2024 Hungarian Grand Prix - Hungaroring, July 19 - 21

[GrizzleBoy]

Lando doesn't have the instinct. He's not killing it with his rocket ship like all previous champions before him. Dare I say it... Lando will never be champion? And neither will Piastri??

If your car is fast enough, you don't necessarily need the killer instinct. If we took all the cars as they are now and raced them for an entire season, chances are Lando would be WDC.

Killer instinct counts for something, but at the of the day, it's a non-spec series. If your car is fast enough, you only need to beat your teammate.

This is crazy to say considering Lando has been getting beaten by his team mate much more regularly recently now that the car is fast enough.

It's also crazy to say because the cars as they are now, would have merc winning 3 of the last four races without the car with the highest ultimate pace and likely more if they had this car from race 1.

Lando is the person who said Lewis getting to 92 wins in 2020 didn't mean anything to him because he was in a car where he really only needed to beat two people.

Well, Lando pretty much only needed to beat Max for most of this Season so far in a car that could match or beat Maxs Red Bull for a large chunk of the races and still only has one win to his name. And that win wasn't even on merit, but via a safety car that simply placed him ahead of Max. And the other win he was going to get this year was be cause his team simply placed him ahead of Oscar to protect Lando from an undercut and in his petulance returned that favour by acting toward the team as if they were asking him to give back something he'd earned himself.

Landos outburst at the end of that race toward Lewis (and it only ever seems to be toward Lewis) pretty much sealed the deal foe that he's just not a person I'm going to be able to see favourably until he matures somewhat or ditches whatever rich boy entitlement syndrome he has.

If we are completely honest, Lando has barely done anything special since he arrived in F1 except look good against an already faded Ricciardo who was about to retire. The hype he had around his name for so long barely made any sense to me beside being a pretty boy when he was younger and the girls liking him and getting merch sales. Not to say he isn't a good driver, but there are many more "good" drivers who have had less of a car advantage than him who won races on merit.

He has many races left to get his head in the game though so let's see how it goes with car development etc over the summer break because if Ferrari, Merc and Red Bull are all on more equal pace footing after the break, there's a chance those wasted opportunities are going to be permanent until 2025.

[TFSA]

This is crazy to say considering Lando has been getting beaten by his team mate much more regularly recently now that the car is fast enough.

No it isn't.

Fact is that Lando is still ahead of Piastri in the WDC (Leclerc is even ahead of Piastri), so while the margins may be on the smaller side, he's still the papaya driver doing better on average - and that's even including the crash in Austria, which surely cost Norris the win there.

And while both of them have been on the receiving end of bad strategy calls from McLaren, Norris has had the worst of that (even with them leaving Piastri out in Silverstone - Norris has had several strategy mishaps).

As for Mercedes, Russell was gifted the win in Austria, McLaren qualified subpar at Spa which put them on the back foot. Mercedes hasn't brought any major upgrades since their resurgence (and those they did bring, they decided to remove from the car, and revert to the old spec). So by all reasonable measures, McLaren is still the faster car on average.

Norris and McLaren isn't gonna bottle it every single race.

[PlatinumZealot]

Lando and McLaren has wasted his car so far. Experienced driver, probably the current quickest, but not experienced in a championship battle.

[basti313]

Lando and McLaren has wasted his car so far. Experienced driver, probably the current quickest, but not experienced in a championship battle.

Well, strange assumption.
The majority, nearly every point that was lost in this season was on:
- Bad starts. Is he thinking about the WDC at the start?
- Bad Qs. Is he really thinking about the WDC in his Q3 laps? Wait...most points on this were bottled vs. Pia in the beginning of the season...
- Bad strategy. They did not try to cover Max in Stone or most other errors, where is the WDC relevance?

The only single event one can really point to WDC is the crash at Spielberg. Still, if he can not overtake Max he does not need to even think about WDC, so I am not 100% sure if one can pinpoint it on experience.

There is simply no battle. There would be one if Lando could beat Max or the RedBull, whoever...on speed. This has nothing to do with experience, it is in most cases simply "too slow". Be it in Q, at the start or when trying to overtake.

[PlatinumZealot]

No. Lando is very quick. He had no speed issues this season. It was all down to mistakes. The champions minimize mistakes. Ask Jenson Button in 2009.

[basti313]

You said "not experienced in a championship battle". You can call it "mistakes", but they have nothing to do with a championship battle, it may be quick, but not fast enough or consistent, however you want to call getting fast to the flag. These are mistakes that count every single race. It is the same mistakes (besides a blown engine) that cost Lewis the 2016 WDC, so you also can not blame mistakes like bottled Q3 laps to "not experienced in a championship battle".
I fear, that McLaren and Lando, both together, just f*** up this season and given the trajectory or the last races will lose both WDC and WCC despite having the quickest driver and car. Not because of nonsense experience assumptions, but simply because they make errors that no beginner should make.

[Seanspeed]

No. Lando is very quick. He had no speed issues this season. It was all down to mistakes. The champions minimize mistakes. Ask Jenson Button in 2009.

People can agree Lando is quick, though I still dont understand where your opinion that he's the quickest comes from. Like, genuinely, I cannot grasp how anybody could even begin to make that case based on actual evidence rather than just a 'gut feeling' or something. And it's just so weird to say when we have a once-in-a-generation level talent running around out there. Not to mention other high level talents like Hamilton, Russell and Leclerc. Is this is just some pettiness against Verstappen or something? lol

But I would agree that Lando's bigger issue is mistakes from him and the team, sure. He's certainly fast enough to win a championship in the fastest car.

[PlatinumZealot]

No. Lando is very quick. He had no speed issues this season. It was all down to mistakes. The champions minimize mistakes. Ask Jenson Button in 2009.

People can agree Lando is quick, though I still dont understand where your opinion that he's the quickest comes from. Like, genuinely, I cannot grasp how anybody could even begin to make that case based on actual evidence rather than just a 'gut feeling' or something. And it's just so weird to say when we have a once-in-a-generation level talent running around out there. Not to mention other high level talents like Hamilton, Russell and Leclerc. Is this is just some pettiness against Verstappen or something? lol

But I would agree that Lando's bigger issue is mistakes from him and the team, sure. He's certainly fast enough to win a championship in the fastest car.

Not really a gut feeling, it's observing certain cues.

[Seanspeed]

Not really a gut feeling, it's observing certain cues.

That's essentially just another way of saying 'gut feeling'. If you cant actually support the claim with arguments and have to rely on some vague "It's just what I see from him", then it's just a gut feeling in the end.

[PlatinumZealot]

Not really a gut feeling, it's observing certain cues.

That's essentially just another way of saying 'gut feeling'. If you cant actually support the claim with arguments and have to rely on some vague "It's just what I see from him", then it's just a gut feeling in the end.

Seriously Sean speed?!! Seriously?!

How long have you been watching motor sports? (rhetorical question)

Are you telling me you need to see timings to tell how well a driver is controlling the car?

The onboards is a good way to see if they have under steer or oversteer, their steering inputs etc. The outboards show the balance... That's how i survived boredom watching the schumacher and Vettel eras... Just basically watching them control the car, taking their lines and seeing how that correlates to timings. So after all that mental database i can do without the timings to guess if the lap is quick.

I think we have to just agree to disagree on this one.

I hold my stance that Norris is the quickest driver this year by the way he is driving that McLaren. I am happy to be wrong, but at least it is an unbiased evaluation. I have no stock invested in Lando.

[Seanspeed]

Not really a gut feeling, it's observing certain cues.

That's essentially just another way of saying 'gut feeling'. If you cant actually support the claim with arguments and have to rely on some vague "It's just what I see from him", then it's just a gut feeling in the end.

Seriously Sean speed?!! Seriously?!

How long have you been watching motor sports? (rhetorical question)

Are you telling me you need to see timings to tell how well a driver is controlling the car?

The onboards is a good way to see if they have under steer or oversteer, their steering inputs etc. The outboards show the balance... That's how i survived boredom watching the schumacher and Vettel eras... Just basically watching them control the car, taking their lines and seeing how that correlates to timings. So after all that mental database i can do without the timings to guess if the lap is quick.

I think we have to just agree to disagree on this one.

I hold my stance that Norris is the quickest driver this year by the way he is driving that McLaren. I am happy to be wrong, but at least it is an unbiased evaluation. I have no stock invested in Lando.

It is incredibly silly to judge who is fastest solely by watching an onboard and just watching inputs and whatnot. That is absolutely not how this works at all. You cannot tell what is actually fast without the stopwatch. Any car can be driven differently with different positive results(and indeed many cars will demand different inputs to be fast) and honestly, the margins are so incredibly fine with this stuff in terms of inputs, and related just as much to relationships with braking and steering and throttle all together as one 'greater than the sum of its parts' package that's extremely hard to gauge just looking at an onboard and without very studious analysis of detailed telemetry.

It's not anything you can quantify or actually judge outside your 'instinct' on what you think you're seeing. Aka - your gut feeling. Not even a literal professional driving coach could tell you what professional driver is definitively faster purely by watching a driver's inputs. It's just genuinely impossible.

[PlatinumZealot]

Just as bold a claim without any empirical evidence.

If you had historical knowledge of which turns are more sensitive to track time... It's not hard to surmise which driver will be behind when mistakes are made in those corners. Mistakes being more or less understeer, locks ups etc. Throtttle steering inputs etc.

A trained eye should be sufficient.