GCXX wrote: ↑27 Nov 2023, 12:04
How can you compare cars from two different generations?
When people say RB19 is the best car ever - I think it's obviously them who make that comparison. It wasn't my intention for the reason both you and I mentioned. But if some still want to compare and find out which car was 'the best car ever', there is no other way than comparing ultimate performance, taking reliability into account too, because fast car cannot be great, if it breaks down all the time.
So, cornering speed and overall speed over a lap, in race trim, reliability is more than reliable metric to say which car is better, especially when the difference is big and obvious, not couple of tenths which could come from a driver.
Yeah, you are right, of course even RB16B was better than RB19. It wasn't near as competitive though, let alone successful statistically.
Statistics might be very misleading very often.
How can people confuse concepts of 'the best' and 'the most successful' statistically is frankly beyond me. We've seen both cars achieving more than they arguably deserved based on raw performance, and great, fast and super competitive cars wasted by underperforming drivers and teams making operational mistakes.
Imagine Aston didnt make that mistake on tires choice in Monaco. That's minus one race win for RB19. Imagine if Max and Checo came into each other once, like Mercedes drivers did in 2014 and 2016 to give up on another dominant victory. That's minus another race win. Imagine if Red bull had a bad final pitstop say in Qatar, and Piastri being very close behind won it. Could that have happened? easily. Imagine Max went wide and crashed in wet Zandvoort driving on slicks? That's minus another win. Would that say something about technical advantage of RB19 over its rivals? No, nothing. If red bull won 17 or 18 out of 22 races this year, instead of 21, would people talk about RB19 as the most dominant (let alone best) car ever? I think you know the answer and hopefully you finally understand what I meant from the beginning. The whole team and its lead driver performed way above anything we've seen in F1 ever before. That made their results look so dominant, even if the technical advantage they enjoyed wasn't near as vast and comprehensive as it looks judging by race results and Championship points.