basti313 wrote: ↑04 Sep 2023, 13:44
ringo wrote: ↑04 Sep 2023, 08:09
50 point gap in a car that cant even get on the podium without some mishaps by the front runners is a big gap between teammates.
As for the qualy gap. When lewis stops tweaking, things will lean back in his favour.
He tends to tweak too much and mess up fp2 and fp3 and doesnt get in good enough running for qualy.
??? It has a long history...when it was Rosberg vs. Ham it was completely normal that one of the two messes up Q3 and is 0.3-0.4sec behind the other one. Just look at the old Q times.
Today F1 is so competitive that 0.4s loss in Q2 ends the Q for you...
So I do not see what you mean with tweaking, I would rather say it is the risk he takes for the last lap in the Q sessions.
For the gap: I agree, the gap is huge. We see a particularly bad season by Russel. Similar to the bad half season by Ham last year...so also not something special, this happens for nearly everyone on the grid.
FP2 and FP3 are practice sessions. Not qualy sessions.
Though in fariness, both drivers have messed up qualifying as well. Both are human and make errors, both in practice looking for an edge, and also in qualifying where conversations are had with the race engineer on how to prep tyres and when is the perfect time to be on the track. There are a lot of moving parts, so I for one do not overly judge George or Lewis for some of the poorer outcomes with W14. They're both virtually operating at the same level.
George is also underrated. I saw somewhere someone saying he is a tier 1b driver. I find it funny, because only Max and Lewis make less errors. The other top drivers Lando and Charles make more errors and underperform more.
Overall I think think, as you say things are so close on track a few tenths can mean many places both in qualy and race results.
Lewis' battle with Alonso is a prime example. Alonso lost a good bunch of points to Lewis, through a tiny window, between Albon and 2 Mclarens. Lewis was fortunate to get by and gain 5 seconds on Albon to maintain 6th while Alonso was in 9th.