In my book Hamilton, Massa, Kubica, Alonso and Vettel performance-levels were all roughly on the same level in 2008 with the two Toyota guys, Webber, Räikkönen and Heidfeld making up the second tier. We may endlessly debate, who should be a No.1, but all of those five had their moments of brilliance, all of them had their lows and fair share of disappointing performances. And this is what can be quite widely acknowledged, me thinks. Talking about shining in a top car (pro FM/LH arguments) vs shining in a "bad car" (pro-RK/FA/SV arguments), then if an example is brought, then it's quite a tough call, which performance was more impressive - Hamilton at Silverstone or Sutil at Monaco. Both were truly amazing drives taking into account all factors (car performance included). What counts against nominating Vettel as an overall No.1 is that he is still quite an unproven driver. The examples of Frentzen and Fisichella should be cautionary enough to avoid nominating someone as a surefire top dog before reaching a top team even despite excellent drives in a midfield car. Kubica was for long keeping the honour as a driver of the year, but his end-season drop in form made it a bit doubtful. What makes the rating of him harder, is that we won't know for sure, how competitive BMW exactly was, its performance fluctuated quite a lot (struggling in France, Hungary and Brazil, at the same time RK was doing very well at Fuji despite the rumours that BMW had stopped development by then). And to be fair, to me Kubica is a bit of an unproven driver too. His advantage over Heidfeld derived from qualifying as they seemed roughly equal in races. And also - I'm awaiting for more brilliant seasons from RK to get a better evaluation. A lot of drivers have had one excellent season - like Frentzen in '99, or Button in '04, but who rates them as an all-time star?