[2018] Pecking order speculation thread

[CBeck113]

Come on and stop bi*ching about facts - this is "[2018] Pecking order speculation thread", so let people speculate, even if they don't share your opinion.

You're right but there are some people who state speculation as facts. That's my problem with that.

They need other help that we can't give them

[markovski19]

Alonso to win at least 1 race this season. That being Monaco

Sent from my SM-G950F using Tapatalk

[bauc]

1. Lana Rhoades
2. August Ames
3. Mia Malkova
4 Madison Ivy
5. Tori Black

Oh s**t, wrong forum

[Singabule]

1. Mercedes (but WDC goes to Vettel)
2. Ferrari
...
3. Red Bull
...
4. Renault
5. McLaren
6. Force India
...
7. Toro Rosso
...
8. Haas
9. Williams
10. Sauber

Agree with this, but hamilton can still clear winner as usual. Also STR is not that far to FI

[GPR-A duplicate2]

I don't see that. Mercedes was dominating most races from Barcelona. Could we let this bias out of this? There is no parameter by which we could compare these drivers. It's always the same here.

Well, let me attempt it. Using on track battles.
1. 2012 US GP - In equal car, Hamilton hunts down Vettel, after chasing him for a number of laps.
2. 2016 AUS GP - Vettel chases Hamilton to the end, but on penultimate lap, makes a mistake and gives up a close opportunity.
3. 2017 SPAIN GP - Hamilton hunts down Vettel, in equal cars.
4. 2017 BELGIUM GP - In spite of having the best possible chance to overtake (after SC restart), Vettel fails to overtake Hamilton.
5. 2017 US GP - Having lost the lead at the start, Hamilton hunts down Vettel.

I am not sure if I can recall more such close fights between these two over the years.

As for Hamilton's chasing abilities, almost every time Nico was ahead in tracks that offered opportunities to overtake, he did so emphatically. There isn't another driver who has such a distinction of hunting down. Last year, Bottas could hold back Vettel on two of best tracks for overtaking.

Forget about having dominating car, even when the car was struggling at the beginning of the season, Hamilton managed to take poles, while Vettel in a good car struggled.

I don't understand, how is that Hamilton can lose "IF" he is having a better car than Vettel (unless reliability of Mercedes is poor and obviously, we know the situation of reliability between Mercedes and Ferrari!). If someone would have said Alonso, instead of Vettel, I would have still thought about it.

None of this is fanboyism. Just what we have seen over the years.

[marvin78]

Again you state speculation as facts. It could be, that the car was even or better or worse but how do you know that? Again: That's pure speculation and nothing else. You could be right. I don't say that there is no chance, that eg. HAM is a better driver than VET (I would at "under certain conditions" or "in my opinion") but I don't know that and you don't know that. If you read your post from a neutral point of view, you wrote so much things that are purely guessed or speculated (or as "someone said, that a car was struggeling, it must be true" - yeah I am exaggerating) . I would never write this down in a way you did. I would always add "in my opinion" because that's all that it would be. I did not see this things, the way you did and I looked very closely. We don't know all the facts and that makes all this conclusions "maybe". I just can't tell who is better (over the many years). So if you say "that we have seen", that's purely wrong. You did see that. Perhaps some other saw that the way you did. That's ok. But don't state this speculation as facts. That's all I ask for.

[Sieper]

And also, whilst I agree, I think that Hamilton is one of the handful of all-time greatest drivers, taking those poles wasn't purely his merit alone, the Mercedes qualy mode was worth up to half a second extra on some tracks) in his capable hands. Less so with Bottas as he struggles much more with putting down the added power.

[Phil]

I don't see that. Mercedes was dominating most races from Barcelona.

Uh huh. Except Hungary. Except Austria. Except Spa. Except Singapore. Except Malaysia. Except Mexico. Except Brazil. Unless maybe dominating means something completely different to you, i really dont see what you are talking about here.

[marvin78]

Maybe I am. But you're right. I forgot to write that this is just my opinion. I see it like that and yes, in my opinion Mercedes was the dominating team in some of that races. But that is not based on facts. See? That's the way you do it if you want to discuss things. I can do that here but I would not do that in serious threads. Oh wait...

[GPR-A duplicate2]

Again you state speculation as facts. It could be, that the car was even or better or worse but how do you know that?

In that case, this forum should be shut down, as almost no one here, has any data relating any driver or car's performance. All we can do here, is use the incidents that have transpired and look at them with whatever amount of knowledge they have about drivers, cars and racing. Well, that is what I have done, unless you have telemetry data feed from teams (or expecting others to have) for the purposes of debate.

[marvin78]

The rest of my post is a huge part of an answer to your post. So why did you not read it? Could you please not partly quote my posts to make your point? Thank you. That is really annoying and you do that very often.

I know moderators don't like full quotes but that's simply BS (in my opinion) if there are not different topics in that post you quote.

[marvin78]

Oh my. This forums get more and more ridiculous. "repetitive and argumentative"? Really? I did not repeat myself. That was the point of that post. My bad. I should not discuss thing that cannot be discussed.

[Phil]

Maybe I am. But you're right. I forgot to write that this is just my opinion. I see it like that and yes, in my opinion Mercedes was the dominating team in some of that races. But that is not based on facts. See? That's the way you do it if you want to discuss things. I can do that here but I would not do that in serious threads. Oh wait...

I think it's fair to say that everything that is posted here is an opinion of sort. But I must say, I am intrigued by your opinion - Without wanting to go into the dictionaries definition of dominance, I really can't see any of that apart from maybe Silverstone, Monza and perhaps CotA. But the rest? Heck, I even forgot to mention Monaco (which is also after Barcelona), which brings up the count to at least 8 races (from a total of 15) where Mercedes wasn't the dominating team or clearly was slower than Ferrari or in some than even RedBull. Now, I take it if one just looks at the results from last year, one could think Mercedes had an easy going, but that clearly wasn't the case of at least a couple of races (Monaco, Spa, Hungary, Malaysia, Singapore and Mexico). Ferrari should have easily won Singapore and Malaysia having the quickest car there, except rain and brain fade propelled Hamilton to an extremely lucky win from 5th (on a track where overtaking is next to impossible) and Malaysia where both Ferraris imploded outside the race and Mexico with Vettel and Max going at and pretty much stepped over each other. Or maybe you were just looking at qualifying throughout the year when, yes, Mercedes did have some magical few tenths over Ferrari. But going into next year, that will probably be smaller, given that oil burning will be closer monitored and the limit decreased again to 0.6l.

If I were to sum up 2017, it would be the following:

- Mercedes dominant in qualifying
- Mercedes very quick in cold and harder compounds, but somewhat a bit of a struggle first half of the season when not
- Ferrari having an extremely quick car on all tracks
- Ferrari imploding in Singapore and Malaysia and threw away a lot of points (they could have easily got 60 and 86 points - 2x25 + 2x18 potentially with both Kimi and Vettel qualifying ahead of both Mercedes) that turned the WDC upsidedown
- RedBull with an extremely quick car towards the end of the year, but also with PU (Renault) issues
- Bottas faster than Kimi (stronger 2nd driver)

Overall, I think Ferrari could have (should have) run the WD championship extremely close. In the end, I think Mercedes had a bit more potential to win the WDC over Ferrari, especially if they had sacrificed Bottas for Hamilton, but I still think that Ferrari was an extremely formidable contender and overall the easier car to manage with fewer faults. No doubt, the qualifying advantage helped Mercedes throughout the year.

Will they still retain that advantage in 2018? Will they have solved the tire issues? Will they still have a power unit advantage in the races with the oil being limited to 0.6l and the FIA regulating now what exactly is allowed to be in the oil?

[TAG]

^^ Ferrari had nothing to do with Singapore. or Baku for that matter. If Mercedes played the same games sacrificing Bottas it wouldn't even be close. We we speak speculation, we should keep it hardware only, but during the season we know that's not the case.

[Phil]

Huh? Ferrari had the quickest car in Malaysia. Easily. Undisputed. Vettel suffered technical issues in qualifying (preventing him of participating in qualifying) and Kimi, who stuck his car on the front row (at less than a tenth vs. Lewis) imploded with the same fault just moments before the race. Adding further to that, even Max passed Hamilton on track in the RedBull. Just imagine for a moment if 1.) Vettel didn't suffer any fault in qualifying, 2.) Kimi's car didn't suffer the same fault on race day. We could have potentially have 3 cars finish ahead of Hamilton/Mercedes...

The context of this discussion being that Mercedes dominated post Barcelona. Clearly, they didn't in the races I mentioned. And this is relevant to 2018, because obviously the Mercedes is an evolution of last years car, so is the Ferrari and the RedBull. So to some extent we can assume that the cars will most likely perform with similar traits to last year.

Speaking of which, I wonder why Mercedes went with the long wheelbase and low-rake solution. Certainly, because they know this approach very well, but IMO also because it was closely connected to the suspension trickery (FRIC) that they heavily invested in. Ferrari got it banned and took one huge advantage away from Mercedes, yet they are still stuck on the long wheelbase and low-rake solution because going different, would set too many question marks and present unknowns. So who knows... can Mercedes iron out the flaws it had in 2017 using the same concept? How much will Ferrari improve on their already very good package? And how much will Renault improve that might just propel RedBull to a potentially championship winning team?