Ash's Infernape wasn't even that good.
Turtwig (Torterra by the end of things) lost almost every non-Team Rocket battle it was in once it evolved into Grotle, Gliscor was rarely used while a Gligar, and Gliscor had only marginally improved, but had a tendency to lose when it mattered (Read: Whenever fighting anyone but Team Rocket), Buizel was a cocky bastard and, in the end, nothing special, really. Gible was a one trick pony. It was a small Pokemon, but it knew Draco Meteor. Otherwise, it bit on things until it was KO'd. Meanwhile, Pikachu was at what I'd call his "Mid tier" in terms of his fluctuating power. Always fast and agile, like usual, but he seemed to drop in power, basically having to rely on Volt Tackle to do any damage.

In Sinnoh, the only real powerhouses Ash had were Staraptor and Infernape, and that might only because everyone else on his team were jobbing like crazy.

Yeah, Ash never really was the best at building a team and Sinnoh really showed that.

Actually, his Kanto team was worse, really. His Sinnoh team was a little more balanced, he just sucked at training.
The show was also too biased towards Infernape. Need to show the threat level of an enemy? Let's just have Torterra, Pikachu, or Gliscor lose to them so Infernape can win and prove his strength. It was dumb, and gave us a poor scale to measure his power against.

The anime in general is a poor scale to measure any Pokemon's power.

*glares at Pikachu knocking out Rock/Ground types with fricken Thunderbolt*

'aim for the horn!'

All. My. Hate.

Best part of the Kanto/Indigo League season~

Funny thing is, Ash didn't even have that bad of a team in Kanto if he just evolved his Pokemon and didn't release his best ones.

Moral of the story, don't aspire to be Ash.

Be his cousin Red instead.:lol