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Originally Posted by SFDMALEX
The whole discussion of driving style is pretty much useless in this day in age to be honest.
It will go as far as left or right foot braking.
There is only one fastest line, and there is only one way to drive that line in order to get everything out of it. Period. So if you watch the top 4 qual spots they all drive identicaly. The only difference is how well each drive exploints his brakes and his grip. And that is simply how late they brake, and how early and how hard they get on the throttle. And we are talking thousands of a second difference here.
This only applies to qual however.
Driving style today can only be discussed in terms of racing. That is how each drive goes about passing, protecting the line etc.
So in that respect Kimi is fairly clean and safe.
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I disagree.
First of all there is no such thing as only one line on every track and every circumstance. There is a fastest line but that changes based on circumstance - is it raining, is there dust on track, is the car loose, is the car understeering, etc. What is the driver behind trying to do. All these factors make you adopt a different line.
After qualifying, Rosberg made a comment that the difference between Sepang and Bahrain was that Sepang offered a lot more lines to experiment with.
If you read couple of Peter Windsor's articles in F1 racing, he's spends quite some time talking about driver styles. There was an awesome article a couple years back where Peter compared all the drivers on the grid during testing in Barcelona for a couple corners. There was a huge difference between how the drivers approached the corner. Some turned in early while on the brakes (like Schumacher and Coulthard) and others braked in a straight line and then turned in hard (like Villeneuve and Hakkinen). I think Peter rated the drivers on visual speed, accuracy (did he hit the corner the same way every time) and so on.
Left or right foot braking is normally a matter of driver preference but left foot braking certainly helps in that it allows simultaneous application of both pedals to subtly rotate the car in the corner. This is of great help in fast corners. I remember a good example of this in the comparison between Michael and Rubens at Turn 1 in Suzuka and the Maggots/Becketts complex in Silverstone. Michael made up about 0.2-0.3 seconds over Rubens thru left foot braking - he carried more speed into the corner.
I think DC and Jenson are perhaps the smoothest drivers on the grid today. Compared to them drivers like Kimi and Montoya are more on the edge - their cars are always dancing about on the corners.
If there was no such difference in driving style why would a car be good to one driver and not his teammate but after a couple fundamental changes it would suit the other guy more. A case in point was Toyota in 2005 - Ralf kept complaining that the car was not giving him enough confidence in braking so he kept a margin and was slower than Trulli. But then when the revised car came out, it suited Ralf's driving style better and he did a better job.