cheeRS wrote: ↑14 Jul 2021, 23:57
Sieper wrote: ↑13 Jul 2021, 23:13
Is it weird that I am a bit ticked off but that “dominant car” talk now that Max won a few races? When have Max and checo qualified P1 and P2 by a second on any non redbull car? Never. In fact, it was mostly just Max followed by 2 mercedesses so far. Last season we had several time Merc on 1 and 2, sometimes even by over a second.
I hope they can indeed turn also this deficit around.
Only replying since you asked for it. Dominant is certainly subjective here.
If a car wins every race by .25 sec it's still considered dominant, just as one that wins by 10 sec every race.
Two things are true for any reasonable F1 fan:
1. Max is top tier, and definitely better than Checo overall
2. The RBR16B has proven to be the better car, at least up until now.
You can say what you want about Lewis' skill or whether it's just the car, but the fact is that rarely, rarely will any driver out qualify him by a large margin unless the car is clearly better. In France/Austria/Styria, Merc barely stood a chance. To me, that's dominant, as it probably is to most reasonable fans.
In Styrian GP, Red Bull outqualified the next best car (Mercedes) by 0.194. In Austrian GP, Red Bull outqualified the next best car (McLaren) by 0.48. These are margins, traditionlly considered to be closely matched cars. Don't discount that the McLaren car wasn't good. No good car can qualify on the front row by such a thin margin. Being unable to manage the tyres in races, is a different proposition.
The other major factor that need to be considered, which often is getting ignored is, a driver in his late 30s, can't be as quick as a driver in his early 20s. That's just human anatomy. Lewis used to be ultra quick in his early 20s, where he used to pull some stunning qualifying laps that used to surprise a clinical operator like Button (by his own admission). So, who knows, if Max is put in that Mercedes, he might be producing the same results that he is producing with RB16B. Any margin less than 3 tenths, a greater driver can overcome with his own skills, like Alonso used to do in the RB dominance days to come close to beating Seb. A margin less than 3 tenths, it's hard to distinguish if it the car or the driver that is making the difference.
The difference, IMHO, is, Max is aruguably the best driver on the grid. He is young, has matured faster than any other F1 driver of any generation and has a competitive car, with which he is making the difference. May be a younger Lewis in the W12, could have been spoiling the party for Max in qualifying, where every last hundredth matter. Look at Federer in the past 5 years, he was the same guy that used to beat anyone in his way, but is a pale shadow of his former self. Same with Rossi. The dominant Mercedes cars of the past few years, have obviously masked the physical degradation of a driver like Lewis. No offense, he is still a top quality, but just not the same like in his 20s. So, it may not be so much with the cars after all.
