My Top Ten Drivers of 2012: The Rest...

Here are my views on those F1 drivers from 2012 who didn't make my top 10 ranking I published a few days ago.

My top 10 drivers of 2012 can be read here.

From about seventh place downwards in my ranking a number of drivers were in close contention with each other. Those who came particularly close to making the top 10 (in no particular order) were Sergio Perez, Michael Schumacher, Pastor Maldonado and Paul Di Resta.

Credit: Morio / CC

Sergio Perez is perhaps the most glaring omission from the final cut, given his season featured three memorable podium runs in Malaysia, Montreal and Monza. There he showed astounding confidence and verve and found pace to sail through the field like he was operating with different laws of physics to anyone else, and further he gets his big break for 2013 with a move to McLaren. But Sergio's problem is that an F1 season lasts 20 races, and aside from the three races mentioned there wasn't a great deal to write home about. There was one good race (Hockenheim), a couple more in which he was unlucky to start at the back (Melbourne and Monaco) and three more where first lap contact put him to the back (Spain) or wiped him out altogether (Spa and Brazil). But in the remaining races you'd hardly know that he was there.

And worse, in the latter part of the year and with a signed McLaren contract in his pocket he threw errors into the mix too. He binned it in Suzuka (trying to pass Lewis Hamilton - the guy he's replacing next year - no less) then making what looked avoidable contact with other cars in each of the next four races. Rumour has the top brass at Sauber believing that Perez is inconsistent, and that the C31 was a better car than he tended to make it look. And what about those podium runs themselves: how much of those were down to Perez's driving and how much down to the peculiar magic touch of the C31 on the Pirelli tyres if voodoo-like factors aligned? Next year, in the McLaren glare, we'll start to get answers to some of these questions. Of course, it's a fantastic opportunity and he is young and has time to improve. But at the very least all at McLaren would be forgiven for having some doubts about its new charge. Indeed, some recent comments from Martin Whitmarsh seem to betray as much.

This year we finally witnessed the swansong of the great Michael Schumacher. Debates about the wisdom of his comeback will continue to rage no doubt, but this year Schumi continued his year-on-year improvement since his return in 2010, and for the most part drove more than respectably. The qualifying gap between him and Rosberg was closed for the first time, and he was often the more convincing in races too, particularly in the year's mid-part when the lemon-like characteristics of the W03 became obvious. The main problem Schumi had was that intangible quality called luck. The opening round in Melbourne summed up his season: he qualified fourth (ahead of his team mate) and was running strongly in third...then his hydraulics went. In no fewer than six of the first seven rounds something impeded or stopped Schumi through little fault of his, and over the piece there were five mechanical retirements for him (compared to Rosberg's big fat zero). Without the bad luck it would have been fascinating to see if he could have beaten Rosberg's points total.

My Top 10 F1 Drivers of 2011: The rest...

Here are my views on those F1 drivers from 2011 who didn't make the top 10 list I published a few days ago.

My top 10 drivers of 2011 can be read here.

Tenth place in the top ten was a close run thing between a number of drivers. Kamui Kobayashi got it, squeaking ahead of Jaime Alguersuari, Heikki Kovalainen and Felipe Massa.

Felipe Massa
Credit: Mark McArdle / CC

Taking them in reverse order brings us immediately to the curious case of Felipe Massa. In truth it was another desperately disappointing season for the popular Brazilian, in which his coming within two corners of winning the title in 2008 seemed like it was from another age. If anything, he was even further adrift of his team mate Fernando Alonso this year than last - only once (in China) did he clearly out race him. And while the Ferrari 150° Italia wasn't a great car, almost never did Massa look better than it, evidenced by the fact that he never finished higher than fifth in a year that his stable mate claimed ten podium finishes. He can claim to have been unlucky on occasion, there was more than one botched pitstop (see Malaysia, Turkey and Valencia), in Spa he punctured and at Monza he was hit by Webber. But even with these the pace wasn't there most of the time. Further, he didn't help himself, getting involved in a series of incidents to an extent that he didn't do in 2010: crashes in Canada and Hungary stopped better results, as did spins in Spain and Abu Dhabi. He hit a particular low by breaking his suspension twice in two days in India, with almost exactly the same error. Then there was his famous running battle with Lewis Hamilton this year. Yes, he was more the victim of these clashes all told, but he also sometimes displayed a machismo when wheel to wheel with him that didn't help matters, most obviously in Monaco and India. And, to be honest, his Hamilton grudge expressed out of the car struck me as a classic case of displacement.

Mooted reasons for Massa's struggles continue to vary. We'll probably never know how much the Hungary accident has affected him, but my instinct is that a lot of Massa's problems stem from the guy he's sharing a garage with. Massa of all the front runners appears particularly vulnerable to confidence, as well as particularly in need of emotional support. In a team mostly focussed on Alonso, and where Alonso almost always beats him, Massa isn't getting much of either of these things and it shows. Ferrari are retaining him for next year, showing admirable loyalty it has to be said, but next year is very much last chance saloon. They don't expect him to beat Alonso, but they do expect him to finish a bit closer behind him, as well as to take points from rivals more often.