petrolheadblog.com's 2009 Top 10

It’s the done thing at this time of year, isn’t it?

The teams we all expected to challenge were nowhere.  The teams we’d written off in pre-season were somewhere, and a team that barely made it to the first race won the whole show.  The world champion divided opinion, with his supporters matched in size and volume by those who felt he’d reversed into it having done nothing of note for the last 10 races.  The outgoing world champion faced serious scrutiny off the track but answered every critic on it, his nemesis tried his best to make sense of a team in crisis and the last of the big-spending Japanese car makers took their final bow.  How do you begin putting that into some kind of order?

With difficulty, as it turns out.  What follows is an attempt at ranking the 10 best Formula One drivers of 2009, and is nothing more than opinion, based on sessions watched and timesheets studied.  You can make statistics mean whatever you want – you can even use them to suggest that Jenson Button is better than Sir Stirling Moss, and if you dream of doing so then you’re either one of his family or in entirely the wrong place - and so they’ve been left to one side as far as possible.  Sometimes the numbers don’t do justice to the performance.  Sometimes they flatter it enormously.

To qualify for a place in this particular top 10, a driver needs to have completed at least half of the 2009 season, which means no place for the mightily impressive Kamui Kobayashi, whose two end-of-season races were wonderful but not enough to assess him fairly.  There’s also no room for Tonio Liuzzi, Jaime Alguersuari, Romain Grosjean or – but no!  But yes! – Luca Badoer.  I can but imagine your horror.

That leaves 20 drivers vying for 10 places (and I should mention that yes, friend of petrolheadblog.com Nelson Piquet Jr is eligible), and in a season where the title contenders haven’t always excelled and the best performers have been hiding in the middle of the pack, arriving at a final list hasn’t been easy.  You may well disagree, and if you do, I’d very much like to hear from you.  Right, shall we begin?

10. Kimi Raikkonen

Why so low?  The Ferrari F60 was rarely better than good and quite often a fair bit worse, but the Iceman only appeared interested from mid-season.  His rise coincided with the loss of Felipe Massa to injury, and his drives in Valencia, Monza and particularly Spa were brilliant efforts in a car whose development had long since tailed off.  At other times, at too many other times, the Finn was a man going through the motions.  Off to rally a Citroen in 2010, he’s a loss when operating at his peak but hasn’t truly done so since he left McLaren, 2007 title notwithstanding.

9. Nico Rosberg

Solid.  11 points-scoring finishes, 7th in the drivers championship, but too much promise unfulfilled.  He led strongly in Malaysia before crumbling in the rain, made all the wrong calls in China, underwhelmed in a good car through the early part of the European season and finally, after some strong runs mid-season, turned a potential win into a big fat out of control zero at the Singapore pit exit.  His drive from the back of the field to 4th at the Nurburgring was a reminder of what he can do, and his pace on Fridays was searing, but too often he fell away a little when it mattered.  Whether leading the team or learning from the master, Nico must begin to deliver on his undoubted promise at Mercedes.

8. Sebastien Buemi

20 years old, straight in at the deep end with one of the slowest cars in the field, Buemi outqualified a multiple CART champion in the same car and scored a point first time out in Melbourne.  Hello, world.  By mid-season the Toro Rosso was even worse, but Buemi clinically disposed of Sebastien Bourdais and was fazed not a jot by his promotion to team leader.  His qualifying aberration in Japan was the work of a rookie, his many measured drives weren’t, and his 4 points-scoring finishes were richly deserved.  If Red Bull get behind him, Buemi really could be special.

7. Felipe Massa

It isn’t possible to rank him higher without knowing what he might have gone on to achieve, though surviving to see Christmas was achievement enough, and you might feel 7th is too generous for a man who couldn’t complete the season.  Before a flying spring curtailed his season, though, Massa had scored more than double the points of teammate Raikkonen.  Sensational in dragging the F60 through to 4th at Silverstone and a remarkable 3rd at Nurburgring, spellbinding through a Monaco middle stint that should stand as a lesson in controlled aggression, Felipe operated at but never beyond his car’s limits every time he sat in it.  His stock has risen exponentially through the last 24 months, and it’s to be hoped that his return to racing will see him back at the front, in the position his 2009 drives deserved.

6. Rubens Barrichello

Generally brilliant once his season got going, his season kicked into gear just as his Brawn was fading.  He had plenty of rotten luck in the early part of the year, but too many of his performances in the dominant car through that period were lacklustre – only 5th in Bahrain after getting trapped behind Piquet Jr, too slow to win in Spain, hitting everything that moved in an entertaining Turkish cameo.  Only when we reached Britain did Rubinho really hit his stride, and through the second half of the season he held a definite edge on his title-winning teammate.  Wins at Valencia and Monza were richly deserved, and the old stager keeps his place in the 2010 field on merit, but this year was an opportunity missed.  At 37, he might not get another.

5. Mark Webber

12 months ago Mark Webber was beginning his recovery from a badly broken leg and shoulder, his bicycle having collided with a car during his Pure Tasmania Challenge charity event.  At the end of March he was in Melbourne, suited, booted and ready for action but only half-fit.  By mid-July he was a Formula One race winner.  A breakthrough season for the Australian might have been even better had he been able to prepare through the winter, and threatened to be more than that anyway before a run of 5 races without a point put paid to his title bid.  Only 9th in Valencia could be said to be Mark’s doing, and while his driving might lack that final tenth that separates the great from the world class, Webbo’s performances in the cockpit were a model of consistency.

4. Jenson Button

Button’s world championship year was built on the first 7 races.  6 wins, a 3rd place, a world title bought and paid for.  Then, on home soil, his year began to unravel.  His fans point out that he scored points in every race he finished and attempt to suggest that he drove sensibly once he’d built up a lead, but an honest analysis is less kind on an Englishman fading under pressure.  A number of those mid-season drives, notably runs to 6th at Silverstone, 7th in Hungary and 7th in Valencia, were recoveries from either bad qualifying, bad opening stints or both.  His only non-finish, at Spa, came through a first lap shunt after qualifying a dismal 14th.  At the same time, the man in the other Brawn, the man Jenson had taken to pieces in the early rounds, was demonstrating that the car was still a race winner.  It took Button until Interlagos to clear his head, and on that October afternoon he won the title by finally putting in a performance worthy of it.  Next year, partnered with Lewis Hamilton at McLaren, early-season JB stands half a chance.  Mid-season JB will be ruthlessly dismantled.

3. Fernando Alonso

It’s tempting to write, “Scored 26 points in a truck,” and move on, but it’s worth giving the Spaniard a little more time than that.  By the end of 2009 the Renault R29 was as bad as anything else in Formula One, yet somehow in Singapore it carried Alonso to a podium finish, only 16 seconds adrift of winner Lewis Hamilton.  Perhaps it’d be more accurate to say Alonso dragged it there.  Around the twists of Abu Dhabi, the fast esses of Suzuka and the sweeps of Spa, R29 was the dictionary definition of ‘recalcitrant’ and yet there was never room for a cigarette paper between Alonso and the ragged edge of adhesion.  He gave everything, everywhere, and his all-out approach brought a steady flow of points through the year, including a 5th place in Spain that simply shouldn’t have been possible in such a dog of a car.

2. Sebastian Vettel

It’s easy to forget that Vettel is 22 years old and has completed only 2 full seasons as a Grand Prix driver.  Every so often we’re given a reminder – slapping the barriers in Monte Carlo, falling off the road before a lap had been completed in Istanbul – and are hit by the realisation that hey, he’s not the complete package after all.  His win at Suzuka was the drive of a seasoned veteran, not a man who had never raced on the legendary circuit before.  At Silverstone his dominance was crushing, in the mould of another fast German driver.  Quick enough to have been this year’s world champion with better reliability and a little more luck, as well as being an immensely likable man, Vettel’s time will come.  Soon.

1. Lewis Hamilton

Why?  Because it’s incredibly difficult to recall a race in which Lewis let the car down, and incredibly easy now to answer those who instantly accepted Fernando Alonso’s claim that he brought 6 tenths of a second to McLaren.  The team might never again produce a racing car as bad as the MP4-24 was at the beginning of the season, yet Hamilton opened with 3 points finishes in the first 4 events, being denied a clean sweep by disqualification during the Australian ‘Liegate’ affair.  After that, no points for 5 races as the McLaren’s aerodynamic shortcomings were exposed, most notably at Silverstone where he fought brilliantly with Alonso for 16th position.  Hamilton helped drive the development of the car throughout that period, reaping the rewards in Hungary where he took a well-judged win; from zero to heroes in 4 months.  Another win in Singapore followed, while his charging drive at Monza was spectacular right to the premature finish.  17th on the grid became 3rd in the race at Interlagos, and his pole lap in Abu Dhabi was nothing short of astounding.  Simply, there is nobody better.

Go on, then.  Tell me I’m wrong.