Is the RB18 dominant?

[mrluke]

Does anybody have any precendent of a "Dominant team" winning more than 70% of races in a season when they had an inferior car?

Or a "Dominant driver" winning more than 70% of races with an inferior car and team?

For me the team, driver and car are all a package. When the same team, car and driver has won pretty much every race in a season they have to be considered dominant, thats what dominant means.

Sure you can argue on occasion somebody else was faster but not in a consistent or meaningful way.

In an inferior car, no, but noone is arguing the RB18 was inferior - only that in the first half of the season it was on par with the Ferrari, and in that part of the season, other factors were decisive in RB winning most races.

And that has happened before. Maybe not often in F1 (that I know of at least).
It is easier to judge in other series, especially those where the cars are equal to begin with and hence driver/team performance has to be the decisive factor. E.g. British F3 1983, where Senna won the first 9 races and finished first or second for all others if he finished the race. Or the 1994 season where Jan Magnussen won all but 3 races of the season, with most of the participants (albeit not all) driving the same chassis/engine combination.

Arent you talking about a spec series where all the cars are the same?

Others are suggesting that the car, the driver and the team can all independently lead to a dominant season. I disagree and dont think we have seen that in an F1 season in at least the last 30 years.

The WDC is won each year by the driver with the "best" (fastest consistent finisher) car. I'm sure there must be an exception but I cant think of one off the top of my head, maybe 2007 where lewis and alonso took points off each other.

However this whole thread feels like an exercise in justifying that Max wins because he's the best driver but Lewis only wins when he has the best car.

[Sieper]

Does anybody have any precendent of a "Dominant team" winning more than 70% of races in a season when they had an inferior car?

Or a "Dominant driver" winning more than 70% of races with an inferior car and team?

For me the team, driver and car are all a package. When the same team, car and driver has won pretty much every race in a season they have to be considered dominant, thats what dominant means.

Sure you can argue on occasion somebody else was faster but not in a consistent or meaningful way.

In an inferior car, no, but noone is arguing the RB18 was inferior - only that in the first half of the season it was on par with the Ferrari, and in that part of the season, other factors were decisive in RB winning most races.

And that has happened before. Maybe not often in F1 (that I know of at least).
It is easier to judge in other series, especially those where the cars are equal to begin with and hence driver/team performance has to be the decisive factor. E.g. British F3 1983, where Senna won the first 9 races and finished first or second for all others if he finished the race. Or the 1994 season where Jan Magnussen won all but 3 races of the season, with most of the participants (albeit not all) driving the same chassis/engine combination.

Arent you talking about a spec series where all the cars are the same?

Others are suggesting that the car, the driver and the team can all independently lead to a dominant season. I disagree and dont think we have seen that in an F1 season in at least the last 30 years.

The WDC is won each year by the driver with the "best" (fastest consistent finisher) car. I'm sure there must be an exception but I cant think of one off the top of my head, maybe 2007 where lewis and alonso took points off each other.

However this whole thread feels like an exercise in justifying that Max wins because he's the best driver but Lewis only wins when he has the best car.

Lewis had a more dominant car than Max had, yet Max has now produced a more dominant season on his first time having an equal and second part of the season, except for Brazil and maybe Mexico, best car.

That is something that some people do not want to accept and are using hyperbole to try and reject.

If it wasn’t for the Monaco qualy crash by Perez (and the race playing out as it did as Leclerc was going to win it) and the Singapore qualy underfueling Max would have likely produced all 17 of the RBR wins this season.

[DChemTech]

Does anybody have any precendent of a "Dominant team" winning more than 70% of races in a season when they had an inferior car?

Or a "Dominant driver" winning more than 70% of races with an inferior car and team?

For me the team, driver and car are all a package. When the same team, car and driver has won pretty much every race in a season they have to be considered dominant, thats what dominant means.

Sure you can argue on occasion somebody else was faster but not in a consistent or meaningful way.

In an inferior car, no, but noone is arguing the RB18 was inferior - only that in the first half of the season it was on par with the Ferrari, and in that part of the season, other factors were decisive in RB winning most races.

And that has happened before. Maybe not often in F1 (that I know of at least).
It is easier to judge in other series, especially those where the cars are equal to begin with and hence driver/team performance has to be the decisive factor. E.g. British F3 1983, where Senna won the first 9 races and finished first or second for all others if he finished the race. Or the 1994 season where Jan Magnussen won all but 3 races of the season, with most of the participants (albeit not all) driving the same chassis/engine combination.

Arent you talking about a spec series where all the cars are the same?

Others are suggesting that the car, the driver and the team can all independently lead to a dominant season. I disagree and dont think we have seen that in an F1 season in at least the last 30 years.

The WDC is won each year by the driver with the "best" (fastest consistent finisher) car. I'm sure there must be an exception but I cant think of one off the top of my head, maybe 2007 where lewis and alonso took points off each other.

However this whole thread feels like an exercise in justifying that Max wins because he's the best driver but Lewis only wins when he has the best car.

Yes, I deliberately chose spec series to show that it is possible to win 70%+ races with a car that is, by definition, not dominant because in spec series the car is simply not part of the equation. Also in response to those that say that "X wins shows car dominance" - spec series with dominance clearly disprove that notion. X wins may just as well signal a dominant team or driver.

Now, F1 is not a spec series, which makes the different factors (team, driver, car) more difficult to untangle - often dominance is a combination of factors. But that still does not mean that a dominant season per definition means a dominant car. And whether or not something actually happened is irrelevant - what matters is that it can happen. Even if all drivers that won a majority of races in a season F1 did so in a dominant car, that does not mean that a driver (or driver pair) winning the majority of races in a season per definition did so because the car is dominant . If one wants to establish whether or not the car is dominant, one should consider car performance statistics and not solely the number of wins.

Now I agree that it would be better to consider the driver/car/team package when talking about dominance as you state (and as I have also stated multiple times), but once again, that is not the subject of this thread - the subject that is stated in the title is solely the car.

And as to the intention of this thread, I actually had completely the opposite feeling: that this topic was set up to declare dominance of the RB18 (note the choice of simply declaring that it is; not determine whether it is), and thereby downplaying Max' performance of this year by assertion that his performance was simply due to the car, not due to the driver - indeed, as others have done for Hamilton. I detest both sides, both Hamilton and Verstappen are excellent drivers in their own right, and there's plenty of evidence for that. Some exceptions aside, both of them have outclassed their teammates in the same material, have shown excellent performance in wet races, etc.
So as to that I am personally not at all interested in assessing car performance to downplay the performance of a particular driver. But I do think car comparison in itself is a nice objective, yet if we do so, we should work with metrics that are as purely as possible metrics of car performance, and win rate is too entangled with other possible causes (such as team and driver performance) to be used in that capacity.

[ab_f1]

In an inferior car, no, but noone is arguing the RB18 was inferior - only that in the first half of the season it was on par with the Ferrari, and in that part of the season, other factors were decisive in RB winning most races.

And that has happened before. Maybe not often in F1 (that I know of at least).
It is easier to judge in other series, especially those where the cars are equal to begin with and hence driver/team performance has to be the decisive factor. E.g. British F3 1983, where Senna won the first 9 races and finished first or second for all others if he finished the race. Or the 1994 season where Jan Magnussen won all but 3 races of the season, with most of the participants (albeit not all) driving the same chassis/engine combination.

Arent you talking about a spec series where all the cars are the same?

Others are suggesting that the car, the driver and the team can all independently lead to a dominant season. I disagree and dont think we have seen that in an F1 season in at least the last 30 years.

The WDC is won each year by the driver with the "best" (fastest consistent finisher) car. I'm sure there must be an exception but I cant think of one off the top of my head, maybe 2007 where lewis and alonso took points off each other.

However this whole thread feels like an exercise in justifying that Max wins because he's the best driver but Lewis only wins when he has the best car.

Lewis had a more dominant car than Max had, yet Max has now produced a more dominant season on his first time having an equal and second part of the season, except for Brazil and maybe Mexico, best car.

That is something that some people do not want to accept and are using hyperbole to try and reject.

If it wasn’t for the Monaco qualy crash by Perez (and the race playing out as it did as Leclerc was going to win it) and the Singapore qualy underfueling Max would have likely produced all 17 of the RBR wins this season.

So you are saying that Lewis had teammates who were allowed to fight him and not one arm tied behind back?

[SiLo]

In an inferior car, no, but noone is arguing the RB18 was inferior - only that in the first half of the season it was on par with the Ferrari, and in that part of the season, other factors were decisive in RB winning most races.

And that has happened before. Maybe not often in F1 (that I know of at least).
It is easier to judge in other series, especially those where the cars are equal to begin with and hence driver/team performance has to be the decisive factor. E.g. British F3 1983, where Senna won the first 9 races and finished first or second for all others if he finished the race. Or the 1994 season where Jan Magnussen won all but 3 races of the season, with most of the participants (albeit not all) driving the same chassis/engine combination.

Arent you talking about a spec series where all the cars are the same?

Others are suggesting that the car, the driver and the team can all independently lead to a dominant season. I disagree and dont think we have seen that in an F1 season in at least the last 30 years.

The WDC is won each year by the driver with the "best" (fastest consistent finisher) car. I'm sure there must be an exception but I cant think of one off the top of my head, maybe 2007 where lewis and alonso took points off each other.

However this whole thread feels like an exercise in justifying that Max wins because he's the best driver but Lewis only wins when he has the best car.

Lewis had a more dominant car than Max had, yet Max has now produced a more dominant season on his first time having an equal and second part of the season, except for Brazil and maybe Mexico, best car.

That is something that some people do not want to accept and are using hyperbole to try and reject.

If it wasn’t for the Monaco qualy crash by Perez (and the race playing out as it did as Leclerc was going to win it) and the Singapore qualy underfueling Max would have likely produced all 17 of the RBR wins this season.

In 2020 Lewis won 11 of the 16 races he entered (missed Bahrain due to COVID). That's 68.75% of the races he entered. Over the season he scored 83% of the total points available for races entered (78% if you include the one he missed). He was on the podium for 87% of the races he entered (82% if you include the one he missed).

Merc didn't help him when it comes to Monza (50/50 though as he should have spotted pit entry light), Hungary pitstop call and Russia as well. Judging by the pace in Bahrain, he'd have been a shoe in for the win there as well.

Conversely, Max has won 14/22 races he entered, which is 68.18%. Over the season he scored 76% of the total points available for races entered. He was on the podium for 77% of the races he entered.

Red Bull didn't help him in Singapore with that terrible fuel call. Monaco is hard to call because quali is such an unknown there, and the Ferraris should really have walked that race entirely.

Comparing them both with a bit of context, driver+car had very similar season in terms of performance and dominance. Especially over their teammate and the rest of the field. So I disagree with your statement that Lewis had a more dominant car, yet Max produced a more dominant season. Statistically, Lewis in 2020 had a better season as, by percentage he:

• Won an equal amount of races (I'm ignoring the decimals here for fairness)

• Had more poles

• Scored more points

• Had more podiums

If you want to talk about teammates, Bottas scored 64% of the points Lewis did in 2020, and Perez scored 67% of the points Max did in 2022.

Now, as this is a thread about the RB18, I think the above statistics, whilst slightly beaten in 2020, are still objectively clear of countless other seasons when it comes to car dominance. So my answer would be yes, the RB18+Max is dominant. Really, anyone saying anything else is just being ignorant.

[Vanja #66]

Anyone who bases their argument on belief that driver is more important than the car and one certain (irrelevant which exactly) driver could win WDC without the best car should take a look at Vettel's results when he left Ferrari and Ricciardo's resuts when he left RB. Dramatic downturn and it's got almost nothing to do with driver motivation and getting used to new car. The car was simply lot worse

A driver being 1s a lap faster than other driver in the same car is stunning and is likely far more than overall difference between Max/Ham/Lec and Latifi (Russell was around 0.3-0.4s faster on average in Q in 2021). Yet the worst car being 2s a lap slower than the best car is actually quite a good result.

[mrluke]

In an inferior car, no, but noone is arguing the RB18 was inferior - only that in the first half of the season it was on par with the Ferrari, and in that part of the season, other factors were decisive in RB winning most races.

And that has happened before. Maybe not often in F1 (that I know of at least).
It is easier to judge in other series, especially those where the cars are equal to begin with and hence driver/team performance has to be the decisive factor. E.g. British F3 1983, where Senna won the first 9 races and finished first or second for all others if he finished the race. Or the 1994 season where Jan Magnussen won all but 3 races of the season, with most of the participants (albeit not all) driving the same chassis/engine combination.

Arent you talking about a spec series where all the cars are the same?

Others are suggesting that the car, the driver and the team can all independently lead to a dominant season. I disagree and dont think we have seen that in an F1 season in at least the last 30 years.

The WDC is won each year by the driver with the "best" (fastest consistent finisher) car. I'm sure there must be an exception but I cant think of one off the top of my head, maybe 2007 where lewis and alonso took points off each other.

However this whole thread feels like an exercise in justifying that Max wins because he's the best driver but Lewis only wins when he has the best car.

Lewis had a more dominant car than Max had, yet Max has now produced a more dominant season on his first time having an equal and second part of the season, except for Brazil and maybe Mexico, best car.

That is something that some people do not want to accept and are using hyperbole to try and reject.

If it wasn’t for the Monaco qualy crash by Perez (and the race playing out as it did as Leclerc was going to win it) and the Singapore qualy underfueling Max would have likely produced all 17 of the RBR wins this season.

This is an opinion piece. How can you factually demonstrate that the 2020 Mercedes was more "dominant" than the 2022 Redbull?

[DChemTech]

Anyone who bases their argument on belief that driver is more important than the car and one certain (irrelevant which exactly) driver could win WDC without the best car should take a look at Vettel's results when he left Ferrari and Ricciardo's resuts when he left RB. Dramatic downturn and it's got almost nothing to do with driver motivation and getting used to new car. The car was simply lot worse

A driver being 1s a lap faster than other driver in the same car is stunning and is likely far more than overall difference between Max/Ham/Lec and Latifi (Russell was around 0.3-0.4s faster on average in Q in 2021). Yet the worst car being 2s a lap slower than the best car is actually quite a good result.

I don't see anyone basing their argument on that though.
My argument is just that you cannot use number of wins as a marker of car dominance, because wins depend on multiple factors and not just on car dominance - as shown by the fact that dominance of a single team/driver is possible even with spec-cars with car dominance being completely out of the equation.

Also we are not comparing best-to-worst car here, but best to second best.
If two cars are (as good as) equal, it may be that one comes out consistently winning on the basis of team/driver performance. In that case, one team (or driver) would have the majority of wins, but not the dominant car. Which would be obvious if looking to other markers than wins alone, but for some reason it seems many people don't even want to consider that option.

[Hoffman900]

Arent you talking about a spec series where all the cars are the same?

Others are suggesting that the car, the driver and the team can all independently lead to a dominant season. I disagree and dont think we have seen that in an F1 season in at least the last 30 years.

The WDC is won each year by the driver with the "best" (fastest consistent finisher) car. I'm sure there must be an exception but I cant think of one off the top of my head, maybe 2007 where lewis and alonso took points off each other.

However this whole thread feels like an exercise in justifying that Max wins because he's the best driver but Lewis only wins when he has the best car.

Lewis had a more dominant car than Max had, yet Max has now produced a more dominant season on his first time having an equal and second part of the season, except for Brazil and maybe Mexico, best car.

That is something that some people do not want to accept and are using hyperbole to try and reject.

If it wasn’t for the Monaco qualy crash by Perez (and the race playing out as it did as Leclerc was going to win it) and the Singapore qualy underfueling Max would have likely produced all 17 of the RBR wins this season.

This is an opinion piece. How can you factually demonstrate that the 2020 Mercedes was more "dominant" than the 2022 Redbull?

He’s one of the top posters on the Max Verstappen fan forum. He can’t.

I think relative to the field, the MP4/4 is still the most dominate car in F1. Some of the Merc’s are close. By halfway through the season the RB-18 was pretty dominate, but they had help via Ferrari (as did Merc a few years ago) being Ferrari, but I don’t think the rest of the field’s potential was that far off.

Some of RB’s strengths is pit wall / strategy department. Race wins are meaningless as the calendar is much longer than it historically use to be. In terms of outright pace though, the MP4/4 is still tops and it had the two all time best drivers at the time.

[SiLo]

Lewis had a more dominant car than Max had, yet Max has now produced a more dominant season on his first time having an equal and second part of the season, except for Brazil and maybe Mexico, best car.

That is something that some people do not want to accept and are using hyperbole to try and reject.

If it wasn’t for the Monaco qualy crash by Perez (and the race playing out as it did as Leclerc was going to win it) and the Singapore qualy underfueling Max would have likely produced all 17 of the RBR wins this season.

This is an opinion piece. How can you factually demonstrate that the 2020 Mercedes was more "dominant" than the 2022 Redbull?

He’s one of the top posters on the Max Verstappen fan forum. He can’t.

I think relative to the field, the MP4/4 is still the most dominate car in F1. Some of the Merc’s are close. By halfway through the season the RB-18 was pretty dominate, but they had help via Ferrari (as did Merc a few years ago) being Ferrari, but I don’t think the rest of the field’s potential was that far off.

Some of RB’s strengths is pit wall / strategy department. Race wins are meaningless as the calendar is much longer than it historically use to be. In terms of outright pace though, the MP4/4 is still tops and it had the two all time best drivers at the time.

This is why I broke everything down into percentages. At least it can help make things a bit more relative when making comparisons.

[Sieper]

Lewis had a more dominant car than Max had, yet Max has now produced a more dominant season on his first time having an equal and second part of the season, except for Brazil and maybe Mexico, best car.

That is something that some people do not want to accept and are using hyperbole to try and reject.

If it wasn’t for the Monaco qualy crash by Perez (and the race playing out as it did as Leclerc was going to win it) and the Singapore qualy underfueling Max would have likely produced all 17 of the RBR wins this season.

This is an opinion piece. How can you factually demonstrate that the 2020 Mercedes was more "dominant" than the 2022 Redbull?

He’s one of the top posters on the Max Verstappen fan forum. He can’t.

I think relative to the field, the MP4/4 is still the most dominate car in F1. Some of the Merc’s are close. By halfway through the season the RB-18 was pretty dominate, but they had help via Ferrari (as did Merc a few years ago) being Ferrari, but I don’t think the rest of the field’s potential was that far off.

Some of RB’s strengths is pit wall / strategy department. Race wins are meaningless as the calendar is much longer than it historically use to be. In terms of outright pace though, the MP4/4 is still tops and it had the two all time best drivers at the time.

I have stated my allegiance here dozens of time, I used to always include that as a Max fan, etc. I don't do that anymore with every post as by now I am a long time poster here and I assume that is known. Occasionally I will reiterate it just to be fair, so that everyone can be on the same page.

It feel like you are trying to use that "calling me out" as a downplay of me / my opinion. But rest assured, I am discussing here with people I know to be as much a fan over other drivers as I am of Max so my opinion on the matter is as valid as others.

[Sieper]

Arent you talking about a spec series where all the cars are the same?

Others are suggesting that the car, the driver and the team can all independently lead to a dominant season. I disagree and dont think we have seen that in an F1 season in at least the last 30 years.

The WDC is won each year by the driver with the "best" (fastest consistent finisher) car. I'm sure there must be an exception but I cant think of one off the top of my head, maybe 2007 where lewis and alonso took points off each other.

However this whole thread feels like an exercise in justifying that Max wins because he's the best driver but Lewis only wins when he has the best car.

Lewis had a more dominant car than Max had, yet Max has now produced a more dominant season on his first time having an equal and second part of the season, except for Brazil and maybe Mexico, best car.

That is something that some people do not want to accept and are using hyperbole to try and reject.

If it wasn’t for the Monaco qualy crash by Perez (and the race playing out as it did as Leclerc was going to win it) and the Singapore qualy underfueling Max would have likely produced all 17 of the RBR wins this season.

This is an opinion piece. How can you factually demonstrate that the 2020 Mercedes was more "dominant" than the 2022 Redbull?

One fact is f.e. that Mercedes finished 1-2.
Another fact is that Mercedes had 15 (5 by Valtteri) of the 17 poles, redbull 8 (1 by Sergio) of the 22
laps led, Lewis 60% Valtteri also nearly 20% in 2020 (80% togehter), Max 48% and Sergio 11% (60%)

In the end we will disagree, to me it is clear that Max has done something very special, something that he produced on the first chance het got and it confirms to me how good he is. In fact, he took the record number of podiums alltime in 2021 and that certainly wasn't a dominant car. If he can do those things it confirms to me he doesn't need an absolutely dominating car to get the results, just a car that is very close to the best, imho within 2 tenths and then he can pull it off even against Lewis and imho the RB18 hasn't been a dominant force until the summer stop, after that it was the best car except when they go the set-up wrong (Brazil, sprint weekend).

[mrluke]

In an inferior car, no, but noone is arguing the RB18 was inferior - only that in the first half of the season it was on par with the Ferrari, and in that part of the season, other factors were decisive in RB winning most races.

And that has happened before. Maybe not often in F1 (that I know of at least).
It is easier to judge in other series, especially those where the cars are equal to begin with and hence driver/team performance has to be the decisive factor. E.g. British F3 1983, where Senna won the first 9 races and finished first or second for all others if he finished the race. Or the 1994 season where Jan Magnussen won all but 3 races of the season, with most of the participants (albeit not all) driving the same chassis/engine combination.

Arent you talking about a spec series where all the cars are the same?

Others are suggesting that the car, the driver and the team can all independently lead to a dominant season. I disagree and dont think we have seen that in an F1 season in at least the last 30 years.

The WDC is won each year by the driver with the "best" (fastest consistent finisher) car. I'm sure there must be an exception but I cant think of one off the top of my head, maybe 2007 where lewis and alonso took points off each other.

However this whole thread feels like an exercise in justifying that Max wins because he's the best driver but Lewis only wins when he has the best car.

Yes, I deliberately chose spec series to show that it is possible to win 70%+ races with a car that is, by definition, not dominant because in spec series the car is simply not part of the equation. Also in response to those that say that "X wins shows car dominance" - spec series with dominance clearly disprove that notion. X wins may just as well signal a dominant team or driver.

Now, F1 is not a spec series, which makes the different factors (team, driver, car) more difficult to untangle - often dominance is a combination of factors. But that still does not mean that a dominant season per definition means a dominant car. And whether or not something actually happened is irrelevant - what matters is that it can happen. Even if all drivers that won a majority of races in a season F1 did so in a dominant car, that does not mean that a driver (or driver pair) winning the majority of races in a season per definition did so because the car is dominant . If one wants to establish whether or not the car is dominant, one should consider car performance statistics and not solely the number of wins.

Now I agree that it would be better to consider the driver/car/team package when talking about dominance as you state (and as I have also stated multiple times), but once again, that is not the subject of this thread - the subject that is stated in the title is solely the car.

And as to the intention of this thread, I actually had completely the opposite feeling: that this topic was set up to declare dominance of the RB18 (note the choice of simply declaring that it is; not determine whether it is), and thereby downplaying Max' performance of this year by assertion that his performance was simply due to the car, not due to the driver - indeed, as others have done for Hamilton. I detest both sides, both Hamilton and Verstappen are excellent drivers in their own right, and there's plenty of evidence for that. Some exceptions aside, both of them have outclassed their teammates in the same material, have shown excellent performance in wet races, etc.
So as to that I am personally not at all interested in assessing car performance to downplay the performance of a particular driver. But I do think car comparison in itself is a nice objective, yet if we do so, we should work with metrics that are as purely as possible metrics of car performance, and win rate is too entangled with other possible causes (such as team and driver performance) to be used in that capacity.

I did respond to each part but tbh i'm not sure if furthered the discussion much. In principle I think we are aligned so no point splitting hairs

Looking at the challenge of identifying each contribution:

A single win is very difficult to determine, consistent wins is more indicative of an underlying performance advantage.

Winning over multiple seasons has to be team driven, and I would include driver's contribution to car development in that as opposed to his performance behind the wheel in a race.

So if a team/driver combination wins 7 in 10 races how can you separate the contribution from each?

If you compare to a team mate it'll be argued that the car was designed around one driver or the other.

- The car gives the total performance envelope.

- The driver is responsible for using the full available car performance.

- The team develops the car (before and during the season) as well as manages the driver and their race strategy.

Of those 3, it is the car that sets the upper limit on available performance, the other two factors are about using that potential.

Therefore I would say that to consistently win throughout a whole season by a decent margin, has to be down to available car performance. At a push you could say other packages had a higher performance limit but were unable to access it, in which case does it even count? If nobody can use it, how do we evaluate it?

Your maximum available performance has to be higher than the level the other teams are delivering to win consistently.

There's going to be some variation between drivers but what do we think the order of magnitude is for that, maybe 0.3s?

The team strategy calls can be pretty big on a race by race basis but over the course of the season you would expect this to even out. RBR probably have a slight advantage here because they always seem to make the right call. There's also maybe 1s per race saved on pitstops.

Then we have the combined ability of the driver and the team to develop the car over the season. Sometimes we see cars finishing the season much more (or less) competitive than when they started. Individually the driver plays a role here but would say its very difficult to evaluate that in isolation.

I guess to tie up that rambling, the available performance comes from the car, its down to everybody else to extract it and make the car in the first place but without a fast enough car you aren't going to dominate anything.

[Sieper]

nice way to sum it up, fast enough car, then up to the driver to dominate. Which Max has done with some record braking numbers the first time he had that fast enough car available to him.

[Andres125sx]

I actually had completely the opposite feeling: that this topic was set up to declare dominance of the RB18 (note the choice of simply declaring that it is; not determine whether it is), and thereby downplaying Max' performance

I think this is the main problem with this thread. Max fans feel if they accept RB18 dominance that would downplay Max perfomance, so they take any asertion about RB18 dominance as an attack to Max. Same as Lewis fans who couldn´t accept Mercedes dominance in past era.

But they´re not. As you´ve said repeatedly, this thread is about RB18 dominance, or not. Nothing about team dominance, or driver perfomance, only about RB18 dominance

Assuming when people say RB18 was dominant, that is downplaying Max perfomance, is plain wrong. This thread is about RB18 dominance, not about Max perfomance.


As I said previously, RB18 being dominant does not mean Max perfomance was poor. Far from that. If Max fans could accept this, the discussion will be a lot more sensible


I agree with the rest of your post btw


Oh and dominance does not mean same as Mercedes in past era. That was one of the most dominant periods in F1 history, but some steps down in dominance scale is still being dominant.