Donkies of the 2013 Season

[steveaki13]

Another something to keep us entertained in the off season.

[steveaki13]

Drivers that have disappointed me in 2013.

Mark Webber - Despite the car, he couldn't match Seb really and finished only 3rd in the Championship. Despite how good Seb has been, Mark should have finished second this year.

Felipe Massa - Another poor season for him even against Alonso and so gets a vote for me.


Teams that have disappointed:

Ferrari - Another poor car and left Alonso to battle just to score some podiums.
McLaren - Terrible Car. A season a no podiums.
Williams - Another shocker of a car and only got better after removing parts.

[555-04Q2]

Basically everyone except RBR and Seb get my vote.

[steveaki13]

Basically everyone except RBR and Seb get my vote.

The teams certainly were made to look like Donkey's by not designing a car that could even see Red Bull most of the season.

A bit harsh on the drivers though. :p

[555-04Q2]

Maybe but there are some drivers that deserve the mantle of donkeys too :p:

[steveaki13]

Absolutely. See above a few posts.

[rjbetty]

2013 OVERALL DONKEY PODIUM

3rd: Williams - *sighs* Well I guess it was too good to last, and it was back down to earth with a bump. How it is possible to put together a season probably worse than 2011 I don't know. But there were reasons for this: Senior people had left the team causing much disruption. Despite the PDVSA (Pretty Darn Vast Savings Account) contribution, the team could still do with more cash. There was also the sad loss of Sir Frank Williams' wife before the start of the season. But they did improve in the end and were able to show glimpses of 2012 form. All this leads me to take it much easier on Williams than otherwise would be the case.



=2nd: Helmut Marko - because he just is. I feel it is primarily because of the Doc's influence that Seb does have this horrible streak to him. He also, as usual, made crackpot declarations through the year. Try this most recent quote for example:

"My Sebby is better than Hamilton and Rosberg, COMBINED! And that's a fact!" He belligerently boomed.
The reasoning for this is that Seb did score more points than the Mercedes drivers put together, but you don't have to be Adrian Newey to understand the flawed reasoning to that.

On another note, I would like to see a televised debate between Dr Marko and Garry Walker. I think I might pay to watch that. ;)

=2nd: Pastor Maldonado - The 2nd step of the podium is shared with another complete fruitcake who made some ill-advised, not to mention slightly insane declarations recently. He also seems to have a sense of entitlement that suddenly makes Paul di Resta quite endearing. It seems he will grab that Lotus drive, which just goes to show there is no justice in F1.



1st: Go on, guess...




Well it's no surprise that the presigious award for Donkey of the Year goes to everyone's favourite Woking based F1 Team - McLaren. Words fail us, though plenty has been said. Basically this was one of the most absurd displays of ineptitude for a long time, up there with the BAR debacle of 1999 I'd say. Congrats, and thanks for messing up my FGP Season.

[steveaki13]

Good posts and points Rj.

[anfield5]

Drivers that have fallen short.
None really, if I was being picky I would single out Mark Webber, but this is really not fair as he didn't do anything wrong, he was simply not a match fore Vettel, although I do wish he would learn how to start a race

Teams that have not impressed.
This is a different story.
McLaren win with a totally horrid car, giving neither driver a chance to be competitive, then to cap it off, waiting until after moost seats have been filled or have drivers basically penciled in before ditching Perez. C'mon McLaren if you had given a decent car he could have scored podiums and possibly even challenged for wins.
Williams finish second, after a great 2012 when they truly looked likely to move back towards the front, this year was a disaster, the car was a dog and I don't really blame Maldonardo in getting frustrated and opting out.
Caterham and Marussia. equal third. It has now been 4 seasons, and these two are still pottering around at the back, getting in the way.

Other things.
In NZ we had the BBC commentary. I got totally sick and tired of the head muppet conistently referring to Caterham and Marrusia as the 'Young TEams' as if this could justify their fourth season with nothing to show apart from finishing last all the time.

The continued manipulation of the rules to give a false dog and pony show, including mandating that Pirelli build crappy tires, the use of silly artificial things such as DRS, this system wouldn'y be quite as bad if the drivers where allowed to use it when they chose to.

[tjoepie]

McLaren for the above-mentioned horrendous backward step and for the above-mentioned ditching of a young, promising driver for a younger driver who may or may not be promising at F1 level (because promise at lower formulas isn't necessarily going to translate). Fair go, he may do well - but rather ditch Button who certainly has a short sell-by date. Also the FIA for making the rules more and more convoluted, contrived and restricting.

[jens]

McLaren is the donkey for me. Lotus and Sauber are textbook examples, how you can design fast cars on what looks like a shoestring budget. McLaren still has a decent budget, but the whole year has been a huge let-down. Especially considering their normal standards.

Other than that I don't know.
Caterham and Marussia aren't really "new teams" any more, but they don't have any depth in the team to improve to another level. Disappointing.
Williams is disappointing though not really surprising any more. More like "usual business" unlike McLaren (yet).
The way Ferrari fell off late in the season was pretty underwhelming too. Alonso got only a single podium in the last six races.

Drivers?
Obviously the most underwhelming drivers of the year have been the bunch of paydrivers (Maldonado, Gutiérrez, Chilton), but this hardly makes them donkies as it was expected and someone has to pay the bills to keep the teams running. Massa doesn't surprise me any more either - more like business as usual. Webber is already pretty old, so him getting obliterated by Vettel was more like a predictable way of things. To be honest, expected a bit more from both Sutil and Vergne. I'd say the reputation of both drivers has been dented and makes their F1 futures questionable.

[AndyL]

Has to be McLaren for rolling out one of their worst cars ever. Maybe the worst ever, if you make allowance for rules - there were a lot more opportunities to make mistakes or miss the boat with the less restrictive rules of the 70s and 80s, and a number of their poor championship finishes in the past have been down to unreliability more than lack of speed.

However I kind of get the feeling they're in a no-win situation regarding the criticism over Perez. Last year they were criticised for hiring Perez and doing it too early. Now they're getting it for sacking Perez and doing it too late!

[Storm]

McLaren and Ferrari

[N. Jones]

McLaren. Lured me into a false sense of excitement. Watching them piddle around between 9th and 14th was not a joy to behold.

Williams is just in a sad state. I too hoped the win last year would at least keep them in the top ten during the race. That never happened and they sank back to....

Caterham and Marussia, levels of Why-are-we-here? All I know is journos from F1 always say it takes five years to build a car capable of scoring points. If this is true then we should see these two scoring a point or two next season, but I'm not sold on the idea.

[anfield5]

McLaren. Lured me into a false sense of excitement. Watching them piddle around between 9th and 14th was not a joy to behold.

Williams is just in a sad state. I too hoped the win last year would at least keep them in the top ten during the race. That never happened and they sank back to....

Caterham and Marussia, levels of Why-are-we-here? All I know is journos from F1 always say it takes five years to build a car capable of scoring points. If this is true then we should see these two scoring a point or two next season, but I'm not sold on the idea.

To this I would say "absolute rubbish'
In their first four years Sauber had 27 top 6 finishes including 2 podiums, if we expand that to top 10's the number is a huge 56.

Jordan had 20 top 6 with a podium and 41 top 10's

AGS, who were one of the worst F1 teams ever had 2 top 6 finishes in 4 years (12 top 10's)

The much maligned Osella had 1 top 6 (7 top 10's)

I can't think of any team that hasn't scored top 10's after 4 seasons continuing on in F1 and having any success what so ever, let alone even surviving.

[anfield5]

McLaren. Lured me into a false sense of excitement. Watching them piddle around between 9th and 14th was not a joy to behold.

Williams is just in a sad state. I too hoped the win last year would at least keep them in the top ten during the race. That never happened and they sank back to....

Caterham and Marussia, levels of Why-are-we-here? All I know is journos from F1 always say it takes five years to build a car capable of scoring points. If this is true then we should see these two scoring a point or two next season, but I'm not sold on the idea.

To this I would say "absolute rubbish'
In their first four years Sauber had 27 top 6 finishes including 2 podiums, if we expand that to top 10's the number is a huge 56.

Jordan had 20 top 6 with a podium and 41 top 10's

AGS, who were one of the worst F1 teams ever had 2 top 6 finishes in 4 years (12 top 10's)

The much maligned Osella had 1 top 6 (7 top 10's)

I can't think of any team that hasn't scored top 10's after 4 seasons continuing on in F1 and having any success what so ever, let alone even surviving.

[rjbetty]

That's true, but back then cars used to retire from races and if they went off the track usually never got back on.

Caterham and Marussia have averaged around 2-6 seconds off the pace through their time. Not great. But Sauber were usually 2sec off the pace in several seasons.

[Dave B]

Donkey of the entire season: Lotus for utterly mismanaging their finances and losing a great driver, while pinning all their hopes on the equivalent of a Nigerian chain mail.

[anfield5]

Donkey of the entire season: Lotus for utterly mismanaging their finances and losing a great driver, while pinning all their hopes on the equivalent of a Nigerian chain mail.

I also considered the black team for daring to call themselves Lotus, it is a diabolical marketing ploy aimed to attract fans and money to the team, who believe they are in some way connected to Lotus. They are simply sponsored by Proton who own the Lotus name. It would be like Marrusia getting sponsorship from Fred Tyrrell's fish'n'chip shop and calling themselves Tyrrell