Sebastien Bourdais seems to be getting a bit of press these days, and most of it is bad. Up until now he seemed to be his own worst critic. But today he struck back, perhaps providing some explanation to why he has not been performing as well as his teammate.
“I am convinced I am not any slower than Sebastian(Vettel) in a car where I am comfortable.”
The statement reminds me of a comment Graham Rahal made last year:
“Sebastien likes his car setup different than I do. I can’t drive a car like Sebastien does; he likes a lot of understeer in his car and I just can’t cope with that.”
Some are going to label Sebastien as a baby, no doubt. Let us examine some of the arguments that he has going against him.
2. Vettel has been out performing him.
Take a look at the results:
Race Bourdais Vettel
Australia 7th RET
Malaysia RET RET
Bahrain 15th RET
Spain RET RET
Turkey RET 17th
Monaco RET 5th
Canada 13th 8th
France 17th 12th
GB 11th RET
Germany 12th 8th
Hungary 18th RET
Europe 10th 6th
Belgium 7th 5th
Of the 13 races, 4 go to Bourdais , 7 go to Vettel and 2 no finishes. 3 top 10′s for Bourdais and 5 top 10′s for Vettel. Vettle has 6 DNF, Bourdais has 4.
No one can possibly say that Bourdais hasn’t been competitive.. especially before the STR3. But here is the thing… Did anyone else notice that Vettel has failed to finish almost half of his annuities?. I guess it only matters when a driver crashes during testing sessions.
Here is another interesting fact. Here is a list of all drivers this year and last, and the DNF count by the 10th race (2008 and 2007).
Bourdais: 4
Vettel: 5
Speed: 7
Vitantonio Liuzzi: 6
After a hectic qualifying it looks like we’ve got a grid for a great race tomorrow at Monza. With two STRs up front it looks as if Kovalainen should get an early lead with Vettel and Webber giving chase. In the dry he should take Vettel with ease early on.
Not sure if Bourdais will be in there, he may run 5th or 6th for a while. I reckon both STRs will have fallen back a little before the first stops. Webber’s career is littered with terrible luck so expect his car to expire, or someone to drive into him.
The main interest will be watching Raikkonen and Hamilton (and Kubica) working their way through the field and whether they can catch Massa. With the points situation Kovalainen’s job is basically to beat Massa, preferably by winning. Hamilton has the points lead so can afford to give one or two away but would rather not so will be out to minimise that loss. Kimi needs to win to gain points back, nothing else will do. Heikki also wants to win for his own reputation, of course – he IS in a McLaren, he’s expected to win races. Massa needs to beat Hamilton by several points-paying positions regardless of what their respective team-mates do.
We’re in for a classic title run over the rest of the year, don’t miss it.
Check out the MotoGP at Indy as well. Could be dull, could be the best thing ever. MotoGP races are a bit like that. One week you watch a parade of riders, the next week all hell breaks loose with passing and repassing… I’m not the world’s foremost expert on MotoGP so I just sit back and enjoy.
The other thing on is the 1000km race at Silverstone. I nearly attended and would have done had the Italian GP not been on, but after all the happenings at Spa and with a grid such as we have at Monza I could NOT miss that Grand Prix. Yeah I know I could tape it (I haven’t quite caught up with DVRs yet) but it’s not the same…
And I think some taxi cabs are running around in circles somewhere.
Regular readers of The Starting Grid may wonder who I am. I’m Patrick, I write my own blog at Too Much Racing. Mark very kindly asked me to contribute over here from time to time and I was only too happy to oblige. Check out my blog after every F1 and IndyCar race for my ‘race notes’ posts, this is the stream of conciousness running through my head during the races. I’m told they are quite good but I couldn’t possibly comment.
Thanks again to Mark and Void for allowing my musings to appear at The Starting Grid.