Nico Rosberg is as good as Sebastian Vettel, but Adrian Sutil has been a real surprise of the season.<\/p>\n
Those are the opinions of Gerhard Berger, given during an interview with Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport.<\/p>\n
The Austrian and ten-time grand prix winner, 50, acknowledged the highly rated skills of Vettel, with whom he worked as a rookie at Toro Rosso in 2008.<\/p>\n
“He is incredibly mature,” said Berger.\u00a0 “It is true he is still making mistakes, but I put that in the category of lacking experience.<\/p>\n
“His biggest problem is that he probably underestimated Mark Webber.”<\/p>\n
Berger’s most flattering comments are reserved for Rosberg, who has surprised many observers this year by looking more competitive than his illustrious Mercedes teammate Michael Schumacher.<\/p>\n
“For me, Nico is on par with Vettel.\u00a0 He just needs the right car now to begin winning.<\/p>\n
“He has shown this year that he makes very few mistakes, that his setup is usually right, and that he is mostly ahead of Michael Schumacher.<\/p>\n
“If Rosberg and Vettel were sitting in identical cars, I would not know who to put my money on,” said the former McLaren and Ferrari driver.<\/p>\n
Berger is also impressed with Sutil, who has driven for F1’s Silverstone based team – as Spyker and now Force India – since 2007.<\/p>\n
“Last year I was laughing at him,” the veteran admitted.<\/p>\n
“I would never have believed he has this much potential.\u00a0 His speed is tremendous, and his mistakes have reduced dramatically.<\/p>\n
“For me, with Rosberg, he is the surprise of the season,” said Berger.<\/p>\n
Less impressive, according to Berger, is Nico Hulkenberg, but he is willing to give the Williams rookie some more time to prove himself.<\/p>\n
“He is in a learning phase,” said the Austrian.\u00a0 “He makes many more mistakes than Vettel and Rosberg did when they began, but Sutil was the same.<\/p>\n
“I think Hulkenberg’s mistakes are normal for a first year.\u00a0 If everything goes right, he is almost at the level of Barrichello — and that’s a compliment.<\/p>\n
“Barrichello is certainly the best man of the second league, and with his vast experience he doesn’t make mistakes,” added Berger.<\/p>\n
\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nico Rosberg is as good as Sebastian Vettel, but Adrian Sutil has been a real surprise of the season. Those are the opinions of Gerhard Berger, given during an interview with Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport. The Austrian and ten-time grand prix winner, 50, acknowledged the highly rated skills of Vettel, with whom he worked …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[5311,5262,5340,258,4,164],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7806"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7806"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7807,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7806\/revisions\/7807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}