Who goes where?

It has reached that point in the year where the focus of many a driver and team is as much on the season coming as on the dog end of the one currently in train. Not so much, perhaps, if you are Red Bull, Ferrari or Mclaren, and are still in the running for this year's championships, but for everyone else, there is the hope that 2011 will be better.

And inevitably that means drivers thinking about whether they can land themselves with a more competitive seat, and teams pondering whether a change of drivers might bring a change of fortunes. It is perhaps no coincidence that the top three teams are retaining exactly the same driver line up for 2011, while it is far from clear that this is the case anywhere further down the grid.

For drivers, the most promising vacancy at the moment is probably the one alongside Robert Kubica at Renault. After a dismal 2009, where even the talents of Fernando Alonso were insufficient to keep them from slipping into midfield mediocrity, the team would appear to be once more on an upward trajectory. Current number 2 driver Vitaly Petrov has not yet been ruled out - and Eric Bouillier has been remarkably frank about what is required of the young Russian, saying that he doesn't need to match Kubica, but he does need to show that he has the potential to get rather closer to him that he is managing at the moment, but one senses that La Regie are sniffing around to see if there are better prospects out there.

I'm not convinced by the wisdom of taking on Kimi Raikkonen, though to be fair, much depends on whether the Finn is feeling a renewed enthusiasm for F1 following his sabbatical in the World Rally Championship, or whether he (or his management) is simply casting around for a way to make money as it looks like Red Bull are becoming disillusioned with the marketing potential of their tie-up at Citroen. However, if the Finn meets with Boullier and convinces him that he's genuinely serious about giving F1 another shot then, providing his pecuniary demands are not excessive, he's probably the fastest man Renault are going to be able to hire. Certainly it will be interesting to see how he compares with Robert Kubica.

More likely though, if Petrov goes, it will be in order to be replaced by one of a number of drivers who would meet Renault's job spec of being a good solid number 2 who can be relied upon to rack up constructors championship points, and who are currently finding their talents wasted in uncompetitive machinery. Timo Glock and Heikki Kovalainen have both shown they are good, serious racing drivers and their talents have been largely wasted with Virgin and Lotus this year. While it's possible those teams might be rather better prepared next year (I've rather more faith in Fernandes' Lotus operation than in the awkward menage-a-trois between Wirth Research, Richard Branson and Manor Motorsport) a Renault seat would still look a more tempting prospect.

Then there's Nick Heidfeld, back for the moment at his spiritual home of Sauber after spending much of the year on the sidelines at Mercedes, hoping that Michael Schumacher might throw in the towel. Again, Renault would be accepting they're not hiring a future mega-star if they took him on, but he's certainly not slow - he's been teamed up with Raikkonen, Webber and Kubica in the past, and held his own against all three of them. Probably a better bet than Sauber, even if Heidfeld disregarded the awkward truth that Peter Sauber's choice of driver to sit alongside Kobayashi next year is likely to be governed by financial constraints rather than driving talent.

The other name that strikes me as a possible for Renault is Force India's Adrian Sutil. The Anglo-Indian team started the year well but have been gradually slipping back towards the rear of the midfield, and it seems to me that if the German rainmaster is to progress then he's going to have to find another ride. Assessing how quick he is has never been easy - he's easily had the beating of Tonio Liuzzi this year, but he didn't always look any quicker than Giancarlo Fisichella, and going back to his debut in the sport at Spyker, it is striking that HRT's Sakon Yamamoto wasn't that far off his pace. He'd be a gamble, but there have been odd hints - particularly when the heavens open - that he's got something special about him.

Although Renault might not be his only option. Of the top teams, Renault is the only one which officially has a vacancy but Martin Brundle mischievously noted that an awful lot of drivers were seen coming and going from the Mercedes motorhome over the Monza weekend earlier in the month. Nico Rosberg is almost certain to be driving for the team again next year, but I can hardly be alone in wondering whether Michael Schumacher will call time on his so far rather uninspired come-back, or should he not jump, whether the team might opt to push him. It would be an ignominious end to a long and tremendously successful career, but time and tide wait for no man...

... And if Mercedes is to remain a German 'super team' then Adrian Sutil might be a good fit. It has been said that a part of the motivation for Mercedes' involvement in the sport has been to increase its appeal to younger car buyers, and if that is their aim then Sutil perhaps makes more sense than Nick Heidfeld (who may be relatively young by any normal definition, but, at 33, is in F1 terms beginning to run out of time). As mentioned above, Timo Glock might also be available and if the team were prepared to pay Williams enough money to get them to release him, Willi Weber's new protege, Nico Hulkenberg would tick all the right marketability boxes, and more importantly, after a rather shaky start, has begun to regularly match and sometimes beat team mate Barrichello. Perhaps not the new Schumacher, but I wouldn't be surprised if he's now faster than the old one is these days.

So far, in considering Renault and Mercedes' options, I've not mentioned any young drivers still seeking to break into F1. The bad news for would-be F1 drivers is that those top teams which might have a vacancy have enough choices from among the established F1 drivers that I'd be surprised if either of them hired a rookie. The truth is that the options for drivers looking to get their first F1 ride in 2011 are looking rather limited.

Toro Rosso and Williams have yet to announce their line-ups for next year, but I wouldn't be especially surprised if both teams retained their current line-ups. Sauber have already announced that Kamui Kobayashi will be driving for them next year, so the vacancies are likely to be made up of the following: The second Sauber, one or possibly both seats at Force India and, perhaps, a seat or two at Lotus or Virgin if someone manages to pinch Kovalainen or Glock.

Scottish DTM driver Paul Di Resta is seemingly considered a shoe-in at Force India, and if hiring a driver who hasn't raced in single seaters since 2006 seems a rather eccentric choice, then it is worth remembering that he is the man who beat Sebastian Vettel to the F3 Euroseries title that year, and that his DTM career has taken off after he regularly started doing incredible things with a second string two-year old Mercedes in his debut season. Whether he's as good, or even better than Vettel, or ultimately turns out to be another driver with a strong junior record who doesn't quite cut it at the very highest level, only time will tell, but as a fellow Edinburgher, I'm glad he's getting a chance.

So who might the other hopefuls be? There's GP2 champion Pastor Maldonado, but after some stories over the summer that he was in talks with Sauber, things seem to have gone very quiet on that front of late. His problem, I suspect, is that he took a very long time to come good in GP2, and has had a wildly inconsistent career that would make him a bit of a gamble. He comes with plenty of cash, but almost certainly not as much as Telmex-backed Sergio Perez, the man whom he beat to the GP2 title. Perez was in only his second season in GP2 (as against Maldonado's 5th!) and the signing of fellow Telmex-backed driver Esteban Gutierrez as a test driver at Sauber suggests that he may have a chance with the Swiss team.

Beyond those two, it's not quite clear who else would be in the running for an F1 seat - Daniel Ricciardo has impressed me with his performances in the Renault World Series but as a Red Bull backed driver, he's unlikely to get a shot next year unless the team lose faith in Alguersuari or Buemi, both of whom have been doing a fairly decent job of late. And in any case, it might make more sense to give Ricciardo the benefit of another year gaining experience in GP2 if, as I reckon is likely, he takes the Renault World Series at his first attempt this year.

Certainly it makes more sense than taking a seat at HRT next year. Whether their struggles with the recalcitrant Dallaras have done anything to further the careers of Bruno Senna, Sakon Yamamoto or Karun Chandhok this year I rather doubt, and the simple truth is that, stuck in such a hopelessly uncompetitive car, there is a limit to what any driver can do. Even beating your team mate might depend as much on the vagaries of the machinery as on any difference between the drivers. Where Lotus look like they will make progress next year and Virgin at least look like they might do so, I see no reason to expect HRT to be any less hopeless than they have been this season. On the other hand, I wouldn't be entirely surprised if they weren't on the grid at all. Which might be a blessing in disguise for some young F1 hopefuls.

Top 10 Drivers - 2008

Behind Clive's list over at F1 Insight, but well ahead of the annual Autocourse list, here is the annual Motor Sports Ramblings top 10 drivers list. It's only a personal view, and I think a case could be made for any of my top 3 drivers as the being the driver of the year. Nonetheless, after much indecision, I have arrived at my list.

10. Rubens Barrichello – You’re in your sixteenth season of Formula 1. You’ve spent six years in a championship winning team, playing second-fiddle to the greatest driver of his generation. Now you find yourself in your third year with Honda, a team which, over the last couple of years, seems to determined to take great leaps backwards. It would be easy for you to become entirely demoralised, to cruise-and-collect on your way to retirement. That, though, is not what Barrichello did.

After two years of being comprehensively outpaced by Jenson Button, Barrichello fought back this year with the outclassed Honda RA108, scoring the lion’s share of the team’s points and more often than not outqualifying the younger Brit. His drive in the wet at Britain brought the team it’s only podium, and while it may have owed much to Ross Brawn’s inspired call on the tyres, it still required a driver to keep it on the road on a day when many others did not. There were times, such as at the Chinese Grand Prix, when Barrichello had the recalcitrant Honda far further up the running order than it had any right to be and, after a couple of seasons when his star appeared to be on the wane, he did much to re-establish his reputation as one of the best drivers in the business this year. In the process, he just might have finished off any chances Jenson Button might ever have had of getting a drive with one of the front-running teams.

9. Jarno Trulli – After 3 years driving alongside an increasingly bored looking Ralf Schumacher, Jarno Trulli could easily have been caught on the hop when he found himself placed alongside a promising young newcomer, GP2 champion Timo Glock. Glock’s performances in the Toyota were impressive, but over the course of the season, it was Trulli who got more out of the car. His standout performance came at Magny Cours, when he out-paced the Mclarens, the BMWs and the Renaults to pick up Toyota’s first podium in over 2 years. Other drivers might have scored unexpected top 3 finishes this year, but Trulli’s was one of the relatively few which were the result of pace rather than luck.

He may continue to have a reputation as a one-lap specialist, but to my mind, that still reflects his phenomenal qualifying abilities, rather than any lack of race pace. If you’re really quick over a single lap, you will find yourself having to keep quicker machinery behind you on race day. So it proved again this year. Only towards the end of the season was the Toyota anything like a front-running car really, yet he more often than not made it through into the top-10 shoot out in qualifying, and outqualified team mate Glock 13-4. He racked up a good number of points too – all important when a team’s FOM money is dependent on its constructors’ championship position. Unless Toyota make a quantum leap forward under the new regulations next year, he’ll probably never be world champion, but there were more than a few flashes of the pace Trulli showed back in 2004 when he gave Alonso an awful lot to think about at Renault before he fell out with the team and his confidence went to pieces.

8. Nick Heidfeld - Ok, so in comparison with his team mate, ‘Quick Nick’ didn’t really live up to his epithet this year, he could be seen as a bit of a disappointment. After all, this was a man who had been de facto team leader last year, but just as Robert Kubica struggled with last year’s oversteery F1.07, so Heidfeld couldn’t extract the most from this year’s car. Only at Spa and Shanghai did he simply look quicker than Kubica.

In light of the press coverage, it would be easy to forget that Heidfeld actually finished the championship with a very impressive haul of 60 points, not many fewer than Kubica and more than Kovalainen was able to score with the more competitive Mclaren. He was on the podium four times (again, more than Kovalainen could manage in the Mclaren) and impressed in the wet at Silverstone on a day when his team mate flew off the road. In Spa he called it absolutely right in coming in for wet tyres 2 laps from the end, against the advice of his team, and while he may not have future world champion written all over him the way his young team mate does, he proved to be a very capable number 2. Last year, I suggested he might make an excellent partner to Hamilton at Mclaren, and what I’ve seen this year leaves me wondering if Mclaren might have picked up the constructors’ championship had they followed my advice.

7. Kimi Raikkonen - It was a disappointing year for the reigning world champion. There can be little doubting that the Ferrari was a potentially title winning car, but for whatever reason, the Finn never really seemed to get on with it. For much of the middle of the season, especially at Hungary, Hockenheim and Valencia, he appeared lacklustre and out of sorts, to the extent that more than a few observers were rather surprised when the Scuderia announced the renewal of his contract.

Raikkonen, though was the victim of more than his fair share of bad fortune this year, not to mention having to contend with a team mate who is almost certainly far better than most of the paddock is willing to give him credit for. He may have struggled to get the best out of the Ferrari over a single lap, but his race pace was, when he was in clear air and got the chance to demonstrate it, frequently very impressive. Hence all those fastest laps. In Sepang, he was outqualified by Massa on a heavier fuel load, but the Brazilian could do nothing about him on race day, and ended up flying off the road in frustration. In Spain he had the measure of Massa, and in Canada, where it seemed Ferrari had no answer for BMW, let alone Mclaren, he was a serious contender for victory before Hamilton ploughed into him in the pits. He dominated the French Grand Prix until a cracked exhaust slowed him, would have won at Spa had it not began to rain just a couple of laps from home, and comprehensively outpaced his team mate at China when the Brazilian was meant to be making his bid for the title. It was a mixed year for the quiet Finn, but that mid-season slump aside, he did a better job than his results might suggest.

6. Mark Webber – Another year in which the Aussie’s undoubted talents were wasted in a sub-standard Red Bull. It must be to his immense frustration that Renault fell so far behind in the horsepower war (you know, the one that is supposedly not being fought) that the works team were more often than not outpaced by the old Minardi guys running their car with a Ferrari engine. Webber made the most of what he had, and picked up an awful lot of 6^th, 7^th and 8^th place finishes. David Coulthard, in the other Red Bull, rarely managed to get the car anywhere near the points. Another man with an unfair reputation as a qualifying specialist, it’s simply easier to transcend the limitations of your machinery over a single lap than over a whole race. All the same, how on earth did he get the RB4 on the front row at Silverstone? He’s doubtless still kicking himself for throwing it off the road on the first lap.

It was one of very few mistakes that Webber made all year. His finest drive? His pace in Barcelona was particularly impressive, and staying on the road in horrendous conditions in Monaco ensured his best result of the season but to my mind one of his great, largely unnoticed drives came at Spa. The Renault-engined version of the Red Bull chassis showed little pace, yet Webber nonetheless got himself up to 7^th on the grid, and ran well in the early stages only to be punted off the road by Heikki Kovalainen. From there, he kept his head down and finished an unheralded 8^th. It was a drive typical of his year – getting the most out of an underperforming car in difficult circumstances and largely unnoticed.

5. Sebastian Vettel – The cheerful German youth became the youngest man ever to win a Grand Prix at Monza in September. He couldn’t have done it in finer style either. OK, so the Red Bull is a very forgiving car in the wet, and the Ferrari engine is exactly what you would want for Monza’s long straights, but even so… a Toro Rosso winning from pole position, never seriously challenged? You’d have got long odds on that before the start of the year, and much of the credit must go to Vettel.

He began the season impressively, breaking through unexpectedly into the top 10 run-off in Melbourne, but thereafter, seemed to fade away for a while, retiring from each of the first four races, getting caught up in silly little incidents. Then, in the conditions you would have thought most likely to induce unforced errors, the torrential rain at Monaco, he put in a fine, consistent drive to finish fifth behind Mark Webber. From there, his season began an upswing that really took off in Valencia, when he and the Red Bull looked really at home on the Spanish dockland circuit. There followed good points finishes in Belgium and Singapore, and of course that fairytale win at Monza. Just to show he really knows what he’s doing in the rain, he rounded off the year by nearly snatching the world title from Hamilton’s grasp with a fine drive to 4^th in Brazil. At the start of the year, I wondered whether the wunderkind could live up to the hype. I’m beginning to think he really can.

4. Fernando Alonso – It may have been an on/off year for the Spanish double world champion, but if I were a team boss, I’d still have him at the top of my shopping list, no matter how difficult he might be. He was always quick, the only driver to outqualify his team mate at every race, but at times, especially in the first part of the year, he was rather erratic, losing good points with silly errors in Monaco, Canada and Germany. There were times when he looked like a quick, but overenthusiastic youngster unable to rein in his urge to push a car that wasn’t truly on the pace. Outside the car, in the first part of the season, overenthusiasm was not a problem Renault were faced with. Rumour has it, he skipped team debriefs, unable to summon up the commitment to deal with a car which was far from competitive.

Then Renault turned a corner and the old Fernando Alonso was back. In the last third of the year, Alonso racked up more points than either of the two title challengers, in a car which was far from the fastest in the field. The Singapore win might have owed much to luck, but the same could not be said of his Fuji victory two weeks later. His drive to fourth in a car which team mate Piquet struggled to get into the points was in its own way equally impressive, and he nearly succeeded in his stated ambition of helping Massa beat old rival Hamilton to the title in Brazil with another fine drive in difficult conditions to take 2^nd. There were two Fernando Alonsos this year. The one who looked petulant and unpredictable for much of the first half of the year would barely scrape into this top 10, but the one who beat Michael Schumacher to the world title in 2006 in an inferior car, and who made a reappearance towards the end of the year, would be my driver of the year.

3. Felipe Massa - Despite my long-held scepticism about the little Brazilian, I think I might finally have to concede that Felipe Massa really is the real deal. He clearly established himself as Ferrari’s main title contender, ahead of his World Champion team mate Kimi Raikkonen. There were times when he was absolutely inspired – at Hungary, in Turkey, a track he has really made his own, and most notably at his home race in Brazil where he made his final, desperate bid to wrest the World title from Lewis Hamilton. Other good, solid wins came at Valencia and Bahrain, and for all that he was hardly a worthy winner at Spa, he did at least keep his car on the road, when others did not.

Had his Ferrari been more reliable (there were engine failures in Australia and Hungary and pit-stop bungles in Canada and Singapore) he would have won the world title easily. However, he must shoulder his share of the blame for failing to take the title in what was probably the fastest car in the field. Before the engine failure in Melbourne, there had been not one but two spins, and then two weeks later, he spun out of a safe second place in Malaysia and was a no-score. He looked

positively amateurish in the wet at Silverstone, finishing 13^th and last and there were other races where he just looked lacklustre. He had no answer for Raikkonen’s pace at Spa, Magny Cours or at the vital race in Shanghai. At Fuji, he pushed Hamilton off the road in a clumsy move that left him with a penalty which cost him a possible podium finish, and the way he practically rolled over and invited Hamilton past in the closing laps of the German Grand Prix left not a few of us wondering if the Brazilian was really world champion material. This was undoubtedly the strongest season from the Brazilian yet, and he is almost unrecognisable as the fast but wildly unpredictable youngster who debuted with Sauber in 2002. All the same, I can’t help but wonder whether his best shot at the driver’s title may now lie in the past.

2. Lewis Hamilton – A controversial thought, but was Lewis Hamilton a slightly less complete driver this year than he was last season? Had he actually taken a bit of a step backward, under the increased pressure of being seen as a title contender from the start. He got things off to a great start at Melbourne, with a dominant win, and he did well to recover some points from a Malaysia weekend when everything seemed to wrong for him. Things took a turn for the worse, though, with a scrappy, error-strewn and ultimately point-less weekend at Bahrain. He fumbled his start, and then compounded his error by running into the back of Alonso.

It wasn’t the only time he would throw away points with silly, basic errors. There was his infamous moment of brain fade when he ran into the back of Kimi Raikkonen in the pitlane in Canada, and his entirely unnecessary banzai approach to the first corner at Fuji. Come to that, his failure to hand back a place he had gained unfairly at the expense of Sebastian Vettel in France almost certainly cost him points too. So why do I place him ahead of Massa in my top 10?

In short, because when he was good, he was truly astounding. His comprehensive domination of the British Grand Prix, winning by over a minute in atrocious conditions that would leave many floundering, was to my mind one of the all time great race drives. Two weeks later, he was again in dominant form in Germany, passing Massa on the road on his way to victory (one of very few overtaking manoeuvres between the title contenders which didn’t take place on the opening lap). In the wet at Monaco and – for a while – at Monza, he again showed a degree of car control which none of his rivals seem able to muster. In the end, he gets the nod from me over Felipe Massa because while Massa was frequently impressive, I always had the impression the Ferrari was ultimately the quicker car this year, and yet in spite of this, and in spite of a couple of very dubious stewarding decisions, Hamilton still just came away with the title.

1. Robert Kubica If one thing is clear, it is that nobody was perfect this year. All the leading drivers made mistakes and had off-days over the course of the season. To my mind, though Poland’s Robert Kubica had fewer than any of his rivals. How else to explain that, in a BMW Sauber that was never any match for Ferrari or Mclaren, and which by the end of the year struggled to stay on terms with Renault or Toyota, he was still in with a mathematical shot at the title after Kimi Raikkonen had fallen by the wayside, with two rounds to go?

He frequently transcended the limits of his car, pitching it onto pole at Bahrain and keeping Kimi Raikkonen honest on the way to a podium finish, and again staying right on the pace of the Ferraris and Mclarens in Spain. The win in Canada might have owed much to luck, but on the other hand, had Lewis Hamilton not been very lucky with his enforced pit-stop early on at Monaco, which just happened to land him on exactly the right strategy for the conditions, Kubica would probably have won round the streets of the Principality. Less noticed, but equally impressive were the occasions on which Kubica dragged a car which was far from truly competitive much further up the order. The Hungarian Grand Prix, where the BMW proved so slow that Nick Heidfeld couldn’t drag it out of Q1, for example. Or Valencia, where again the car looked miles from the pace in the hands of his team mate, but where Kubica got himself amongst the Mclarens and Ferraris while Heidfeld struggled to hold off the Toro Rossos and Renaults.

Kubica’s season wasn’t perfect. He threw away the lead of the World Championship with an (admittedly understandable) mistake in the rain at Silverstone, and he was curiously lacklustre at Spa and at Shanghai, where Heidfeld appeared better able to get to grips with the BMW. To my mind, though, he came much closer to perfection than anyone else this year, and frequently overcame the limitations of a car which was not truly a race winner. If, as everyone expects, Ferrari ditch Massa or Raikkonen at the end of next year, they face an interesting dilemma in choosing between double world champion Alonso and BMW's new Polish star.

The Rest

Of all those who haven’t made the top 10, the most glaring omission, I think is Toyota novice Timo Glock. The German GP2 champion might not have made quite the kind of impact that his forerunner as GP2 Champion did, but after a slightly disappointing start to the season, he came on increasingly strong towards the end. Rarely able to match Trulli in qualifying, he was often as strong come race day, and in Hungary, really wasn’t far behind race winner Kovalainen. He looks to have a strong future in the sport.

Heikki Kovalainen is the only race winner not in my top 10 this year. Again, I think a case can be made for his being in the lower reaches of the top 10, and he certainly had more than his share of bad luck over the course of the year, but the blunt truth is that he finished only seventh in the title race with a car which his team mate was able to take to the title. To be fair, while his Hungarian GP win relied on luck, but for misfortune, he might have won in Turkey and at Fuji. It is also worth remembering that, while he never had the race-pace of Hamilton, he frequently matched Hamilton on fuel-corrected qualifying pace in the first part of the year, which suggests that fundamentally the pace may be there. It will be interesting to see if he can be more of a factor at Mclaren next year.

This year’s Williams was a major disappointment. Nico Rosberg picked up a couple of podiums with it at street circuits, to which it seemed more suited but made too many mistakes this year – notably at Monaco and Canada where he might otherwise have picked up points, and generally failed to transcend the limitations of his car. Sometimes, he struggled even to out-pace rookie team mate Kazuki Nakajima (though to be fair, it is worth pointing to Autosport’s analysis of the difference in outright pace between drivers as measured by fastest lap of the weekend – which put Rosberg further ahead of his team mate than any other driver. Nonetheless, I found him slightly underwhelming this year. Nakajima was not as much of a disappointment as I feared he might have been, and seems to have more pace than his Dad, but did nothing to suggest he will break the mould and become Japan’s first Grand Prix winner.

What of the other men in their first Grand Prix season? Sebastien Bourdais came into F1 with 4 Champ Car titles, and seemed to pick up the lion’s share of Toro Rosso’s bad luck – failing, for instance, to get off the line from the second row in Italy, inexplicably being stripped of his seventh place in Fuji for being run off the road by Felipe Massa and getting losing what would have been a fine fourth place in Spa on the final lap. Contrary to what some have said, he looks to me like he belongs in F1 and deserves another year, though, on the other hand, he doesn’t really look like a future champion.

Nelson Piquet Jr, on the other hand, was a crashing disappointment. In the early part of the season, he was miles from the pace of his team mate, which is perhaps understandable given his team mate was Fernando Alonso. More worryingly for him, though, he made the Renault look like a tail-end car. There were occasional flashes of the kind of talent that enabled him to win the British F3 championship and fight Lewis Hamilton all the way for the GP2 title in 2006, but more often than not he seemed to collapse under the pressure, especially in qualifying, where he seemed unable to access the kind of pace he could sometimes show in free practice. He also went off the road a lot. To be fair though, he kept everything together to pick up a solid second place in Germany when a fortunately timed safety car left him in the pound seats, and even beat Alonso without help from the safety car in France (albeit Alonso was heavily compromised by a fuel strategy seemingly geared around Saturday afternoon glory-hunting.)

Jenson Button must have been frustrated to find himself stuck in a hopelessly uncompetitive Honda for the second year in a row. Perhaps the sheer disappointment goes some way to explaining why, unlike last year, he never seemed able to rise above this, and was generally out-paced by his veteran team mate Barrichello. Honda, for all that they made a complete mess of 2008, might be wondering why they were paying quite so much for their lead driver. His performances were at least generally more impressive than those of David Coulthard whom, I think, stayed around in the sport for a year too long. He never looked like getting on terms with the pace of team mate Mark Webber, and seemed to spend much of the year getting caught up in collisions. By staying out of trouble in Canada, he did however pick up one last podium in a long and generally successful career.

Last, and, to be honest, least, Force India crept close to the pace this year, but still didn’t make the leap required to actually pose any kind of threat to anyone else on the grid. Giancarlo Fisichella, after three years with front-running Renault, somehow maintained enough interest in the job to out-pace Adrian Sutil most of the time, which suggests that the German was rather over-hyped last year. There were odd flashes from both drivers through the year – Giancarlo Fisichella’s 12^th place on the grid at Monza and his solid run in the top 5 for a good part of the Brazilian GP (only for the team to fumble a pit stop) and Adrian Sutil’s impressive but ultimately fruitless drive in the wet at Monaco and (much less noticed) his race at Spa which saw him mixing it with the Hondas and Williams for much of the race. In the end, though, the team must be hoping that their deal with Mercedes will see them turn the corner, because they are fast filling the role left vacant by Minardi as perennial tail-enders. A shame for a team which, as Jordan, made a semi-serious bid for the title just ten years back.

The Motorsports Ramblings Top 10 - 2007

It may not be the Autocourse list, but it is a good two months earlier. Argue with my selection all you will, but this represents my best attempt to decide who did the best job in 2007. Without further ado...

10. Heikki Kovalainen

It must have sounded like an enticing prospect. For your debut season, you get last year's World Championship winning car, a year's prior preparation as their official test driver, and Giancarlo Fisichella as your team mate. It didn't quite work out as hoped for the young Finn. There is little doubt that this year's Renault R27 was a pale shadow of its predecessor, and Fisichella is a tougher nut to crack than is popularly assumed (just ask Ralph Firman, Alex Wurz, Felipe Massa or Jenson Button, all of whom came off second best to him).

The low point of his season came at the beginning. While fellow GP2 graduate Lewis Hamilton was grabbing all the plaudits at the front, Kovalainen had a messy race, with a spin and an off-track excursion, and finished a long way off the pace of his team mate. In other words, he looked like a rookie. It didn't immediately get a whole lot better, and indeed some of his early season performances were so poor there was talk of him being shown the door and replaced with Nelson Piquet Jr.

A promising showing in Spain, where for the first time he outraced Fisichella, gave hint that there was potential, but it was in the North American races that Kovalainen began to really turn things around. In Canada he recovered from a poor qualifying performance to finish 4th, ahead of such as Alonso and Raikkonen. A week later in Indianapolis, he ran rings around Fisichella and fought hard with Raikkonen and Heidfeld in the opening stages, eventually coming home 5th. From there on in, he was in a roll, almost invariably outpacing Fisichella and scoring points on all but two occasions. Late on in the season, he put in his most impressive performance to date, keeping the Renault on the island in very tricky conditions to finish an excellent 2nd in Fuji. Wherever he ends up when the Alonso saga shakes out, he's served notice than there's more than one quick Finn in F1.

9. Robert Kubica

Such was the explosive pace which the Pole showed when he burst onto the F1 scene at the end of last year, one could be forgiven for thinking his 2007 season a little disappointing. After all, he didn't quite get onto terms with team mate Nick Heidfeld over the course of the whole season, despite the widespread assumption he would comfortably outpace the German this year. He was genuinely quicker at Melbourne and (most notably) at Magny Cours, but elsewhere he appeared to be ever so slightly overshadowed. On reflection, though, he did about as much as anyone really had any right to expect. He was amongst the drivers who found the control Bridgestone tyres hardest to adapt to, and as someone who skipped GP2, many of the circuits were quite unfamiliar to him. Given these disadvantages, its impressive he ran Heidfeld as close as he did.

A potential surprise win fell by the wayside in China when his hydraulics packed up while leading and fueled to the finish. On the plus side, he could count himself lucky simply to be alive and unscathed after a truly horrific looking accident at 190mph during the Canadian Grand Prix. On balance, a pretty solid performance for a man in his first full season of F1.

8. Mark Webber

What is it with Mark Webber? Without fail, the man always seems to end up in the wrong place at the wrong time. He spent two years with Williams while they were in the depths of their troubles, and then he goes and moves to Red Bull just in time to end up racing the woefully unreliable RB3. On the plus side, it was at least reasonably quick when it kept going.

On points, David Coulthard actually came out ahead over the season, but that only goes to show how misleading raw points tallies can be when it comes to the performances of drivers further down the field. Look at it this way: Was the Red Bull really a car which you'd expect to make it through the top 10 run-off in qualifying on a regular basis? No? Well Mark Webber got it through on no less than 10 occasions. Coulthard, by contrast, got there just twice. OK, so there was less to separate them in race conditions, but still, with the notable exceptions of China and Bahrain, it was the Australian who had the edge.

Like many a true racer, he was at his absolute best in wet conditions, taking a podium for Red Bull at the Nurburgring and looking like he might challenge for victory at Fuji before being eliminated by Sebastien Vettel - under a safety car, no less. It was emblematic of a season, and a career, which seems to have been dogged by bad luck throughout. One can only hope that in 2008 he'll finally get a chance to show what he can do.

7. Jenson Button

If Mark Webber had a frustrating time of it in 2007, he can perhaps console himself with the thought that at least he wasn't driving a Honda. The Japanese concern has spent years carefully building up a reputation as an engineering-led company with some very well-made cars and bikes, only to go and sabotage itself by establishing a colossally awful F1 team.

This year's RA107 was terrible. So bad, that for much of the season, it was outpaced by a group of ex-Arrows mechanics running last year's Honda with a pair of drivers rejected by the works. Initially, Button seemed to take this rather badly, and he found himself being outpaced by Rubens Barrichello. In reality, he was probably suffering, as many drivers had done, from the swap from Michelins to Bridgestones. Once he got that licked, he drove better than almost anyone. How else to explain how he dragged his car into the points in Magny Cours and Monza, ahead of sundry Williams and Toyotas? If that were not enough, how about sticking the car on the third row in Fuji? With the weather acting as something of a leveller, Button got a rare chance to make full use of his supreme delicacy of touch and demonstrate why some consider him to be in the same sort of class as Raikkonen, Alonso and Hamilton.

A wet/dry track provided another opportunity to show what he could do a week later in China, and he seized it with both hands, taking a 5th place finish which was comfortably the team's best result all season, and which finally hauled them ahead of Super Aguri in the points table. The thought occurs that had Button been in a Super Aguri, he might actually have done better, so lets hope that Honda get their act together in 2008. If they do, Button could really fly in the brave new world of standard ECUs and no traction control.

6. Nick Heidfeld

He's got a reputation for being a touch dull, has Nick Heidfeld. A perception, one might add, which is unlikely to be significantly altered by his decision to sport the weirdest facial hair the sport has seen since the 1970s (when, lets face it, weird facial hair really wasn't all that weird). Still, there must be a few teams pondering upon the advantages of dullness in a lead driver, right now. Especially when its married to the kind of prodigious pace which Heidfeld has demonstrated this year.

Remember how, at the beginning of the season, he expected he would be blown away by Robert Kubica? Didn't happen. Instead, Heidfeld was the one man who could just occasionally gatecrash the Ferrari/Mclaren battle at the front. Recall, for instance, his wonderfully opportunistic move on Alonso for 4th in Bahrain? Remember, too, that he was the one man able to give Hamilton pause for thought in Canada. Not convinced? Here's another stat. On occasions where both the BMW drivers finished, only twice did Kubica beat Heidfeld all season.

I don't know if there is any chance of it happening, but think how convenient it would be for all concerned if Mario Thiessen and Ron Dennis were to organise a Heidfeld/Alonso swap. And if it were to happen, who's to say that Heidfeld wouldn't given Hamilton more of a run for his money than anyone would expect?

5. Nico Rosberg

How good was this year's Williams? We'll never know for sure, but it didn't look very good in the hands of an experienced guy like Alex Wurz. Chances are, Nico Rosberg was making the FW29 look a good deal better than it actually was. Certainly, he seemed determined from the outset to extract every last drop of pace from the 2007 Williams. He signaled his intent with 7th in the Australian Grand Prix, pulling off the race's only pass of any account in the process, at a circuit where such things are supposed to be next to impossible. Two weeks later, he hung gamely on to Felipe Massa's Ferrari in Malaysia until his engine let go. He was damned quick in qualifying at Monaco - a circuit where he has not previously shined - and was let down only by a strategy that really relied on his not getting stuck behind a heavily fueled Nick Heidfeld.

While Alex Wurz was lucky to pick up a bundle of points in a couple of very high-attrition races, Rosberg by contrast had to work very hard for every point he scored, doing what he could against BMWs and Renaults which were usually faster. In the final race, he even went one better, keeping much closer to Fernando Alonso's Mclaren than anyone had any right to expect, and passing both BMWs on the track, on his way to fourth place. I'm not at all sure anyone else achieved so much with so little, this season.

4. Felipe Massa

First, a disclaimer. The performances of the leading 4 drivers were so closely matched this year, that I could make a good case for any of them as my driver of the year. Certainly, had the dice fallen a little differently over the course of the year, we might now have been looking at Brazil's fourth world champion. Think about the times that he lost points needlessly. The gearbox failure in qualifying at Melbourne, the refueling error in qualifying at Hungary, his failure to get off the grid at Silverstone. And that's without even mentioning the two races where he failed to finish at all - thanks to suspension failure at Monza and a silly error on the part of both driver and team in Montreal which led to his disqualification.

In the plus column, Massa was frequently mighty in the first part of the season. We'll never know how much of a threat he might have posed in Melbourne, but based on his pace in the subsequent races, Raikkonen might not have found it easy to secure a win on his Ferrari debut. In Bahrain and Barcelona, he was imperious, comfortably having the measure of his more illustrious team mate. He would probably have equalled Raikkonen's win tally too, had he not had to sacrifice his own desire for a home victory at Interlagos to help his team mate's title ambitions.

So why doesn't he feature higher up my list? Two reasons really. Firstly, once Raikkonen really got to grips with the Ferrari and its Bridgestone rubber, Massa rarely looked quite as quick as his team mate (save of course at Brazil). Over a single qualifying lap, he perhaps still had it, but over a race distance, he seemed to lack that last tenth of a second a lap. The second reason is that he never showed quite the 'fight' of the other three. Sure, he was unlucky with his start position on a number of occasions, but one can't help but feel that Raikkonen, Hamilton or Alonso might have made up more places in Hungary or Melbourne. He was also a tad underwhelming whenever the track was wet, come to that. These are minor niggles though, and like any of the big 4, he would have made a worthy champion.

3. Fernando Alonso

How short was the reign of the man who finally toppled King Schumacher. If you only ever read the British tabloids, you might think that Alonso's year consisted of being blown away by a fresh faced British newcomer and going off in one almighty sulk. Which, of course, would be nonsense (apart, perhaps, from the bit about the sulking).

Yes, there were days when Hamilton appeared to have his team mate beaten on pace, but equally, there were occasions when Alonso was comfortably the quicker of the two. Think of his dominant performances at Malaysia and Monza, for example, or the way he just left his team mate for dust at Spa or Silverstone. Fernando Alonso was also responsible for two of the most astounding passing manouvres of the year - on Massa for the lead of the German Grand Prix and most impressively of all, round the outside of Heidfeld at the Lycee in the French Grand Prix.

The falling out with Mclaren was unedifying, for sure, and his public pronouncements suggested an unhealthy degree of paranoia. On the other hand, though, how much more impressive that a man who was barely on speaking terms with his team, and who had fallen out spectacularly with the boss of the operation could simply tune it all out and drive as he did in Monza and Spa, while at the very eye of the storm.

So why only 3rd? Firstly, I can't help thinking that he made more mistakes than Hamilton or Raikkonen - he just got lucky and didn't pay as heavy a penalty for them. His startline move on Massa at the Spanish Grand Prix was ill-judged and his multifarious Canadian errors smacked of desperation. He looked scrappy at Indianapolis and Bahrain, come to that. It seemed he was far more rattled by Hamilton than was the case the other way round. Secondly, at the very death, in Shanghai and Interlagos, he seemed, well, flat. Had he been at his mighty best in Shanghai, he just might have taken the fight to Raikkonen, and who knows, he could have been a triple world champion by now.

2. Kimi Raikkonen

Let's be clear about one thing. If this list were based only on drivers performances in the latter half of the season, Kimi Raikkonen would be my driver of the year. From Indianapolis onwards, he was on the form of his life. He dominated Grands Prix at Silverstone, Spa and China, looked quicker than Massa in race trim in Turkey and gave Hamilton far more of a fight that might have been expected in Hungary. It was said that the 2007 Ferrari didn't really work well in wet conditions, but this did not seem to trouble Raikkonen at the Japanese Grand Prix, where he thoroughly shaded his team mate. If he needed a little assistance from Massa in Brazil to be sure of the title, well, so be it.

Mark Hughes once opined of Kimi Raikkonen that "he refuses even to acknowledge the game". He was talking about the constant psychological warfare that seems to be a standard part of Formula 1 at the very top level these these days. Kimi doesn't go in for it, and he doesn't let others throw him off his stride either. When he found himself outpaced by Massa at the beginning of the year, there was no self doubt, nor any petulant suggestion that Ferrari were favouring the Brazilian. He showed no outward sign that this had gotten to him at all. He simply kept his head down and worked on finding the missing tenths of a second. It's an attribute which would have been much appreciated in the Mclaren garage this year, and one which just might have helped him secure the title. Both Hamilton and Alonso made mistakes under pressure this year, pressure which was at least partly of their own creation.

So why's he not at the top of my list? Simple, this is about performance over the whole season and he was really rather lacklustre in the opening part of the year. A man who is supposedly the outright fastest driver in the world really should not be getting beaten by Felipe Massa, and in Malaysia, Bahrain and Spain, he was simply outclassed. He might have had the pace in Monaco, but a rare unforced error in qualifying meant we had no way of of knowing. Still, as I have said before, he's a worthy champion nonetheless, and his comeback drive to win the title must rank amongst the most extraordinary in the sport's history.

1. Lewis Hamilton

The British press have a lot to answer for. Here was a driver of astonishing natural talent, a man with a seemingly innate ability to make an F1 car dance on the very edge of adhesion, and by Brazil I was simply sick to the back teeth of hearing about hm, and quietly hoping that Kimi Raikkonen might wrest the title from his grasp.

It's usually assumed that it takes at least a couple of seasons to get fully to grips with F1. Lewis, armed with the most complete preparation any rookie has ever had, and access to the most advanced simulator in the sport, set about making a mockery of this. By his third race, he was outpacing his double world champion team mate Fernando Alonso and after two victories in North America, the lad from Stevenage had emerged as the odds-on favourite for the World Title.

Over the course of the season, he ticked all the right boxes. He demonstrated tremendous spatial awareness and racecraft at the start of both the Australian and Malaysian Grands Prix, pulled off an excellent move under braking to snatch second from Kimi Raikkonen on Ferrari's home turf at Monza, blocked out intra-team strife to take an assured win in Hungary and proved himself equal to the worst the elements could throw at him in Fuji. All in all, it was the performance of an established Grand Prix great, rather than a fresh faced rookie.

Let's not go overboard with the superlatives. There were certainly times when Alonso made him look rather ordinary, though equally, there were times when he made Alonso look rather foolish. And while it could be suggested that it was misfortune (in the form of a duff gearbox) which cost him the title, he really suffered no greater mechanical misfortune than either of his title rivals, over the course of the season. In the end, it was his one real elementary error, sliding into the gravel trap while coming in to pit at Shanghai, that cost him the Championship. Still, who'd bet against him coming back stronger next year?

The Rest

10 is an arbitrary number. If there was space for a few more, then three or four other drivers would merit consideration. Jarno Trulli's efforts to rag what pace there was out of the 2007 Toyota were impressive on occasion, though more often than not he qualified well only to sink back down the order come race day. Both Super Aguri drivers had their moments. Takuma Sato had the upper hand in the early part of the year, and even passed Fernando Alonso for position during the Canadian Grand Prix - not something anyone would have predicted before the season began. Anthony Davidson generally outpaced the Japanese driver in the latter half of the year, and his qualifying effort in Turkey was one of the standout performances of the year. Adrian Sutil did all that could be expected in the hopeless Spyker, outclassing all his team mates and occasionally dragging the car a touch further up the order than it had any business being (most notably at Spa and at Indianapolis). He went off the road too often to merit inclusion in the top 10 though, and indeed this tendency may preclude his picking up a more worthwhile drive next year.

David Coulthard did a solid job for Red Bull, without ever quite appearing to be on the same level as his team mate. He was impressive in the wet, picking up a couple of 4th places, and coped admirably with a broken gearbox on his way to 5th in Barcelona. Rubens Barrichello, too, did a better job than he was credited for. Unfortunately, he was generally at his best when the Honda was at its worst, and so ended up pointless at the season's conclusion. If, as rumours suggest, this is his last season, it was a sad note on which to end.

Three other old stagers who may be staring retirement in the face are Giancarlo Fisichella, Ralf Schumacher and Alex Wurz. Wurz was a terrible disappointment in the Williams, and jumped before he was pushed. Schumacher achieved little in the Toyota, and was outclassed by Jarno Trulli. Fisichella had a good start to the season with the disappointing Renault, but appeared to lose interest mid-season and rarely figured after the British Grand Prix.

Vitantonio Liuzzi might just have done enough to salvage his F1 career, but his performances at the troubled Toro Rosso team were hard to judge. His team mate, Sebastien Vettel, initially looked out of his depth but came on in leaps and bounds when Toro Rosso finally began to understand the RB3 towards the season's end. He did enough to suggest that the mid-season replacement of the unexceptional Scott Speed was the right move.

Christijan Albers, whom I had been impressed by last year, was rather shown up by the appearance of a talented young team mate, and when the money ran out, he was shown the door at Spyker. Neither Markus Winkelhock nor Sakon Yamamoto made much of an impression either, though the number 2 seat at Spyker was perhaps F1's least desirable drive this year.