Sebastien Bourdais - should he stay or should he go ?
I started my 2008 F1 driver rankings yesterday with Part 1, here comes Part 2 covering the ranks 15 to 11:
15th David Coulthard
DC almost made it to Part 1 but at the end I found him a bit less disappointing than Heikki Kovalainen. Although Coulthard scored the only podium for Red Bull this year he was still clearly outperformed by his team mate. The 2:16 qualifying statistics says it all. Coulthard also got involved in many racing incidents ruining several races for himself and for few other drivers. The way the final race of his F1 careers went pretty much sums up his 2008 season.
14th Sebastien Bourdais
Sebastien Bourdais finally made it to F1 after spending several title winning seasons in the now defunct Champ Car series in the United States. But even he himself knew the transition to F1 won’t be easy. He scored points on his F1 debut in Australia but afterwards it was a long downhill ride accelerated by the introduction of new STR03 car. Towards the end of the season he lifted his game making it to Q3 6 times in last 7 GPs. He however rarely managed to built on that impressive qualifying on the race days. The jury is out now, the interest from other parties in those 2 Toro Rosso seats is rather big …
13th Rubens Barrichello
I should probably rank Barrichello lower but all the lower ranks are occupied already 
. But he managed to bring a really bad car to the podium (lucky one) and in my opinion he did generally OK this season, better than his team mate.
12th Kazuki Nakajima
He perhaps did better than many would have expected. But after quite impressive early season point scoring performances he faded away, same as the performance of the Williams car. He is OK but I wonder if he would still be with Williams if not for the Toyota engine deal …
11th Nico Rosberg
Not the best car but several Q3 qualifying performances and two podiums including his career best 2nd place finish in Singapore make this Rosberg’s best Formula 1 season so far although he scored less points and finished lower in drivers championship (13th with 17 points) than in 2007 (9th with 20 points). We can expect the “Rosberg to …” rumours and speculations to begin soon as 2009 will likely be his last season with Williams …
How would your 15th to 11th look ?
Stay tuned for the Part 3 (10th – 6th) and Part 4 (top 5).
Photo: Red Bull/GEPA
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For the most part I agree with your evaluation of drivers. My list would be very close to the same. The main difference being that I would rank Coulthard lower & Kovalainen higher.
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OK. My list from 15 to 11 would be:
15. Bourdais
14. Barrichello
13. Nakajima
12. Kovalainen
11. Rosberg
Note I placed Coulthard in my buttom list and so he does not appear here, while Kovalainen does.
I guess it depend on what parameters you use in determining ranking.
It is clear to me than when a driver like Coulhard is beat so severely by his team mate and has so few finishes that then there is something wrong. Barrichello and Button are tough to rank as the Honda was not very competitive this year. My reason for ranking Kovalainen higher is to remember that it was his good driving in the past that has earned him the seat with McLaren, and that his team mate was none other than the champion. Still I agree Kovalainen was disappointing this year.
thanks for the thumbs up
So far the rankings were quite easy the top ten and especially the top 5 are tougher
I am trying to disregard as much as possible the car and focus on the driver here so expect some controversial 1-5 positions 
Bourdais was a bit disappointing but Toro Rosso should keep him to see what he can achieve with the new car. They can always bring someone new in during the season if he does not perform …
It appears a lot of your rankings depend on the car.
I would say Barrichello did fantastic with a horrible car, and would place him easily in the top 10. Same for Rosberg. Coulthard was horrible all year, clearly outperformed by his team mate, and usually out of the race by crash taking other cars with him. I would consider him near bottom with Piquet.
I tried to keep my as independent on cars as possible but it is not that easy
. at the end this is all very subjective opinion
you are right about Coulthad but I had already all the bottom places occupied, there are only that many available