But he hasn't been in a lesser car and out-performed it, which leads me to presume he's not actually that good.
So, the fact he didn't have to drive a bad car before means he's a bad driver throughout his career? You are aware of how little sense that makes, I hope.
It's a ridiculously arbitrary way of measuring a driver's abilities and would mean that the best driver in the world would have no way of proving himself to you unless he steps into a Haas and squeezes a couple podium places out of them.
No matter how good a driver is, when a car is slow in the corners, slow in the straights and the strategists fuck up, he won't be able to perform.
And just for shits n giggles: How exactly do you think did Vettel get cockpits in these cars in the first place? He reached 8th place in his first full season in Torro Rosso, where his teammate ended up ranked 17th and both Red Bull drivers being on 11th and 16th place.
the list of examples of someone in inferior equipment doing well during Seb's career goes on - and yet he can't seem to be able to do that.
Well, partially cause (as you just said yourself) he never even had a "chance" to do that (well, at least as long as you continue to disregard season '0
.
And in current years Ferrari, I doubt anyone could either. Leclerc had a few decent races in the beginning with full support and backing by the team, but the gap to the other teams has widened in the past weeks and both Vettel and Leclerc are pretty consistent in that they reach lap-times within half a second of one another and struggle to remain in the top 10. This qualifying, we got a fine example of Ferrari's bad strategists when they send out Vettel and he ended up not even reaching Q2, cause he was stuck in the middle of a large group and then during the race itself, we saw their completely fucked aero-balance when Leclerc crashed (like we couldn't tell before their balance was atrocious). And just for good measure, the car lacks in top speed and it suffered a total brake failure, too.
Vettel has been abondoned by his team and got little to no support, so there's no help coming from there either.
Hell, in Silverstone, they let him drive in a bad chassis and then threw him right under the bus with their pitstop orders. They gave him two short stints on hard tyres and one long on soft, while Leclerc got a one-stop strategy. With Leclercs crash this race, which looked exactly like Vettels spin in Silverstone, I wonder if bad balance was an issue there, too. At least Vettel prevented a crash with (I think) Albon.
In Spain, Vettel asks the pit crew if he can continue on his tyres or if he needs to stop, they don't give him an answer for a couple laps and then go "can you continue on these tyres?". The team is clearly bidding their time with him and just waiting for his contract to end, doing the bare minimum of work with him.
The car is bad, the team doesn't support him, but somehow he's supposed to wrestle that car all the way to the podium or else he's a bad driver? Seems fair.
his racecraft has always been poor, think Istanbul with Webber, and Brazil last year with Charles to name but two, and he continues to show no real skill or ability in the car despite being one of the more experienced driver, meanwhile old man Kimi is still managing to show glimpses (I'm not going to argue he's still got it, mind), Perez is still always there or thereabouts and again the list continues.
And to point out how bad he is, the best you can come up with are two crashes, almost ten years apart. As
@Coccxys has said: You can point out bad calls and mistakes by any given driver. Vettel isn't perfect, no one ever claimed he'd be, but this is -quite frankly- very petty.
Old man Kimi has not scored a single point in this season. He's an amazing driver (which is why I take a bit offense to you calling him timid in an earlier post) but how exactly has Kimi outperformed his bad car? He's a living example that a good driver can't magically make a car go faster by willpower and skill alone.
I don't even think the surname will generate as much buzz as everyone is expecting, because before you had to actually care enough to look into who was up-and-coming to find out who might be the next Hill, Schumacher, Prost, whatever.
I should have been more specific: I was talking from a German point of view. The surname will generate
a lot of buzz here. For a short time, at least.
The excitement for him was had the moment all the media pounced on him senselessly because they wanted to be able to say they could interview a Schumacher, not because he was a really quick and cool upcoming prospect and/or a driver with a story to tell like Billy Monger for example.
I dunno, I think once he made the jump into F1, that will also give him a boost internationally. The buzz that surrounds him right now isn't "Someone named Schumacher in a Formula series" alone, it's always dangling that insinuation before our eyes that he will go into F1 and kick ass.
The buzz always frames it in a way that he will be a future F1 driver (and maybe champion).
And on that note: I would like to see him win an F1 title, dunno if he will be able to, but it would be neat. There's also a german female F3 driver, would like to see her in Formula 1 one day... As long as she doesn't go full Danica Patrick on us.
