Prix - a race he could well have won - and then an exhaust problem forced him to cede victory to team-mate Felipe Massa in the French Grand Prix at Magny-Cours.
There followed Ferrari's dismal performance in the rain-lashed British Grand Prix at Silverstone in mid-summer from which Raikkonen did reasonably well to salvage fifth place as Massa proved to be all at sea in the sister scarlet machine, but the hard facts are that in the wake of his Spanish success in late April, the 29-year-old would not win again all year. The Brazilian did so five times.
Worse still, for four consecutive grands prix from Valencia in August to Singapore a month later he did not score at all - the final nail in the coffin of the defence of his trophy, and a showing that led many, the Scuderia's president Luca di Montezemolo notably amongst them, to question where his motivation had gone and whether he would even still be around in F1 in 2009.
Though Raikkonen's feisty drive at Spa-Francorchamps - at least until his costly mistake almost within sight of the chequered flag - and late-season resurgence of sorts has given some hope that all is not yet lost, the man from Espoo knows he will need to come out of the blocks fighting from the word 'go' in 2009 if he is not to be totally overshadowed by Massa again. Only then will we know if the real Kimi Raikkonen is back in the building - or has gone for good.
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Top ten F1 drivers: 5th - Robert Kubica.
Mon 24 Nov, 11:53 AM
Robert Kubica takes fifth place in your vote for the top F1 driver of the year.
After asking you to vote for your leading drivers from the 2008 Formula 1 World Championship season, the time has come to start the countdown to the driver you voted the top star of 2008.
Over the next ten weekdays, we will be revealing the top ten in reverse order, with the winner being revealed on Friday, 28 November.
More than 45,000 votes were cast in the F1 poll, with each driver's average score out of ten then being calculated to decide the winner.
F1 Driver of the Year - Fifth place:
Name: Robert Kubica
Team: BMW Sauber
Car: BMW Sauber F1.08
Wins: 1
Podiums: 7
Pole positions: 1
Fastest laps: 0
Championship points: 75
Championship position: 4th
If it was a surprise that Robert Kubica began the 2008 Formula 1 World Championship campaign as an unexpected and unlikely title candidate, it was perhaps even more so that seven races in he was leading the standings - and the fact that he ultimately slipped back to fourth position at the close was entirely a reflection of the drop-off in the competitiveness of his car rather than anything to do with his driving.
Whilst eventual champion Lewis Hamilton and runner-up Felipe Massa - both of whom Kubica comfortably the measure for much of the year - and their teams made costly mistakes left, right and centre, Kubica and BMW Sauber rarely made any, the Pole's only significant error coming when he spun third place away in the torrential downpour of the British Grand Prix at Silverstone. Given the conditions and his clean sheet for the remainder of the season, though, that was more than excusable.
If there was any driver on the grid that managed to squeeze 110 per cent out of his car week-in, week-out, it was the one behind the wheel of the #4 entry, and that he thoroughly overshadowed Nick Heidfeld - a man dubbed 'Quick Nick' - in the sister F1.08 for the majority of the campaign was testament to just how well he performed.
Kubica sensationally almost stole pole position from under the nose of Hamilton in the season curtain-raiser Down Under in Melbourne, and though that grand prix would ultimately end in disappointment following contact with Williams' Kazuki Nakajima, the 23-year-old was back with a bang for round two in Malaysia, storming to the runner-up spot and just one race later still registering BMW's maiden pole position in the top flight in its own right in Bahrain, adding another podium position to his spoils the following day.
Solid performances in Spain and Turkey were the precursor to a brilliant second place in Monaco - the glittering jewel in F1's crown - as he split Hamilton and Massa at the chequered flag, and then, only a fortnight later, the crowning glory of his own season, with an inspired if slightly fortuitous victory, again a first for BMW, in the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal after Hamilton and Kimi Raikkonen collided in the pit-lane. The first of his countrymen ever to compete at the pinnacle of international motorsport, it was a truly momentous breakthrough achievement, and one that propelled him to the top of the drivers' table.
Though he would keep himself in the fight by dint of a string of stand-out showings from thereon in, however, there would be no further triumphs for the man from Kraków, and indeed rostrums only at Valencia, Monza and Fuji, on each occasion clearly the result of a driver transcending the abilities of the equipment beneath him.
Elsewhere there were thinner pickings, and it was particularly cruel that having battled so hard for so long to keep in touch, Kubica lost third place in the final reckoning to Raikkonen, being overtaken by a driver who had rarely shone season-long - a clear sign that in the current age of F1, you are only ever as good as the machinery at your disposal.
As BMW fell evermore away from Ferrari and McLaren's pace over the second half of the campaign - even slipping behind Renault in the last few races - Kubica's frustration became palpable, as he was increasingly willing to criticise the team in public and began to suggest that the squad's efforts to help Heidfeld overcome his qualifying malaise had been at the expense of his own title ambitions. The way he un-lapped himself from Hamilton on the penultimate tour of the Brazilian Grand Prix at Interlagos - in so doing very nearly losing the Briton the championship - was petulant indeed.
Whether BMW's focus on Heidfeld ultimately did cost the former World Series by Renault Champion the trophy is doubtful, but the Munich and Hinwil-based concern knows it must maintain the pace year-long in 2009 if the man with whom Dr Mario Theissen admitted 'the working relationship was not always easy' in 2008 is to be rather more placated second time around.
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Top ten F1 drivers: 4th - Lewis Hamilton.
Tue 25 Nov, 11:23 AM
Lewis Hamilton takes fourth place in your vote for the top F1 driver of the year.
After asking you to vote for your leading drivers from the 2008 Formula 1 World Championship season, the time has come to start the countdown to the driver you voted the top star of 2008.
Over the next ten weekdays, we will be revealing the top ten in reverse order, with the winner being revealed on Friday, 28 November.
More than 45,000 votes were cast in the F1 poll, with each driver's average score out of ten then being calculated to decide the winner.
F1 Driver of the Year - Fifth place:
Name: Lewis Hamilton
Team: McLaren-Mercedes
Car: McLaren-Mercedes MP4-23
Wins: 5
Podiums: 10
Pole positions: 7
Fastest laps: 1
Championship points: 98
Championship position: 1st
Perhaps surprisingly only fourth in the Crash.net readers' poll of the best Formula 1 drivers of 2008 is newly-crowned world champion Lewis Hamilton - the youngest man ever to lift the laurels at the pinnacle of international motor racing.
That Hamilton was less impressive than he had been during the course of his rookie season in the top flight in 2007 is arguable; that he endured a mixed campaign second time around is not. For the McLaren-Mercedes star, 2008 was very much a year of peaks and troughs, and if most observers agree that the right man ultimately did clinch the crown, they are similarly unanimous that in order to do so he required more than a small degree of luck.
The 23-year-old began the season in imperious fashion, converting pole position into victory in the curtain-raiser Down Under in Melbourne, and history holds that more often than not, he who wins the first grand prix of the year generally goes on to win the championship too. Hamilton maintained that tradition - but boy did he make it hard work for himself.
Following his Australian success, there were four further triumphs over the remainder of the campaign, and a couple of them - Monaco and Silverstone - were quite legendary drives, and saw the Stevenage-born ace accomplish two of his boyhood dreams. Victory in front of his adoring home fans in the teeming rain of the British Grand Prix was quite possibly Hamilton's best performance of the season, as he didn't so much drive away from all of his pursuers as completely out-class them, ascending to a higher plane that nobody else came even close to attaining.
He also reached the top step of the rostrum in the German Grand Prix at Hockenheim - another virtuoso showing, as McLaren's risky strategy relied heavily upon Hamilton producing a Michael Schumacher-esque series of qualifying laps in order to pull off the eventual result - and in the Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai, when a peerless performance left Ferrari quite literally gasping for breath.
Elsewhere, though, his season was blighted by a succession of at times inexplicable errors, most notably catastrophically running into the back of the stationary Ferrari of defending world champion Kimi Raikkonen at the end of the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve's pit-lane during the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal. Further precious points were lost in Japan, when what can only be described as a drastic effort to atone for a poor getaway saw Hamilton leave his braking impossibly late into the first corner at Fuji Speedway and almost decimate half the field in the process.
Bahrain was another example of a lack of clear thinking, when after being demoted on the grid the 2006 GP2 Series Champion clattered into the back of sworn rival and former team-mate Fernando Alonso on only lap two, going on to take the chequered flag an unlucky but perhaps appropriate 13th.
There were also snipes from a number of other drivers in the wake of his robust driving style in fighting his way up through the order in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, and some believe Robert Kubica un-lapping himself from Hamilton in the closing stages of the final race of the season in Brazil - in so doing very nearly costing the Briton the trophy - was a way of teaching him a lesson that such behaviour will not be tolerated in the future, and that his rivals are every bit as willing to play hard and aggressive in return.
Indeed, Hamilton's drive at Interlagos appeared at times to be not so much cautious as indifferent, as he wrapped up the laurels in somewhat ignominious fashion, only moving into the fifth place he so desperately needed two corners from home at the expense of Timo Glock's ailing Toyota. One lap fewer and the nine-time grand prix winner would not have been world champion, but then equally, had he not been controversially stripped of a sensational victory in the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps two months earlier, he would not have needed to worry in São Paulo at all.
The right man did ultimately win, then - just - but if Lewis Hamilton is to successfully defend his crown in 2009, he can ill afford to be as inconsistent again.
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Top ten F1 drivers: 3rd - Fernando Alonso.
Wed 26 Nov, 11:08 AM
Fernando Alonso takes third place in your vote for the top F1 driver of the year.
After asking you to vote for your leading drivers from the 2008 Formula 1 World Championship season, the time has come to start the countdown to the driver you voted the top star of 2008.
Over the next ten weekdays, we will be revealing the top ten in reverse order, with the winner being revealed on Friday, 28 November.
More than 45,000 votes were cast in the F1 poll, with each driver's average score out of ten then being calculated to decide the winner.
F1 Driver of the Year - Third place:
Name: Fernando Alonso
Team: Renault
Car: Renault R28
Wins: 2
Podiums: 3
Pole positions: 0
Fastest laps: 0
Championship points: 61
Championship position: 5th
A handful of races into the 2008 Formula 1 World Championship, Fernando Alonso was publicly bemoaning the lack of competitiveness of his Renault and describing it as only the eighth-quickest car on the grid - out of ten.
Fast forward several months, and the same Alonso notched up more points over the second half of the season than any other driver - meaning had the title been determined by the final nine races alone, he would have clinched his third championship crown. How times change.
Qualifying a lowly eleventh for the curtain-raiser Down Under in Melbourne was an indication of just how much work lay ahead for the Régie over the balance of the campaign, and only the Spaniard's determination and canny ability to stay out of trouble enabled him to claim fourth place at the chequered flag. The problem was, until the Hungarian Grand Prix almost five months later, in terms of results that was about as good as it got.
More happily, whilst Renault's fortunes took a while to improve, the pace did at least step up a gear, with Alonso pulling arguably the lap of the season out of the bag in front of his adoring home fans in Barcelona to line up a barely-believable second on the grid for the Spanish Grand Prix in April, ahead of title protagonists Felipe Massa and Robert Kubica and eventual world champion and former McLaren-Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton. Though the engine would go on to let the 27-year-old down during the actual race, it was nevertheless a sign that things were on the up.
Indeed, only three times in 18 outings did the man from Oviedo fail to make the top ten on the starting grid - and on one of those occasions, in Singapore, it was completely out of his hands, with some observers having even tipped him to steal pole position. What's more, Alonso was the only driver in the field to out-qualify his team-mate - rookie Nelsinho Piquet - in every single race. If anyone had any remaining doubts about just how well the 21-time grand prix winner performed in 2008 and how strongly his motivation continued to burn with an uncompetitive car at his disposal, that statistic alone should have put them firmly to bed.
Whilst on-track results were relatively sparse over the first half of the year - Alonso counting a paltry 13 points from the opening ten grands prix - over the remaining eight he notched up 48, never finishing lower than fourth and in Singapore and Japan in particular producing two of the very finest showings of his glittering F1 career. In the former the double world champion refused to let an engine failure in qualifying sway his focus, as he took full advantage of a safety car period in the sport's inaugural night race to bring himself into play using all of his guile, experience and speed.
If it was an unexpected victory, it was nonetheless a wholly merited one, and he followed it up just a fortnight later with a second consecutive success at Fuji, atoning for an error in the same race twelve months previously that had likely cost him a third successive drivers' trophy, and a result that proved Renault were back - and back to stay.
The runner-up spot to an untouchable Massa in the season-ending Brazilian Grand Prix at Interlagos was a similarly sublime performance, and one that enabled Alonso to leapfrog Heikki Kovalainen - the man who had replaced him at McLaren - and BMW-Sauber's Nick Heidfeld to fifth place in the final standings.
Given where he and the team had begun proceedings in 2008, it was a superb outcome, and one that had many of the sport's experts lauding the Asturian as the best and most complete driver in F1 once more - and one who had banished the 'spoiled brat' reputation that, rightly or wrongly, he had come to be labelled with by the media during his time at Woking the previous year.
Having pledged his future to the French concern for at least another season - even if the rumours of an eventual switch to Ferrari persist - should Renault maintain its progress over the winter months, there is no reason to suggest that Fernando Alonso will not hit the ground running in 2009 as a genuine championship contender. After what he has been through in 2008, it is the least his talent deserves.
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Formula 1 » Top ten F1 drivers: 2nd - Felipe Massa.
Thursday, 27th November 2008
Felipe Massa takes second place in your vote for the top F1 driver of the year.
After asking you to vote for your leading drivers from the 2008 Formula 1 World Championship season, the time has come to start the countdown to the driver you voted the top star of 2008.
Over the next ten weekdays, we will be revealing the top ten in reverse order, with the winner being revealed on Friday, 28 November.
More than 45,000 votes were cast in the F1 poll, with each driver's average score out of ten then being calculated to decide the winner.
F1 Driver of the Year – Second place:
Name: Felipe Massa
Team: Ferrari
Car: Ferrari F2008
Wins: 6
Podiums: 10
Pole positions: 6
Fastest laps: 3
Championship points: 97
Championship position: 2nd
Felipe Massa both won and lost the 2008 Formula 1 World Drivers' Championship on the final lap of the final race of the season in front of his adoring home fans in Brazil – but despite the crushing disappointment that ultimately befell him, he will arguably emerge an even stronger driver still because of it in 2009.
The Brazilian entered the campaign in most observers' eyes as the number two at Ferrari to reigning world champion team-mate Kimi Raikkonen, the Finn having largely had the measure of the sister scarlet pilot for the majority of 2007. Though Raikkonen again began the year looking the quicker out of the blocks of the pair, whilst his challenge soon ran out of steam, Massa rapidly proved that he was in it for the long run – and developed into the title contender few had genuinely thought he was capable of being.
A collision with the Red Bull Racing of David Coulthard in the curtain-raising Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne followed by a spin whilst endeavouring to keep pace with Raikkonen a week later in Malaysia left Massa with nul points on the board, however, and just two races into the campaign an ignominious start had again brought the critics out in their droves.
Then, however, came Bahrain – where the São Paulista was the defending winner, and where he impressively overcame his jittery opening to the season to once again stamp his authority on proceedings with a flawless victory to get his challenge off the mark. There followed a trio of further rostrum finishes – including a third successive triumph in the Turkish Grand Prix in Istanbul, a race that Massa has all-but made his own since 2006 – and all of a sudden the man who only a matter of weeks earlier had been written off altogether was back in the fight with a vengeance.
Ironically, it was Raikkonen's bad luck in having to surrender first place to his team-mate in the French Grand Prix mid-season with a loose exhaust that seemed to be the catalyst to ignite Massa's own push for glory, and propelled the 27-year-old into the lead of the drivers' standings. From that point onwards, the Finn would not triumph again. The Brazilian did so three times.
Over the second half of the campaign, Massa became embroiled in a fraught scrap with McLaren-Mercedes rival Lewis Hamilton for the drivers' crown, the pair of them more often than not the class of the field and increasingly turning the title chase into a two-horse affair. Both men endured the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune on more than one occasion, and both at some point or other became drawn into the media frenzy that closely tracked their battle.
Massa was widely pilloried following his abject performance in the British Grand Prix at Silverstone – spinning an unprecedented five times in the rain en route to a lowly 13th spot at the chequered flag – but he answered those same critics with aplomb on home turf at Interlagos, proving to be uncatchable in the very conditions in which he was supposed not to be able to drive.
The eleven-time grand prix-winner was also peerless in both Hungary and Valencia, in the former being desperately unlucky to be deprived of victory almost within sight of the chequered flag having not put a foot wrong all race. The ten points that he lost that day, his supporters point out, would have comfortably made him world champion. So, undoubtedly, would the ten that went begging in Singapore when the Scuderia's faulty refuelling system struck again – with calamitous consequences.
Question marks remain, however, with off-colour performances at Spa-Francorchamps and in Shanghai arguably earning Massa six points more than he deserved, and his driving in the Japanese Grand Prix at Fuji Speedway – clattering clumsily into both Lewis Hamilton and Sébastien Bourdais during the course of the 67-lap encounter – was reckless to say the least.
And then, in the most dramatic of final showdowns, there was Brazil, where quite simply nobody could live with him. To miss out on the laurels by just a single point having driven his heart out and done all that he possibly could was cruel indeed, but he will bounce back. Have no doubt – Felipe Massa, the man many believed would never challenge for the world championship, will be an F1 title contender for many, many years to come.
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Formula 1 » Top ten F1 drivers: 1st - Sebastian Vettal .
Friday, 28th November 2008
Sebastian Vettel takes first place in your vote for the top F1 driver of the year.
After asking you to vote for your leading drivers from the 2008 Formula 1 World Championship season, the time has reveal the driver you voted the top star of 2008.
More than 45,000 votes were cast in the F1 poll, with each driver's average score out of ten then being calculated to decide the winner.
F1 Driver of the Year – First place:
Name: Sebastian Vettel
Team: Scuderia Toro Rosso
Car: Scuderia Toro Rosso-Ferrari STR2B/STR3
Wins: 1
Podiums: 1
Pole positions: 1
Fastest laps: 0
Championship points: 35
Championship position: 8th
He finished just eighth in the 2008 Formula 1 World Championship, ascended the podium only once and qualified higher than sixth on merely a single occasion – but still Sebastian Vettel did enough to be voted Crash.net readers' best driver of the year.
The young German – dubbed ‘the next Michael Schumacher' in some circles – was competing in his first full season in the top flight, having made his grand prix debut with BMW-Sauber in place of the convalescing Robert Kubica at Indianapolis last year.
Even then, however, there had been clear signs that his was a talent that was really quite special, as Vettel joined the elite club of drivers to have scored points on their maiden appearance. Having joined STR for the final seven races of 2007, he then even more impressively went on to run up in third place in the torrential downpour of the Japanese Grand Prix at Fuji Speedway, and just a week later achieved the small Faenza-based squad's highest finish of the year with fourth place in the Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai. A star, indubitably, had been born.
That being the case, much was expected of both Vettel and the improving STR in 2008, but in four of the first eight grands prix, he could qualify no better than 18th. What had gone wrong? The answer was that Toro Rosso had begun the campaign with a development of the car with which it had ended the previous season, ahead of bravely introducing the new, Red Bull Racing-based STR3 at the Monaco Grand Prix in May.
In endeavouring to compensate for a car that was clearly not up to the task and lagging behind its direct competition, Vettel was too often guilty of over-driving, and in three of the first four races the 21-year-old failed to even make it beyond the opening lap. The man who had been touted as F1's latest superstar was suddenly in danger of becoming a has-been before he had even made it.
And then came Monaco, and a brilliant drive around the narrow, tortuous streets of the Principality earned Vettel both his and the team's first points of the year with a strong fifth place. The season had finally begun, the momentum was beginning to flow again – and from that point on there would be no looking back.
From the British Grand Prix onwards, the man from Heppenheim only once failed to make the top ten on the starting grid, and over the balance of the campaign he out-qualified record-breaking four-time Champ Car king team-mate Sébastien Bourdais by a margin of 13 to five.
In the last seven outings, Vettel finished inside the top six in all races bar one, and in Valencia, Spa-Francorchamps, Singapore and Fuji he drove with all the composure and brio of a seasoned grand prix veteran. In the Brazilian Grand Prix finale at Interlagos the former German Formula BMW Champion was sublime as he ran up in second place for a while, and just over a lap from home he boldly and opportunistically overtook the McLaren-Mercedes of eventual title-winner Lewis Hamilton to pinch what would be fourth place at the flag.
The undisputed highlight of Vettel's 2008 season, though, was Monza, when the driver who was already the sport's youngest-ever points-scorer added to that achievement by becoming its youngest pole position sitter and grand prix winner too over the course of a weekend that firmly installed him as a world champion in-waiting.
That he stormed to the top spot on the starting grid could perhaps have been explained away by the uncharacteristic weather conditions that caught out many – Hamilton and defending F1 World Champion Kimi Raikkonen amongst them – but Vettel's performance on race day, not putting a foot wrong and never once letting Heikki Kovalainen in the sister Silver Arrow get close enough to apply any pressure, was a drive of pure genius.
That, as much as anything else he achieved in 2008, was more than sufficient to mark Sebastian Vettel out as one of the key pretenders to Hamilton's throne over the years to come. Red Bull Racing has work to do indeed if it is to provide the erstwhile F3 Euroseries Vice-Champion with a car to match his evident potential in 2009.
as you know my beloved driver only took place on the third of the championship title.. but at lease he tried.. :D
terusss... Crash.net ngadain pooling, and again FM cuman jadi runner up.. hehehehe..
here's the detail...
___________________
Top ten F1 drivers: 6th - Kimi Raikkonen.
Fri 21 Nov, 12:29 PM
Kimi Raikkonen takes sixth place in your vote for the top F1 driver of the year.
After asking you to vote for your leading drivers from the 2008 Formula 1 World Championship season, the time has come to start the countdown to the driver you voted the top star of 2008.
Over the next ten weekdays, we will be revealing the top ten in reverse order, with the winner being revealed on Friday, 28 November.
More than 45,000 votes were cast in the F1 poll, with each driver's average score out of ten then being calculated to decide the winner.
F1 Driver of the Year - Sixth place:
Name: Kimi Raikkonen
Team: Ferrari
Car: Ferrari F2008
Wins: 2
Podiums: 10
Pole positions: 2
Fastest laps: 10
Championship points: 75
Championship position: 3rd
Kimi Raikkonen developed into something of an enigma in 2008. His celebrated 'Ice Man' persona frosted over so much that many were left to wonder if his desire to scrap and to win had cooled off altogether. For much of the season, indeed, it seemed as if Kimi had left the building.
Entering the campaign as the reigning Formula 1 World Champion, Raikkonen was in most observers' eyes the favourite to repeat that success, but he did not so much surrender his crown with a fight as practically cast it away, apparently uninterested in defending the title that he had battled so hard and so greatly against the odds to claim the previous year.
The Finn started proceedings off well enough, with triumphs in two of the first four races, the runner-up spot in Bahrain and pole position in Barcelona seeing him leading the drivers' standings early on. What's more, a record-equalling ten fastest laps proved that the scintillating raw speed for which Raikkonen has become famous was still there - somewhere, at least, but seemingly only when it was too late.
After his initial flourish, however, the 17-time grand prix winner's momentum stalled to such an extent that he even went backwards, and a catastrophic error in running into the back of the Force India of Adrian Sutil in the closing laps at Monaco would in hindsight prove to be the beginning of the end of his challenge.
Raikkonen found himself on the receiving end of just such a catastrophic error himself when Lewis Hamilton clattered into the back of him in the Montreal pit-lane during the Canadian Grand Prix - a race he could well have won - and then an exhaust problem forced him to cede victory to team-mate Felipe Massa in the French Grand Prix at Magny-Cours.
There followed Ferrari's dismal performance in the rain-lashed British Grand Prix at Silverstone in mid-summer from which Raikkonen did reasonably well to salvage fifth place as Massa proved to be all at sea in the sister scarlet machine, but the hard facts are that in the wake of his Spanish success in late April, the 29-year-old would not win again all year. The Brazilian did so five times.
Worse still, for four consecutive grands prix from Valencia in August to Singapore a month later he did not score at all - the final nail in the coffin of the defence of his trophy, and a showing that led many, the Scuderia's president Luca di Montezemolo notably amongst them, to question where his motivation had gone and whether he would even still be around in F1 in 2009.
Though Raikkonen's feisty drive at Spa-Francorchamps - at least until his costly mistake almost within sight of the chequered flag - and late-season resurgence of sorts has given some hope that all is not yet lost, the man from Espoo knows he will need to come out of the blocks fighting from the word 'go' in 2009 if he is not to be totally overshadowed by Massa again. Only then will we know if the real Kimi Raikkonen is back in the building - or has gone for good.
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Top ten F1 drivers: 5th - Robert Kubica.
Mon 24 Nov, 11:53 AM
Robert Kubica takes fifth place in your vote for the top F1 driver of the year.
After asking you to vote for your leading drivers from the 2008 Formula 1 World Championship season, the time has come to start the countdown to the driver you voted the top star of 2008.
Over the next ten weekdays, we will be revealing the top ten in reverse order, with the winner being revealed on Friday, 28 November.
More than 45,000 votes were cast in the F1 poll, with each driver's average score out of ten then being calculated to decide the winner.
F1 Driver of the Year - Fifth place:
Name: Robert Kubica
Team: BMW Sauber
Car: BMW Sauber F1.08
Wins: 1
Podiums: 7
Pole positions: 1
Fastest laps: 0
Championship points: 75
Championship position: 4th
If it was a surprise that Robert Kubica began the 2008 Formula 1 World Championship campaign as an unexpected and unlikely title candidate, it was perhaps even more so that seven races in he was leading the standings - and the fact that he ultimately slipped back to fourth position at the close was entirely a reflection of the drop-off in the competitiveness of his car rather than anything to do with his driving.
Whilst eventual champion Lewis Hamilton and runner-up Felipe Massa - both of whom Kubica comfortably the measure for much of the year - and their teams made costly mistakes left, right and centre, Kubica and BMW Sauber rarely made any, the Pole's only significant error coming when he spun third place away in the torrential downpour of the British Grand Prix at Silverstone. Given the conditions and his clean sheet for the remainder of the season, though, that was more than excusable.
If there was any driver on the grid that managed to squeeze 110 per cent out of his car week-in, week-out, it was the one behind the wheel of the #4 entry, and that he thoroughly overshadowed Nick Heidfeld - a man dubbed 'Quick Nick' - in the sister F1.08 for the majority of the campaign was testament to just how well he performed.
Kubica sensationally almost stole pole position from under the nose of Hamilton in the season curtain-raiser Down Under in Melbourne, and though that grand prix would ultimately end in disappointment following contact with Williams' Kazuki Nakajima, the 23-year-old was back with a bang for round two in Malaysia, storming to the runner-up spot and just one race later still registering BMW's maiden pole position in the top flight in its own right in Bahrain, adding another podium position to his spoils the following day.
Solid performances in Spain and Turkey were the precursor to a brilliant second place in Monaco - the glittering jewel in F1's crown - as he split Hamilton and Massa at the chequered flag, and then, only a fortnight later, the crowning glory of his own season, with an inspired if slightly fortuitous victory, again a first for BMW, in the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal after Hamilton and Kimi Raikkonen collided in the pit-lane. The first of his countrymen ever to compete at the pinnacle of international motorsport, it was a truly momentous breakthrough achievement, and one that propelled him to the top of the drivers' table.
Though he would keep himself in the fight by dint of a string of stand-out showings from thereon in, however, there would be no further triumphs for the man from Kraków, and indeed rostrums only at Valencia, Monza and Fuji, on each occasion clearly the result of a driver transcending the abilities of the equipment beneath him.
Elsewhere there were thinner pickings, and it was particularly cruel that having battled so hard for so long to keep in touch, Kubica lost third place in the final reckoning to Raikkonen, being overtaken by a driver who had rarely shone season-long - a clear sign that in the current age of F1, you are only ever as good as the machinery at your disposal.
As BMW fell evermore away from Ferrari and McLaren's pace over the second half of the campaign - even slipping behind Renault in the last few races - Kubica's frustration became palpable, as he was increasingly willing to criticise the team in public and began to suggest that the squad's efforts to help Heidfeld overcome his qualifying malaise had been at the expense of his own title ambitions. The way he un-lapped himself from Hamilton on the penultimate tour of the Brazilian Grand Prix at Interlagos - in so doing very nearly losing the Briton the championship - was petulant indeed.
Whether BMW's focus on Heidfeld ultimately did cost the former World Series by Renault Champion the trophy is doubtful, but the Munich and Hinwil-based concern knows it must maintain the pace year-long in 2009 if the man with whom Dr Mario Theissen admitted 'the working relationship was not always easy' in 2008 is to be rather more placated second time around.
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Top ten F1 drivers: 4th - Lewis Hamilton.
Tue 25 Nov, 11:23 AM
Lewis Hamilton takes fourth place in your vote for the top F1 driver of the year.
After asking you to vote for your leading drivers from the 2008 Formula 1 World Championship season, the time has come to start the countdown to the driver you voted the top star of 2008.
Over the next ten weekdays, we will be revealing the top ten in reverse order, with the winner being revealed on Friday, 28 November.
More than 45,000 votes were cast in the F1 poll, with each driver's average score out of ten then being calculated to decide the winner.
F1 Driver of the Year - Fifth place:
Name: Lewis Hamilton
Team: McLaren-Mercedes
Car: McLaren-Mercedes MP4-23
Wins: 5
Podiums: 10
Pole positions: 7
Fastest laps: 1
Championship points: 98
Championship position: 1st
Perhaps surprisingly only fourth in the Crash.net readers' poll of the best Formula 1 drivers of 2008 is newly-crowned world champion Lewis Hamilton - the youngest man ever to lift the laurels at the pinnacle of international motor racing.
That Hamilton was less impressive than he had been during the course of his rookie season in the top flight in 2007 is arguable; that he endured a mixed campaign second time around is not. For the McLaren-Mercedes star, 2008 was very much a year of peaks and troughs, and if most observers agree that the right man ultimately did clinch the crown, they are similarly unanimous that in order to do so he required more than a small degree of luck.
The 23-year-old began the season in imperious fashion, converting pole position into victory in the curtain-raiser Down Under in Melbourne, and history holds that more often than not, he who wins the first grand prix of the year generally goes on to win the championship too. Hamilton maintained that tradition - but boy did he make it hard work for himself.
Following his Australian success, there were four further triumphs over the remainder of the campaign, and a couple of them - Monaco and Silverstone - were quite legendary drives, and saw the Stevenage-born ace accomplish two of his boyhood dreams. Victory in front of his adoring home fans in the teeming rain of the British Grand Prix was quite possibly Hamilton's best performance of the season, as he didn't so much drive away from all of his pursuers as completely out-class them, ascending to a higher plane that nobody else came even close to attaining.
He also reached the top step of the rostrum in the German Grand Prix at Hockenheim - another virtuoso showing, as McLaren's risky strategy relied heavily upon Hamilton producing a Michael Schumacher-esque series of qualifying laps in order to pull off the eventual result - and in the Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai, when a peerless performance left Ferrari quite literally gasping for breath.
Elsewhere, though, his season was blighted by a succession of at times inexplicable errors, most notably catastrophically running into the back of the stationary Ferrari of defending world champion Kimi Raikkonen at the end of the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve's pit-lane during the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal. Further precious points were lost in Japan, when what can only be described as a drastic effort to atone for a poor getaway saw Hamilton leave his braking impossibly late into the first corner at Fuji Speedway and almost decimate half the field in the process.
Bahrain was another example of a lack of clear thinking, when after being demoted on the grid the 2006 GP2 Series Champion clattered into the back of sworn rival and former team-mate Fernando Alonso on only lap two, going on to take the chequered flag an unlucky but perhaps appropriate 13th.
There were also snipes from a number of other drivers in the wake of his robust driving style in fighting his way up through the order in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, and some believe Robert Kubica un-lapping himself from Hamilton in the closing stages of the final race of the season in Brazil - in so doing very nearly costing the Briton the trophy - was a way of teaching him a lesson that such behaviour will not be tolerated in the future, and that his rivals are every bit as willing to play hard and aggressive in return.
Indeed, Hamilton's drive at Interlagos appeared at times to be not so much cautious as indifferent, as he wrapped up the laurels in somewhat ignominious fashion, only moving into the fifth place he so desperately needed two corners from home at the expense of Timo Glock's ailing Toyota. One lap fewer and the nine-time grand prix winner would not have been world champion, but then equally, had he not been controversially stripped of a sensational victory in the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps two months earlier, he would not have needed to worry in São Paulo at all.
The right man did ultimately win, then - just - but if Lewis Hamilton is to successfully defend his crown in 2009, he can ill afford to be as inconsistent again.
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Top ten F1 drivers: 3rd - Fernando Alonso.
Wed 26 Nov, 11:08 AM
Fernando Alonso takes third place in your vote for the top F1 driver of the year.
After asking you to vote for your leading drivers from the 2008 Formula 1 World Championship season, the time has come to start the countdown to the driver you voted the top star of 2008.
Over the next ten weekdays, we will be revealing the top ten in reverse order, with the winner being revealed on Friday, 28 November.
More than 45,000 votes were cast in the F1 poll, with each driver's average score out of ten then being calculated to decide the winner.
F1 Driver of the Year - Third place:
Name: Fernando Alonso
Team: Renault
Car: Renault R28
Wins: 2
Podiums: 3
Pole positions: 0
Fastest laps: 0
Championship points: 61
Championship position: 5th
A handful of races into the 2008 Formula 1 World Championship, Fernando Alonso was publicly bemoaning the lack of competitiveness of his Renault and describing it as only the eighth-quickest car on the grid - out of ten.
Fast forward several months, and the same Alonso notched up more points over the second half of the season than any other driver - meaning had the title been determined by the final nine races alone, he would have clinched his third championship crown. How times change.
Qualifying a lowly eleventh for the curtain-raiser Down Under in Melbourne was an indication of just how much work lay ahead for the Régie over the balance of the campaign, and only the Spaniard's determination and canny ability to stay out of trouble enabled him to claim fourth place at the chequered flag. The problem was, until the Hungarian Grand Prix almost five months later, in terms of results that was about as good as it got.
More happily, whilst Renault's fortunes took a while to improve, the pace did at least step up a gear, with Alonso pulling arguably the lap of the season out of the bag in front of his adoring home fans in Barcelona to line up a barely-believable second on the grid for the Spanish Grand Prix in April, ahead of title protagonists Felipe Massa and Robert Kubica and eventual world champion and former McLaren-Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton. Though the engine would go on to let the 27-year-old down during the actual race, it was nevertheless a sign that things were on the up.
Indeed, only three times in 18 outings did the man from Oviedo fail to make the top ten on the starting grid - and on one of those occasions, in Singapore, it was completely out of his hands, with some observers having even tipped him to steal pole position. What's more, Alonso was the only driver in the field to out-qualify his team-mate - rookie Nelsinho Piquet - in every single race. If anyone had any remaining doubts about just how well the 21-time grand prix winner performed in 2008 and how strongly his motivation continued to burn with an uncompetitive car at his disposal, that statistic alone should have put them firmly to bed.
Whilst on-track results were relatively sparse over the first half of the year - Alonso counting a paltry 13 points from the opening ten grands prix - over the remaining eight he notched up 48, never finishing lower than fourth and in Singapore and Japan in particular producing two of the very finest showings of his glittering F1 career. In the former the double world champion refused to let an engine failure in qualifying sway his focus, as he took full advantage of a safety car period in the sport's inaugural night race to bring himself into play using all of his guile, experience and speed.
If it was an unexpected victory, it was nonetheless a wholly merited one, and he followed it up just a fortnight later with a second consecutive success at Fuji, atoning for an error in the same race twelve months previously that had likely cost him a third successive drivers' trophy, and a result that proved Renault were back - and back to stay.
The runner-up spot to an untouchable Massa in the season-ending Brazilian Grand Prix at Interlagos was a similarly sublime performance, and one that enabled Alonso to leapfrog Heikki Kovalainen - the man who had replaced him at McLaren - and BMW-Sauber's Nick Heidfeld to fifth place in the final standings.
Given where he and the team had begun proceedings in 2008, it was a superb outcome, and one that had many of the sport's experts lauding the Asturian as the best and most complete driver in F1 once more - and one who had banished the 'spoiled brat' reputation that, rightly or wrongly, he had come to be labelled with by the media during his time at Woking the previous year.
Having pledged his future to the French concern for at least another season - even if the rumours of an eventual switch to Ferrari persist - should Renault maintain its progress over the winter months, there is no reason to suggest that Fernando Alonso will not hit the ground running in 2009 as a genuine championship contender. After what he has been through in 2008, it is the least his talent deserves.
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Formula 1 » Top ten F1 drivers: 2nd - Felipe Massa.
Thursday, 27th November 2008
Felipe Massa takes second place in your vote for the top F1 driver of the year.
After asking you to vote for your leading drivers from the 2008 Formula 1 World Championship season, the time has come to start the countdown to the driver you voted the top star of 2008.
Over the next ten weekdays, we will be revealing the top ten in reverse order, with the winner being revealed on Friday, 28 November.
More than 45,000 votes were cast in the F1 poll, with each driver's average score out of ten then being calculated to decide the winner.
F1 Driver of the Year – Second place:
Name: Felipe Massa
Team: Ferrari
Car: Ferrari F2008
Wins: 6
Podiums: 10
Pole positions: 6
Fastest laps: 3
Championship points: 97
Championship position: 2nd
Felipe Massa both won and lost the 2008 Formula 1 World Drivers' Championship on the final lap of the final race of the season in front of his adoring home fans in Brazil – but despite the crushing disappointment that ultimately befell him, he will arguably emerge an even stronger driver still because of it in 2009.
The Brazilian entered the campaign in most observers' eyes as the number two at Ferrari to reigning world champion team-mate Kimi Raikkonen, the Finn having largely had the measure of the sister scarlet pilot for the majority of 2007. Though Raikkonen again began the year looking the quicker out of the blocks of the pair, whilst his challenge soon ran out of steam, Massa rapidly proved that he was in it for the long run – and developed into the title contender few had genuinely thought he was capable of being.
A collision with the Red Bull Racing of David Coulthard in the curtain-raising Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne followed by a spin whilst endeavouring to keep pace with Raikkonen a week later in Malaysia left Massa with nul points on the board, however, and just two races into the campaign an ignominious start had again brought the critics out in their droves.
Then, however, came Bahrain – where the São Paulista was the defending winner, and where he impressively overcame his jittery opening to the season to once again stamp his authority on proceedings with a flawless victory to get his challenge off the mark. There followed a trio of further rostrum finishes – including a third successive triumph in the Turkish Grand Prix in Istanbul, a race that Massa has all-but made his own since 2006 – and all of a sudden the man who only a matter of weeks earlier had been written off altogether was back in the fight with a vengeance.
Ironically, it was Raikkonen's bad luck in having to surrender first place to his team-mate in the French Grand Prix mid-season with a loose exhaust that seemed to be the catalyst to ignite Massa's own push for glory, and propelled the 27-year-old into the lead of the drivers' standings. From that point onwards, the Finn would not triumph again. The Brazilian did so three times.
Over the second half of the campaign, Massa became embroiled in a fraught scrap with McLaren-Mercedes rival Lewis Hamilton for the drivers' crown, the pair of them more often than not the class of the field and increasingly turning the title chase into a two-horse affair. Both men endured the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune on more than one occasion, and both at some point or other became drawn into the media frenzy that closely tracked their battle.
Massa was widely pilloried following his abject performance in the British Grand Prix at Silverstone – spinning an unprecedented five times in the rain en route to a lowly 13th spot at the chequered flag – but he answered those same critics with aplomb on home turf at Interlagos, proving to be uncatchable in the very conditions in which he was supposed not to be able to drive.
The eleven-time grand prix-winner was also peerless in both Hungary and Valencia, in the former being desperately unlucky to be deprived of victory almost within sight of the chequered flag having not put a foot wrong all race. The ten points that he lost that day, his supporters point out, would have comfortably made him world champion. So, undoubtedly, would the ten that went begging in Singapore when the Scuderia's faulty refuelling system struck again – with calamitous consequences.
Question marks remain, however, with off-colour performances at Spa-Francorchamps and in Shanghai arguably earning Massa six points more than he deserved, and his driving in the Japanese Grand Prix at Fuji Speedway – clattering clumsily into both Lewis Hamilton and Sébastien Bourdais during the course of the 67-lap encounter – was reckless to say the least.
And then, in the most dramatic of final showdowns, there was Brazil, where quite simply nobody could live with him. To miss out on the laurels by just a single point having driven his heart out and done all that he possibly could was cruel indeed, but he will bounce back. Have no doubt – Felipe Massa, the man many believed would never challenge for the world championship, will be an F1 title contender for many, many years to come.
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Formula 1 » Top ten F1 drivers: 1st - Sebastian Vettal .
Friday, 28th November 2008
Sebastian Vettel takes first place in your vote for the top F1 driver of the year.
After asking you to vote for your leading drivers from the 2008 Formula 1 World Championship season, the time has reveal the driver you voted the top star of 2008.
More than 45,000 votes were cast in the F1 poll, with each driver's average score out of ten then being calculated to decide the winner.
F1 Driver of the Year – First place:
Name: Sebastian Vettel
Team: Scuderia Toro Rosso
Car: Scuderia Toro Rosso-Ferrari STR2B/STR3
Wins: 1
Podiums: 1
Pole positions: 1
Fastest laps: 0
Championship points: 35
Championship position: 8th
He finished just eighth in the 2008 Formula 1 World Championship, ascended the podium only once and qualified higher than sixth on merely a single occasion – but still Sebastian Vettel did enough to be voted Crash.net readers' best driver of the year.
The young German – dubbed ‘the next Michael Schumacher' in some circles – was competing in his first full season in the top flight, having made his grand prix debut with BMW-Sauber in place of the convalescing Robert Kubica at Indianapolis last year.
Even then, however, there had been clear signs that his was a talent that was really quite special, as Vettel joined the elite club of drivers to have scored points on their maiden appearance. Having joined STR for the final seven races of 2007, he then even more impressively went on to run up in third place in the torrential downpour of the Japanese Grand Prix at Fuji Speedway, and just a week later achieved the small Faenza-based squad's highest finish of the year with fourth place in the Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai. A star, indubitably, had been born.
That being the case, much was expected of both Vettel and the improving STR in 2008, but in four of the first eight grands prix, he could qualify no better than 18th. What had gone wrong? The answer was that Toro Rosso had begun the campaign with a development of the car with which it had ended the previous season, ahead of bravely introducing the new, Red Bull Racing-based STR3 at the Monaco Grand Prix in May.
In endeavouring to compensate for a car that was clearly not up to the task and lagging behind its direct competition, Vettel was too often guilty of over-driving, and in three of the first four races the 21-year-old failed to even make it beyond the opening lap. The man who had been touted as F1's latest superstar was suddenly in danger of becoming a has-been before he had even made it.
And then came Monaco, and a brilliant drive around the narrow, tortuous streets of the Principality earned Vettel both his and the team's first points of the year with a strong fifth place. The season had finally begun, the momentum was beginning to flow again – and from that point on there would be no looking back.
From the British Grand Prix onwards, the man from Heppenheim only once failed to make the top ten on the starting grid, and over the balance of the campaign he out-qualified record-breaking four-time Champ Car king team-mate Sébastien Bourdais by a margin of 13 to five.
In the last seven outings, Vettel finished inside the top six in all races bar one, and in Valencia, Spa-Francorchamps, Singapore and Fuji he drove with all the composure and brio of a seasoned grand prix veteran. In the Brazilian Grand Prix finale at Interlagos the former German Formula BMW Champion was sublime as he ran up in second place for a while, and just over a lap from home he boldly and opportunistically overtook the McLaren-Mercedes of eventual title-winner Lewis Hamilton to pinch what would be fourth place at the flag.
The undisputed highlight of Vettel's 2008 season, though, was Monza, when the driver who was already the sport's youngest-ever points-scorer added to that achievement by becoming its youngest pole position sitter and grand prix winner too over the course of a weekend that firmly installed him as a world champion in-waiting.
That he stormed to the top spot on the starting grid could perhaps have been explained away by the uncharacteristic weather conditions that caught out many – Hamilton and defending F1 World Champion Kimi Raikkonen amongst them – but Vettel's performance on race day, not putting a foot wrong and never once letting Heikki Kovalainen in the sister Silver Arrow get close enough to apply any pressure, was a drive of pure genius.
That, as much as anything else he achieved in 2008, was more than sufficient to mark Sebastian Vettel out as one of the key pretenders to Hamilton's throne over the years to come. Red Bull Racing has work to do indeed if it is to provide the erstwhile F3 Euroseries Vice-Champion with a car to match his evident potential in 2009.
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