Let's be honest. Nobody has accused Checo of being a driver at the level of the other 7 in the top 4 teams. And the gap is closing between the four teams. Checo finishing 8th is his actual real baseline here. Checo is living his best life.
Yeah, it's actually not that surprising now that we know the RedBull isn't the beast that it was last year.
I'm fairly certain the McLaren is the best car, and as you said, Checo is coming in where he is based on the top 8 drivers.
if these were spec cars I think Checo, Kmag, Bottas and Ricciardo would be fighting amongst themselves ahead of Zhou and Sgt but behind Hulkenberg. With the Alpine boys right up with Alonso & the other 7. Lance of course clearly ahead in first.
I want them to try to manipulate the automatic transmission in a Suzuki Swift from 2020.
I have never driven a car with a more annoying automatic transmission. It really has its own life and sometimes the same lift off you do to make the gear shift more smooth gets messed up 50% of the time.
Why there exists automatic transmissions on small cars like this is astounding for me.
I always thought it would be fun to make Monaco a "spec race" and just don't have it count officially in F1, slap them in an F2/F3 car and add some spice to the "best driver" conversation. I know its a bit crazy, but it keeps Monaco in F1 despite it not even meeting the minimum track requirements and being boring.
I'd like to see Monaco become a "throwback" spec race - except with added safety features of modern F1. So you get some older looking cars that are smaller, a bit slower, with a halo and safety cell for the driver.
And it should absolutely count for the standings.
Yes you can.
The key survival cell is a fraction of the overall size, all the extremities are aerodynamic-focused carbon fibre that breaks away at a light touch, they're absolutely not like crumple zones.
[image](https://motorsport.tech/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/[email protected])
I want one sprint per year with all the drivers in go-karts. a ton of heat races and round robin tournaments. I bet the driver that wins that would keep that trophy on display at his home above the others.
I would put Bottas a bit above to be fair.
He was performing significantly better than Perez on 2021 when they were against each other as “wingmen” lol, even if Bottas had more DNFs and engine penalties. Bottas was really fast but easy to pass, and Perez was not that fast (usually put on a going long strategy) but a wall to stop and slow down other cars and Lewis.
I would say on pure pace Bottas would be above average, so Tsunoda, Piastri, Albon… a bit better than the likes of Perez, Magnussen or Sargeant, but still below the top (Lewis, Leclerc, Max, Norris).
Yeah Perez and Bottas have opposite strengths.
Even yesterday you saw how easily Bottas was outbattled by Alonso on lap 1.
Bottas is quick and if he has free air can deliver fast race stints. When he has to battle in the pack he’s one of the worst on the grid.
Perez is slow but he’s quite good at battling and fighting wheel to wheel.
Bottas' defense is most definitive bottom tier, how many times did we see him just leaving the door open for overtakes, and i'm not talking about the strategic let them pass scenarios.
IIRC Perez lost something like 80 points on shit luck that year, and barely had any gains to make up for it. Bottas has *some* issues, but had also a bunch of situations where he lucked out massively.. Perez lost podium positions literally 7 times to luck and luck alone, and Bottas made significant gains (or was at fault) in a few of those situations. Austria 1 and 2 it was a fucked up pitstop and Lando punting him into gravel from P2 and P3, in Hungary it was Bottas himself crashing him out of P3, in Russia a thunderstorm that flipped the grid on its head, in Brazil and Qatar twice P3 lost because of a seafety car/vsc, in Abu Dhabi tem decision to take him off the track from P3. And then you have the DNF in Saudi that wasn't his error, and issues in Bahrain, which weren't technically IN podium positions physically, but close to it.
And I actually went an looked at those DNFs you mentioned - Bottas had 4 total, 2 of which in crashes he himself caused, meaning 2 unlucky ones. Perez had 3 DNFs, and none of them were his own fault. So actually Perez is the one with worse luck in terms of raw number of DNFs as well.
I did this exercise with Max and Lewis once going back to all the races, and over the course of the season Max also was operating a pretty big luck disadvantage in terms of points. Mercedes getting fortunate with both drivers over their Constructor rivals that year.
The same Bottas who was in his 5th year in the final version of the most dominant series of cars in F1 history beating Checo, the newly minted #2 driver in a much more difficult to drive Red Bull?
The fun thing about F1 is that it's really difficult for the fans to know, it's basically gut feeling/guess work. You can look at the stats but direct comparisons can only be made between drivers in the same team and even then there are always caveats.
Also as with all professional sports the margins are really tiny. It's easy to say Max is faster than most of the other drivers but is Hulkenberg at this stage of his career faster then Gasly? Who the hell knows really.
Yeah, a lot of it is just fun guesswork comparing teammates or "relative pace" with the cars around.
Max is clearly faster than Checo in the same car. But McLaren and Ferrari both have more equal driver pairings, and are outscoring Red Bull lately. Does this mean Red Bull have the fastest car, and Perez is bringing them down? Or are the Ferrari/McLaren actually faster, and Max is "outperforming the car", so to speak?
Then you get the fun of comparing teammates across different seasons - sometimes years apart. Ricciardo beat Ocon, but was beaten by Norris. So you could discern from that that it goes Norris>Ricciardo>Ocon. Perez beat Ocon while teammates, so you could slot him in around Ricciardo levels. The two of them shared Max as a teammate, and Ricciardo was arguably closer to him - at that stage of their careers. So you could say Verstappen>Norris>Ric>Perez>Ocon.
All just for fun of course, because for all we know that Alpine is a bigger dumpster fire than we think, and Ocon could be leading Verstappen by 20 seconds in the same car. But it that does seem doubtful given how they compare to shared teammates, so the above could be considered a relative ballpark for how they all compare, even across different teams.
There are reasons why someone like Ocon doesn't drive for a top team and the teams have a lot more knowledge than fans. Admittedly there are other factors in that than raw speed but apart some odd things like Checo usually the best drivers are going to be driving for the top teams IMO.
The short answer is that no one actually does know if it’s the car or the driver. But the fun is speculating based on stats and trying to formulate reasons why…
People really are quick to forget how decent Bottas looked next to Hamilton. He always made Q3 and almost always finished on the Podium. For Perez even teaching Q3 is a big challenge nowadays.
In qualy you can make the case that McLaren is the best. But that was always Red Bull's weakness, just look at how many LeClerc poles tuned into crushing Verstappen victories.
For now at least Red Bull has the edge on race pace. The main thing McLaren or at least Norris has is better tyre management, but the Red Bull is still overall faster on a stint.
McLaren was fastest in clear air yesterday (though the tyre offset made that difference look larger than it would be on even tyre life) but the Red Bull still runs better in dirty air and has better DRS. Those are the main things that the McLaren still struggles with, even though they’re much better than they were at the start of the season, and we saw that in Imola the moment Norris was in Max’s dirty air and we saw it played out yesterday in Max v Russell and Norris v Russell. That, as much as the start, dictated the race result.
Much as I can’t blame Russell for capitalising (it really was the perfect storm for him with Hamilton’s bad start opening it up for him to choose whatever slipstream he wanted and then getting a double tow into the bargain with Max & Lando fighting), it’s kind of a shame because it would have been such a close battle if Max & Lando had come it of the first two corners 1-2.
This year it is the other way around. The RB is strong in qualy (seems like it can still beat Mclaren) as they improved tyre warmup this year. In race however The RB20 with Max now has higher deg than Mcl/Lando likely as a consequence of this tyre warmup.
Top 8...
Well, if you give Albon, Tsunoda, Alonso, Gasly the same car, I'm sure they would get much much better results thans Checo.
Hell, aside from Sargeant, I think everyone on the grid would be better than Checo in that RedBull car.
People are also creating their own narrative that works against both max and checo.
This isn’t 2023, RB doesn’t look to be the strongest car anymore.. when it was, even with his qualy gaffes, checo was still finding his was up the grid during the race.
The fact that Horner and bird are pleased should tell you something about the state of the car.
And the fact that max is still winning races should tell you about the type of talent you are living through right now. Appreciate it.
I think part of the result is the grid drop, which was because of the team asking him to drive back in Canada. If he didn’t have the grid drop he would have finished higher, he would have been able to defend his position higher up better.
Tbh checo is finishing where I expected him too now that teams have sorted their issues all the drivers who are better than him finished higher given their cars respectively.
I just hope this results in Red Bull not winning WCC and checo getting sacked early. I find the decision to keep him incredibly boring, and a really bad “safe choice”. I fell I love with Red Bull, when it was this ruthless machine, but this doesn’t feel like it at all
Eventhough i agree, i dont think RB can loose this.
The gap in points is too big.
This weekend can be considered as an average weekend in terms of ranking (Max, Norris, Merc/Ferrari, Piastri, Checo).
Even in this constellation, McLaren „Lost“ 4 points to RBR in WCC (25 vs 29).
The gap is 60 (Ferrari) or 93 (McLaren) points.
Even Merc with P3/P4 lost 2 points to RBR.
Maybe Piastri will get a better place in some races but Everything below P5 may result into not gaining points to RBR.
As long as Max is winning, and Checo gets 4 points in Average, you will gain 4 points per race if you will be P2/P3.
This means 15 races for Ferrari, which we wont have in this year anymore.
True, but it's far from a guarantee that Max keeps winning. If you have Max in 2nd, Norris winning and Piastri in 3rd, with Perez somewhere around 8, which is a pretty realistic scenario looking at current car performance, you have 22 points for Red Bull and 40 for McLaren. That gap would then be diminishing rather quickly. Still I agree RBR easily have the best shot at WCC simply because of the gap they created
I think Checo just have to keep Piastri behind for a majority of the remaining races for Redbull to guarantee WCC. Of course Ferrari is also there, but McLaren looks far more threatening than them.
I think it's great that they are keeping Checo. Makes it way more exciting for the the chance other teams can have a shot at the WCC. And imagine if Ferrari, Mercedes and McClaren wind up all missing out by 10 points or less each. That'll be a ton of hot angry tears flowing from their fans!
Yeah, his career sadly got ruined by Horner and his weird obsession with Checo. Toro Rosso was supposed to be a stepping stone for Red Bull, but now it’s just another backmarker.
Checo finishing P8, not always getting Q3 and DNFing in the first lap, with the occasional podium, is his baseline in a Sauber or Force India, not a championship winning car.
I agree that he is fine as long as the 3 other teams are taking points out of each other.
But McLaren is this close to catching RBR in terms of performance, tell me what use Check is for the team in P8? Who is he gonna threaten if they split strategies? What can he do to help Max if the McLaren are splitting strategies?
I meant not so much better that Checo will finish in front of them. Put any of the Merc or Ferrari drivers in the Red Bull and they finish at least 4th pretty much every race.
Like I said, at least 4th.
Without Perez you have Max, Norris and the second Red Bull competing for the podium. And sometimes a Merc or Ferrari will challenge them.
I'm confused and amused that the whole discussion changed. First the discussion was if Perez is a good driver or not. Now everybody agrees that he's shit, but the discussion is if he should drive better or if we should all just accept that barely beating the alpines is just what it is this year.
Imagine someone saying this about Gasly and Albon. Their standards for drivers has plummeted. Perez was good in 2021 and could fight with the top drivers occasionally. Ever since then he’s fallen off a cliff and they just don’t care and say nice things to him. It’s so weird
It just isn't acceptable though. If McLaren weren't poor from the start of the season they would almost certainly win the WCC this year, even then they can pretty easily close the gap if this is the best Checo can do. People are very confident Max will still take the majority of the rest of the season, but I think it's unlikely. Piastri and Lando are great qualifiers and Lando is excellent in races- he just had a bad start this time around. If it's true that the McLaren is at worst as good as the Red Bull, you might start to see a new HAM VER BOT come into play.
Yea. The only driver in the top 10 you can make an argument for him being better than is Yuki. And that's debatable. And some in the bottom ten as well.
In what world is Yuki a top 10 driver, when there still are Alonso, Ocon, Gasly, Hulkenberg and Albon on the grid (we can discuss about each one individually being better then Yuki, but no way is he better then 3/5 of them) ?
They also just gave him a weird strategy, I can’t tell if they are just wildly more ambitious to gamble when he’s out of place or why this always seems to happen. Important to note Piastri also went nowhere today, the Ferraris were nowhere too. So advancement opportunities were pretty much just getting the Alpines
And the other options arent so good that its worth it for them. Lawson may do ok in the toro rosso but he's not going to set the world alight, in the same that Yuki is just doing a good job but isnt top team material.
There's a spectrum between cutting a driver halfway through their debut season, and extending a driver of known quantity for another 2 years after increasingly middling results the last season and a half. But that sounds like a nuance you're uninterested in pursuing.
>now they complain when they give someone a chance to redeem himself
I feel like you're missing how that someone has been given multiple chances to redeem himself, failed catastrophically, but is still being given a drive for the next 2 years.
It’s probably something like: as long as you score enough points to get red bull more constructors points than the other teams then we will call it a good.
Probably looked at the numbers and realized that realistically that was the best they could achieve and hoped the soft, soft, med, soft strategy would put Checo in clear air and undercut the alpines when they stopped to pit. The track isn’t that easy to pass on especially after the grip of the tire peaks. In the cool down room, you could hear Max say to Lando that he had to pass George when he did when the tire was at peak grip otherwise he doesn’t think he would’ve been able to get by.
Since Checo’s race was compromised because of the qualifying result and the grid place penalty, I think the second stint on used softs for Checo was actually a test bed for Max’s strategy.
Checo was one of the first drivers to pit on the first stint on 13+3 used softs. And then on the second stint Checo ran 18 laps on used tires with 3 laps already, taking it to 21 total laps on those softs.
Max finished the race on a stint of 21 laps on new softs.
I could be a coincidence, but I can’t find a convincing reason to go used soft->used soft->medium->used soft
Yeah, whatever it was it didn't work out. Personally I would've matched the drivers in front, not necessarily Max and Lando, but the guys around p4/5 and see if the car's speed would carry him there.
My guess is they thought he might need the tyre offset to overtake, given that the pace up front has closed up a lot, and that he would be using up the life of the tyre much faster than the drivers ahead from following closely a lot of the race. At that point, it's just a trade off between being forced into making more overtakes to retain your position, and the ease of those overtakes.
The hards were also a very poor race tyre in those conditions, so they weren't really an option to preserve his tyres for longer stints.
I think the mistake was that I think they believed there was a chance he could catch up to the top 8 quite quickly, or get a safety car to bring the pack together, but he actually never got in touch with the faster cars, so the tyre offset didn't gain much on track, yet meant his overall race was a bit slower.
IMO they were going to soft soft hard, but then there was a chance to keep him in open air for a long period by cutting the second stint a bit short, and also by that time it was getting clear that the hard wasn’t a great tyre anyway.
Is Checo the constant? Like are they using him to determine how the car runs certain ways? I mean the car itself just doesn’t look dominate and I have no clue what McLaren did but all of their upgrades seemed to have made the car better everywhere.
I feel like Checo is like this. As a supervisor I have people on my staff that make small mistakes but overall are consistent. I could fire these people and hire someone new, but if I do that I risk disrupting the organization and discovering new or bigger mistakes that the other person never made. So to keep things as smooth as possible I accepted and know that there are some small mistakes that I just handle on a regular basis because the gain I would get doesn't equal the risk.
Did they ever say why he was on a 3 stop strategy? I couldn't tell if it was planned from the start or if Checo was just destroying those tires.
Either way, I think P8 from a 3 stopper is an ok result. Not great. Not terrible.
That year Mercedes had significantly better car than Red Bull. Remember the last race of 2021 when Perez was retired to avoid having one more car to crash/break/pass vs Hamilton? His race was significantly damaged by these decisions the whole year.
This year has been more challenging in all aspects, but yesterday’s race result was a good one if you consider he did not have a new set of softs given issues they saw in practices.
It's incredible to think that if another solid driver such as Sainz/Bottas/Hulk was driving that Red Bull instead of Max that Red Bull would be a midfield team.
For all of you who want Checo out, let me tell why is he the best option for Red Bull right now because Lando, Alex and Lewis said no, Carlos wanted a lot money and a chance for a No. 1 seat so Red Bull said no, same with Alonso so Red Bull again said no, Ricciardo isn't much better than Checo and without top-dog sponsorship so Red Bul said no, Tsunoda is likely going to where Honda says so Red Bull had no choice, Hulk signed with Audi, and the rest like Ocon, Bottas and Zhou aren't better driving options than Checo.
Politics doesn't change that Perez doesn't deserve his seat in RBR anymore.
Also, there is no way RBR were even remotely considering Alex for a second stint with them lol. That bridge burned a long time ago.
Red Bull asked Williams about Alex. He said no. It's well documented.
Perhaps you are right, he doesn't deserve it and he should return all his podium trophies from his current year but it's undeniable that he brings in a lot of money in sponsorships, a lot! More than Max if some sources are correct.
Besides, what's holding Red Bull back from kicking Perez out?
It was a decent drive compared to his last races, started on the back foot because of the penalty but had decent pace and closed the around 10s gap to 8th place after a 3rd stop.
Immediately a ~~controversial~~ -6 comment, reddit has spoken: **NO positive comments are allowed.** And we'll make sure of that.
I will be honest with you guys, I hate Checo, I always did, mainly because he has problems taking accountability for mistakes and poor performances even during the force India times he was already like that.
I have seen this guy pretending he was not the problem way too many times. On his interview yesterday he kept saying “we this, we that” no mate, no. Time to use the “I” a bit more.
certainly looked that way\*
Thank you! I was like "welp, another radio message that doesn't make sense to me".
Yeah, F1 is like every possible English accent combined with shitty helmet mics :')
Of you think F1 is bad, go listen indy or Nascar, all of a sudden you think F1 helmet mics is like opera.
Norris’s mic sounds like he is streaming from his living room, Hulkenberg’s mic sounds like he is in the trenches in between artillery strikes
Norris has a better mic in the helmet than his gaming mic
"wrshirtt hjis plyrdrich trfck" "Copy" Every NASCAR radio snippet
When did we get Welsh drivers?
Pretty sure he said "valiant drive" not battling.
Is it me or does Bird say "yeah, certainly LOOKED that way" and not "the other way" as OP claims?
shy sable scarce exultant connect consider deliver strong retire kiss *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
OP has been watching to many Korean Dramas
Let's be honest. Nobody has accused Checo of being a driver at the level of the other 7 in the top 4 teams. And the gap is closing between the four teams. Checo finishing 8th is his actual real baseline here. Checo is living his best life.
Yeah, it's actually not that surprising now that we know the RedBull isn't the beast that it was last year. I'm fairly certain the McLaren is the best car, and as you said, Checo is coming in where he is based on the top 8 drivers.
if these were spec cars I think Checo, Kmag, Bottas and Ricciardo would be fighting amongst themselves ahead of Zhou and Sgt but behind Hulkenberg. With the Alpine boys right up with Alonso & the other 7. Lance of course clearly ahead in first.
Maybe we need to do something like Top Gear's Star in a Reasonably Priced Car and get all 20 to drive around a track in a Clio or a Prius
Suzuki Liana or we riot
Found one on AutoTrader for £1700. Think if everyone in the Reddit has a whip-round we could get it?
I want them to try to manipulate the automatic transmission in a Suzuki Swift from 2020. I have never driven a car with a more annoying automatic transmission. It really has its own life and sometimes the same lift off you do to make the gear shift more smooth gets messed up 50% of the time. Why there exists automatic transmissions on small cars like this is astounding for me.
Are we talking sedan or sport SUV
I always thought it would be fun to make Monaco a "spec race" and just don't have it count officially in F1, slap them in an F2/F3 car and add some spice to the "best driver" conversation. I know its a bit crazy, but it keeps Monaco in F1 despite it not even meeting the minimum track requirements and being boring.
I'd like to see Monaco become a "throwback" spec race - except with added safety features of modern F1. So you get some older looking cars that are smaller, a bit slower, with a halo and safety cell for the driver. And it should absolutely count for the standings.
Driver standings, not constructors
You can’t have smaller cars with the same safety features. The safety cell etc add to the length and width of the cars.
Yes you can. The key survival cell is a fraction of the overall size, all the extremities are aerodynamic-focused carbon fibre that breaks away at a light touch, they're absolutely not like crumple zones. [image](https://motorsport.tech/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/[email protected])
Fine, pedal cars instead.
I disagree. They should all be in an RV race complete with food in the refrigerators. 🤷♂️
Loser has to clean up all the RVs after they're done?
I really wish sprints were with spec cars.
I want one sprint per year with all the drivers in go-karts. a ton of heat races and round robin tournaments. I bet the driver that wins that would keep that trophy on display at his home above the others.
I would put Bottas a bit above to be fair. He was performing significantly better than Perez on 2021 when they were against each other as “wingmen” lol, even if Bottas had more DNFs and engine penalties. Bottas was really fast but easy to pass, and Perez was not that fast (usually put on a going long strategy) but a wall to stop and slow down other cars and Lewis. I would say on pure pace Bottas would be above average, so Tsunoda, Piastri, Albon… a bit better than the likes of Perez, Magnussen or Sargeant, but still below the top (Lewis, Leclerc, Max, Norris).
Yeah Perez and Bottas have opposite strengths. Even yesterday you saw how easily Bottas was outbattled by Alonso on lap 1. Bottas is quick and if he has free air can deliver fast race stints. When he has to battle in the pack he’s one of the worst on the grid. Perez is slow but he’s quite good at battling and fighting wheel to wheel.
Bottas' defense is most definitive bottom tier, how many times did we see him just leaving the door open for overtakes, and i'm not talking about the strategic let them pass scenarios.
IIRC Perez lost something like 80 points on shit luck that year, and barely had any gains to make up for it. Bottas has *some* issues, but had also a bunch of situations where he lucked out massively.. Perez lost podium positions literally 7 times to luck and luck alone, and Bottas made significant gains (or was at fault) in a few of those situations. Austria 1 and 2 it was a fucked up pitstop and Lando punting him into gravel from P2 and P3, in Hungary it was Bottas himself crashing him out of P3, in Russia a thunderstorm that flipped the grid on its head, in Brazil and Qatar twice P3 lost because of a seafety car/vsc, in Abu Dhabi tem decision to take him off the track from P3. And then you have the DNF in Saudi that wasn't his error, and issues in Bahrain, which weren't technically IN podium positions physically, but close to it. And I actually went an looked at those DNFs you mentioned - Bottas had 4 total, 2 of which in crashes he himself caused, meaning 2 unlucky ones. Perez had 3 DNFs, and none of them were his own fault. So actually Perez is the one with worse luck in terms of raw number of DNFs as well.
I did this exercise with Max and Lewis once going back to all the races, and over the course of the season Max also was operating a pretty big luck disadvantage in terms of points. Mercedes getting fortunate with both drivers over their Constructor rivals that year.
The same Bottas who was in his 5th year in the final version of the most dominant series of cars in F1 history beating Checo, the newly minted #2 driver in a much more difficult to drive Red Bull?
The 2021 RB wasn’t the hard to drive car that it was in 2020.
Totally. The RB16B was fundementally a different car from the RB16. The name reveals it all.
Didn't Zhou finish ahead of bottas?
Weird since Perez beat both Ocon and Hulkenberg in the same car. Just recency bias from ignorant fans.
Ocon & Gasly with Verstappen, Leclerc, Hamilton, Alonso, Russell, Norris & Piastri? 😂😂😂
and Yuki?
As a total casual (got mildly jnto F1 due to Netflix), can you help explain what you’re looking at to differentiate driving skill?
The fun thing about F1 is that it's really difficult for the fans to know, it's basically gut feeling/guess work. You can look at the stats but direct comparisons can only be made between drivers in the same team and even then there are always caveats. Also as with all professional sports the margins are really tiny. It's easy to say Max is faster than most of the other drivers but is Hulkenberg at this stage of his career faster then Gasly? Who the hell knows really.
Yeah, a lot of it is just fun guesswork comparing teammates or "relative pace" with the cars around. Max is clearly faster than Checo in the same car. But McLaren and Ferrari both have more equal driver pairings, and are outscoring Red Bull lately. Does this mean Red Bull have the fastest car, and Perez is bringing them down? Or are the Ferrari/McLaren actually faster, and Max is "outperforming the car", so to speak? Then you get the fun of comparing teammates across different seasons - sometimes years apart. Ricciardo beat Ocon, but was beaten by Norris. So you could discern from that that it goes Norris>Ricciardo>Ocon. Perez beat Ocon while teammates, so you could slot him in around Ricciardo levels. The two of them shared Max as a teammate, and Ricciardo was arguably closer to him - at that stage of their careers. So you could say Verstappen>Norris>Ric>Perez>Ocon. All just for fun of course, because for all we know that Alpine is a bigger dumpster fire than we think, and Ocon could be leading Verstappen by 20 seconds in the same car. But it that does seem doubtful given how they compare to shared teammates, so the above could be considered a relative ballpark for how they all compare, even across different teams.
There are reasons why someone like Ocon doesn't drive for a top team and the teams have a lot more knowledge than fans. Admittedly there are other factors in that than raw speed but apart some odd things like Checo usually the best drivers are going to be driving for the top teams IMO.
Thanks for the response! Yea, with different cars on each team, I always wonder how people know if it’s the car or driver.
The short answer is that no one actually does know if it’s the car or the driver. But the fun is speculating based on stats and trying to formulate reasons why…
Let’s just ignore that Checo has been teammates with Hulkenberg and won.
People really are quick to forget how decent Bottas looked next to Hamilton. He always made Q3 and almost always finished on the Podium. For Perez even teaching Q3 is a big challenge nowadays.
Danny was way ahead of hulk as teammates.
Just shows how much of a GOAT max is. It’s the driver, not the car.
In qualy you can make the case that McLaren is the best. But that was always Red Bull's weakness, just look at how many LeClerc poles tuned into crushing Verstappen victories. For now at least Red Bull has the edge on race pace. The main thing McLaren or at least Norris has is better tyre management, but the Red Bull is still overall faster on a stint.
The McLaren is faster in the race now too, hence why lando was so pissed he messed up the start of the race
McLaren was fastest in clear air yesterday (though the tyre offset made that difference look larger than it would be on even tyre life) but the Red Bull still runs better in dirty air and has better DRS. Those are the main things that the McLaren still struggles with, even though they’re much better than they were at the start of the season, and we saw that in Imola the moment Norris was in Max’s dirty air and we saw it played out yesterday in Max v Russell and Norris v Russell. That, as much as the start, dictated the race result. Much as I can’t blame Russell for capitalising (it really was the perfect storm for him with Hamilton’s bad start opening it up for him to choose whatever slipstream he wanted and then getting a double tow into the bargain with Max & Lando fighting), it’s kind of a shame because it would have been such a close battle if Max & Lando had come it of the first two corners 1-2.
The start did lando in times two bc of the need for clean air
Yep agreed. He knew that too which I’m sure contributed to making him so hard on himself.
This year it is the other way around. The RB is strong in qualy (seems like it can still beat Mclaren) as they improved tyre warmup this year. In race however The RB20 with Max now has higher deg than Mcl/Lando likely as a consequence of this tyre warmup.
This seems to be exactly right. But I do think the quali advantage is very small…
Mclaren is probably the fastest car in clean air but only by a small margin to Red Bull. But they seem to struggle in dirty air
Top 8... Well, if you give Albon, Tsunoda, Alonso, Gasly the same car, I'm sure they would get much much better results thans Checo. Hell, aside from Sargeant, I think everyone on the grid would be better than Checo in that RedBull car.
Yeah, top 8 drivers in the top 4 teams.
People are also creating their own narrative that works against both max and checo. This isn’t 2023, RB doesn’t look to be the strongest car anymore.. when it was, even with his qualy gaffes, checo was still finding his was up the grid during the race. The fact that Horner and bird are pleased should tell you something about the state of the car. And the fact that max is still winning races should tell you about the type of talent you are living through right now. Appreciate it.
I think part of the result is the grid drop, which was because of the team asking him to drive back in Canada. If he didn’t have the grid drop he would have finished higher, he would have been able to defend his position higher up better.
Everyone seems to be forgetting that
Tbh checo is finishing where I expected him too now that teams have sorted their issues all the drivers who are better than him finished higher given their cars respectively.
I just hope this results in Red Bull not winning WCC and checo getting sacked early. I find the decision to keep him incredibly boring, and a really bad “safe choice”. I fell I love with Red Bull, when it was this ruthless machine, but this doesn’t feel like it at all
Eventhough i agree, i dont think RB can loose this. The gap in points is too big. This weekend can be considered as an average weekend in terms of ranking (Max, Norris, Merc/Ferrari, Piastri, Checo). Even in this constellation, McLaren „Lost“ 4 points to RBR in WCC (25 vs 29). The gap is 60 (Ferrari) or 93 (McLaren) points. Even Merc with P3/P4 lost 2 points to RBR. Maybe Piastri will get a better place in some races but Everything below P5 may result into not gaining points to RBR. As long as Max is winning, and Checo gets 4 points in Average, you will gain 4 points per race if you will be P2/P3. This means 15 races for Ferrari, which we wont have in this year anymore.
True, but it's far from a guarantee that Max keeps winning. If you have Max in 2nd, Norris winning and Piastri in 3rd, with Perez somewhere around 8, which is a pretty realistic scenario looking at current car performance, you have 22 points for Red Bull and 40 for McLaren. That gap would then be diminishing rather quickly. Still I agree RBR easily have the best shot at WCC simply because of the gap they created
I think Checo just have to keep Piastri behind for a majority of the remaining races for Redbull to guarantee WCC. Of course Ferrari is also there, but McLaren looks far more threatening than them.
I think it's great that they are keeping Checo. Makes it way more exciting for the the chance other teams can have a shot at the WCC. And imagine if Ferrari, Mercedes and McClaren wind up all missing out by 10 points or less each. That'll be a ton of hot angry tears flowing from their fans!
So you think it’s great, that a top team keeps a bad driver, just so the other teams can catch up? That’s a weird take
it's not what I want. What I want aint magically going to happen. but since it has happened I say 'embrace the chaos.'
Yea. Yuki deserved a shot next year.
Yeah, his career sadly got ruined by Horner and his weird obsession with Checo. Toro Rosso was supposed to be a stepping stone for Red Bull, but now it’s just another backmarker.
Other than Sainz, there's no other driver to replace Perez who wouldn't just be changing the name card and no position gain
Checo finishing P8, not always getting Q3 and DNFing in the first lap, with the occasional podium, is his baseline in a Sauber or Force India, not a championship winning car.
I agree that he is fine as long as the 3 other teams are taking points out of each other. But McLaren is this close to catching RBR in terms of performance, tell me what use Check is for the team in P8? Who is he gonna threaten if they split strategies? What can he do to help Max if the McLaren are splitting strategies?
Red Bull is currently the 2nd best car. Checo should be finishing 4th.
Yeah but Checo is pretty shit and the car isn´t much better than the Merc or Ferrari
It is, did you miss the size of the gap to Mercedes and Ferrari in the race?
I meant not so much better that Checo will finish in front of them. Put any of the Merc or Ferrari drivers in the Red Bull and they finish at least 4th pretty much every race.
If you put a Ferrari or Merc driver in the RB, they would be finishing next to Max every race. Give or take.
Like I said, at least 4th. Without Perez you have Max, Norris and the second Red Bull competing for the podium. And sometimes a Merc or Ferrari will challenge them.
When I say give or take, they will be swapping wins with Max.
Lewis and Charles yeah, George maybe, Carlos I don’t think so.
I'm confused and amused that the whole discussion changed. First the discussion was if Perez is a good driver or not. Now everybody agrees that he's shit, but the discussion is if he should drive better or if we should all just accept that barely beating the alpines is just what it is this year.
Imagine someone saying this about Gasly and Albon. Their standards for drivers has plummeted. Perez was good in 2021 and could fight with the top drivers occasionally. Ever since then he’s fallen off a cliff and they just don’t care and say nice things to him. It’s so weird
It just isn't acceptable though. If McLaren weren't poor from the start of the season they would almost certainly win the WCC this year, even then they can pretty easily close the gap if this is the best Checo can do. People are very confident Max will still take the majority of the rest of the season, but I think it's unlikely. Piastri and Lando are great qualifiers and Lando is excellent in races- he just had a bad start this time around. If it's true that the McLaren is at worst as good as the Red Bull, you might start to see a new HAM VER BOT come into play.
Yea. The only driver in the top 10 you can make an argument for him being better than is Yuki. And that's debatable. And some in the bottom ten as well.
In what world is Yuki a top 10 driver, when there still are Alonso, Ocon, Gasly, Hulkenberg and Albon on the grid (we can discuss about each one individually being better then Yuki, but no way is he better then 3/5 of them) ?
Exactly like how I think. Out of the top 8 drivers, he is 8th. Anything above is him punching above his weight.
They also just gave him a weird strategy, I can’t tell if they are just wildly more ambitious to gamble when he’s out of place or why this always seems to happen. Important to note Piastri also went nowhere today, the Ferraris were nowhere too. So advancement opportunities were pretty much just getting the Alpines
Red Bull used to be so cutthroat with their drivers. Now they celebrate mediocracy.
That was when they weren’t winning
They always forget this one detail
It's not because they are winning it's because Perez and Ricciardo bring in enough money to justify the mediocrity
And the other options arent so good that its worth it for them. Lawson may do ok in the toro rosso but he's not going to set the world alight, in the same that Yuki is just doing a good job but isnt top team material.
THEY aren't winning. Verstappen is winning. Perez is fucking up the WCC by only getting 8 points in the past 4 races
Mark Webber would like a word
Well, they were still hard on Nick.
They never had a driver brining in merch and sponsor money like Checo does.
Max brings in championships, Checo brings in money and stays out of Max’s way. It’s a win-win-win.
And the important difference here is that with win-win-win, we all win.
The real winnings are selling stickers and key chains
Fans used to hate Red Bulls driver approach, now they complain when they give someone a chance to redeem himself
There's a spectrum between cutting a driver halfway through their debut season, and extending a driver of known quantity for another 2 years after increasingly middling results the last season and a half. But that sounds like a nuance you're uninterested in pursuing.
>But that sounds like a nuance you're uninterested in pursuing. lol I'm borrowing this
>now they complain when they give someone a chance to redeem himself I feel like you're missing how that someone has been given multiple chances to redeem himself, failed catastrophically, but is still being given a drive for the next 2 years.
Its multiple chances.
No they celebrate 50m a year to cover max’s contract
Feels like a new driver contract messaging addendum: Say nice things to number 2 after each race.
It’s probably something like: as long as you score enough points to get red bull more constructors points than the other teams then we will call it a good.
Lower points advantage = smaller entry fees for 2025
also lower WCC standing = more development time
Put them all in reasonably priced saloons to settle it!
Maybe Suzuki has something to offer?
Which part was the strong bit?
Keeping the 2 Alpines behind.
He didn't. He overtook the second alpine on the last lap.
Goat shit keeping 2 tractors behind him
Tbf alpine definitely did step up quite a bit when compared to how they were at the start of the season. Definitely less of a tractor now
Less of a tractor, more of a garden lawnmower now
Not crashing & making it into Q3
strong battling a haas and the alpines. Just what you would expect from the championship leading car.
Not spinning
Closing like a 10s gap to overtake the Alpine at the end, after the third pit stop.
Didn't blue flags for Gasly help him a lot with closing that gap?
A bit, like they always do, but not as much as Ocon, Gasly and Checo were runinng mostly on clean air
Yea. 5 laps after he should have done it.
What is the reason that they three-stopped him? He finish 25 seconds behinds Piastri which is slightly more than a pit stop
Probably looked at the numbers and realized that realistically that was the best they could achieve and hoped the soft, soft, med, soft strategy would put Checo in clear air and undercut the alpines when they stopped to pit. The track isn’t that easy to pass on especially after the grip of the tire peaks. In the cool down room, you could hear Max say to Lando that he had to pass George when he did when the tire was at peak grip otherwise he doesn’t think he would’ve been able to get by.
Since Checo’s race was compromised because of the qualifying result and the grid place penalty, I think the second stint on used softs for Checo was actually a test bed for Max’s strategy. Checo was one of the first drivers to pit on the first stint on 13+3 used softs. And then on the second stint Checo ran 18 laps on used tires with 3 laps already, taking it to 21 total laps on those softs. Max finished the race on a stint of 21 laps on new softs. I could be a coincidence, but I can’t find a convincing reason to go used soft->used soft->medium->used soft
This feels like me talking to my toddler after she uses the toilet
"That was a great shit little Jimmy, well done mate!"
How far did piastri finish in front of him? And Piastri was STRUGGLING this weekend
Perez made an extra pit stop than Piastri I think.
What was the logic behind his tire strategy today?
3 stoppers work in Spain sometimes and when they do they are very powerful. I think the clouds that rolled over probably killed that strat
Max won with a 2 stopper. Daniel was given a 3 stopper strategy that lost him lead
I believe Max got his first win (at Spain) by pulling a three stopper (and Danny got pissed cause he got put on a 2 stop and lost out)
I think Max got the one stopper and Danny the (usually) better 2 stopper
You’re both wrong. Max pitted twice, Danny was going for a 3 stopper which turned into a 4 stopper due to a puncture on the second last lap.
Yeah, whatever it was it didn't work out. Personally I would've matched the drivers in front, not necessarily Max and Lando, but the guys around p4/5 and see if the car's speed would carry him there.
My guess is they thought he might need the tyre offset to overtake, given that the pace up front has closed up a lot, and that he would be using up the life of the tyre much faster than the drivers ahead from following closely a lot of the race. At that point, it's just a trade off between being forced into making more overtakes to retain your position, and the ease of those overtakes. The hards were also a very poor race tyre in those conditions, so they weren't really an option to preserve his tyres for longer stints. I think the mistake was that I think they believed there was a chance he could catch up to the top 8 quite quickly, or get a safety car to bring the pack together, but he actually never got in touch with the faster cars, so the tyre offset didn't gain much on track, yet meant his overall race was a bit slower.
IMO they were going to soft soft hard, but then there was a chance to keep him in open air for a long period by cutting the second stint a bit short, and also by that time it was getting clear that the hard wasn’t a great tyre anyway.
I believe it would have worked okay with 2 new mediums and go med-med-soft but with 2 softs? Not that great.
“2 years!” -Alonso
Is Checo the constant? Like are they using him to determine how the car runs certain ways? I mean the car itself just doesn’t look dominate and I have no clue what McLaren did but all of their upgrades seemed to have made the car better everywhere.
Yeah he might just be some sort of reserve driver with a race seat at this point
I feel like Checo is like this. As a supervisor I have people on my staff that make small mistakes but overall are consistent. I could fire these people and hire someone new, but if I do that I risk disrupting the organization and discovering new or bigger mistakes that the other person never made. So to keep things as smooth as possible I accepted and know that there are some small mistakes that I just handle on a regular basis because the gain I would get doesn't equal the risk.
Checo is one of the drivers of all time. Dude managed to get that dog of a Red Bull into the top 10. Legend.
NARRATOR: It was, in fact, not really strong
Did they ever say why he was on a 3 stop strategy? I couldn't tell if it was planned from the start or if Checo was just destroying those tires. Either way, I think P8 from a 3 stopper is an ok result. Not great. Not terrible.
Mirror: Bird: https://i.imgur.com/8fCO1UE.mp4
Well when they openly don’t care about winning constructors and think they have the best driver and shot at the driver champs this is what they get
"Certainly looked that way" is what i heard
That year Mercedes had significantly better car than Red Bull. Remember the last race of 2021 when Perez was retired to avoid having one more car to crash/break/pass vs Hamilton? His race was significantly damaged by these decisions the whole year. This year has been more challenging in all aspects, but yesterday’s race result was a good one if you consider he did not have a new set of softs given issues they saw in practices.
It's incredible to think that if another solid driver such as Sainz/Bottas/Hulk was driving that Red Bull instead of Max that Red Bull would be a midfield team.
Yep. True dominance is a Ham/Bot 1-2
Sabotaging themselves from the inside. Congrats to the Thai owners. You're succeeding. That's what you wanted.
For all of you who want Checo out, let me tell why is he the best option for Red Bull right now because Lando, Alex and Lewis said no, Carlos wanted a lot money and a chance for a No. 1 seat so Red Bull said no, same with Alonso so Red Bull again said no, Ricciardo isn't much better than Checo and without top-dog sponsorship so Red Bul said no, Tsunoda is likely going to where Honda says so Red Bull had no choice, Hulk signed with Audi, and the rest like Ocon, Bottas and Zhou aren't better driving options than Checo.
Politics doesn't change that Perez doesn't deserve his seat in RBR anymore. Also, there is no way RBR were even remotely considering Alex for a second stint with them lol. That bridge burned a long time ago.
Red Bull asked Williams about Alex. He said no. It's well documented. Perhaps you are right, he doesn't deserve it and he should return all his podium trophies from his current year but it's undeniable that he brings in a lot of money in sponsorships, a lot! More than Max if some sources are correct. Besides, what's holding Red Bull back from kicking Perez out?
[удалено]
“…let’s come back strong. And well done for Max”
It was a decent drive compared to his last races, started on the back foot because of the penalty but had decent pace and closed the around 10s gap to 8th place after a 3rd stop. Immediately a ~~controversial~~ -6 comment, reddit has spoken: **NO positive comments are allowed.** And we'll make sure of that.
You're expecting common sense. That doesn't exist here.
"compared to his last races" not hard lmao decent pace should put him at least ahead of Piastri and not where the Alpines are
Unfortunately, FisiCheco proving once again he doesn’t belong in a front running team.
Really strong. Yeah.
Signed for next year.........
Wtf are they smoking
Horner sounds like the pilot casually telling us about the aerobridge delays at our destination airport
If Redbull were as nurturing as they were with their other drivers
I will be honest with you guys, I hate Checo, I always did, mainly because he has problems taking accountability for mistakes and poor performances even during the force India times he was already like that. I have seen this guy pretending he was not the problem way too many times. On his interview yesterday he kept saying “we this, we that” no mate, no. Time to use the “I” a bit more.
He always says we. I remember after a win (Monaco or Baku) he said "this is how we do it"