Formula One Legend Niki Lauda’s thoughts on the 2010 season
Former Formula One great, Niki Lauda, has said that the present championship rankings are fully indicating the true power distribution in the sport at the moment. The Austrian great remarked that the racer with the most victories and the squad with the best team results were justly leading the field at the moment. The former Ferrari protagonist said Mark Webber deserved to be at the top after notching up the most wins. Red Bull’s Australian driver, Mark Webber, currently leads the championship with four wins under his belt. The other serious contenders for the 2010 driver’s title; McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button, Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso and Webber’s Red Bull team mate Sebastian Vettel, on the other hand have two scored victories each. Lauda stated that although luck had played a part in determining how matters stood at the moment, fortune had favoured the most deserving.
Lauda explained that it was not a matter of great concern that Red Bull, despite its state-of-the-art RB6 machine, had only recently got to dominate the championship proceedings after suffering several hitches. The Formula One great said Red Bull were not a unique case, for it had often happened in history that the team with the fastest car was not always at the top of the standings. Lauda elaborated that up until the Hungarian Grand Prix, the Red Bull side had fallen foul of its lack of experience in the Formula One fast lane. The Austrian star said Red Bull had the advantage of having the fastest car on the grid, and it was just a matter of time the team attained the maturity needed to win a championship title.
For Lauda, Sebastian Vettel is by far the most gifted driver amongst the 2010 Formula One lineup. Lauda said even though the German’s team-mate Mark Webber was leading the championship at the moment, it was Vettel who had impressed him most with his raw speed and talent. Trailing behind Vettel in Lauda’s esteem were the other four 2010 title contenders. When asked to give his thoughts on the drive-through penalty dished out to Vettel at the Hungarian Grand Prix after the German mistakenly failed to comply with safety car rules, Lauda said it was natural for Vettel to be disappointed at not converting his pole into a well deserved win. The ex-racer reasoned that Vettel’s mistakes on the grid were a legacy of his lack of experience. The German racer was yet very young and it was only natural he should slip every now and then regardless of his remarkable talent, reasoned Lauda.
On his opinion over the budding on-track rivalry between Red Bull team mates Mark Webber and Vettel, Lauda said he would rather see the two drivers fight it out fair and square for the championship title rather than rely on the team to resort to the banned but widely practiced strategy of team orders. There were two ways a team could be run elaborated Lauda; Either the management could resort to the sort of driver discrimination displayed by Ferrari at the year’s German Grand Prix, or alternatively it could let the drivers fight each other for the title. Ferrari created a storm in Germany earlier this year when their driver Felipe Massa was stripped of a highly deserved victory after the team ordered him to relinquish the lead to team mate Fernando Alonso.
Lauda, who had slammed Fernando Alonso for his incompetence with the press following the Hockenheim controversy, said the two times world champion had little to do with his team’s traditional reliance on team orders. The multiple world championship title winner further remarked that Ferrari were in for a tough penalty for their breach of rules at the German Grand Prix when the World Motor Sport Council convened to look into the matter later this year. Lauda categorically stated that rules must be adhered to by everyone, and therefore Ferrari must pay a fair price for its disregard for regulations.
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