F1 2008 Driver Reviews: FINAL PART- My Top Five
This is the big one! Here are my top five drivers of the 2008 Formula 1 season along with my analysis of their performances.
If you haven't had the chance to read the other three parts of my 2008 driver reviews feature then the links are below for you.
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5th Sebastien Vettel
Championship Position- 8th
Race Starts: 18
Raced laps: 687
Wins:1
Pole Positions:1
Fastest laps: 0
Podiums: 2
Points: 35
Season highlight: Taking a stunning win at a very damp Monza.
Season lowlight: Retiring on the first lap in the first 4 races of the season.
Sebastien Vettel made a lasting impression on everyone in 2008. In 2007, fans were sort of split 50/50 on him. Some weren’t sure how talented he was. However, looking back on his 2008 season, there can be no doubting the amount of talent this boy has.
Vettel's fantastic season actually started out quite badly. In his first 4 races, he was involved in a early collisions. This resulted in untimely exits and early baths for Sebastien.
It was when Toro Rosso launched a new car that his season started to take off. This car was more suited to his driving style. Over the course of the season, Vettel adapted and his results got better and better.
In Monaco it was wet, which allowed him to show his supreme natural talent. He finished in a well deserved 5th position in a car that had barely been tested.
In Germany, he fought very hard to earn a point. He battled with the likes of Webber and Alonso all afternoon long. He showed in that race how tough a driver he was, even if it was just for a single point.
It was at Valencia where Vettel’s performances really started to make people stand and take notice. At this point, Toro Rosso had received the full Ferrari engine upgrade. The car was setup far more effectively and the sky became the limit.
His string of results in the last seven races were very strong:6th, 5th, 1st, 5th, 6th, 9th, and 4th.
His win at Monza was particularly special. A very wet track always levels the playing field. This allows drivers to shine, rather than just those with the best equipment. Vettel was quick throughout the whole GP weekend. In qualifying, he stunned everyone by taking pole position.
This was a stunning result with no luck involved at all. All the other drivers had exactly the same conditions to deal with, and Sebastien was the fastest of them all.
In the race, he provided an even better performance. He utterly dominated the race and left Kovalainen (in a much quicker car) well and truly behind. It was a drive of great maturity for someone so young.
You can easily run out of superlatives to describe how good that drive was. His drive was beaten only by Hamilton’s rampage at Silverstone earlier in the season.
Vettel clearly shows an awful lot of promise (that may be the understatement of the year). He is super quick. Unlike Hamilton, he doesn’t have a tendency to make silly errors. His first lap collisions at the start of the season were his only real negative point in an otherwise astonishing season. 35 points is a great total fordriving in a Toro Rosso.
He was clearly ahead of all the other Red Bull drivers. This included team mate Sebastien Bourdais, and the main works team drivers Mark Webber and David Coulthard.
The team absolutely loved working with Vettel. He had a great cheerful personality, which always kept the spirits of the Toro Rosso team very high (most of whom were there when the team was under the Minardi name). For someone so young he had a great feel for an F1 car. He is already capable of giving good feedback for car setup despite his inexperience.
If Vettel comes to grips quickly with next season’s Red Bull, then he could continue to cause upsets. It is important that we stay realistic about Vettel. He will have some hard times in his early career as well as good ones as he continues his F1 career.
It’s very easy to be a giant killer and perform a miracle when nobody expects you to. Having no pressure is a wonderful luxury when competing at such a high level. Next season, there will be a ton of pressure on him to continue to perform. How will he be able to cope with that? Will his charm and personality which has endeared him to so many remain as his career gets more serious?
Only time will answer these questions, but it’s looking very promising so far.
4th Fernando Alonso
Championship Position: 5th
Race Starts: 18
Raced laps: 1000
Wins: 2
Pole Positions: 0
Fastest laps: 0
Podiums: 3
Points: 61
Season lowlight: Pulling out of qualifying in Q2 in Singapore when a very strong result was possible.
Season highlight: Winning the race the next day which turned around his and Renault’s season.
Alonso’s season can best be described as a season of two halves. The first half of the season was very frustrating, as the Renault was very often too far off the pace to achieve anything.
In the second half of the season, Renault made substantial improvements, and Alonso was back to his brilliant best.
Fernando Alonso was back in his spiritual home in 2008. He has always loved the way that the Renault team works, and he has a great relationship with all of the mechanics. Overall we saw more of the happy Fernando Alonso, which was nice to see. However, this didn’t stop him from being frustrated in a car that was over a second off the pace in the first half of the season.
Despite this Alonso, showed all of his talent in Melbourne with a feisty drive to 4th place from starting 11th on the grid. This included a great opportunistic move on Kovalainen and Raikkonen. Even when the car wasn’t quick, Alonso was always pushing, and putting in 110 percent, as he always has done in his career.
One of the main issues with Alonso in the first half of the season, was at times he pushed too hard for results that weren’t possible. Fernando Alonso is a winner, and he wants to be on the winner’s rostrum. He wanted to banish the memories of the 2007 season with Mclaren.
On a couple of occasions this resulted in him losing crucial points for the team. Monaco was a chance for a big result, but he tried too hard, and ended up making a poorly judged move on Heidfeld and ruined his race. The same thing happened in Canada, there was a chance to challenge for the win (a podium at the very least), but he spun and was out of the race. Going for solid points on both of these occasions would have been better for the team.
At Silverstone, there was another opportunity for a big result. Unfortunately, Alonso and Renault opted to keep on worn Inters at the first stop. This turned out to be a bad move. Alonso used up his tires too quickly and he only finished 6th, when a bigger result could have been on the cards.
Valencia was another frustrating weekend. Alonso made a mistake in qualifying, which was followed by an incident with Nakajima that put out of the race early in front of his home fans.
After this race, the Renault started to improve drastically, and Alonso got on great run of results till the end of the season.
In mixed conditions in Belgium and Italy, he finished 4th in both races. These were important points for the championship, which Alonso hadn’t been getting consistently. These are the sort of results he needed to pick up in the first half of the season.
Singapore turned out to be a huge turning point in the season. The Renault was handling very well around the bumpy streets of Singapore. A great grid slot and finish was possible. However, Alonso pulled up with a mechanical failure in Q2. His sheer frustration was evident for everyone to see. It wasn’t just the frustration of that particular moment. It was the frustration of his whole season to that point.
A car not fast enough to challenge for the championship, and wasted opportunities in previous races.
However, he got lucky in the race when teammate Piquet Jnr hit the wall and brought out the Safety Car. The timing worked perfectly with Pat Symonds' radical recovery strategy. Alonso suddenly got presented with an opportunity to win, which a world class driver like him took with open arms.
Alonso, then got another surprise win in Fuji. He made the use of Hamilton’s first turn error to emerge from turn one in second position. From there, he opted for a different strategy to get ahead of Kubica. After the first round of stops, he sailed away into the distance to take a great win. This was the Fernando Alonso that everyone was very used to back in 2005 and 2006 (his title winning years).
He rounded off the season with a great drive in China, where he tagged along with the Ferraris. Alonso, then earned a podium in Brazil. The last six races, Fernando Alonso was in fine form finshing 4th, 4th, 1st, 1st, 4th, and 2nd.
If he produced that set of results in the first two-thirds of the season, then he may have challenged for the title. Indeed if he had done as well in the first two-thirds of the season, then he may well have sneaked to the top of my 2008 driver rankings.
However, despite Alonso trying really hard early in the season, he made a few mistakes that cost big points for his team. He might have drove for himself on occasions, rather than collecting vital points for the team in their tight WCC battle for 4th place. That’s why he has to settle for 4th place on my rankings.
Alonso and Renault are now on superb form, and have a good chance of carrying this momentum into 2009. Alonso has a good chance of challenging for the title. He can win the title with a fast car but will he get it? We have to wait and see. If he does, watch him fly!
3rd Felipe Massa
Championship Position- 2nd
Race Starts- 18
Raced laps- 1057
Wins- 6
Pole Positions- 6
Fastest laps- 3
Podiums- 10
Points- 97
Season highlight- Winning in Brazil in the title final in front of his home crowd.
Season lowlight- Getting 0 points in the first two races of the season.
Felipe Massa made a stunning improvement in 2008. Many expected him to struggle against newly crowned champion Kimi Raikkonen. Others expected him to flounder without the aid of traction control.
However, Massa proved all his doubters wrong in 2008. He was a better driver in almost every area. In the past, Massa has always been fast at a selection of tracks (mainly the ones designed by Hermann Tilke, where he was still very rapid in 2008) but not up to race winning pace at the others. In 2008, he was fast at practically every track.
Felipe Massa got a very good handle on this year’s Ferrari whereas Kimi Raikkonen didn’t. In qualifying, there was a very big difference between the pair’s performances. Felipe Massa discovered how to get the best out of qualifying with the Ferrari (much harder than with the McLaren) and this was one of the key factors to his season. He turned qualifying laps into a very spectacular art form in 2008.
He got the pole position at all three of 2008’s street tracks. Street tracks have been where Felipe Massa has notoriously always struggled. Monaco, in particular is a track he really hates. However, in qualifying he put together his greatest ever lap around the track, and beat Kimi Raikkonen and Lewis Hamilton to pole position.
This was perhaps the biggest moment of his season, and maybe even his career. If he can be quick at the track he dislikes the most, then what is to stop him from being quick everywhere else? The Monaco GP weekend gave him alot of added belief in his driving ability.
Wheel to wheel battles have in the past been a big weakness, but Massa has improved in this department as well. He is now far braver in battle and not scared to make a move. Massa pulled three or four stunning moves this season. In Canada, he fought back gallantly after a problem in the pits and his move on Barrichello and Kovalainen at the hairpin were extremely clever.
His overtaking move and drive at Hungary was the best of his season. The only way he could beat the quicker McLarens was to beat them down at Turn 1, and try to drive away. He did exactly that. Massa braked extremely late in order to pass Hamilton on the outside! His race pace was then very impressive during the entire race. He was on the way to a GP victory, when sadly his engine expired with moments to go. This was truely unfair for Massa who drove magnificently that day.
His next best moment of the season came at Singapore, where he earned the pole position by over 0.6 seconds. On a very challenging and long lap, every corner was perfect and not one single mistake was made. This was the qualifying lap of the season. He could have won that race too hasd it not been for the pitlane incident.
Ferrari potentially cost Massa at least 20 points this season. With those points, Massa would have won the championship before Brazil. However in Brazil, he utterly dominated in mixed conditions, and showed great dignity and maturity in defeat, which caught the hearts of many F1 fans.
Massa’s season wasn’t completely perfect though. In the very wet conditions at Silverstone, he drove very poorly and spun five times. His defensive driving is still pretty weak. He let Hamilton past too easily in Turkey and in particular Germany. With a much quicker Ferrari, he should have been able to pass Piquet Jnr. The extra two points gained from achieving that would have won him the title.
There was also that peculiar spin in Sepang. That was eight points very foolishly dropped down the drain. Some of the old Felipe Massa has yet to escape him.
He can rightly blame Ferrari for losing him too many points. However, the silly points he himself threw away, Massa might have been the champion.
Although he is now a much improved driver, he hasn’t reached the ultra high level which Hamilton can achieve (when he is at his very best like in Silverstone and Hockenheim this season). For that reason, I can’t put Massa above Hamilton, even though he made fewer errors than Lewis and was a bit more consistent.
It’s also worth noting that on the very few occasions that Raikkonen got the Ferrari to his liking, he was comfortably quicker than Massa. This was at fast tracks such as Spa and Catalunya.
Massa should still be highly praised on his performance this season. If he had won the championship, then there is no doubt that he would have been a very worthy champion. He deserved it every bit as much as Hamilton did. Some of the praise should go to his race engineer Rob Smedley, who has done brilliantly to deal with Massa’s complex personality and get the best out of him.
Next season will be a tough challenge for Massa, as Hamilton will be more confident after winning the WDC, and Raikkonen will surely feel more at home on slick tires. There is no reason though why Massa can’t adapt to the new cars and have another strong season in 2009.
2nd Lewis Hamilton
Championship Position: 1st
Race Starts: 18
Raced laps: 1065
Wins: 5
Pole Positions: 7
Fastest laps: 1
Podiums: 10
Points: 98
Season highlight: Winning the title in the dying moments in Brazil.
Season lowlight: Ignoring the pit lane red light in Montreal which potentially cost him 20 points.
Lewis Hamilton deserved to win the world championship. However despite winning, Hamilton has a number of faults that he needs to address.
When Hamilton was at his best, he was absolutely untouchable. In the monsoon conditions at Silverstone, he was at an ultra high level, which nobody could even hope to match. He was super quick and didn’t make any mistakes. The lap times he produced on intermediates, when he really should have the full wets on were simply awe inspiring.
The rest of the field on the other hand were absolutely all over the place. There were cars spinning left, right, and center. This race demonstrates why Hamilton has the potential to win many championships. This performance was as impressive as Schumacher’s win in Barcelona in 1996, and Senna’s win at Donington in 1993. It was that type of performance!
In Germany he was also very mighty. Despite McLaren making a big tactical error, Hamilton still fought back to reclaim the No. 1 spot he had earlier on in the race. He was so quick in this race that he made title rival Massa look like a sitting duck.
China was another impressive race where he calmly dominated the race. This was despite the amount of pressure that was on him to win the championship. This performance was just a week after his error-strewn drive in Fuji.
When Hamilton was at his peak level of performance in 2008, he was absolutely stunning and unstoppable. However, there were too many errors.
In Canada, he forgot about the red light and hit Raikkonen. This was the worse error we saw during the whole of the 2008 season. This was a race weekend, where Hamilton was driving superbly, yet had a moment of brain fade at a crucial moment.
In France, where he incurred a 10 place penalty as a result, Hamilton looked miffed all weekend long. In the race, there wasn’t the usual aggression and conviction in his overtaking. He then in fact overtook Vettel illegally and he got another a zero points score. That error in Canada potentially cost him 20 points.
Bahrain was a race with another silly error. He lost all his focus in the race build up, and got the start procedure completely wrong. He lost places and then hit Fernando Alonso. He never recovered for the rest of the race.
The balance between going for a race win or just taking the points for the championship is still a problem for Hamilton. In Japan, he tried to overtake Raikkonen at the start, even when all he needed to do was finish ahead of Massa. He has to control that desire to win.
In Brazil, it was the opposite problem. He was too conservative. He wasn’t far enough ahead of Glock and Vettel. This got him into big trouble when the unexpected rain shower arrived at the end of the race. If he had pushed a bit harder, then Vettel and Glock wouldn’t have featured at all.
While Hamilton is clearly the most naturally talented driver on the grid, he is far from being the finished article. There is still a long way to go for Hamilton if he wants to reach the dizzy heights of greatness.
If Hamilton can cut out all the errors, then he will be very hard to beat over the next few seasons. If he can perform like he did at Silverstone at every race next season, then his rivals have one big challenge on their hands. Whether he can cut the errors out remains to be seen. Some great drivers never stop making errors.
This season, Hamilton was McLaren’s team leader, and there were high expectations after such a brilliant debut season. The pressure clearly got to him at times and affected his performance. He is very likely going to have to get used to this pressure.
Hamilton’s 2008 title is deserved, but at the same time it could be seen as lucky as well. Ferrari cost Massa at least two race wins in 2008. Also had Kubica and Alonso been in quicker cars, Hamilton would have had even fiercer opposition.
The fact is that Hamilton did win more points than anyone else, and when he was driving at his absolute best he was the finest driver out there. It would be wrong for me not put him into the top two.
A world title should give him alot more confidence next season, and he may well go up another level next season. A car with slick tires may well suit his driving style, as he loves a car with oversteer tendencies.
He will have learned a lot from this season’s roller coaster ride.
He will naturally start 2009 as the title favorite.
1st Robert Kubica
Championship Position: 4th
Race Starts: 18
Raced laps: 1084
Wins: 1
Pole Positions: 1
Fastest laps: 0
Podiums: 7
Points: 75
Season highlight: Taking his maiden F1 win in Montreal.
Season lowlight: Not being able to take his title challenge down to the final race.
Robert Kubica may be a surprise choice for No. 1 to some, but in this writer’s opinion, he has been the best driver overall this season.
Robert Kubica was quick throughout 2008 and always got the best out of his BMW Sauber. He was very consistent, and didn’t make mistakes as title contenders Felipe Massa and in particular, Lewis Hamilton did.
He didn’t have a brilliant 2007. However in 2008, the BMW Sauber rewarded his aggressive driving more, and his ability to brake very late. Kubica is a no-nonsense racing driver. He isn’t interested in the added rewards of being a GP driver. He definitely has no interest in a playboy life style and media attention. It is said that when he goes to a rally event he chooses just to watch it with the general public. Kubica is 100 percent focused on racing and getting results. He doesn’t get himself distracted.
Kubica also pushes his team very hard too, which is a very important quality in a front running driver. He got angry with his team when they didn’t focus on his title challenge in the second half of the season.
The season started strongly, when Kubica fought Hamilton for pole position in Melbourne. A front row slot was a signal of intent from Kubica and BMW. In the race a great result was on, but Kubica was taken out by Nakajima. Malaysia and Bahrain were great races as well. He took 2nd and 3rd respectively. He showed a great consistent pace in both races, and made the most of errors from McLaren and Ferrari.
Monaco was one of his best drives of the season. In the wet conditions he out-drove his car and finished in 2nd place. He was quick in all the varying conditions, and didn’t make any mistakes; unlike some of the drivers around him. McLaren and Ferrari were quicker in Monaco, but he managed to get himself involved. He should have actually won this race in theory. If Hamilton’s tag with the wall hadn’t accidentally put him on the optimum strategy, then this would have been Kubica’s first F1 win.
As it was Kubica’s maiden win indeed came in the very next race in Montreal. This wasn’t actually his best drive of the season, but he made the most of everyone else losing their heads. On a two stop race he overtook Heidfeld and had to pull out a big enough gap, so that he could pit, and come out ahead of Nick. He did this with ease, and won the race which was richly deserved.
Due to the fact that he had been so consistent so far, he led the championship after this race. Kubica wasn’t in a car as fast as the McLaren or Ferrari, but he was always getting the maximum result, and a bit more at times. The McLaren and Ferrari drivers already shared alot of errors between them, whereas Kubica had made none so far. He had fully earned the right to be leading the championship at this point.
After this race, the season went downhill a bit for Kubica; as the team opted to spend alot more time on the big rule changes in 2009. The car slipped backwards and into the clutches of Renault, Toro Rosso and Toyota, and further behind McLaren and Ferrari.
Despite this, Kubica still managed to extract enough from the car to keep him in the championship hunt. In Valencia, he produced a super-human effort to qualify and finished in third place. Considering that the Mclaren and Ferrari were now alot quicker, this was a quite sensational drive. His super late braking style suited this circuit, as there were several major braking points on the circuit.
He earned another podium in Monza in the very wet conditions. This was coming back from an unusually poor qualifying session, where he didn’t make it to Q3. He then got 2nd place in Fuji ahead of all the McLaren and Ferrari drivers. The race craft he showed against a much faster Raikkonen was superb. He stayed calm and got his braking points spot on each time Raikkonen attacked and never locked up. This was probably the best race craft we saw season.
With two races to go, and despite having a considerably slower car than the main title challengers for every race, he was only 12 points behind Hamilton. This was a great achievement considering how much pace the car lost in the second half of the season. Imagine if BMW had kept on developing the car 100 percent. Kubica could very well have won this world championship.
Hamilton may have won the championship, and drove two or three of the best races seen in 2008, but Kubica was a much more consistent performer throughout the season. There were barely any errors and Kubica is always a very cool customer. Nothing seemed to bother him at all. The only thing that stopped him from winning this year’s title was not having a fast enough car. Had Kubica had a McLaren or Ferrari in 2008, this would have been his title.
As it stood, he mounted a serious championship challenge anyway. Robert Kubica has to be considered one of the strong favorites for the 2009 championship.
To summarize up this feature here is my full order for the 2008 drivers
20. Adrian Sutil
19. Nelson Piquet Jnr
18. Jenson Button
17. Giancarlo Fisichella
16. David Coulthard
15. Kazuki Nakajima
14. Sebastien Bourdais
13. Nico Rosberg
12. Timo Glock
11. Heikki Kovalainen
10. Kimi Raikkonen
9. Rubens Barrichello
8. Mark Webber
7. Nick Heidfeld
6. Jarno Trulli
5. Sebastien Vettel
4. Fernando Alonso
3. Felipe Massa
2. Lewis Hamilton
1. Robert Kubica
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