bhall wrote:Let's try it this way then: hypothetically program two android drivers with the ability to take any car they operate to the razor's edge of their performance capabilities without committing a single error in the process. Now put those identical android drivers into two cars of varying capability and allow them to race each other. The android in the fastest car will win every time even though both androids performed at the exact same level. Does that then make the winning android the best android anyway?
This is why it's always the car, and it's quite easy to determine a car's capability by what it enables, because if a car does it, that means the car can do it, because the car did do it.
That's a very good point bhall. Couldn't agree more. I think one of the prime problems in any of these arguments is our inability to get past the fairy-tale dream that
its always 70% driver (30% being the car). This perhaps used to be the case in a time and era when cars were inherently more difficult and challenging to drive. Or perhaps this was as much a pipe dream back then when the likes of Senna raced as well, even if I think it's undisputable that the drivers back then were a bigger factor. At the end of the day though - a driver can always only exploit what the car allows him to. Anything above is an impossability by definition.
Given that the cars back in the older days were more difficult to drive - less reliable, less consistant, more erratic and not as glued to the track as they are todays, I would say it was much harder to achive this.
If we use abitrary numbers to put a meaning to it; i would guess that perhaps in the old days, drivers were getting out between 70-80% out of a car, with the rare exception over 80%. Anything significantly higher than that, and you were well within dangerous territory that could get you killed in an instant. This was also the reason why a good driver on his day like Senna in Monaco, could extract significantly more performance out of a car, which shows how the lap times back then varied not by hundreths, or tenths, but up to seconds.
Now days, with the overal more consistent behaviour of the cars, thanks to downforce, reliability, better track surfaces/conditions, help from pitwall, computers (doing complex simulations or supplying data to analyse performance of driver and car) and more safety (less risk), I think drivers are much closer to exploiting that last bit of performance from a car. I would guess that most drivers in todays Formula are much closer to maximizing the full potential, hence why we are seeing team-mates (both identical cars) seperated usually by tenths to hundreths.
Having that said, I think it's clear that this years car are again more difficult to drive than last years, due to less downforce and more unpredictable behaviour of the turbo'ed cars. They're still a far way off the cars that were driven in madness a couple of years back. Also, not every car in a given Formula is as easy to drive as others. I would say some cars are significantly easier to drive (and extract more performance out of as a result) than others. I think this is where Alonso's ability springs to mind when people say that he dragged that F2012 to the last race and nearly won it, compared to the Redbull which is generally considered to have been the most dominant car in the last couple of years. By the same logic, I think this years Mercedes takes that award easily - it must be quite a lot easier to drive and extract that amount of performance than perhaps some of the lesser capable cars this season. An easier car to drive, also makes it easier to extract more performance out of, because it gives you that little bit of more confidence at or close to the limit.
Just my 2 cents worth.
