Right, but still, rather then just admitting he was outclassed, still grasping for options. Drivers obvious have better and worse seasons, but you're still dancing away from admitting he was just outright beaten. Vettel has never beaten a high class driver before remember. The biggest difference for me was just the class of the team mate he faced was new for him, he's traditionally had fairly weak team mates.

That's why having 33% less track time due to reliability issues is, to many people, relevant in understanding what happened in 2014. When you've got a radically different formula, with radically different engines and radically different aero packages, and a driver has no time to get accustomed to it because his car breaks down every 3 laps, and spends the entire season catching up, that goes a way to reasonably explaining what happened in 2014.

If that was the case you'd expect them to get closer as the season went on, but Vettel was relatively his best against Ricciardo at the start of the year and the margin continued to grow as Ricciardo settled in and was arguably at its largest at the season end.

But regardless, you're still just looking for justifications and not admitting he was just outclassed. In fact, despite you being happy to admit how much Webber destroyed Vettel by (and if there were any underlying issues) you're still not admitting Ricciardo destroyed Vettel by equal numbers. You think Webber had no reasons when he was beaten? Of course he did, he was up against intra team favoritism, his own body weight and for most of 2009 he was severely injured from a pre season crash. All drivers have their issues which lead to outcomes. But my point is at the end of the day it doesn't really matter, especially in a season so one sided as 2014.