Andres125sx wrote: ↑17 Oct 2022, 08:07
Yes, and I could have an affair with Scarlett Johansson... but reality is no, I wont. Have you ever seen any car winning most of the races without being dominant? Then no need to imagine absurd scenarios
It's a thought experiment obviousy, which has been an acceptable form of rhetoric at least since the classical era. It serves to illustrate that a driver/team can win consistently without a dominant car. Whether or not that happens in practice is irrelevant, it simply means that the notion that "x always wins" or "x wins >y%"
in itself is not definitive proof of
car dominance. One needs to consider the conditions under which it happens.
As I posted before, the performace of a team is a function of at least three factors; team_performance = f(car, driver, strategy). And if one considers performance versus competitors, one could say it has four factors team_performance = f(car, driver, strategy, competition performance). If competitors consistently fail, or your driver and strategy is much better than that of the main competitor, it could still be that you win the (vast) majority of races without having a dominant car. And we could do other thought experiments. What if a car always starts 2nd (with a different team in front), but always ends first by 0.1s (in absence of calamities) because they systematically mananage to perform faster pitstops and overtake the competitor in the pit. Is that a dominant car? To me, no, it's dominant strategy.
And in my opinion, the data does point to that for at least the first half of the season; in cases where RB won with a big margin over Fer, there was an issue with Fer (strategy or crash). In the other situations, it was typically a close call between Verstappen and Leclerc. Often Max came out on top - which can be because in 'uneventful' races the strategy of RB was better than of Fer, or because Max is a somewhat better driver than Charles, or because the RB18 is a marginally better car - but it is not a sign of dominance. Some have argued that RB decided to run with a less aggressive engine setup, but to me, that seems risky if the margin is only 1-3 seconds at the line for the lead driver, and the second driver is not on the podium. So, just looking at number of wins in itself is not enough, conditions matter, and I don't think the conditions pre-summer break point at car dominance.
Perez did 9 podiums, same as Lecrerc. Would you say Lecrerc is struggling to get on the podium?
I would say Leclerc was hampered by issues (strategy, technical, and in some cases driver error) more frequently than Perez. In 'uneventful' races Leclerc, and also Sainz, could compete with Perez and often beat Perez. Which hints there is a large driver factor at play. If it was just the car that was dominant, then also a mediocre/decent driver would often end second. We did not see that with the RB18, and in most cases where Perez did end 2nd (before summer) there were, again, issues with Ferrari at play. It could very well be that RB will score consistent 1-2 finishes in absence of Ferrari issues from now on, we will see.
If that was true, Lecrerc and Sainz should be ahead in the table... but they´re not, Max is first and Perez is second, with same DNFs as Lecrerc
Nope, it can be other effects are at play. Issues don't always lead to DNFs - poor strategic choices, long pitstops because one of the wheels was missing, etc. don't show up as DNFs; they do show up as poor scores that can alter the ranking.
The season is the whole season, it doesn´t matter how strong or weak the beginning of the season was, it´s the whole season what counts.
I guess that is more of a philosophical point - should we average performance over a season, or is 'dominance' something dynamic that can shift? To me, it is the second. Brawn was dominant at the start of 2009, but certainly not at the end. Over the whole season, that averaged out to being non-dominant, but just good enough to stick the win.
For this season, RB as a team is certainly dominant on average; in other words, the combination (car,driver,strategy, relative performance to competition) is dominant. But in isolation, the car factor was not dominant in the first half of the season if the conditions are considered. Whether it is dominant on average over the entire season? Maybe, depends a bit on what happens in races to come.
Apart from that, I agree Max is responsible of a good part of the domination, but it´s not a black or white scenario, it is also possible that the car is dominant and Max has been the best. That´s the reason he won the title with 4 races remaining, that´s a huge margin can´t be achieved without both a dominant car and a dominant driver.
I think the notion that it is not black or white is important to remark. There are certainly people that want to attribute Hamilton's title streak to being 'just the car'. I disagree there, the notion that he crushed his teammates in most seasons shows that he was also dominant as a driver, and very likely would still have been WDC in a car that was equal to the competition. Driver performance is harder to appreciate if the car is not dominant, but that doesn't mean it's not there.
