f1isgood wrote: ↑26 Oct 2024, 18:55
Seanspeed wrote: ↑26 Oct 2024, 18:28
FittingMechanics wrote: ↑26 Oct 2024, 13:34
Leclerc and Ferrari bottled it after Monaco.
It is clear they had fastest car, especially since Monza.
Ferrari have had the fastest car at a very small handful of tracks this year. Red Bull dominated through China, and then Mclaren have had the fastest car at the large majority of tracks since. Even in Monaco, Piastri was super close to Leclerc in qualifying and the race, and I dont think it takes some huge leap to suggest Leclerc made the difference in the end.
Ferrari did mess up badly with their Barcelona package(and specifically, the new floor), which derailed the whole middle chunk of the season. But even after rectifying it, it's still not accurate to say they've been fastest since Monza. Mclaren were arguably faster in Monza, they just messed up on strategy. Mclaren were pretty clearly fastest in Singapore as well. And looked pretty competitive in qualifying at Austin, but for Norris' mistake for Sprint quali.
This narrative that Ferrari have somehow had the car to beat since Monza is quite obviously false. This is just trying to deflect from the mistakes and underperformance of Mclaren and Norris, who are entirely to blame for the current championship predicament. There's still opportunity to rectify things, but if Verstappen still wins in the end, Mclaren+Norris will have 100% blown it.
McLaren and Norris have clearly underperformed their car. The results would be what Verstappen and Red Bull got in 2022/2023 if they were more competent. This is just the objectively correct thing to say. Anything else is simply deflecting away from the failure of the team.
The problem with people like you is that you consider Verstappen a god-tier driver. Whenever he wins by a large margin, it's not the car, it's all on Max's skills and you use a washed up second-tier midfield driver (Perez) as a benchmark for proof of that. Meanwhile Lando is teammates with a driver which is getting (perhaps unwarranted) praise everywhere, yet when Lando beats him by a country-mile to win dominant races, it's all on the car, Lando deserves absolutely no credit in your eyes.
At all instances that McLaren had a clearly superior car on all conditions compared to rivals this year, they have won the race, comfortably. Some others, they might have been fastest at certain conditions, but slower at others. They haven't been perfect and lost out on maybe 3-4 more race wins.
But to claim what McLaren has had this year is in any level comparable to the most dominant driver-car combination in the history of the sport is frankly just a laughable suggestion.
In 2023, Max and RedBull had literally no competition whatsoever except for Singapore. And that's not even an overstatement, there literally was no team that could get within any reasonable shot of taking a win away from a RedBull car. Yet you claim McLaren has had the privilege of sharing that same level of dominance this season, even though just by looking at the last 3 races with Ferrari being the fastest car in 2 of them is enough to dispute that assumption
