2021 Red Bull Racing F1 Team

[mstar]

Verstappen was too fast and too good for Hamilton this year. This season was one of the best I have seen from a driver for a long time.

Well as Newey said RB should of wrapped up the title before Jeddah, as he thinks overall they had the best package. Lewis TBH kept the title fight alive and lets be honest was winning in abu dhabi on pure pace. So we can't really say Max was too fast, too good can we, as lewis came on so strong in the last 4 races?

I wonder why Lewis couldn't be that strong earlier than last 4 races?
I wonder if Abu Dhabi was 11th race of the season and Hungary would have been the last? How would the emotions looked?
People have short memory to forget the misfortunes and misery piled on Max by Mercedes drivers, which gave the opportunity in the first place for Lewis to have a chance till the last race. People say, Lewis was robbed in Abu Dhabi. Well, it was robbed twice from Max, just that it was mid season, people forgot.

TBH with the RB car max should of wrapped up the championship way before Jeddah imo. The stats back this up, as Adrian Newey mentioned.

[PlatinumZealot]

Verstappen was too fast and too good for Hamilton this year. This season was one of the best I have seen from a driver for a long time.

Well as Newey said RB should of wrapped up the title before Jeddah, as he thinks overall they had the best package. Lewis TBH kept the title fight alive and lets be honest was winning in abu dhabi on pure pace. So we can't really say Max was too fast, too good can we, as lewis came on so strong in the last 4 races?

I wonder why Lewis couldn't be that strong earlier than last 4 races?

I think it was more of a case of RedBull having very weak setups and losing their composure. Mistakes set in. Poor starts. Set-up compromises hurt top speed and race pace. Not noticing yellow flags. A whole bunch of stuff unravelled for them more than one single rival driver setting the world on fire.

I wonder if Abu Dhabi was 11th race of the season and Hungary would have been the last? How would the emotions looked?

I think emotions would be the same except the result would have been reversed.

People have short memory to forget the misfortunes and misery piled on Max by Mercedes drivers, which gave the opportunity in the first place for Lewis to have a chance till the last race. People say, Lewis was robbed in Abu Dhabi. Well, it was robbed twice from Max, just that it was mid season, people forgot.

You said the Mercedes drivers piled on mizery to Max and he was robbed?

None of the Mercedes drivers crashed into Max over the season so undue misery there.

Bahrain... Max undid himself, overtook off-track.

Silverstone... Max miscaclulated how close his rear tyre was to Lewis front tyres and turned in too early.. (if we looked on on-boards of both drivers.)

Hungary... Was a racing incident. It was a literal domino effect of Bottas hitting another car which Max didn't see sliding towards him. It's lap one so most drivers are not noticing random torpedos coming at them but maybe it could have been avoided.

Don't see the FIA robbing him in any of those situations.

I think FIA was kind to them overall. RedBull and Max did a great job that was enough to take advantage of the situations presented to them in the floor regulations the, conditions in the races and the officiating actions of the officials. They are champions now.

Interested to see Adrian's interpretation of the rules. I noticed he spent much time at the race tracks and not at the factory this year.

[diffuser]

Verstappen was too fast and too good for Hamilton this year. This season was one of the best I have seen from a driver for a long time.

Well as Newey said RB should of wrapped up the title before Jeddah, as he thinks overall they had the best package. Lewis TBH kept the title fight alive and lets be honest was winning in abu dhabi on pure pace. So we can't really say Max was too fast, too good can we, as lewis came on so strong in the last 4 races?

I wonder why Lewis couldn't be that strong earlier than last 4 races?
I wonder if Abu Dhabi was 11th race of the season and Hungary would have been the last? How would the emotions looked?
People have short memory to forget the misfortunes and misery piled on Max by Mercedes drivers, which gave the opportunity in the first place for Lewis to have a chance till the last race. People say, Lewis was robbed in Abu Dhabi. Well, it was robbed twice from Max, just that it was mid season, people forgot.

Merc was faster in most of the races after the the summer break, not just the last 5. But then SPA was Rained out, Italy there was the accident.

[mwillems]

Verstappen was too fast and too good for Hamilton this year. This season was one of the best I have seen from a driver for a long time.

Well as Newey said RB should of wrapped up the title before Jeddah, as he thinks overall they had the best package. Lewis TBH kept the title fight alive and lets be honest was winning in abu dhabi on pure pace. So we can't really say Max was too fast, too good can we, as lewis came on so strong in the last 4 races?

I wonder why Lewis couldn't be that strong earlier than last 4 races?
I wonder if Abu Dhabi was 11th race of the season and Hungary would have been the last? How would the emotions looked?
People have short memory to forget the misfortunes and misery piled on Max by Mercedes drivers, which gave the opportunity in the first place for Lewis to have a chance till the last race. People say, Lewis was robbed in Abu Dhabi. Well, it was robbed twice from Max, just that it was mid season, people forgot.

I believe in the first half of the season it took Lewis some time to recover from Covid and get his energy back.
I don't know how much this affected him, but the fact he did raise it and spoke of a lack of energy suggests to me there is truth to it. I guess that added to the fact the RB was the better car and Max was driving great in that first part of the season combined to work against him.

[Edax]

I get the sense that this is not the situation that Honda wanted to win under, you know the whole honour thing, but they will take it never the less.

The Bushido way of achieving victory was only through upholding honour. This is not just a samuraithing, organizations still use it as a guide. I can imagine Honda may contemplate saying next year to maks things right in their concience.

The unlikely victory of the underdog is also a very Japanese thing. To walk away from this track with pole, fastest lap and the win would certainly qualify. Even if it took a bit of divine intervention.

But I guess what is important for Honda as a company is that they finally showed reliable engines this year. Those early years must have really stung: the GP2 comments by alonso, blown up engines left and right, the rejection by Mclaren.

[ispano6]

I get the sense that this is not the situation that Honda wanted to win under, you know the whole honour thing, but they will take it never the less.

The Bushido way of achieving victory was only through upholding honour. This is not just a samuraithing, organizations still use it as a guide. I can imagine Honda may contemplate saying next year to maks things right in their concience.

I'm sure many at Honda feel hard done by Mercedes. Should have been both championships really. Honda are already "staying" next year anyway.

[ispano6]

Verstappen was too fast and too good for Hamilton this year. This season was one of the best I have seen from a driver for a long time.

Well as Newey said RB should of wrapped up the title before Jeddah, as he thinks overall they had the best package. Lewis TBH kept the title fight alive and lets be honest was winning in abu dhabi on pure pace. So we can't really say Max was too fast, too good can we, as lewis came on so strong in the last 4 races?

Newey meant Baku, Silverstone, Hungary shouldn't have happened, and if it didn't, it would have been wrapped up before/by Jeddah. Shame Suzuka didn't happen either. Max actually hasn't finished a race at Suzuka under Honda power.

[SiLo]

Well as Newey said RB should of wrapped up the title before Jeddah, as he thinks overall they had the best package. Lewis TBH kept the title fight alive and lets be honest was winning in abu dhabi on pure pace. So we can't really say Max was too fast, too good can we, as lewis came on so strong in the last 4 races?

I wonder why Lewis couldn't be that strong earlier than last 4 races?
I wonder if Abu Dhabi was 11th race of the season and Hungary would have been the last? How would the emotions looked?
People have short memory to forget the misfortunes and misery piled on Max by Mercedes drivers, which gave the opportunity in the first place for Lewis to have a chance till the last race. People say, Lewis was robbed in Abu Dhabi. Well, it was robbed twice from Max, just that it was mid season, people forgot.

I believe in the first half of the season it took Lewis some time to recover from Covid and get his energy back.
I don't know how much this affected him, but the fact he did raise it and spoke of a lack of energy suggests to me there is truth to it. I guess that added to the fact the RB was the better car and Max was driving great in that first part of the season combined to work against him.

I will never forget him almost collapsing on the podium in Hungary.

I think Newey is right and wrong, they should have had a big lead, but due to crashes and misfortune they didn't. I don't think you can take away from the second half performance from both Lewis and Mercedes.

Across the entire year though Max was the better driver, although his aggressiveness will have soured that a little for many.

[diffuser]

To whomsoever it may concern....

https://racingnews365.com/norris-versta ... e-best-car

Norris: Verstappen won the title without the best car

Oh a comment from his friend who has no clue and was just focusing on his job. How sweet.
The stats says otherwise Ryar.
You can count the race wins yourself. Max did not win a race he was not supposed to.
He has led the most laps and that literally tells you which car was fastest over all the laps in the season. And then the matter on if he won the chamionship on his own is still debated.
athe FIA has put up his 5 best wins of the season. I tend to agree with their selection.
And those wins i think were pretty much par for the course. His best drive for me is Zandvoort because the car was better but it was still a close race.
The rest were all expected wins.
Most dominant wins were in Austria.
Dont think he had any wins driving the "slower" car according to you.

10 poles to Red Bull Vs 9 Poles to Mercedes
11 Wins to Red Bull Vs 9 Wins to Mercedes

Lewis hasn't been the same qualifier that he used to be, which is evident with him losing qualifying so many times to Bottas. In some places, it has been argued that, Lewis sets up car more for races, which is probably true with the kind of pace the car generally has in races. So, qualifying is not a true representation of the car's pace, atleast in Lewis' hands. Max obviously, at this stage of his career, a better qualifier than Lewis.

In races, obviously, a lot of things were messed up by Lewis and the team. Imola (poor start despite pole and beaching), Baku (opportunity missed), Monaco (poor weekend for Lewis, despite Bottas being less than half a tenth behind Max), Hungary (poor strategy and stuck behind Alonso), Italy (poor quali for Lewis, strategy + pit stop blunder). With that as a context, stats could have looked very different. I guess that is why, Norris thinks Mercedes had the faster car.

Typically the winner of the constructors is arguably the fastest and most reliability.

I think Hamilton always lost some poles to Bottas. Bottas is an excellent driver that has lost his confidence. He's much closer to the Max's and Lewis's than you think. He struggles with tire management.

[seense]

Max did not win a race he was not supposed to.

Zandvoort. He couldn't pull away from Lewis. Austin, they won it on strategy not on the average pace. Max said so himself that they shouldnt have won these two races.
In mexico yes Max had clearly the fastest car. The other win was abu dahbi where Mercedes again had the faster car.

So i dont get you. It's quite obvious Merc had the better car from mid season onwards.

[ispano6]

Max Verstappen has the record for most podiums in a season, and most likely would have been a perfect score if it weren't for being taken out by Pirelli and Mercedes! Definitely was a champions drive this year. No one deserved it more and the most popular driver won, so it was a win for F1!

BTW, keep it on topic, praise/defend Mercedes and their drivers in the other team thread.

[DChemTech]

Max did not win a race he was not supposed to.

Zandvoort. He couldn't pull away from Lewis. Austin, they won it on strategy not on the average pace. Max said so himself that they shouldnt have won these two races.
In mexico yes Max had clearly the fastest car. The other win was abu dahbi where Mercedes again had the faster car.

So i dont get you. It's quite obvious Merc had the better car from mid season onwards.

Exactly. In the first part of the season, the balance as to who seemed to have the better car switched nearly per-race. After catching a break with the tire change, the balance shifted towards Mercedes - visible from race-pace (especially the last few races - if Max was ahead, he could not drive away. If Lewis was, he could), but also reflected in Max's ever more aggressive (sometimes overly so) driving style. He very well realised that he would not be able to stay ahead otherwise. He had to extract every little bit of performance from the car to stay ahead, and he needed to take risks.

Of course there is this long standing discussion about "can a driver drive better than the car allows" (as was e.g. said of Alonso in the past), or is the car that wins, by definition, the fastest car? I think the answer to both is no. Of course in a very pragmatic sense, the driver can never drive better than the car allows - but performance is much harder to extract from some cars than from others. And that is where drivers can excel; extracting the most performance from a car, especially one that's hard to perform well in. And this is what Max did exceptionally this year - he got more out of his car than Lewis did. Like e.g. Schumacher did in comparison the the elder Verstappen or initially poor Ferraris, or like Alonso did in several seasons.

I think that is well illustrated from e.g. qualifying data. The qualifying gap between Max and Checo is much larger, both in position and time-gap, than between Lewis and Bottas. Bottas was on the podium much more than Perez, too - again much bigger teammate gap at RB than MB. And there's a reason statistical analysis assigns such a high score to Max compared to all other drivers this year. Sure, I understand some LH fans are angry and find the whole thing undeserved, but the numbers don't agree. Sure, Max went over the line sometimes, but that happens when you need to drive exceptionally continuously to have a shot at victory, and all in all, he harmed his own scorechart with that more than anything else. In the end, that does not take away from what he managed this year - an exceptional drive that squeezed every little bit of performance from the car, which was absolutely championship worthy.

[Wouter]

Update: Horner extends contract as team principal Red Bull Racing until at least 2026.

By: Ronald Vording, Journalist, Co-auteur: Christian Nimmervoll
Dec 22 2021 07:20
Christian Horner will stay longer at Red Bull Racing as team principal. Helmut Marko revealed to the Austrian Servus TV
that behind the scenes work has been done on a new contract from the Brit. However, the motorsports chief was still in the middle whether the paperwork was already signed or not.
Inquiry by Motorsport.com shows that the signatures have indeed been made and that Horner will stay until at least 2026.

https://nl.motorsport.com/f1/news/helmu ... l/6946730/

[TNTHead]

Max did not win a race he was not supposed to.

Zandvoort. He couldn't pull away from Lewis. Austin, they won it on strategy not on the average pace. Max said so himself that they shouldnt have won these two races.
In mexico yes Max had clearly the fastest car. The other win was abu dahbi where Mercedes again had the faster car.

So i dont get you. It's quite obvious Merc had the better car from mid season onwards.

Exactly. In the first part of the season, the balance as to who seemed to have the better car switched nearly per-race. After catching a break with the tire change, the balance shifted towards Mercedes - visible from race-pace (especially the last few races - if Max was ahead, he could not drive away. If Lewis was, he could), but also reflected in Max's ever more aggressive (sometimes overly so) driving style. He very well realised that he would not be able to stay ahead otherwise. He had to extract every little bit of performance from the car to stay ahead, and he needed to take risks.

Of course there is this long standing discussion about "can a driver drive better than the car allows" (as was e.g. said of Alonso in the past), or is the car that wins, by definition, the fastest car? I think the answer to both is no. Of course in a very pragmatic sense, the driver can never drive better than the car allows - but performance is much harder to extract from some cars than from others. And that is where drivers can excel; extracting the most performance from a car, especially one that's hard to perform well in. And this is what Max did exceptionally this year - he got more out of his car than Lewis did. Like e.g. Schumacher did in comparison the the elder Verstappen or initially poor Ferraris, or like Alonso did in several seasons.

I think that is well illustrated from e.g. qualifying data. The qualifying gap between Max and Checo is much larger, both in position and time-gap, than between Lewis and Bottas. Bottas was on the podium much more than Perez, too - again much bigger teammate gap at RB than MB. And there's a reason statistical analysis assigns such a high score to Max compared to all other drivers this year. Sure, I understand some LH fans are angry and find the whole thing undeserved, but the numbers don't agree. Sure, Max went over the line sometimes, but that happens when you need to drive exceptionally continuously to have a shot at victory, and all in all, he harmed his own scorechart with that more than anything else. In the end, that does not take away from what he managed this year - an exceptional drive that squeezed every little bit of performance from the car, which was absolutely championship worthy.

Agreed, although you make the implicit assumption that Bottas and Perez are comparable performance indicators. This is unknown because they didn't drive in the same car in a season in the past. Actually I would suggest that Bottas is better in qualifying and Perez is better in race pace. Although the appraised tyre management of Perez was (compared to VER) not obviously clear. So comparing VER to HAM via teams mates is quite difficult if not impossible.

[DChemTech]

Zandvoort. He couldn't pull away from Lewis. Austin, they won it on strategy not on the average pace. Max said so himself that they shouldnt have won these two races.
In mexico yes Max had clearly the fastest car. The other win was abu dahbi where Mercedes again had the faster car.

So i dont get you. It's quite obvious Merc had the better car from mid season onwards.

Exactly. In the first part of the season, the balance as to who seemed to have the better car switched nearly per-race. After catching a break with the tire change, the balance shifted towards Mercedes - visible from race-pace (especially the last few races - if Max was ahead, he could not drive away. If Lewis was, he could), but also reflected in Max's ever more aggressive (sometimes overly so) driving style. He very well realised that he would not be able to stay ahead otherwise. He had to extract every little bit of performance from the car to stay ahead, and he needed to take risks.

Of course there is this long standing discussion about "can a driver drive better than the car allows" (as was e.g. said of Alonso in the past), or is the car that wins, by definition, the fastest car? I think the answer to both is no. Of course in a very pragmatic sense, the driver can never drive better than the car allows - but performance is much harder to extract from some cars than from others. And that is where drivers can excel; extracting the most performance from a car, especially one that's hard to perform well in. And this is what Max did exceptionally this year - he got more out of his car than Lewis did. Like e.g. Schumacher did in comparison the the elder Verstappen or initially poor Ferraris, or like Alonso did in several seasons.

I think that is well illustrated from e.g. qualifying data. The qualifying gap between Max and Checo is much larger, both in position and time-gap, than between Lewis and Bottas. Bottas was on the podium much more than Perez, too - again much bigger teammate gap at RB than MB. And there's a reason statistical analysis assigns such a high score to Max compared to all other drivers this year. Sure, I understand some LH fans are angry and find the whole thing undeserved, but the numbers don't agree. Sure, Max went over the line sometimes, but that happens when you need to drive exceptionally continuously to have a shot at victory, and all in all, he harmed his own scorechart with that more than anything else. In the end, that does not take away from what he managed this year - an exceptional drive that squeezed every little bit of performance from the car, which was absolutely championship worthy.

Agreed, although you make the implicit assumption that Bottas and Perez are comparable performance indicators. This is unknown because they didn't drive in the same car in a season in the past. Actually I would suggest that Bottas is better in qualifying and Perez is better in race pace. Although the appraised tyre management of Perez was (compared to VER) not obviously clear. So comparing VER to HAM via teams mates is quite difficult if not impossible.

Yes, that is indeed an implicit assumption that can be questioned. Overall, I think they are similar tier although I would, on the past few seasons, perhaps rate Perez a bit higher. He dissapointed in that sense this year. But perhaps the RB is just harder to extract performance from than the MB