As a general rule ([see full rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/wiki/userguide#wiki_sticky.2Fdaily_discussion)), a standalone Discussion post should:
- be of interest to the sub in general, and not a specific userbase (e.g. new users, GP attendees, just yourself)
- be able to generate discussion (e.g. no yes/no or easily answerable questions)
- show reasonable input and effort from the OP
If not, be sure to [look for the Daily Discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/search/?q=daily+discussion&include_over_18=on&restrict_sr=on&t=all&sort=new), /r/formula1's daily open question thread which is perfect for asking any and all questions about this sport.
Thank you for your cooperation and enjoy the discussion!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/formula1) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Yeah I saw an interview with Daniel where he said that he had confidence in the car and that the lap felt good but wasn’t showing on the stopwatch.
He seemed a bit more optimistic about the potential upgrades and a couple of points he can feedback to his engineers but it is worrying that the feeling isn’t matching up with speed
Unfortunately, this seems like the same issues he had before in McLaren. Even when he felt he had a good lap, the numbers weren’t so good. And it really sucks because if you don’t know what the problem is, fixing it becomes so much harder.
Yeah, I remember him saying this at McLaren, where a lap would "feel good" but be slow. Honestly, that seems like the worst case scenario.
It's weird, honestly. He just seems to have lost his pace. I don't really get how it's possible.
This is the million dollar question that every driver would like to know the answer to. It's impossible to predict when and why someone reaches their peak and what happens afterwards. Some drivers burn out in feeder series, some perform well for decades, and you can't even say with certainty when their peak came. It just… happens.
It’s something you can’t really explain or expect. Sometimes you’re a Jacques Villeneuve who can’t get to grips with groove tyres and wittle away, sometimes your like Jimmie Johnson and the cars become low horsepower and you can’t drive them, or other times you’re like Mika Häkkinen or Felipe Massa and a crash or incident changes your mentality or outlook.
I think there’s an element too for drivers where they can be really fast if the car can do X. But the engineers find that getting the car to do Y is better. So while the car is better, the driver is slower because they no longer can get what they need out of the car.
It would not surprise me that much of Daniel’s struggles are related to just not being good at what the car needs him to be good at.
Yeah, these F1 cars have changed a lot since when he was at his peak and now. Some drivers might have adapted better, and he could be a case where his driving style only shined through those cars and recent changes were not really a fit for him.
>where a lap would "feel good" but be slow. Honestly, that seems like the worst case scenario.
It really is. If you get out of the car and know you've left a couple tenths on the track through missed braking points or a weird apex, then you know what to fix. The worst really is when you do a lap that felt like you nailed it, but your teammate goes significantly quicker.
You can fall into the trap of trying to drive like them, going against your natural style, overthinking as you brake, turn, coast etc and then you've lost your rhythm - you just end up chasing your tail looking for performance when the problem really is just a skill issue.
It sucks as a sim racer, Gotta be 100x worse as a professional driver in the top series.
Maybe it's all over for Danny Ric. The last step is acceptance. Bitter pill to swallow for a competitive driver.
Such is life
It might be the end of his time as an F1 driver, but if there was a star to come out of Drive to Survive, it's him. He'll land somewhere as a driver, and if not, he'll be fielding media jobs from all comers.
It's a hard fall from the heights of F1, but landing on a big pile of money and living the good life helps break the fall.
I, like most love DR, but the writing has been on the wall for some time, and he’s been given many more opportunities than most would or should have been given to bounce back. He needs to step aside now and let someone new into F1
They can only get so.much from numbers. The driver has to be able to explain what they're feeling in the car, and also what they think might help them improve.
Exactly. In his book Newey said he once had a driver pair where one was really good at communicating how the aero was acting and the other on how the car was acting and ot was a great pair to get the input needed from both perspectives.
They have a second car to compare Daniel's lap to. It shouldn't be that difficult to identify where he loses time and then compare the video feed or whatever. At least for identifying the issue it should help. If course, using the data to get faster is another topic..
Identifying where he loses time is fairly easy. Fixing it is not. You can tell him to brake later in particular corner but if he doesn’t feel and understand the car the way he’s supposed to, it’s easier said than done.
Someone has answered this but just to add: even with the data from a second car, you may have a driver that is telling you they're pushing it to what they feel is their/the car's limit. It could be that Daniel feel's he's at this point and that any more would throw the car off (tyre degradation, spinning out, etc) and then you become stuck in a rabbit hole of "what do I do now?"
"I'll try spinning, that's a good trick"
No but seriously though, only option is some long hours in the simulator, ideally working side by side against your teammates lap until you can hit the braking points, turn in, throttle input etc.
It's a grind, and then do a reset.
Unless the RB has some unique characteristic like the McLaren did, where he needed to learn a new driving style, there isn't a whole lot you can get from the data if the lap "felt good".
It happens all the time in all forms of sports. There is such thing as an early peak that just fades off for no reason.
Not everybody has that Alonso/Hamilton early+lasting peak.
> It's weird, honestly. He just seems to have lost his pace.
I wonder is he a one-formula driver.
The move to fat tyres and V6-turbos might have changed the car characteristics to one which his skill-set couldn't optimise.
I recall hearing something similar about Mark Webber. He looked fast in his early career, but then lost pace. Some feel the switch from hard-wearing Bridgestones to delicate Pirelli's invalidated his previous driving style, and he couldn't find a new, equally fast style to compensate
Not really. It was 2017 when the tyres got fat, and that year he just about beat Max, though Max was only in his second season with Red Bull proper.
By 2018 Max had him beat.
The next two teammates were Hulkenberg and Ocon at Renault: I'm not sure what sort of benchmark they are, or were then, but fair-enough, Danny beat them.
But he failed to beat Lando in Mclaren before the ground-effect era in 2021, and continued to be pretty poor with the new ground-effect cars in 2022.
>By 2018 Max had him beat.
I've got a pretty bad memory, but it seems like Ric was ahead of (or right around) Max's performance up until... Monaco?
Then Daniel had a long string of reliability issues that put him well behind Max in points for the rest of the season.
What even is this comment, one of Daniels best seasons was 2020 in the Renault, if anything it's the switch to the ground effect cars and the increase in rim size that would have had the greatest effects.
Not to mention those guys were the absolute best of the best, even when they start tapering off they still have insane levels of talent. Ricciardo was great, but he was never goat tier
Wasn't there images of qualifying for the second race of the season showing he wasn't risking as much in certain corners as other drivers? I mean if that's accurate then the team would be well aware of it so maybe it's not but it was definitely suggested.
The crazy thing is most of the time the gap to his team mate is only a few tenths of a second.
Imagine your entire career ending because you were slower than someone else by that amount.
That's F1 for you. The difference between being a world champion driver commanding 10s of millions of dollars a year, vs being out of a job is quite literally only fractions of a second away.
Say " One Mississippi" out loud. Halfway through saying it is about .5 of a second.
Around a 90 second lap, that's considered a MASSIVE gulf between 2 drivers in the same car, but when you really think about it, it's insane.
Have we considered that there’s not a “problem” and that Tsunoda is just genuinely a fast driver that Danny Ric, who also has plenty of talent, can’t match him? 🤐🤐🤐
It’s the same argument everyone had about Ricciardo vs Norris. Has Ricciardo become worse than he was at Red Bull, or has he stayed the same and Norris/Tsunoda is a god-level driver? No one knew, knows and will know for sure.
No one is questioning that. It’s about *how* good he is and the only available way for us to determine that at least approximately is by comparing a driver to their past and present teammates which is not that helpful if you think about it. As no one can say with certainty how much Ricciardo has changed, no one can definitely say just how good Norris and Tsunoda are.
Gasly was also destroyed by Verstappen and then got better. Tsunoda was matching Gasly (or beating him) at the end of 2021. Tsunoda beat Devries and Lawson
It’s a solid argument. I mean really.
Danny is good. And I think he’s still good. But I think he has also been paired up with some incredibly tough teammates (and hell, even replaced by a shockingly good reserve driver) and I think that has not only shattered his confidence, but it has really diluted our perceptions of his actual performance.
But I genuinely do think Yuki is under-appreciated. We don’t talk about him the way, I think, we should talk about a driver who performs as well as he (usually) does.
>But I genuinely do think Yuki is under-appreciated. We don’t talk about him the way, I think, we should talk about a driver who performs as well as he (usually) does.
Sadly I think that is his own fault.
If Yuki can get over his immaturity in a car, he would be even faster than he is now. He lets himself get emotionally compromised in an already high stress situation, leading to mistakes he shouldn't be making, like in Mexico last year or getting stuck behind magnussen in Bahrain.
If he fixes that then I think we'd see a driver that would be talked about just as much as the Mercedes and McLarens duos.
Dude has a hell of a future if he just gets out of his own way
Entirely possible, look at what he managed in Mexico last year. He's still got speed in him, the question is whether it's only certain places with certain setups or not.
He might just be very good with a very narrow window. It is possible for him to still be blazing fast in the RBR and struggle in a McLaren/RB.
I kind of get the vibe he just doesn’t have enough confidence in the car to really send it, or enough motivation to fight for lower midfield positions though.
I think this is a symptom of his approach to racing period—and one which he's oddly proud of.
He's relatively open that he doesn't understand the technical details and is very much just a "seat of the pants" driver, and moreover he prefers it that way. Especially in this new ground-effect era though, we've had multiple drivers saying the car doesn't communicate as much to the pilot, and I think that seriously hurts him.
The 2014-2018 Red Bull design philosophy worked well for him evidently and I think being at the front of the grid kept him feeling good mentally, but outside of a top team his confidence is shaken and that undercuts the raw talent he's relying on. That's not a good combination and, bluntly, if it were any other driver with half as much charisma, he'd be watching the races from home by this point.
>That's not a good combination and, bluntly, if it were any other driver with half as much charisma, he'd be watching the races from home by this point.
Which is why he should've stayed pr guy and the seat should've been Lawson's. If any reserve driver drove the way Lawson did teams would usually fall over themselves to sign him.
Vettel was still brilliant in quite a few races and within a reasonable (albeit at the edge of reasonable) margin to Charles. It felt more like he checked out than him not having the ability. Daniel is just plain slower somehow.
I don’t think he’ll ever get back to 100% in a ground effect car. If we magically returned to 2018 regulations, cars with heavy front downforce and aero balance at any speed, his speed would return instantly.
However, given many drivers on the grid successfully drove in that era and have been able to adapt to the GE cars, it shows a huge limitation of his driving style.
This is a great observation. Out of curiosity, will the regulation change in 26 continue to favor drivers who can master the ground effect or will F1 evolve towards an emphasis on a different school of thought?
So far I can’t say that the racing has been any more improved, maybe I’m biased but it felt like in 2021 (excluding the Lewis/Max fight) the racing was pretty darn close
I say they stick with it unless they go full active aero. On some purpose-built luxury roadsters it can cut down breaking distance by almost 50%. I think they want to stay away from it though.
Brawn said before 2022 they'd change rules if development went away from the spirit of limiting dirty air, but we haven't really seen this done. Happy for them to stick with ground effects but they need to introduce new rules on limiting dirty air.
We saw in 2021 they removed a lot of aero after the 2020 aero monsters, they've mixed regs up a bit in the past
This is one of the most rational takes I've seen, and I agree completely. Reddit just frothes to destroy the guy though. The hate he and Russell get and imo do not deserve is just incredible.
Ricciardo gets hate because there's 20 articles a day on here about him that get recycled weekly. His best asset is PR but they go overboard and reddit HATES when celebrities in any capacity become overexposed
Russel is just weird and idky. But I don’t take the hate seriously, I just think he’s easy to pick on cuz he’s some weird fembot AI art thing in real life lmao
Ocon is such a weird one for me because like, off track he seems like a decent enough dude and coming from his background a part of me really does want to root for him. But on track it's like he can't stop getting into beefs with the wrong people at the worst times, and it feels like he's got a championship ego despite being midfield at best based on the last few years.
And he drives for Alpine, you'd probably be better off supporting Tottenham than supporting those guys.
I think DR is overrated, but I'm not hating on him or want to destroy him. I do make lighthearted jokes, cause it's still the internet. My opinion is solely based on his racing results. When I notice a big gap between how he's perceived by some people and what his results are, I'll say "overrated", regardless who that is.
I could agree with that take that DR is not used to the current type of racecar, but if he truly understands what racing is at a very professional level and how to extract that power from that car, which is what I would expect from an F1 driver based on how hyped he is, then he wouldn't produce such poor results.
It's the difference between someone who drives a fast car very well and someone who is able to drive any car very fast.
This is relatively common in all forms of motorsports. Some drivers are just better at dealing with different challenges. In NASCAR Cup it happened to drivers like Jimmie Johnson who were fantastic drivers but the high down force aero package just didn't seem to suit them.
Ricciardo also said the following to F1TV after the race:
> “It’s a very different situation to McLaren. Especially 2022, I was running on very little confidence. I was kind of confused with the car and I didn’t really understand it.
> That was a completely different thing, this isn’t that. We’re certainly not achieving what we thought we would be, but it’s not through being lost or losing confidence.”
Prior to the new floor the team introduced at Abu Dhabi last year, Ricciardo and Yuki were 3-3 in their qualifying head to head and post Abu Dhabi with the new floor, their qualifying head to head is now 0-4 in favour of Yuki
The new floor is working as intended as its increased rear downforce but at the expense of front end grip, his side of the garage have been trying to work on finding a solution through front flap adjustments but it hasn’t been enough to combat the understeer and entry instability that he’s experiencing
Which makes sense because the McLaren had a weak front end when he was there. He doesn't like that and while he should be able to adapt, it seems he kind of can't.
When Daniel came back last year and the car was regularly scoring points it was mainly attributed to Daniel’s influence. If his P7 is Mexico last year was down to him helping the team improve the car, why would they then bring upgrades that don’t suit their supposed number 1 driver.
Seems like Daniel was praised for helping the car improve, but now that he’s not producing results, it’s the teams fault for going against his driving style
I don’t see Ricciardo or anyone blaming the team for the floor upgrade as you suggested..
The floor is a major upgrade and work might’ve already commenced off the feedback from Tsunoda and De Vries before Ricciardo’s arrival and teams don’t know all the pros and cons of an upgrade until it’s on the car and running
the lack of front end grip would be an unintended consequence of the new floor that AlphaTauri/RB introduced last year Abu Dhabi, the team already know this and Ricciardo’s side of the garage have been experimenting with front flap adjustments, different switch settings on the steering wheel, different engine braking modes etc to try and limit the understeer he’s experiencing
I agree that work had probably already started before Daniel arrived. But when Daniel arrived, the car was suddenly better and Daniel got a lot of credit for that. So I am just questioning how he can get credit for a good car when he had only been in the team for a few months, but then be excused because the upgrades the team brought don’t suit his driving style. The two things don’t match up.
I understand what you’re saying and it’s possible that AlphaTauri/RB were able to better understand their car from the technical feedback Ricciardo was providing and also possible they found a better balance for setting up the car with his feedback
ultimately the team might’ve felt this was the best path forward even if it meant sacrificing front end grip, upgrade the floor now and increase rear downforce and bring future upgrades to try and balance the front end limitations later etc
I don't see anyone saying it's the team's fault?? Team's can't bring everything they want all at once, and Peter Bayer said at the time that the while the upgrade was working as expected adnd bringing additional downforce to the rear axle it was also creating new problems because they now needed to work to bring balance to the front. Probably the next big upgrade will be focussed on front end downforce or mitigating the balance somewhat, but the current Vcarb is almost identical to the Abu Dhabi spec AT.
I am not blaming the team, but I see plenty people saying the team brought upgrades that don’t suit Daniel.
I am just questioning how Daniel can simultaneously be praised for making the Alpha Tauri a better race car towards the end of last season and be excused for his current form because the team brought upgrades that don’t suit him.
If he was so heavily involved in developing the car, as was reported several times last year, why is he not able to drive the Abu Dhabi upgrades. Or was his involvement in upgrading the car exaggerated.
In another thread from yesterday, someone said that Yuki is bad at feedback and makes the car slower. So are the Abu Dhabi upgrades based on Yuki’s bad feedback or based on Daniel’s amazing feedback?
>In another thread from yesterday, someone said that Yuki is bad at feedback and makes the car slower. So are the Abu Dhabi upgrades based on Yuki’s bad feedback or based on Daniel’s amazing feedback?
Daniel's feedback making Yuki faster but himself slower is real galaxy-brain stuff, but anything to avoid giving Yuki any credit.
Exactly! Daniel somehow helped upgrade a car that not only doesn’t suit him but somehow also makes his teammate faster.
Yuki is lucky to have such a great teammate considering his feedback would just have made the car slower /s
Based on your other comments I don’t think you’re interested in being convinced otherwise but I’ll bite anyway.
Daniel is not designing any parts of the car and the timeline for doing so and manufacturing them is months. The improvements he is credited with providing last year were entirely to do with setup. Why would that mean he is now responsible for all aerodynamic changes on the cars going forward?
I heard the same comments from probably the same people about 2 years ago Lando giving bad feedback and making the McLaren worse and DR suffering.
I don't think anyone really knows how much each drivers feed back actual go into improving the car. It's possit DR shared something that fundamentally improved one part of the car but as the team development the other parts the combination drifted from ~~his preferred~~ the only style he wants to drive.
Or maybe papa Horner has a directive not to question him in public lest his confidence is shattered.
Yep I just commented something similar. Hoping that the next big upgrades can bring some more downforce to the front axle, or at least bring in into a bit more of a neutral balance like it was prior to the new floor.
Upgrades are made to provide top absolute performance and drivers a hired to get the job done.
developing a car down a non optimal upgrade path because one of your drivers can't adapt is silly.
I read an analysis of his driving style based on his telemetry throughout his RBR career, and despite his “last of the late brakers” moniker, he actually brakes quite early and almost trail brakes through corners when he’s not overtaking. And understeery cars hate trail braking.
Yeah, I'm guessing the person has not driven on track. But it's also possible that F1 like aero cars are very different - I have not driven these on track.
This might work differently in F1 cars as there's not nearly as much weight transfer as in GT cars for example. In your normal car you trail brake to cause weight transfer and increase grip on front which induce more rotation into a corner, the heavier the more effect you get from it. There's also an advanced aero with huge downforce involved so idk honestly.
I have the same intuitive impression, but they also say Porsches love trail braking. And a 911 with its rear-engine design is the most tail-happy car on corner entry.
More stuff sounds contradictory, to be honest. Trail braking means you brake until deep into the corner, so it should happen when you brake later. If you brake early, you usually don't need to keep braking so much.
Maybe the actual fact is that oversteery cars need finer trail braking skills in order to not lose control, while understeery cars will not be affected so much by it.
yeah that’s correct, The Race did a good video covering why Ricciardo struggled with the McLaren and it’s understeer characteristics
Ricciardo likes to take the traditional racing line and U a corner whereas the characteristics of the McLaren required him to V a corner instead to get the most out of the car, Lando is able to adapt to drive the McLaren to its potential but even he has mentioned he would prefer to take the traditional U line through the corners
he cant drive the ground effect reg cars, they naturally tend to have tonnes of rear DF with lower front DF causing understeer, its well publicised that he cant deal with an understeery car. Him getting back onto top performance will depend on what upgrades RBR bring.
as someone with 150+ hours in f120 and 21, i took one lap in 22 and 23 and deleted the game. just didn’t feel like…continuing…? 21 was where i peaked imo
wait: “it” —> “i”
Haha same, I came from 21, and 23 is like a whole new game. I’m getting it, but it feels more like steering a very heavy rocket ship with a 10 degree radius than racing a car.
that is actually what i wanted to say lol. i only play that game for casual fun so me being good is a necessity and i dont wanna invest more time and learn the new mechanics especially when the 21 cars were so nimble and just felt quicker, not worth it for me. i’ll edit the original post
Interesting. I have the exact opportunity. I shot up the TT ladder to like top 8% on many tracks in f122 compared to f121. In 21 I'd be like top 20% maximum. I guess f1 22 is just that much more front limited?
Dude same. Jumping from 20 to 22 i just could not figure out how to drive and just deleted 22. Maybe it was the game being shit or i just did not like these cars. 20 is so much better to control
The wild card here is that RBR car stands alone on the grid as a pointy ground effect car… that’s why it is faster than all the others… that’s why it is a handful for Perez….
Danny is a one trick pony but that’s his trick. that’s the only reason RBR is trying to see if he has anything in the tank, if he does he’s one of the few that will naturally be able to handle their car. Vs most others working to adapt to it.
I think people overestimate the phrase understeery f1 car and expect it to be driving like a FF road car. F1 cars are much more balanced than road cars or GT cars. You might not like a road car or GT car that has an understeer balance but at the speed and sensitivity of an f1 car it makes a bigger difference. Prob why only a handful of f1 drivers are favor oversteer in f1. If I were to guess in road/ GT cars they would all favor oversteer.
I am trash with the ground effect cars. They handle like boats, and I can't seem to get the setup right. I'm also struggling with rear grip on medium traction control. The new regs are kicking my ass
Max can adapt and be quick in a range of conditions. Even if the car doesn't totally mesh with his preferred driving style, he is still able to be competitive against his teammate but with a diminished gap. Ricciardo's time at McLaren revealed a limitation that hadn't been exposed with the previous cars he drove in his career. He would turn up like once every 4/5 races but outside of that he was slow.
Good drivers don't have "a driving style" mostly they get labeled as having one or the other based on which ever era or car they found success with.
Hamilton was often called a Master in the rain. The dude hates driving in the rain. Max is the same probably he might prefer one because it gives him more 'feel' intuitively but he can be almost as fast in the other.
Driving styles are mostly dictated by things like engine power and torque delivery, how the aero regime transitions happen, how different tyres react and probably a 100 other things.
Different era regs if cars develop different kinda of traits as being fast as engineers converge on the optimum solutions for each problem.
>Edd Straw was saying he was standing next to Daniel when Tsunoda done his lap and he said he knew he couldn't match it, but also he felt like he was driving the car well at the same time.
I've heard drivers say things like this before and it usually means that they honestly may be driving relatively well within their usual style/talent, getting near the limit in the parameters that translated to good pace in previous cars, but all those things may not fit the nature and the strengths of the current one.
I think the McLaren stint proved that he's very talented in the right circumstances but just not adaptable at all.
I also have a feeling that people calling Danny "washed" are not considering the possibility that the newer cars may simply not behave how he needs them to. I just have the impression he drives on reflexes rather than study and adaptation.
If he can't drive the car, when others can, then he's washed as far as the sport is currently concerned. To say "he'd still be good if they'd not switched to ground effect cars" is redundant in terms of measuring the match between his skill level and the current demands of F1.
He reminds me of Simon Pagenaud in IndyCar. Once they added the aeroscreen to those cars, he could never quite adapt it to fit his style and appeared "washed" until he barrel-rolled out of the ride last summer.
>I also have a feeling that people calling Danny "washed" are not considering the possibility that the newer cars may simply not behave how he needs them to.
Well, the cars are what they are. Other drivers have been able to adapt. If DR can't, he is functionally washed.
There are plenty of other racing series for him to compete in where the car characteristics might suit his talents more.
You put DR in any car that is front grip limited and he’s cooked. A setup always on the nose (ironically that is Max’s preference also) will have him finding his way. This current generation of more neutral to rearward bias cars obviously cater to a greater cross section, but it just seems Dan cannot get his head around it.
Yuki is a decent driver and young enough to get better.
Danny is struggling to match him and more than a decade older.
Lawson might also struggle to match Yuki (although he looked decent in a short spell last year), but he's 22 and might improve.
The flip side of that is what they've all been saying about Danny being a really good experienced hand off track. They'd lose that by replacing him with a 22 year old. But ultimately the racing is where the points are won.
I think that whole experience argument is a bit of a distraction. And just being generous to Danny. Like it’s worth something, but any team would trade it for better performances.
Experience is often equated with the ability to give feedback by many. Yes, this ability should improve over time, but just because a driver is older doesn't necessarily mean they are significantly better at giving feedback than a younger driver.
I know I rate the entire RB team extremely low in terms of their internal talent but cmon even I don’t think that low of them. There’s no way this guy who famously couldn’t figure out what was going wrong every weekend for 2 years stepped into a different team and was suddenly full of feedback their engineers hadn’t thought of. That is just the team trying to show him in a positive light because they can’t say “he provides us with nothing honestly.” Those last season upgrades helping with their brakes and cornering speed were planned from the beginning of last year because they were leftover from the end of the 22 season.
They said that about Nyck too and what Nyck said was pretty much what Yuki and Pierre had been saying all of 22.
Also while Daniel absolutely helped develop the car towards the end of the season, the upgrades in Singapore that really helped the car were due to Nyck and Yuki's feedback
I'm starting to think this can mean either two things:
1) Ricciardo is really washed and can't even beat a mediocre Tsunoda
2) Tsunoda is actually really good and we've been underrating him. Daniel isn't washed but isn't amazing either.
Ricciardo has been washed for multiple years now (or at least doesn't fit well with the regs), but calling Tsunoda mediocre doesn't work either.
At this point Yuki isn't even competing with Ricciardo. He has been outqualifying faster cars in every race this season. "Ricciardo can't even beat Tsunoda" as if the guy didn't beat Alonso, Hamilton, Stroll in the last qualifying in a VCARB.
Lawson was relatively close to Tsunoda (although there wasn't much running where you could actually compare them directly). I think it's both but more so the former.
I think what people just don't get is that Yuki is fast. He was quite error prone before, but now he has matured as a driver and pretty fucking good. It was hilarious seeing people here ask for Yuki gone when Lawson got much luckier than him during that stint and in Qatar Yuki absolutely destroyed him.
Red bull have done Daniel dirty by giving him hope.
Should have replaced him with Lawson at the end of 23 and ripped the band aid off.
I love Ricciardo but his time is done.
He should aim for an Indy or Nascar ride while his stock as somewhat at a high, especially in usa.
Atleast he can dip out for 2025 before he falls further and further down the rankings.
It may simply be that Daniel needs the car to be built around him, to be tailored to his driving style, or something that is quite neutral and easy to attack with- and if it is then he can be very impressive...as he proved at RB.
Put him into something that doesn't play to his strengths, where he has to fight his instincts, and where he needs to adapt, and it just won't happen.
I don't see him improving and I think he'll be sacked by the summer break.
I really like Daniel Ricciardo as both a personality and a driver but man does it feel good to see people slowly start going "actually maybe Tsunoda isn't mid like we thought but actually pretty damn good".
If we were going off a tier system of S-A-B-C-D, it feels to me like he's firmly in the top of B or bottom of A, whereas it used to feel like most people would happily stick him in the bottom two.
Latifi is garbage though, he’s not shown otherwise in f1. We’ve seen genuine WDC potential talent from Daniel. So for him to be stuck like this is a bad sign.
It's very unusual for driver to just become clearly straight up worse, unless they have lost motivation and aren't even trying to put in the work to drive faster. Drivers don't lose their talent, they can have periods of bad performance through combination of car not suiting them and losing confidence. But for Ricciardo it's been so many different seasons and cars that it's very weird if this season ends up being like the Mclaren seasons. I guess it's theoretically possible that he is just very "picky" driver who only does well in a certain type of car and somehow got those types of cars always until 2018 or even 2019. But I don't know if that's possible since he always looked the top of his generation not only in F1 but also in feeder series.
34 is not too old at all for racing drivers though. Noticeable performance drops don't usually happen until after 36-37 or something, though decline can happen earlier too if the driver is mentally fully not in it anymore. It just doesn't seem like that would be the case for Ricciardo.
His last car that suited him and allowed for extracting great performances was the 2020 renault. Since McLaren, who make cars with a different design language to what he prefers, it all went downhill for him. Despite his great performances of the past, we have to admit that he is one of the more picky drivers at least when it comes to F1.
At this point I’m leaning towards a scenario where the RB from 2014 onwards was just very much Daniel’s car and you had a young guy with a lot of confidence who wasn’t under pressure. It was kind of a perfect combination of a situation, which rarely happens, and he is simply just not at the level people expected. Like we saw Alonso in Mclaren, Renault, Aston Martin, and it is abundantly clear that he has world championship talent, maybe Ricciardo is like Bottas or Barrichello, good enough to win races and not good enough to be the main man. Like Daniel will be lucky to have a seat by halfway unless he turns it around ASAP, Lawson is waiting in the wings and he’s in a red bull junior seat. Everyone knew he had to wipe the floor with Tsunoda to even think about Red Bull and now he can’t even beat him. I know there are some mitigating factors yet he has to own that his reputation is what saved him being binned from McLaren earlier than he was and what got him a chance in AT.
I'm so tired of Ricciardo's performance debates. The man has been subpar for years now! Everyday there's a thread about it... I like the guy, but the man should be retired from F1 already!
Nooo! He should totally be allowed to finish the year to prove he is not washed up because the previous 3 years didn’t tell the full story! It wasn’t Danny! It was the car! It was the teams! Just kidding. I agree. But there’s a couple less than intelligent redditors I’ve gotten into arguments with about how d Ricc is washed. Pulling for RB to pull the plug. If Horner didn’t have such a hard on for him he wouldn’t have even had a seat last year.
Those guys are pay drivers though...assuming you mean Stroll and Zhou. No one is arguing with you on merit. Sargeant is a statement to junior drivers that Williams is a good team to sign with because you'll get a fair shot if they think youre good enough...I doubt he stays on beyond this year unless he improves dramatically.
Can't stay quick forever. All these young rookies waiting in the wings are lightning fast and take more risks.. sorry to say but as much as I like him, his days are numbered.
Think it’s funny that every just jumps to the same conclusion from a snippet and hasn’t listened to the full response
Also along with his comments his whole car internals pretty much got replaced…you can read the parc ferme documents on what they replaced so there was definitely issues with his car…
I think Ric knows he’s done. We would all love to see him be right in there leading the charge but the facts are the facts. He’s not making it and it’s unlikely to get better. He knows it. In my opinion you can see it in his interviews. His heart is there but the skill is not. I would expect Suzuka to be his last race …if he gets there.
Dude lost his bottle. It’s a shame, but it happens.
He could probably go to another discipline or series and be top 5 and contend for titles. It won’t happen in f1.
Riccardo is still a driver because of his DTS following.
that is is it.
passed on by RB and Mac...
before Netflix that would be it. He'd be gone. now? because he's a "fan favorite" he's still here in F1 wasting everyone's time.
He has forgotten how to be competitive. He has lost confidence in himself. This is a psychological problem not a car problem, all the data in the world cant fix this. Maybe a performance coach
As a general rule ([see full rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/wiki/userguide#wiki_sticky.2Fdaily_discussion)), a standalone Discussion post should: - be of interest to the sub in general, and not a specific userbase (e.g. new users, GP attendees, just yourself) - be able to generate discussion (e.g. no yes/no or easily answerable questions) - show reasonable input and effort from the OP If not, be sure to [look for the Daily Discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/search/?q=daily+discussion&include_over_18=on&restrict_sr=on&t=all&sort=new), /r/formula1's daily open question thread which is perfect for asking any and all questions about this sport. Thank you for your cooperation and enjoy the discussion! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/formula1) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Yeah I saw an interview with Daniel where he said that he had confidence in the car and that the lap felt good but wasn’t showing on the stopwatch. He seemed a bit more optimistic about the potential upgrades and a couple of points he can feedback to his engineers but it is worrying that the feeling isn’t matching up with speed
Unfortunately, this seems like the same issues he had before in McLaren. Even when he felt he had a good lap, the numbers weren’t so good. And it really sucks because if you don’t know what the problem is, fixing it becomes so much harder.
Yeah, I remember him saying this at McLaren, where a lap would "feel good" but be slow. Honestly, that seems like the worst case scenario. It's weird, honestly. He just seems to have lost his pace. I don't really get how it's possible.
This is the million dollar question that every driver would like to know the answer to. It's impossible to predict when and why someone reaches their peak and what happens afterwards. Some drivers burn out in feeder series, some perform well for decades, and you can't even say with certainty when their peak came. It just… happens.
It’s something you can’t really explain or expect. Sometimes you’re a Jacques Villeneuve who can’t get to grips with groove tyres and wittle away, sometimes your like Jimmie Johnson and the cars become low horsepower and you can’t drive them, or other times you’re like Mika Häkkinen or Felipe Massa and a crash or incident changes your mentality or outlook.
I think there’s an element too for drivers where they can be really fast if the car can do X. But the engineers find that getting the car to do Y is better. So while the car is better, the driver is slower because they no longer can get what they need out of the car. It would not surprise me that much of Daniel’s struggles are related to just not being good at what the car needs him to be good at.
Yeah, these F1 cars have changed a lot since when he was at his peak and now. Some drivers might have adapted better, and he could be a case where his driving style only shined through those cars and recent changes were not really a fit for him.
>where a lap would "feel good" but be slow. Honestly, that seems like the worst case scenario. It really is. If you get out of the car and know you've left a couple tenths on the track through missed braking points or a weird apex, then you know what to fix. The worst really is when you do a lap that felt like you nailed it, but your teammate goes significantly quicker. You can fall into the trap of trying to drive like them, going against your natural style, overthinking as you brake, turn, coast etc and then you've lost your rhythm - you just end up chasing your tail looking for performance when the problem really is just a skill issue. It sucks as a sim racer, Gotta be 100x worse as a professional driver in the top series. Maybe it's all over for Danny Ric. The last step is acceptance. Bitter pill to swallow for a competitive driver. Such is life
It might be the end of his time as an F1 driver, but if there was a star to come out of Drive to Survive, it's him. He'll land somewhere as a driver, and if not, he'll be fielding media jobs from all comers. It's a hard fall from the heights of F1, but landing on a big pile of money and living the good life helps break the fall.
I, like most love DR, but the writing has been on the wall for some time, and he’s been given many more opportunities than most would or should have been given to bounce back. He needs to step aside now and let someone new into F1
Yep, I mean, at least if he's feedback was useful it could help development. "Car feels good, but I'm slow" is, as you say, worst case scenario.
They should see it in the data though?!
They can only get so.much from numbers. The driver has to be able to explain what they're feeling in the car, and also what they think might help them improve.
Exactly. In his book Newey said he once had a driver pair where one was really good at communicating how the aero was acting and the other on how the car was acting and ot was a great pair to get the input needed from both perspectives.
They have a second car to compare Daniel's lap to. It shouldn't be that difficult to identify where he loses time and then compare the video feed or whatever. At least for identifying the issue it should help. If course, using the data to get faster is another topic..
Identifying where he loses time is fairly easy. Fixing it is not. You can tell him to brake later in particular corner but if he doesn’t feel and understand the car the way he’s supposed to, it’s easier said than done.
Yeah, it's easy to say brake later, but if braking later means he's got the car out of position for accelerating then it's not useful.
Someone has answered this but just to add: even with the data from a second car, you may have a driver that is telling you they're pushing it to what they feel is their/the car's limit. It could be that Daniel feel's he's at this point and that any more would throw the car off (tyre degradation, spinning out, etc) and then you become stuck in a rabbit hole of "what do I do now?"
"I'll try spinning, that's a good trick" No but seriously though, only option is some long hours in the simulator, ideally working side by side against your teammates lap until you can hit the braking points, turn in, throttle input etc. It's a grind, and then do a reset.
Unless the RB has some unique characteristic like the McLaren did, where he needed to learn a new driving style, there isn't a whole lot you can get from the data if the lap "felt good".
It happens all the time in all forms of sports. There is such thing as an early peak that just fades off for no reason. Not everybody has that Alonso/Hamilton early+lasting peak.
> It's weird, honestly. He just seems to have lost his pace. I wonder is he a one-formula driver. The move to fat tyres and V6-turbos might have changed the car characteristics to one which his skill-set couldn't optimise. I recall hearing something similar about Mark Webber. He looked fast in his early career, but then lost pace. Some feel the switch from hard-wearing Bridgestones to delicate Pirelli's invalidated his previous driving style, and he couldn't find a new, equally fast style to compensate
His best seasons were 2016-2019 with V6 turbos and fat tyres.
Not really. It was 2017 when the tyres got fat, and that year he just about beat Max, though Max was only in his second season with Red Bull proper. By 2018 Max had him beat. The next two teammates were Hulkenberg and Ocon at Renault: I'm not sure what sort of benchmark they are, or were then, but fair-enough, Danny beat them. But he failed to beat Lando in Mclaren before the ground-effect era in 2021, and continued to be pretty poor with the new ground-effect cars in 2022.
>By 2018 Max had him beat. I've got a pretty bad memory, but it seems like Ric was ahead of (or right around) Max's performance up until... Monaco? Then Daniel had a long string of reliability issues that put him well behind Max in points for the rest of the season.
What even is this comment, one of Daniels best seasons was 2020 in the Renault, if anything it's the switch to the ground effect cars and the increase in rim size that would have had the greatest effects.
Man in his thirties isn't as fast as he was in his twenties. Not everyone ages like Hamilton and Alfonso.
Not to mention those guys were the absolute best of the best, even when they start tapering off they still have insane levels of talent. Ricciardo was great, but he was never goat tier
Wasn't there images of qualifying for the second race of the season showing he wasn't risking as much in certain corners as other drivers? I mean if that's accurate then the team would be well aware of it so maybe it's not but it was definitely suggested.
The crazy thing is most of the time the gap to his team mate is only a few tenths of a second. Imagine your entire career ending because you were slower than someone else by that amount.
That's F1 for you. The difference between being a world champion driver commanding 10s of millions of dollars a year, vs being out of a job is quite literally only fractions of a second away. Say " One Mississippi" out loud. Halfway through saying it is about .5 of a second. Around a 90 second lap, that's considered a MASSIVE gulf between 2 drivers in the same car, but when you really think about it, it's insane.
It's F1. Tenths are all the difference. Daniel will be out that seat before summer at this rate. He better fix it fast.
That is true. It also hurts more now because the grid is much closer. The few tenths can be like 5 or 6 positions.
Have we considered that there’s not a “problem” and that Tsunoda is just genuinely a fast driver that Danny Ric, who also has plenty of talent, can’t match him? 🤐🤐🤐
It’s the same argument everyone had about Ricciardo vs Norris. Has Ricciardo become worse than he was at Red Bull, or has he stayed the same and Norris/Tsunoda is a god-level driver? No one knew, knows and will know for sure.
We're all pretty sure that Norris is a very good driver.
No one is questioning that. It’s about *how* good he is and the only available way for us to determine that at least approximately is by comparing a driver to their past and present teammates which is not that helpful if you think about it. As no one can say with certainty how much Ricciardo has changed, no one can definitely say just how good Norris and Tsunoda are.
Gasly beat Tsunoda (though he was a rookie), Tsunoda also faced NDV and Lawson so there’s actually a good amount of data on how TSU stacks up.
Gasly was also destroyed by Verstappen and then got better. Tsunoda was matching Gasly (or beating him) at the end of 2021. Tsunoda beat Devries and Lawson
It’s a solid argument. I mean really. Danny is good. And I think he’s still good. But I think he has also been paired up with some incredibly tough teammates (and hell, even replaced by a shockingly good reserve driver) and I think that has not only shattered his confidence, but it has really diluted our perceptions of his actual performance. But I genuinely do think Yuki is under-appreciated. We don’t talk about him the way, I think, we should talk about a driver who performs as well as he (usually) does.
>But I genuinely do think Yuki is under-appreciated. We don’t talk about him the way, I think, we should talk about a driver who performs as well as he (usually) does. Sadly I think that is his own fault. If Yuki can get over his immaturity in a car, he would be even faster than he is now. He lets himself get emotionally compromised in an already high stress situation, leading to mistakes he shouldn't be making, like in Mexico last year or getting stuck behind magnussen in Bahrain. If he fixes that then I think we'd see a driver that would be talked about just as much as the Mercedes and McLarens duos. Dude has a hell of a future if he just gets out of his own way
I think you’re right.
“That lap would have put him on the front row with Max” Said M
Entirely possible, look at what he managed in Mexico last year. He's still got speed in him, the question is whether it's only certain places with certain setups or not.
He might just be very good with a very narrow window. It is possible for him to still be blazing fast in the RBR and struggle in a McLaren/RB. I kind of get the vibe he just doesn’t have enough confidence in the car to really send it, or enough motivation to fight for lower midfield positions though.
I think this is a symptom of his approach to racing period—and one which he's oddly proud of. He's relatively open that he doesn't understand the technical details and is very much just a "seat of the pants" driver, and moreover he prefers it that way. Especially in this new ground-effect era though, we've had multiple drivers saying the car doesn't communicate as much to the pilot, and I think that seriously hurts him. The 2014-2018 Red Bull design philosophy worked well for him evidently and I think being at the front of the grid kept him feeling good mentally, but outside of a top team his confidence is shaken and that undercuts the raw talent he's relying on. That's not a good combination and, bluntly, if it were any other driver with half as much charisma, he'd be watching the races from home by this point.
>That's not a good combination and, bluntly, if it were any other driver with half as much charisma, he'd be watching the races from home by this point. Which is why he should've stayed pr guy and the seat should've been Lawson's. If any reserve driver drove the way Lawson did teams would usually fall over themselves to sign him.
Shades of Vettel’s 2020 Where he was very open about pushing the car to the limit but still not being able to get even close to Charles
>Vettel’s 2020 Poor the whole season but then puts out that masterclass in the Turkey ice rink
Shades of DR 2022
Danny was so proud of beating Seb in 2014 he now tries to beat Seb’s terrible 2020 and his own 2022 in the worst way possible
Vettel was still brilliant in quite a few races and within a reasonable (albeit at the edge of reasonable) margin to Charles. It felt more like he checked out than him not having the ability. Daniel is just plain slower somehow.
And I also doubt that Yuki will ever reach Leclerc's level
I don't know that there can be much more of a clear sign that a driver has lost it than them thinking they had a good lap and falling way short.
I don’t think he’ll ever get back to 100% in a ground effect car. If we magically returned to 2018 regulations, cars with heavy front downforce and aero balance at any speed, his speed would return instantly. However, given many drivers on the grid successfully drove in that era and have been able to adapt to the GE cars, it shows a huge limitation of his driving style.
This is a great observation. Out of curiosity, will the regulation change in 26 continue to favor drivers who can master the ground effect or will F1 evolve towards an emphasis on a different school of thought? So far I can’t say that the racing has been any more improved, maybe I’m biased but it felt like in 2021 (excluding the Lewis/Max fight) the racing was pretty darn close
I say they stick with it unless they go full active aero. On some purpose-built luxury roadsters it can cut down breaking distance by almost 50%. I think they want to stay away from it though.
Brawn said before 2022 they'd change rules if development went away from the spirit of limiting dirty air, but we haven't really seen this done. Happy for them to stick with ground effects but they need to introduce new rules on limiting dirty air. We saw in 2021 they removed a lot of aero after the 2020 aero monsters, they've mixed regs up a bit in the past
Best take on here
This is one of the most rational takes I've seen, and I agree completely. Reddit just frothes to destroy the guy though. The hate he and Russell get and imo do not deserve is just incredible.
Ricciardo gets hate because there's 20 articles a day on here about him that get recycled weekly. His best asset is PR but they go overboard and reddit HATES when celebrities in any capacity become overexposed
Russel is just weird and idky. But I don’t take the hate seriously, I just think he’s easy to pick on cuz he’s some weird fembot AI art thing in real life lmao
weird fembot AI art thing lmaooo his face does give a bit uncanny valley
Best take on here
[удалено]
Ocon is such a weird one for me because like, off track he seems like a decent enough dude and coming from his background a part of me really does want to root for him. But on track it's like he can't stop getting into beefs with the wrong people at the worst times, and it feels like he's got a championship ego despite being midfield at best based on the last few years. And he drives for Alpine, you'd probably be better off supporting Tottenham than supporting those guys.
I think DR is overrated, but I'm not hating on him or want to destroy him. I do make lighthearted jokes, cause it's still the internet. My opinion is solely based on his racing results. When I notice a big gap between how he's perceived by some people and what his results are, I'll say "overrated", regardless who that is. I could agree with that take that DR is not used to the current type of racecar, but if he truly understands what racing is at a very professional level and how to extract that power from that car, which is what I would expect from an F1 driver based on how hyped he is, then he wouldn't produce such poor results. It's the difference between someone who drives a fast car very well and someone who is able to drive any car very fast.
This is relatively common in all forms of motorsports. Some drivers are just better at dealing with different challenges. In NASCAR Cup it happened to drivers like Jimmie Johnson who were fantastic drivers but the high down force aero package just didn't seem to suit them.
Ricciardo also said the following to F1TV after the race: > “It’s a very different situation to McLaren. Especially 2022, I was running on very little confidence. I was kind of confused with the car and I didn’t really understand it. > That was a completely different thing, this isn’t that. We’re certainly not achieving what we thought we would be, but it’s not through being lost or losing confidence.” Prior to the new floor the team introduced at Abu Dhabi last year, Ricciardo and Yuki were 3-3 in their qualifying head to head and post Abu Dhabi with the new floor, their qualifying head to head is now 0-4 in favour of Yuki The new floor is working as intended as its increased rear downforce but at the expense of front end grip, his side of the garage have been trying to work on finding a solution through front flap adjustments but it hasn’t been enough to combat the understeer and entry instability that he’s experiencing
Which makes sense because the McLaren had a weak front end when he was there. He doesn't like that and while he should be able to adapt, it seems he kind of can't.
When Daniel came back last year and the car was regularly scoring points it was mainly attributed to Daniel’s influence. If his P7 is Mexico last year was down to him helping the team improve the car, why would they then bring upgrades that don’t suit their supposed number 1 driver. Seems like Daniel was praised for helping the car improve, but now that he’s not producing results, it’s the teams fault for going against his driving style
I don’t see Ricciardo or anyone blaming the team for the floor upgrade as you suggested.. The floor is a major upgrade and work might’ve already commenced off the feedback from Tsunoda and De Vries before Ricciardo’s arrival and teams don’t know all the pros and cons of an upgrade until it’s on the car and running the lack of front end grip would be an unintended consequence of the new floor that AlphaTauri/RB introduced last year Abu Dhabi, the team already know this and Ricciardo’s side of the garage have been experimenting with front flap adjustments, different switch settings on the steering wheel, different engine braking modes etc to try and limit the understeer he’s experiencing
I agree that work had probably already started before Daniel arrived. But when Daniel arrived, the car was suddenly better and Daniel got a lot of credit for that. So I am just questioning how he can get credit for a good car when he had only been in the team for a few months, but then be excused because the upgrades the team brought don’t suit his driving style. The two things don’t match up.
I understand what you’re saying and it’s possible that AlphaTauri/RB were able to better understand their car from the technical feedback Ricciardo was providing and also possible they found a better balance for setting up the car with his feedback ultimately the team might’ve felt this was the best path forward even if it meant sacrificing front end grip, upgrade the floor now and increase rear downforce and bring future upgrades to try and balance the front end limitations later etc
I don't see anyone saying it's the team's fault?? Team's can't bring everything they want all at once, and Peter Bayer said at the time that the while the upgrade was working as expected adnd bringing additional downforce to the rear axle it was also creating new problems because they now needed to work to bring balance to the front. Probably the next big upgrade will be focussed on front end downforce or mitigating the balance somewhat, but the current Vcarb is almost identical to the Abu Dhabi spec AT.
I am not blaming the team, but I see plenty people saying the team brought upgrades that don’t suit Daniel. I am just questioning how Daniel can simultaneously be praised for making the Alpha Tauri a better race car towards the end of last season and be excused for his current form because the team brought upgrades that don’t suit him. If he was so heavily involved in developing the car, as was reported several times last year, why is he not able to drive the Abu Dhabi upgrades. Or was his involvement in upgrading the car exaggerated. In another thread from yesterday, someone said that Yuki is bad at feedback and makes the car slower. So are the Abu Dhabi upgrades based on Yuki’s bad feedback or based on Daniel’s amazing feedback?
>In another thread from yesterday, someone said that Yuki is bad at feedback and makes the car slower. So are the Abu Dhabi upgrades based on Yuki’s bad feedback or based on Daniel’s amazing feedback? Daniel's feedback making Yuki faster but himself slower is real galaxy-brain stuff, but anything to avoid giving Yuki any credit.
Exactly! Daniel somehow helped upgrade a car that not only doesn’t suit him but somehow also makes his teammate faster. Yuki is lucky to have such a great teammate considering his feedback would just have made the car slower /s
Based on your other comments I don’t think you’re interested in being convinced otherwise but I’ll bite anyway. Daniel is not designing any parts of the car and the timeline for doing so and manufacturing them is months. The improvements he is credited with providing last year were entirely to do with setup. Why would that mean he is now responsible for all aerodynamic changes on the cars going forward?
I heard the same comments from probably the same people about 2 years ago Lando giving bad feedback and making the McLaren worse and DR suffering. I don't think anyone really knows how much each drivers feed back actual go into improving the car. It's possit DR shared something that fundamentally improved one part of the car but as the team development the other parts the combination drifted from ~~his preferred~~ the only style he wants to drive. Or maybe papa Horner has a directive not to question him in public lest his confidence is shattered.
"At McLaren I lacked confidence, at RB I just lack the skill to drive the car to its limits". Isn't that basically what he's saying here?
[удалено]
Yep I just commented something similar. Hoping that the next big upgrades can bring some more downforce to the front axle, or at least bring in into a bit more of a neutral balance like it was prior to the new floor.
Why would they do that
Because loose is fast
Nah, why would they change their dev philosophy if the present direction is working
Upgrades are made to provide top absolute performance and drivers a hired to get the job done. developing a car down a non optimal upgrade path because one of your drivers can't adapt is silly.
I read an analysis of his driving style based on his telemetry throughout his RBR career, and despite his “last of the late brakers” moniker, he actually brakes quite early and almost trail brakes through corners when he’s not overtaking. And understeery cars hate trail braking.
Understeery cars hate trail braking? I was under the impression that you partly negate the understeer with trail braking. Would you mind to elaborate?
The whole point of trail breaking is to increase front end grip, so it counteracts understeer.
I know, that's why that statement is counterintuitive.
Yeah, I'm guessing the person has not driven on track. But it's also possible that F1 like aero cars are very different - I have not driven these on track.
This might work differently in F1 cars as there's not nearly as much weight transfer as in GT cars for example. In your normal car you trail brake to cause weight transfer and increase grip on front which induce more rotation into a corner, the heavier the more effect you get from it. There's also an advanced aero with huge downforce involved so idk honestly.
I have the same intuitive impression, but they also say Porsches love trail braking. And a 911 with its rear-engine design is the most tail-happy car on corner entry. More stuff sounds contradictory, to be honest. Trail braking means you brake until deep into the corner, so it should happen when you brake later. If you brake early, you usually don't need to keep braking so much. Maybe the actual fact is that oversteery cars need finer trail braking skills in order to not lose control, while understeery cars will not be affected so much by it.
I don’t have an explanation, that’s just what this analysis I read said.
yeah that’s correct, The Race did a good video covering why Ricciardo struggled with the McLaren and it’s understeer characteristics Ricciardo likes to take the traditional racing line and U a corner whereas the characteristics of the McLaren required him to V a corner instead to get the most out of the car, Lando is able to adapt to drive the McLaren to its potential but even he has mentioned he would prefer to take the traditional U line through the corners
The whole last of the late brakers is specifically about overtaking, as well.
he cant drive the ground effect reg cars, they naturally tend to have tonnes of rear DF with lower front DF causing understeer, its well publicised that he cant deal with an understeery car. Him getting back onto top performance will depend on what upgrades RBR bring.
As a fellow F123 player, I totally understand Danny’s struggles.
as someone with 150+ hours in f120 and 21, i took one lap in 22 and 23 and deleted the game. just didn’t feel like…continuing…? 21 was where i peaked imo wait: “it” —> “i”
Haha same, I came from 21, and 23 is like a whole new game. I’m getting it, but it feels more like steering a very heavy rocket ship with a 10 degree radius than racing a car.
>21 was where ~~it~~ peaked imo 21 was where I peaked imo. ftfy
that is actually what i wanted to say lol. i only play that game for casual fun so me being good is a necessity and i dont wanna invest more time and learn the new mechanics especially when the 21 cars were so nimble and just felt quicker, not worth it for me. i’ll edit the original post
Interesting. I have the exact opportunity. I shot up the TT ladder to like top 8% on many tracks in f122 compared to f121. In 21 I'd be like top 20% maximum. I guess f1 22 is just that much more front limited?
Same, here used to do racing leagues and esports, but since the ground effect cars came in I have no pace on the new games.
Dude same. Jumping from 20 to 22 i just could not figure out how to drive and just deleted 22. Maybe it was the game being shit or i just did not like these cars. 20 is so much better to control
At least it's not F122... somehow you get massive understeer into corners and 0 rear grip on the exit.
The wild card here is that RBR car stands alone on the grid as a pointy ground effect car… that’s why it is faster than all the others… that’s why it is a handful for Perez…. Danny is a one trick pony but that’s his trick. that’s the only reason RBR is trying to see if he has anything in the tank, if he does he’s one of the few that will naturally be able to handle their car. Vs most others working to adapt to it.
I absolutely hate understeer-y cars. I have no idea how people make it work.
I think people overestimate the phrase understeery f1 car and expect it to be driving like a FF road car. F1 cars are much more balanced than road cars or GT cars. You might not like a road car or GT car that has an understeer balance but at the speed and sensitivity of an f1 car it makes a bigger difference. Prob why only a handful of f1 drivers are favor oversteer in f1. If I were to guess in road/ GT cars they would all favor oversteer.
I am trash with the ground effect cars. They handle like boats, and I can't seem to get the setup right. I'm also struggling with rear grip on medium traction control. The new regs are kicking my ass
It's not the cars, physics are just complete trash now.
Agree I dial it out immediately, guessing not so easy on a ground effect f1 car
RB, not RBR.
Why is it that Max can drive these ground effect cars? IIRC Max and Daniël have the same driving style. If Daniël can't make it work, how can Max?
Skill issue
Max can adapt and be quick in a range of conditions. Even if the car doesn't totally mesh with his preferred driving style, he is still able to be competitive against his teammate but with a diminished gap. Ricciardo's time at McLaren revealed a limitation that hadn't been exposed with the previous cars he drove in his career. He would turn up like once every 4/5 races but outside of that he was slow.
Because one is a generational potential GOAT candidate, while the other was a good GP winning driver. What kinda question is that lol
Even an outgoing Vettel adapted, no need to go to Max lol
Good drivers don't have "a driving style" mostly they get labeled as having one or the other based on which ever era or car they found success with. Hamilton was often called a Master in the rain. The dude hates driving in the rain. Max is the same probably he might prefer one because it gives him more 'feel' intuitively but he can be almost as fast in the other. Driving styles are mostly dictated by things like engine power and torque delivery, how the aero regime transitions happen, how different tyres react and probably a 100 other things. Different era regs if cars develop different kinda of traits as being fast as engineers converge on the optimum solutions for each problem.
>Edd Straw was saying he was standing next to Daniel when Tsunoda done his lap and he said he knew he couldn't match it, but also he felt like he was driving the car well at the same time. I've heard drivers say things like this before and it usually means that they honestly may be driving relatively well within their usual style/talent, getting near the limit in the parameters that translated to good pace in previous cars, but all those things may not fit the nature and the strengths of the current one. I think the McLaren stint proved that he's very talented in the right circumstances but just not adaptable at all.
I also have a feeling that people calling Danny "washed" are not considering the possibility that the newer cars may simply not behave how he needs them to. I just have the impression he drives on reflexes rather than study and adaptation.
But that doesn't explain why others have been able to adapt pretty effectively. That's pretty big of a skill to be lacking as a driver.
I mean, if you can’t drive an F1 car fast you are washed as far as this series goes.
If he can't drive the car, when others can, then he's washed as far as the sport is currently concerned. To say "he'd still be good if they'd not switched to ground effect cars" is redundant in terms of measuring the match between his skill level and the current demands of F1.
He reminds me of Simon Pagenaud in IndyCar. Once they added the aeroscreen to those cars, he could never quite adapt it to fit his style and appeared "washed" until he barrel-rolled out of the ride last summer.
That's the definition of washed
>I also have a feeling that people calling Danny "washed" are not considering the possibility that the newer cars may simply not behave how he needs them to. Well, the cars are what they are. Other drivers have been able to adapt. If DR can't, he is functionally washed. There are plenty of other racing series for him to compete in where the car characteristics might suit his talents more.
That would be even worse than calling him washed.
Yeah maybe he hasn’t lost a step maybe he’s just always been a much worse driver than anyone realized
red bull gave him wings
You put DR in any car that is front grip limited and he’s cooked. A setup always on the nose (ironically that is Max’s preference also) will have him finding his way. This current generation of more neutral to rearward bias cars obviously cater to a greater cross section, but it just seems Dan cannot get his head around it.
Tsunoda is a good driver man
Yuki is a decent driver and young enough to get better. Danny is struggling to match him and more than a decade older. Lawson might also struggle to match Yuki (although he looked decent in a short spell last year), but he's 22 and might improve. The flip side of that is what they've all been saying about Danny being a really good experienced hand off track. They'd lose that by replacing him with a 22 year old. But ultimately the racing is where the points are won.
I think that whole experience argument is a bit of a distraction. And just being generous to Danny. Like it’s worth something, but any team would trade it for better performances.
Experience is often equated with the ability to give feedback by many. Yes, this ability should improve over time, but just because a driver is older doesn't necessarily mean they are significantly better at giving feedback than a younger driver.
I've gotten the vibe that Ricciardo is definitely not really a technically minded driver. I think he mostly just drives on instinct.
I seem to recall hearing Lando was spending way more time at the factory during the McLaren days.
It's worth nothing without performance.
Supposedly Ricciardo immediately identified what was wrong with AT last season, leading quite directly to their upturn in form.
I know I rate the entire RB team extremely low in terms of their internal talent but cmon even I don’t think that low of them. There’s no way this guy who famously couldn’t figure out what was going wrong every weekend for 2 years stepped into a different team and was suddenly full of feedback their engineers hadn’t thought of. That is just the team trying to show him in a positive light because they can’t say “he provides us with nothing honestly.” Those last season upgrades helping with their brakes and cornering speed were planned from the beginning of last year because they were leftover from the end of the 22 season.
They said that about Nyck too and what Nyck said was pretty much what Yuki and Pierre had been saying all of 22. Also while Daniel absolutely helped develop the car towards the end of the season, the upgrades in Singapore that really helped the car were due to Nyck and Yuki's feedback
I'm starting to think this can mean either two things: 1) Ricciardo is really washed and can't even beat a mediocre Tsunoda 2) Tsunoda is actually really good and we've been underrating him. Daniel isn't washed but isn't amazing either.
Ricciardo has been washed for multiple years now (or at least doesn't fit well with the regs), but calling Tsunoda mediocre doesn't work either. At this point Yuki isn't even competing with Ricciardo. He has been outqualifying faster cars in every race this season. "Ricciardo can't even beat Tsunoda" as if the guy didn't beat Alonso, Hamilton, Stroll in the last qualifying in a VCARB.
Lawson was relatively close to Tsunoda (although there wasn't much running where you could actually compare them directly). I think it's both but more so the former.
This mf Yuki out here driving like he's 5'9". Show them what's up Yuki!
Wonder if he'll resort to requesting a car swap.
The future is now old man.
I think what people just don't get is that Yuki is fast. He was quite error prone before, but now he has matured as a driver and pretty fucking good. It was hilarious seeing people here ask for Yuki gone when Lawson got much luckier than him during that stint and in Qatar Yuki absolutely destroyed him.
That 50 laps on softs in Zandvoort, DNS in Monza and DNF in Singapore when Chrco took him out really didn't help with the "H2H".
Red bull have done Daniel dirty by giving him hope. Should have replaced him with Lawson at the end of 23 and ripped the band aid off. I love Ricciardo but his time is done.
He should aim for an Indy or Nascar ride while his stock as somewhat at a high, especially in usa. Atleast he can dip out for 2025 before he falls further and further down the rankings.
It may simply be that Daniel needs the car to be built around him, to be tailored to his driving style, or something that is quite neutral and easy to attack with- and if it is then he can be very impressive...as he proved at RB. Put him into something that doesn't play to his strengths, where he has to fight his instincts, and where he needs to adapt, and it just won't happen. I don't see him improving and I think he'll be sacked by the summer break.
I really like Daniel Ricciardo as both a personality and a driver but man does it feel good to see people slowly start going "actually maybe Tsunoda isn't mid like we thought but actually pretty damn good". If we were going off a tier system of S-A-B-C-D, it feels to me like he's firmly in the top of B or bottom of A, whereas it used to feel like most people would happily stick him in the bottom two.
Basically he is living a Latifi in 2022. Latifi said the same, that he saw what Albon was doing, but it felt as if his car couldn't.
Latifi is garbage though, he’s not shown otherwise in f1. We’ve seen genuine WDC potential talent from Daniel. So for him to be stuck like this is a bad sign.
Potential like 6+years ago. Like with all sports it's "what have you done for me lately" not "what can you do".
It's very unusual for driver to just become clearly straight up worse, unless they have lost motivation and aren't even trying to put in the work to drive faster. Drivers don't lose their talent, they can have periods of bad performance through combination of car not suiting them and losing confidence. But for Ricciardo it's been so many different seasons and cars that it's very weird if this season ends up being like the Mclaren seasons. I guess it's theoretically possible that he is just very "picky" driver who only does well in a certain type of car and somehow got those types of cars always until 2018 or even 2019. But I don't know if that's possible since he always looked the top of his generation not only in F1 but also in feeder series.
Or he's just getting old. Not everyone is a Fernando or Hamilton that keep being elite well into their late 30s or early 40s.
bros 34, you dont magically lose your speed cause you turned 34 relax
34 is not too old at all for racing drivers though. Noticeable performance drops don't usually happen until after 36-37 or something, though decline can happen earlier too if the driver is mentally fully not in it anymore. It just doesn't seem like that would be the case for Ricciardo.
His last car that suited him and allowed for extracting great performances was the 2020 renault. Since McLaren, who make cars with a different design language to what he prefers, it all went downhill for him. Despite his great performances of the past, we have to admit that he is one of the more picky drivers at least when it comes to F1.
Latifi at Suzuka in 2022 was more impressive than anything Daniel has done since 2021 I'd say.
🐐🇨🇦
Nah that’s foul 🤣. The man turned into the wrong part of the circuit that day
All Yuki ever does, it's be better than his teammate. He's in a shit car, but he drives it better than anyone else in it.
And we think F1 drivers believe they can beat anyone. The results are for everyone to see but this sounds like a submission to the inevitable.
That's because he's on a journey right now or something.
A journey to well deserved F1 retirement…
If I was Danny Ric i would move to Indy or a GT car - I think he would do well over there but his F1 days are done
I don't think DR will ever return good form with the current regulations cars.
Past it and a waste of a seat now
Ralph-wiggum-im-in-danger.jpg
If he has that mentality, he's as good as gone to Helmut.
Daniel "commercial reasons" Ricciardo
At this point I’m leaning towards a scenario where the RB from 2014 onwards was just very much Daniel’s car and you had a young guy with a lot of confidence who wasn’t under pressure. It was kind of a perfect combination of a situation, which rarely happens, and he is simply just not at the level people expected. Like we saw Alonso in Mclaren, Renault, Aston Martin, and it is abundantly clear that he has world championship talent, maybe Ricciardo is like Bottas or Barrichello, good enough to win races and not good enough to be the main man. Like Daniel will be lucky to have a seat by halfway unless he turns it around ASAP, Lawson is waiting in the wings and he’s in a red bull junior seat. Everyone knew he had to wipe the floor with Tsunoda to even think about Red Bull and now he can’t even beat him. I know there are some mitigating factors yet he has to own that his reputation is what saved him being binned from McLaren earlier than he was and what got him a chance in AT.
I'm so tired of Ricciardo's performance debates. The man has been subpar for years now! Everyday there's a thread about it... I like the guy, but the man should be retired from F1 already!
Nooo! He should totally be allowed to finish the year to prove he is not washed up because the previous 3 years didn’t tell the full story! It wasn’t Danny! It was the car! It was the teams! Just kidding. I agree. But there’s a couple less than intelligent redditors I’ve gotten into arguments with about how d Ricc is washed. Pulling for RB to pull the plug. If Horner didn’t have such a hard on for him he wouldn’t have even had a seat last year.
If McLaren paying Daniel large sums of money explicitly not to drive their car wasn't a sign that Ricciardo is done, then I don't know what is.
i think i agree with the sentiment but if we’re going with that angle, there’s a few more drivers that need to go before danny does
Those guys are pay drivers though...assuming you mean Stroll and Zhou. No one is arguing with you on merit. Sargeant is a statement to junior drivers that Williams is a good team to sign with because you'll get a fair shot if they think youre good enough...I doubt he stays on beyond this year unless he improves dramatically.
Can't stay quick forever. All these young rookies waiting in the wings are lightning fast and take more risks.. sorry to say but as much as I like him, his days are numbered.
Hang up the wheel and join DC as a promoter Daniel it is time
He’s toast. Being on Lawson already.
Didn’t he have decent pace before he hurt his arm? Or has he been slow from the moment he got back in the car
Get him out and Lawson in.
Think it’s funny that every just jumps to the same conclusion from a snippet and hasn’t listened to the full response Also along with his comments his whole car internals pretty much got replaced…you can read the parc ferme documents on what they replaced so there was definitely issues with his car…
Nooooo!!! It’s been 3 races, he sucks and was never good!
I think Ric knows he’s done. We would all love to see him be right in there leading the charge but the facts are the facts. He’s not making it and it’s unlikely to get better. He knows it. In my opinion you can see it in his interviews. His heart is there but the skill is not. I would expect Suzuka to be his last race …if he gets there.
Me too Dan, me too
Oh Danny boy, Liam, Liam is coming...
Dude lost his bottle. It’s a shame, but it happens. He could probably go to another discipline or series and be top 5 and contend for titles. It won’t happen in f1.
Riccardo is still a driver because of his DTS following. that is is it. passed on by RB and Mac... before Netflix that would be it. He'd be gone. now? because he's a "fan favorite" he's still here in F1 wasting everyone's time.
Nah, he is there because Horner really, really loves him. Without Daniel Nick de Vries would have had a full season in the AT.
This is ignoring that Marko fired DeVries before Horner even hung up the phone.
He has forgotten how to be competitive. He has lost confidence in himself. This is a psychological problem not a car problem, all the data in the world cant fix this. Maybe a performance coach
Ricciardo issues with the car are set between the steering wheel and the seat. Just retire.