When I set out to write this thing, I had intended not to post two drivers from the same team but I really had no other choice because as much as I prefer Jean-Eric Vergne, I still really like Daniel Ricciardo.
As previously mentioned when I covered Vergne at the start of the week, I have been impressed with both Toro Rosso driver's this season. With Mark Webber opting to leave Formula 1 at the end of the year, after titan names like Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso Red Bull have been considering their sister team for younger talent.
As time goes on and as Spa looms upon us, the odds tell us that Red Bull will announce their new driver for next season at the weekend, but this is still speculation and not my opinion. German and Finnish newspapers seemed to have gotten mixed up in their media circus as one said Kimi was going nowhere and the other said he's signed the Red Bull contract. Today his manager has said he will not be joining Red Bull.
The way Alonso is getting on, it looks as though he wants out of Ferrari, but I honestly can't see Sebastian Vettel liking that too much, he'll probably run and cry to Helmut Marko if Alonso steps anywhere near a Red Bull building.
That only leaves two people and considering the hype has always surrounded Ricciardo and not Vergne, despite the Frenchman being more successful, it looks as if Ricciardo is stepping up in the world for 2014.
So hypothetically, what can Ricciardo bring to Red Bull that Mark Webber lacked?
Fantastic qualifying. He has made it into Q3 four times this season and has scored well in two of the races where he started quite high up on the grid. If he hopes to better Vettel he'll need to do this on a consistent basis.
There's not that much difference between Webber and Ricciardo. Both Australian's are great fun, they both have fantastic personalities and smiles, the fans love them and they are both dedicated drivers. I just worry that Ricciardo will be bred as another number 2.
It could be a totally different story when he gets there. He could turn up to race one next year and take the whole world by storm. Two years separate him and Vettel, so if there's anything Vettel can do, Ricciardo should be able to do it just as well in a Newey designed car.
Let's just hope Red Bull learnt the meanings of the words 'biased' and 'equality' before next season.
When Mark Webber announced he was leaving Formula 1 at the end of the year, speculation immediately turned to the sister Red Bull team Toro Rosso and their young talents.
Despite scoring more points than Daniel Ricciardo this season, Jean-Eric Vergne has failed to finish four races this season while Ricciardo has only retired from two, one being Monaco where he was shafted majorly. It is because of this and Ricciardo's supreme qualifying results that has saw Jean-Eric Vergne being overlooked for the Red Bull seat.
Rumours in the world of F1 have suggested that heavyweights such as Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso have pushed JEV off the short-list entirely, and looks to be staying with Toro Rosso next season.
To me it's a huge shame that the Red Bull hierarchy (Christian Horner, Adrian Newey, Helmut Marko and The Godfather, Dietrich Mateschitz) have chosen to review Ricciardo's progress rather than JEV's.
Regular readers will be aware that I like Ricciardo and have nothing other than positive things to say about the young man. That being said 10 out of 10 times I would pick Jean-Eric Vergne for the simple season of him scoring more points. I think over the course of a season, JEV has the energy and the will to provide over an entire season. This was always Mark Webber's problem, he would do well in parts but under perform in others.
While he may not have been a superstar in 2013, Vergne has definitely continued to deliver time and time again and even though he looks to have lost out, he still remains committed to his own personal cause.
"In comparison with Seb [Vettel's] rising form, it seems to me that Mark's form somehow flattens out." - Helmut Marko on his own driver, Mark Webber
Yes you read correctly, in an interview with autosport, Red Bull's Motorsport advisor Helmut Marko actually criticised his own drivers form calling him inconsistent and says Webber fails under pressure. More on this later but I'd like to start off with his first interview when this story went live on Tuesday.
The blog title basically says it all, the games have indeed begun, the mind games. Pre Season testing hasn't even finished yet and we're already at each other with Mark accusing Fernando Alonso and Ferrari of being too political in their approaches. Click here to read the interview.
I have no hesitation in admitting that Ferrari are all about the politics, and I dare say it has won them a number of world championships, but that is all part of the Ferrari philosophy, anything to get a win! Was that not Enzo Ferrari's message to the team? But that's the team for you. I don't think there's any question that Fernando Alonso has the politics game bestowed upon him. Therefore I don't think it's fair to call him a political tactician just because he's been inducted to a team with this kind of ethos.
If he's looking for people who play the mind games I'll tell him directly; "Helmut! LOOK IN THE MIRROR." He's basing all his comments, all his insults on last season. If he had these issues last season then why didn't we hear from him last season? If Alonso and Ferrari were so keen on a little bit of mind warfare then why did't he join in then? The answer to these questions are because now he can start the mind games nice and early.
Ferrari had a dreadful pre season test last year and we all know the cause of it to be a fault in their wind tunnel giving out "up the left" data. Marko is probably thinking if they serve up the sneaky mind games now, Ferrari will be put on the back burner early on. They are very cheap words from a man who let's be honest, is more or less Dietrich Mateschitz's bitch. Harsh I will admit but true. He's being an absolute hypocrite and in this industry that will come back to bite him.
I also love the way he's hiding behind Red Bull's own magazine. Yeah Helmut, as if the rest of the world can't read it. He's almost like a highly paid idiot And when I say almost, I mean he certainly is a highly paid idiot. His comments certainly didn't get by Fernando Alonso who hit back on twitter. I saw the tweet live from Fernando, but Eurosport have the whole scenario summed up nicely.
Back to the introduction, to start off with the final set of paragraphs is unorthodox I'll admit, but I genuinely couldn't believe what I was reading. To criticise your own driver by calling him inconsistent is beyond me.
I stood and watched Webber's Silverstone win and I seen his overtake on Fernando Alonso to win the race and I'll say this now, Webber is no lazy driver who falls under pressure.
That being said, it's no surprise he is what's known as a number 2 driver and when you've got a puppet like Sebastian Vettel, Mark is really only there to fill up numbers. But if you take a handful of number 2 drivers, Massa, Grosjean, Perez (at McLaren), Webber is by far the most talented out of the lot. In 2011 where Adrian Newey (for newer readers this is what I call Vettel) had his dominant year in the Red Bull who was the only driver keeping up with him? Webber in the sister Red Bull. He's also been better this year than in seasons gone by so I have no doubt or fear in saying that Marko has pulled these comments from his own backside.
If you take Williams, they supported Maldonado through ALL of his crashes and still maintain he is a good driver, they're wrong but they still support their driver.Lotus, after Grosjean nearly took out half the grid at Spa and after serving a one race ban, what did they do to show their support? They gave him a seat for 2013. Webber who won 2 races this season (one being Monte Carlo), didn't cause any major accidents, without his points tally Red Bull would not have won the constructors championship, bit his tongue yet again when Newey got all the attention and backing to win the drivers championship and he gets told by one of his superiors that he crumbles under pressure. What a joke. To top it all off there were even unconfirmed rumours that Red Bull are looking to replace Webber in 2014 with Nico Hulkenberg what these are unconfirmed, I have no proof to back this up so I can't comment too much but these rumours are getting louder.
Marko really needs to remind himself of who he is, he's the smaller devil that sits on the bigger devil's shoulders whispering him what the technicalities of Formula 1 mean. If he honestly thinks his games are going to impact the season in Red Bull's favour then he is sadly mistaken. This is the year Red Bull get toppled. You read it here first.
