Vettel fastest Q since Senna?
I dont know about that. He is better than Alonso at Q. He's possibly the best right now, but i still wouldnt be too sure. Webber has taken him a couple times this season already, and then how about Maldonado and Lewis?
Until Hamilton and Vettel came along, Webber was top dog in qualifying.
Yet Vettel beats Webber with the same numbers as Lewis beats Button, from the very day he joined Red Bull.
Every great qualifier is ocassionaly beaten, it's about the consistency with which you beat the others.
And beating a top qualifier like Webber 4 out of 5 times, sounds pretty consistent.
Possibly most savvy guy...
Are you aware you are stating the possibilty of an assumption?
i highly doubt he is the most technical savvy guy. It makes you look a lot better when you have Adrian Newey or Ross Brawn designing your cars and your competition is still talking about a wind tunnel correlation problem and countles dnf's 
but regardless.... we have no way of knowing if Alonso is more knowledgeable or if Vettel is. They are both very close though. And very good too.
Extremely motivated.
You have to be joking. Who isn't extremely motivated?
Schumacher maybe. And how can you possibly say Vettel is more motivated than say... Kimi. Or Alonso, since he's the guy we're comparing him to right now.
These are a combination of things.
Every team he's worked with has praised him for his tech savy-ness.
He was the only driver to visit Pirelli prior to 2011.
He is usually the last driver out of the paddock at night.
He declined personal sponsors in order to focus more on racing.
Even look at last year, Abu Dhabi, where nothing was on the line anymore that season; that tire puncture was studied more than the Kenedy assasination.
That's a type dedication you rarely see.
Great team motivator.
More than Alonso? Again, this is only an opinion with no way of knowing. Let's say i tell you Alonso is a better team motivator...... how would anyone prove he isn't?
That's why I said, Alonso gets the team to work for him, there's a difference I think.
With Ferrari, you feel they work for him because of the power Alonso holds; deservedly so, but there feels more distance.
Compare that to Red Bull, where Vettel is never short on praising his team (not the RB team, HIS team), where he dedicates a helmet to them, where's he's even said to make sandwhiches for the guys when they work late. It just feels different.
Thrives with a strong teammate.
WHAT?!?!
You mean to say Webber is at his level despite essentially finishing 4th best driver in 2011 and where is he going to finish now in 2012? I'd say if Lewis doesnt have another failure, Mark could easily end up 5th in the same car that got several front row lockups and won the most races in a row. And a massively struggling Button in the same unrealiable car, is not that far from Webber.
Also, in the only season he had a strong teammate they crahsed with eachother and Webber was publicly open about his dislike with the team's "procedings"....
We were comparing Vettel and Alonso; I think the same applies to Lewis.
Webber and Button are very similar: on their day they can beat the best, but they usually lack consistency. However, Webber is (almost) always a force to be reckoned with in qualifying. But look at 2010, look at this year; Webber has a good run early in the year, or half-way through the year, but Vettel never let's loose.
Compare that to Fernando, who lost his mind when Trulli and Lewis were giving him a hard time and hasn't had a strong team mate since (except early 2010, where Massa outraced Alonso in 4 out of the first 7 races, before he hit a bad run of 3 races and then Germany; Massa hasn't been the same since).
The crash with Karthikeyan was absolutely different. First of all... it was in the middle of the race (ie not on the 1st lap). Stewards are VERY forgiving on first lap incidents. Even Grosjean crash at Belgium was penalised for him moving over. He was penalised for the potential to serious injury, removing several competitors and his recurrence.
I wont even get into Blue flags.
So... most race incident crashes are around 50/50, except stuff like when MS hit Jean eric in Singapore... so, since the stewards didnt punish Button, and didnt punish Alonso... i'd say it was a racing incident; just stuff that happens.. 50% blame.
Japan was 100% in Alonso's hands. Button left him space, Kimi left him space.
Doesn't mean it needed to be punished, not everything does, but Alonso has no one to look at for that but himself.
voor het Nederlands
- By darwin dali