Top 10 F1 drivers of the 2008 season so far

After the first 8 GPs (Australia to Magny-Cours) of the F1 season here are my top 10 drivers and the reasons why they are where they are in my list.

1. Robert Kubica- Robert Kubica is my number 1 driver because he has been by far the most consistent driver this season, which is what you need to be a champion. It’s the ability to perform well at every event. All the other front running drivers have made mistakes this year and Robert hasn’t, which is why he finds himself in this position.

The only DNF for Kubica wasn’t his fault. He was on for a good result at Melbourne but was tagged by Nakajima behind the safety car. Without that incident he may well still be leading the world championship as I write this article.

Kubica’s record against Heidfeld has been excellent this season. He has beaten Nick in all 8 qualifying sessions this season and has beaten him in every single race apart from in Australia. Kubica is a much fitter man this season and the car seems to suit him perfectly and he is able to extract everything he can and more out of that BMW at the moment.

Kubica looked great from the off this season, almost getting pole in Melbourne, finishing 2^nd in Malaysia, first pole in Bahrain followed by 3^rd in the race. His record has been outstanding so far.

He fully deserves my number 1 spot, it will be difficult to him to stay there because his car may not allow him to, but if others keep making errors like they are doing he has an outside chance of the championship. Its consistency that wins championships these days and he is by far the most consistent driver so far this season. No major shortfalls to speak of.

He is turning himself into a star this season and Ferrari may well come knocking very soon, if they do BMW will find it hard to hang onto Kubica.

2. Felipe Massa- Many presumed that Massa would struggle without traction control and  be unable to keep up with newly crowned team mate Kimi Raikkonen. Some thought 2007 was as good as he could get. In his first two races he proved a lot of these critics correct with 0 points from his first two races but since Bahrain he has turned it around.

He has won 3 races so far this season, which is more than anybody else so far. He won as most people expected in Bahrain and Turkey, tracks he is always good at. But he won them with great style. Simply nobody could challenge him at these races, he drove extremely well. At a track where Massa is at his best Raikkonen simply has no answer for him or anybody else for that matter.

Massa is now also better at tracks he doesn’t like, he got pole position at Monaco and when it rained on race day pundits thought he would be in the barriers straight away but his racing in wet conditions was extremely good and better than Raikkonen who fell back from him and made mistakes. Massa had to fight through the pack in Montreal after a problem in the pit stop. Again something people say Massa isn’t capable of doing but again he proved these people wrong by doing some great moves, most notable when he did both Barrichello and Kovalainen at the hairpin.

Massa is a much more complete and in-depth driver this season and a lot more mature. He is now a serious threat for the title. If it weren’t for those errors in the first two races he would be the clear number 1 but we still can’t forget that Massa is still susceptible to errors. However his head is in much better shape thanks to his race engineer Rob Smedley. Lets see if he could handle the pressure in a tight championship finale which I am certain he will be a part of.

3. Mark Webber- Mark Webber’s stock value is really going up at the moment. He is being very consistent and keeps on getting the points. He has scored in 6 of the 8 races so far and currently has a very healthy 18 points in the bag. He has been the main reason why Red Bull find themselves in 4^thposition. His Red Bull isn’t quite quick enough to be challenging the top 3 teams but he is comfortably best of the rest this year, which includes the likes of Alonso in the Renault, Trulli in the Toyota and Rosberg in the Williams. Some may rate these better drivers but Webber is delivering in each race. He has been very consistent on a par with my number 1 choice Robert Kubica.

Webber’s two races so far have been 5^th in Barcelona and 4^thin Monaco. His performance in the tough conditions in Monaco was fantastic, he kept out of trouble, made a brave call by putting dry tyres on a bit early but he made it pay for him in the end.

His qualifying record has as usual has been excellent and his record against his team mate is 7-1 in Mark’s favour. Mark Webber has featured in most top ten shootouts in qualifying this season. He continues to prove that he is one of the best qualifiers in the world. In these days of F1 you race where you qualify which is the main difference between him and DC and other midfield runners who don’t score points as often as they perhaps should.

I think Webber deserves to be in a top team, as outside of the top 2 or 3 teams he is definitely one of the best drivers and I think it is a shame that people haven’t seen this yet. If he continues on his current form then he will surely appear on more people’s radars. If he had got some of the great results he was denied in the past couple of seasons then maybe his stock would have been higher by now. If he gets the machinery he will get the job done. Simple.

4. Jarno Trulli- This may be a surprise choice for some but I think Jarno Trulli is doing an excellent job this season. Last season Trulli didn’t have a very good car and in the races it was very poor and inconsistent which Trulli struggled to get the best out of.

This season the car is a different beast and much more consistent lap to lap and a bit easier to setup. We are now seeing a much-improved Jarno Trulli. As usual we are seeing great qualifying laps out of him but he is also driving some great races. In Malaysia Trulli started in third and in the race finish in 4^th. He was able to drive consistently at the front for the whole race and at one point he was even trying to overtake Heikki Kovalainen in the Mclaren. In Magny-Cours he finished a remarkable third after starting in 4^thplace, he beat strong opposition in Alonso, Kovalainen and Kubica in a straight fight. He had to hold off Kovalainen for the last 10 laps but never cracked under pressure like we have seen from him in the past. Remember when Barrichello got Trulli on the last lap in Magny-Cours in 2004? He was a weaker driver then and not an error he would make again now I am sure.

I think Trulli is perhaps driving the best he has ever done in his career and has made only few errors. People expected Glock to give Trulli a hard time but Trulli has given him a proper thrashing so far. Trulli has beaten Glock 7-1 in qualifying and has had 5 finishes in the points compared to Glock’s one.

Trulli seems like a new driver this season so lets see if he can keep it up. Sometimes he slips in the second half of the season and seems to concentrate on his wine making rather than his F1 driving. This season it will be different hopefully. Trulli has such an artistic driving style. He drives his car like a train on a railway, particularly in qualifying. He has a lot of natural talent and it’s been frustrating that he hasn’t always made the most of it.

This season we have seen him making the most of it and that’s why he is 4^th in my top 10.

5. Kimi Raikkonen- I expected Kimi Raikkonen to really consolidate his position as world number 1 this season and take real inspiration from his triumph last season but we have seen a very irratic Kimi Raikkonen.

Kimi Raikkonen has won 2 races in Malaysia and Spain where he drove very well. In Malaysia he was easily faster than Massa in race conditions and had a clear edge over him in Spain. Raikkonen was also faster than Massa in France and was on course for a comfortable victory over him before the exhaust problems kicked in.

The rest of the season so far has been very hit or miss, in Melbourne especially, he made rookie type errors when trying to overtake Heikki Kovalainen and Timo Glock. In the latter stages of the race he lost two positions in two corners to Kovalainen and Alonso. He ended up finishing 8^thand getting just a single point. In Bahrain and Turkey he never had an answer for his team mate Felipe Massa throughout the weekend and was never anywhere near him in those two races. Its almost as if he did accept he was going to be beaten by Massa and just tried to get as many points possible rather than really going all out to win like great champions such as Schumacher or Senna. He didn’t look the part at either of these GPs.

Monaco was another messy GP, he was beaten to pole by Massa and struggled in the wet race whereas Massa seemed to revel in it. After a couple of scrapings with Monaco barriers he found himself in 5^thplace before completely losing the car under breaking and forcing himself and Sutil out of the race.

So overall Raikkonen is having a very inconsistent season at the moment, he is losing out to his team mate in the championship and he has to be careful that gap doesn’t get too big. If he wants to win this championship he needs to get his head straight and really give a bit more and perform a lot better at the tracks where Massa is really strong because Massa is starting to get the hang of more of the tracks that Raikkonen likes.

Great champions like Schumacher and Senna can perform at all the tracks they go to but Raikkonen simply isn’t showing himself at that same level at the moment. However don’t rule out Raikkonen for the title as he can turn it on when he really needs to.

However he can’t leave it too late this year, he has a much stronger Massa competing for the title with him, and Mclaren are gaining on them on the faster circuits and don’t have any major politics to deal with at the moment. The attention that Spygate took from Mclaren definitely helped give the title to Raikkonen last season.

If Raikkonen thinks his main rivals will make big errors and hand him the title this season then he is very much mistaken, he really is going to have to dig deeper for the rest of the season.

6. Lewis Hamilton- Like Kimi Raikkonen 2008 has been a mix for Lewis Hamilton so far. The 2^ndseason is bringing him new challenges. As team leader for Mclaren he is expected to get results race in race out, set up the car perfectly every race. Media interest is always huge and any wrong quote will get twisted to all proportions. Lewis isn’t driving as well as last season and some of the pressure has definitely been getting to him. Lewis is Mclaren’s best hope of the championship this season and he carries a huge weight of expectation from the team, fans and media on his young shoulders.

He has still driven a few blinders this season, his performance in Melbourne was very assured whilst his win in Monaco was a champion’s drive. However when the wheels have come off they really have come off. There can’t be any excuses for the infamous Montreal pit lane incident. He should have been looking out for the red light, simple as that. Trying to make excuses for the incident didn’t make him look good. In the French GP he felt everyone was against him. There wasn’t the conviction and normal aggression in his overtaking moves, he just never got going.

Despite his mixed performances so far he has to be grateful that he is still in the championship fight and try and re-focus on the job in hand rather than let everything outside the car get to him. He has to get used to his fame and learn to take the rough with smooth. It’s very easy to attend sponsor and media events after you have won races but after a disastrous race it can be difficult but it still has to be done and you have to show that you are not rattled and feeling the heat.

I think he maybe needs to relax his schedule a bit so that he is more focused on his racing. Some people from Mclaren think that his mistake off the grid in Bahrain was due to him doing too much before the start of the race and therefore he wasn’t fully in the zone. To be a champion you have to be focused and in the zone all the time and not let anything or anyone detract you from your job. This is what Lewis has to do.

I do think maybe Mclaren have made a mistake this year by putting all their eggs in his basket, rookie to team leader gives a huge raise of expectation. It’s difficult when you are still as inexperienced as he is. After his stellar debut season we forget this fact.

7. Heikki Kovalainen- It’s really hard to tell exactly how good Heikki is at the moment due to the amount of bad luck that he has had. He has had to fight back through the field a lot this year. In Turkey he broke his front wing, in Monaco the car wouldn’t get off the grid and in Canada problems at the pits mainly being served second behind Lewis during the SC period put him a long way back. He also received penalties at Malaysia and France during qualifying. He just has not had a clean break at all this season. And lets not forget that terrible accident during the Spanish GP. Overall Heikki has looked quite strong and during all those races where he has had to fight back through the field he has done the job and has overtaken a lot of cars with style.

I think Heikki just needs to have one really positive weekend where nothing goes wrong and he can challenge for a win, then his whole season may take off and he go on a long run of successful results. I feel that he is very much a confidence driver and just needs that one result just in the same way as fellow Finn Mika Hakkinen. When Mika won his first GP the floodgates opened and he then won two world championships.

In terms of how his pace compares to Lewis, I would say Kovalainen needs to find an extra few tenths. Overall Lewis has outpaced Kovalainen in qualifying, it’s currently 6-2 to Lewis (before Lewis was sent 10 places back in Magny-Cours). In Canada there was a huge difference between the pair of them. If you ignore the bad luck and instances Lewis is generally faster than Heikki quite comfortably but I do think the warning signs are there from Heikki and Mclaren rate him very highly.

One positive result for Heikki and it could gain him a few tenths but I suspect he will spend the rest of the season in Lewis’s wake due to the huge gap in points between them. I hope he can at least get his debut victory this season. He just needs a less dramatic second half of the season, gain confidence and push on next season.

8. Fernando Alonso- Alonso isn’t in a very quick car this year but he is still really trying his best to get the best of his Renault. In Spain he produced a great lap to get onto the front row of the grid in front of his home crowd and would have been 5^th or 6^th had it not been for a reliability gremlin. His qualifying performances in Canada (4^th) and France (3^rd) were also very impressive.

His race performances have been patchy at times though. Alonso is still showing his immense talent but he wants wins and podiums and he is perhaps trying to hard to earn this rather than getting the solid points that the Renault team needs in order to push them into the top 4. Alonso’s move on Heidfeld in Monaco was really desperate and pushed a bit too hard in Montreal when chasing a possible win in a crazy race. Renault lost a lot of points in those two races. Alonso just needs to keep his head down and start scoring the points, which Renault need, to lift them away from the bottom half of the championship, which they currently find themselves languishing in.

Australia was the race where we saw the typical Fernando Alonso as he battled wheel to wheel with Rosberg, Kubica, Raikkonen and Kovalainen and earnt 4^th place. If the Renault car is faster in the second half of the season he will certainly try to make the most of it but he needs to hold back and not take risks for positions he can’t get and get a series of points finishes together.

Alonso needs to ensure he extracts everything out of the car and keep the nearly 1000 people who work for Renault feel wanted and appreciated so that they find more speed in the car. As a world championship winning driver for Renault he needs to inspire them and help them and not criticize them or appear downcast and bring the team down. They are just as frustrated as he is that they are not challenging for the world championship but they are keeping the chin up so Fernando needs to too.

9. Nick Heidfeld- This hasn’t been a great season for Nick Heidfeld so far. He is struggling to come to terms with huge increased pace of his team mate and he is just not getting to grips with this year’s BMW.

However you don’t become a bad driver overnight so there must be quite a lot of differences on that BMW car. However he still has had a few good races. In Australia he finished in a brilliant 2^ndplace where he matched the pace of Kovalainen at times during the race. He also finished 2^ndto Kubica in Canada, in the end Kubica won comfortably but if Heidfeld had not let him pass due to their different strategies I think Nick could well have held off Kubica and Alonso and won the race by himself. However the team’s first win was the priority so this was a missed opportunity for him and Kubica got all the praise.

This must have been extremely difficult for Nick to take and in France I think his performance reflected this, he struggled to get to Q2. He got a bad start in the race and never recovered and finished 13^th.

He needs to his head straight pretty quickly. He was brilliant last season but in F1 you are only as good as your last few races and he is going to end up falling off the radar pretty quickly. He is definitely capable, you can’t just suddenly become a bad driver.

His race pace in most races has still been very solid and if he can sort out his tyre warming problems in qualifying then he can have a decent second half of the season.

10. Sebastien Vettel- Vettel is showing to be somebody with a lot of potential. Straight away at the start of the season he qualified in the top 10 for the Australian GP with a very impressive lap. In Monaco and Canada which were both crazy races he did a great job to finish in the points and showed that when the odds are evened and his’s car’s lack of pace isn’t as much of a problem, he can get amongst the big boys and compete with them.

However despite praising him and putting him in my top 10 I do feel some pundits get a big carried away about him. There is no doubt the talent is there and he will do very well in the future. If he can stay ahead of his team mate Bourdais in qualifying and races and get a few more points when he can then he has a good chance of moving to the main Red Bull next season.

Although he won’t find Mark Webber very easy to beat. Next season will probably determine how much furthur he could go in Formula 1.