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**Jeaxatoem** · 10-06-2010, 12:42 AM

A team's performance is most often an indicator of the drivers they employ. A real talented driver can elevate and motivate an entire team even when their car is originally inferior (a la Alonso and Kubica at Renault, Vettel at STR, etc.) and create a lot of momentum and buzz, which then attracts more sponsors, engineering talent, etc.

I think you're stretching things quite a bit there. This years car is the first that STR have had to design and build themselves (admitedly very heavily based on last years RB5/STR04) since the Minardi PS05, thats a long time for the design office to sit largely unused. Making comparisons to Vettel in 2008 is a bit pointless as the car then was a very good piece of kit and Ascanelli made some very smart calls on what updates to take from Red Bull and which ones to leave behind. You point to the efforts of Vettel, Alonso and Kubica, but neglect to mention that all of them had an experienced team mate to learn from (Heidfeld, Trulli and Heidfeld again respectively) and all made their debut's back when testing was unrestricted and had covered 10's of thousends of miles in testing. OK, its a bit more complicated with Alonso because of that first year with Minardi, but the competition wasnt remotely as strong back then anyway and he spent a year as Renault's test driver before racing for them.

I dont think Buemi is going to be a race winner, but I didn't think that much of him in the junior formules either. As for Alguersuari, his first time in an F1 car was practice in Hungary last year and a lot of his winter testing was done in the wet. His race pace is also very good but he does struggle with the front tires in qualy (so do a lot of drivers).

10-06-2010, 12:42 AM	#2
Jeaxatoem Join Date Nov 2005 Posts 546 Senior Member	A team's performance is most often an indicator of the drivers they employ. A real talented driver can elevate and motivate an entire team even when their car is originally inferior (a la Alonso and Kubica at Renault, Vettel at STR, etc.) and create a lot of momentum and buzz, which then attracts more sponsors, engineering talent, etc. I think you're stretching things quite a bit there. This years car is the first that STR have had to design and build themselves (admitedly very heavily based on last years RB5/STR04) since the Minardi PS05, thats a long time for the design office to sit largely unused. Making comparisons to Vettel in 2008 is a bit pointless as the car then was a very good piece of kit and Ascanelli made some very smart calls on what updates to take from Red Bull and which ones to leave behind. You point to the efforts of Vettel, Alonso and Kubica, but neglect to mention that all of them had an experienced team mate to learn from (Heidfeld, Trulli and Heidfeld again respectively) and all made their debut's back when testing was unrestricted and had covered 10's of thousends of miles in testing. OK, its a bit more complicated with Alonso because of that first year with Minardi, but the competition wasnt remotely as strong back then anyway and he spent a year as Renault's test driver before racing for them. I dont think Buemi is going to be a race winner, but I didn't think that much of him in the junior formules either. As for Alguersuari, his first time in an F1 car was practice in Hungary last year and a lot of his winter testing was done in the wet. His race pace is also very good but he does struggle with the front tires in qualy (so do a lot of drivers).
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