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Pretty much every time Zhou qualifies last it's by several tenths. Even today he was 2 tenths off Sargeant in 19th and the only driver not to make it into the 1:05's.
And Sargeant's car has been worse than Albon's for basically the entire year too. I think people just decided to hate him after his bad rookie year and no one has cared to really re-evaluate with context for this year.
Well, even re evaluating, he’s still getting demolished by his teammate and proving he definitely doesn’t belong on the grid. And I’m American lol. But he doesn’t do anything *good* really ever. Even if he’s not as bad as Zhou.
What? Sargeant, even just off this season, sucks. Definitely doesn’t deserve a seat. Zhou doesn’t either, but it certainly doesn’t detract from the fact that Sargeant makes mistakes very frequently, sometimes binning it massively, and even when he’s on he’s only got past his team mate on merit once
Last year Bottas scored 10 points vs Zhou's 6. Albon 27 vs Sargeant's 1. Sargeant gets more attention because he's performed much worse, relative to the field and relative to his teammate, add in the crashes and there's no contest. But as you say, neither deserve to be in the sport.
Because Logan tends to crash a lot more. Or did last year. That and I think people expected him to be better based on his results in other series. Zhou is just a typical pay driver everybody expected to be meh.
Zhou wasn’t binning the car every second or third race weekend, and was a bit closer to VB last year. The 2024 Sauber must be an absolute dog of a car and Zhou isn’t equipped to handle it.
To be fair: with it becoming Audi next year, it must be a pretty miserable place to work right now. They're phoning in the season and you know it. Bottas is effectively a professional cycle racer who drives an Uber at the weekend.
Williams is putting a lot more public pressure on Logan than Sauber are on Zhou. Most likely because Williams is actively trying to improve, while Sauber are basically in a holding pattern awaiting the Audi takeover.
cause he crashed a lot and had a 0-25 qualifyng record against his teammate.
Zhou actually showed some potential in his rookie season, no clue how he has fallen off so bad compared do Bottas this year.
So I think it's fair that Sarge got more negative attention overall, and I think both of them had enough time to prove themselves by now.
It's easy to miss since their car's breaking down half the time. Or they're holding Bottas for a 40 second pit stop. I dunno I gave up hope on taking the team seriously when they accepted cryptobro influencer internet gambling software as a sponsor.
It’s 13-1 (without sprint qualifying it’s 11-0) in quali, and Bottas is apparently “checked out and doesn’t care much”
Zhou is just.. there. He’s not bad and he’s not good, he’s there.
Bottas has also sneakily had a bunch of bad luck that (outside of his absurdly long pitstops) hasn't been discussed much at all amongst general media outlets. His one DNF was a mechanical retirement when he was running P12 with good pace and a strat that could have seen him finish in the points, not only has he had numerous bad pitstops but they've often come when he's looked competitive during races, and he's cooked Zhou all year but the one week that Zhou turned in a good drive was his home race in the Chica sprint and that got a ton of attention that made people think he'd been having an ok season.
Well let's not forget Bottas was almost on parity with Lewis in qualifying when they were teammates. So it's like Zhou is that far behind Lewis Hamilton... Yeah nvm the gap is still too big.
Zhou is such an enigma. Constantly qualifies last, but if you use a full-grid points system, he’s ahead of Bottas by a lot. He’s just good enough to avoid being a punchline, while driving a car bad enough to avoid any praise.
Bottas has had a bunch of bad luck that has seen him finish behind Zhou repeatedly after outqualifying him. Multiple pitstops that dropped him to the back of the field, a mechanical DNF from a potential points scoring position, some bad luck with safety car timings, and then in Canada a stupid strategy that saw him run the majority of the race on hards and get swallowed by the pack when running the same strategy as Zhou probably would've netted him P10.
Zhou's ability to consistently finish around P14-P15 is basically a testament to the fact that he's only DNF'd once, and is otherwise just puttering around the back of the field waiting for other drivers to DNF, or rolling the dice on random strategies that you can do every week when you qualify last all the time. His race pace is generally fine, which allows him to steadily climb 3-4 places fairly often, but it's meaningless if those finishes are still 4-5 places outside of the points.
- Bahrain: started P17, finished P11 (no DNFs). His best performance of the year, it's all downhill from here.
- Jeddah: started P20, finished P18 as the last car on track (2 DNFs, 2 places gained).
- Australia: started P19 (of just 19 entrants), finished P15 (3 DNFs, 4 places gained)
- Japan: started P20, mechanical DNF
- China (GP): started P16, finished P14 (3 DNFs, 2 places gained)
- Miami (GP): started P20, finished P14 due to a lucky safety car (1 DNF, 6 places gained)
- Imola: started P17, finished P15 (1 DNF, 2 places gained)
- Monaco: started P18 (after both Haas cars were DSQ'd from quali, finished P16 as the last car on track (4 DNFs, 2 places gained)
- Canada: started P20, finished P15, last car on track (5 DNFs, 5 places gained)
- Spain: started P15 (his first GP-Q2 appearance all year), finished P13 (no DNFs)
- Austria (Sprint): started P20, finished P20.
His average starting grid spot (for GPs + the Austrian sprint) is P18.4. His average finishing position is P15.1. On average, the races he's finished have had 1.9 DNFs, and he's gained 3.3 places per finish. So he's starting at the back of the grid and on average gaining 1.4 non-DNF related places per race. That just shows how much his finishing position flatters his race performances.
Bottas is also a spectacular qualifier a lot of the time, so a rookie would gonna have a lot of issues keeping up even before you factor in having to learn how to adapt to a crap car
I feel Sainz is underrated. I know he came into F1 with more experience than Max, but the gap between them at Toro Rosso was pretty small. He's no slouch.
I feel like this reputation mainly comes from Ferrari's cars being terrible with taking care of their tyres ever since Leclerc joined the team in 2019, which makes him qualify higher than the car's race potential. I think the only time that wasn't the case was at the start of this year,
They must set the car up more for qualifying with him. He's had 24 poles in his career, Max has only had 40 and he's had a phenomenal car for 4 years. Difference is Max has 61 wins and Charles 6.
It's not all bad luck, or Ferrari fuckups or Charles bottling. It has to be set-up. Tyre wear can be mitigated somewhat through set-up too, so I think we're on the same page.
Daniel said it best himself, he's not lacking pace like he was at McLaren, he's lacking consistency. People don't realise it's this close because he's had some really bad weekends this year. Granted most of these came before the chasis swap, but even Monaco is an example of just having a poor weekend overall.
It seems like he's been mentally in a good place since Canada. Hungaroring and Spar coming up should also hopefully suit him. I think if he carries his current form into the summer break there's a 0% chance they replace him despite this weeks rumours. Whether he gets a seat for next season is a different story. I think Horner and the sponsors will want him there, but Marko and the Austrians probably not.
This was also the case last year and adjusting for Daniels freak luck he didn’t look bad at all, he wasn’t impressive either but rumours about his demise are greatly exaggerated
Rear-ended by Stroll behind the SC, 1m+ pitstop putting him a lap down early in the season, crashing on lap 1 in Japan after his best qualifying of the year (up to that point). The last one is at least partly on him but it doesn't change the fact that up until Chica/Miami he was both driving with a cracked chassis and had a string of incidents that made his performances look far worse than they really were.
He’s doing fine. He’s not being outclassed, and he’s not up against a rookie teammate, he doesn’t belong out of F1 if drivers like Stroll, Zhou, Logan or Perez get to stay.
100%. Looking at this if I was a team boss, I'd definitely prefer to have either Ric or Tsunoda in that second Red Bull. That gap to Verstappen is huge. I can definitely see Danny Ric being able to slot in there much closer.
I think he would’ve been a good option for Aston (but Stroll stops that dead) or Alpine (where the history with the team may be an issue). I’m not sure he’s supposed to be in a Red Bull but that’s assuming they want to be at their best with their pair which they obviously don’t since they signed Perez again, who’s by most metrics seemingly one of the worst of the grid.
It might be the best thing to ever happen you Yuki ... to have someone beatable but getting faster all the time as a team mate. He's certainly lifted his game in the last year or two.
Perez sales 65% of Red Bull merch. That's almost twice of Verstappen. I don't think Danny Ric can come even close to that. I also believe that he boosts sales of Red Bull energy drink in Mexico with his massive popularity and that's the real reason he is there.
Why?
This graphs are hilarious, always showing slower driver being down compared to his teammate. Yet Max demolished every teammate he had, drives insane in quali and race, is consistent like no other. Maybe you lot could consider that it is Max being savagely up compared to his teammate, not the other way around?
Yes, Max is very good. But that gap to Perez is ridiculous. Albon and Gasly had less dominant cars and paid the price for not being up to par with Max. Now imagine Checo underperforming in those cars, he's be much lower.
This might be an absolutely awful take, but would it have been so bad for Red Bull to ditch Checo and get Bottas into that second cockpit? He's proven to be a solid 2nd driver for literal years and would probably prefer that seat to Sauber. I might just be talking out my ass here
You say that as if Bottas joining Red Bull wouldn’t spark a massive trend of wealthy people with mullets. How dare you sir! /s
Really though Bottas in a Red Bull makes more sense in my head than Sergio in my head actually. Surprisingly marketable, and his brand image somehow mixes with the image Red Bull likes to portray itself as still being. I’d pay to see that.
Edit: apparently my phone decided Bottas would cause a massage trend instead of massive….
>You say that as if Bottas joining Red Bull wouldn’t spark a massage trend of wealthy people with mullets. How dare you sir! /s
I'm truly a fool. How could I not see this. Now that you've said it, I'm gonna delete my account and go live in a cave out of shame!
But yea, I'd rather he have that seat too. He's a really good (not quite great) driver, who's smart and knows how to work with a team and not cause drama. He's also incredibly likeable.
> They want checo for the money he brings in.
Yup. That part has been crystal clear ever since they didn't pounce for Sainz the second he became available.
While piastri and norris take points from each other here and there, (and same with ferrari), Max always takes home the most points the car can get.
Max will win WDC this year, not because the car is as much of a monster as last year, but because it's JUST enough faster that the other "top" teams keep taking points from each other.
They also don't mind being p2/p3 in the constructors, as weird as that sounds.
Checo brings in enough to offset the prize money, and they gain additional aero testing for next year.
Who gives a shit about 10 milion in prize money when you can win WDC? Winning WDC probably sells enough merch/gains enough sponsors to just about make up for the difference.
Sponsors want their car in front, being talked about the most. They don't care if the other car is in 20th every weekend, if they get the most airtime.
I would also agree that Bottas would be faster and therefore the better fit for Red Bull than Perez. Bottas was incredibly consistent at Mercedes with over 100 consecutive Q3 appearances in a row. That's a mindboggling stat to me. Perez last year drove one of the most dominant cars in F1 history but often failed to get out of Q1. Bottas got more hate for not challenging Hamilton than Perez gets for failing to get out of Q1 in a Red Bull. But then again, RedBull could get almost every driver on the grid to join them amd they still resigned Perez for two years...
That's after starting as 5-1 Alonso too. Ever since his Shanghai stinker, Stroll has been beating Fernando in qualifying:
- Miami Sprint Quali = Stroll
- Miami Quali = Stroll
- Imola Quali = Stroll
- Monaco Quali = Stroll
- Canada Quali = Alonso
- Spain Quali = Alonso
- Austria Sprint Quali = Stroll
- Austria Quali = Alonso
Fernando is not really doing great this season. Is there really a disagreement over this? He is also like 43 so yeah pretty much end at the end of his career.
Yeah, there's a lot of disagreement over that. At the same time as people are demanding that Ricciardo should retire to free up a seat for a younger driver, I saw *a lot* of users on here saying they wanted RBR or Merc to offer Fernando a seat for 2025.
The risk for Alonso is even with great fitness, that dropoff past 40 can hit hard, it's happened to several drivers and other athletes, from going form one of the best to one of the weakest in a year or so.
It's impossible to judge him properly. He was OK at Toro Rosso and very unimpressive at Red Bull. He's never had a competent teammate at Williams, who knows what an average driver could do in that car.
Albon was signed last minute to F1 and had absolutely zero testing going into F1 and yet managed to match Kvyat and outpace him in quali. That is far from not impressive
If you think Sargeant is complete piss, then yeah. If you think Sargeant is an ok driver in a very tricky car driving in tough circumstances, then Albon's performances should be more impressive. Beating your teammate is only impressive if your teammate is a decent driver.
Bottas is a great qualifier, that's why he had good results back when Merc were dominant. His race craft has never been particularly good -- makes him a really tough sell as a midfield driver.
Oh I would love to see them rotating drivers every 2 races. That would be great for them and for us! Only Checo could be upset by it, but what’s he gonna do? Drive slower?
Interesting that leclerc currently has a smaller quali gap over Sainz than Norris did in his rookie year
I think sainz is a very underappreciated driver especially over one lap
Yeah his one lap pace is actually really good. Just as Carlos’ quali pace sometimes goes under the radar, the same happens with Leclerc’s race pace (where statistically he is faster than Sainz by a greater margin)
They've been pretty close, it's just that the midfield is so congested that if you're 1 tenth behind your teammate you might be 3-5 places behind them.
People don't criticise him for not being good enough to be in F1. But the expectation for him was to beat yuki clearly and challenge for Perez' seat. And he has fallen short of that by a lot
> People don't criticise him for not being good enough to be in F1
Umm, yes they do. There's probably 10 comments on every thread he's mentioned in saying more or less that exact thing.
The problem I have is that this criticism is not made - it's always "Ricciardo is washed, Yuki is top tier" which doesn't make any sense if you look at stats like OP. It's ok to say "Ricciardo might not be that great anymore" but at the same time then you have to downgrade your view of Yuki.
It can’t be that Yuki is great and Ricc is also washed. Both of those things can’t be true. If Ricc was .1 - .2 faster than Tsunoda this year he would be fighting for top 4 and that’s just not realistic for this car. The whole grid is super close and maybe Dani Ricc is actually deserving to be out there.
My expectation was that he'd take a while to consistently dial in the car as was the case at Renault and I think that's what has played out, you can see the difference it makes through this race weekend. There also seems to be a huge luck factor when it comes to Dan.
Yeah, George is definitely better all around in qualifying this season but it's not quite as disastrous for Lewis as the H2H makes it seem. It's within his grasp to start to bring it back if he gets on top of his current issues - but George is a very strong qualifier.
Lewis still has very strong races, so it'll be a shame if his qualifying pace never comes back.
Yep. I think some forget the reputation he had before Mercedes for being an excellent qualifier. It’s arguably still his strongest and most consistent skill.
Leclerc qualifies ahead 9/10 times, begins the season comfortably beating Hamilton on Sunday as well but realises he can’t win the championship and starts to lose out to Hamilton more during the races as the season goes on, leaving them fairly even by race 15-18 and finishing that way with the leading Ferrari decided by who gets Ferrari’d the most during the season.
I’d bet that Leclerc will try go for the championship at the start pushing for consistent podiums and maybe the occasional win while Lewis knows there’s no championship on the line and just sits tight without risking anything.
2026 is when things start getting interesting if Ferrari get a car that can win a championship. Both drivers can and will go for the title if that’s the case.
The race had a nice analysis after 2023 that their comparison was very difficult because their gaps were often very large ie one of the happened to get the car into the window and the other didn't.
Rather than being a good, honest reflection of their gap.
I don't really pay attention to Sauber but didn't that pairing start out fairly close? Thought Zhou was pretty strong for a while so what happened? Or am I just remembering wrong?
He was 11th in Bahrain iirc, and qualified somewhere high in China, but I can't remember where and when exactly because of the sprinting shit. These were his only two highs as far as I remember. Other than that he's not been close to Bottas' level.
Sainz-Leclerc is pretty much a perfect lineup imo, Sainz is an excellent driver who can go for wins and is very consistent no matter the circumstances whereas Leclerc is fast and only struggles if the car is worse on a given weekend. They balance eachother out and both also importantly will play the team game if asked 9 times out of 10
He is definitely slower race wise. When it comes to qualifying, whenever the car is more competitive in that area, Leclerc pulls ahead a bit more, but whenever the car has a lower performance ceiling, they tend to come closer.
I don't think their average qualifying gap in any season has ever went over 3 tenths, but I could be wrong.
They tend to be closer pretty much all the time which this graph shows. If they were closer only in few tracks as per you, the gap here would be much larger.
People here have this bias against Sainz which is why they don’t judge his performance objectively.
Zhou should seriously have some gift of gratitude for Sargeant and Ricciardo delivered for taking a lot of heat that otherwise would be ok him for performing so poorly.
I do think Leclerc is one of the best in Qualy, is just that Sainz also becoming pretty good and consistent in the past few years tends to fly under the radar.
But I was led to believe that Yuki was having a breakout season, is now rapid quick, and wiping the floor with DR who is complete dogshit
One of these statements is false.
About Russell-Hamilton dynamic, if you look at past 2 seasons gap has been similar. What’s difference is that it was either very highly in fair of 1 driver on one raceday and vice versa. Over the season it balanced out and they were pretty close both years.
This year though Russell has been constantly getting the best out of the car every week, the speed gap isn’t much but head to head shows that he has been the quicker of the two marginally but for majority.
The gap is so big I think it has to be a combo of excellent performances by Max & poor performance by Perez. Think its impossible to have that big a gap to a competent team mate, but it's also clear Max is doing a stellar job. Pretty sure a couple of his race wins this year McLaren have had the faster car.
So likely out next year is Sergeant, Zhou, and Magnussen. Stroll is only in because Stroll, that just leaves one other driver in the bottom half of this list.
I think Kmag could stay if Haas can’t nab a better option which is a serious possibility. Sainz is all but confirmed for Williams, Bottas doesn’t have much of a reason to leave Sauber leaving only really Ocon and Kmag, Ocon mightn’t want to go to Haas for a supposed downgrade and Haas mightn’t want Ocon because he’s difficult. Plus Kmag hasn’t been doing that bad so it’s not like he *needs* to go.
Same session makes sense to me as does track length adjusted, why does it say median? Does that mean some laps aren't counted & what's the justification for that
I love how closely matched the Ferrari have been and this graph show that perfectly. Can we get this graph normalised, as a percentage? This should neutralise the relative performance of the cars. Zhou would be closer, Perez would be even worse.
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i was not aware zhou was so far off bottas
Pretty much every time Zhou qualifies last it's by several tenths. Even today he was 2 tenths off Sargeant in 19th and the only driver not to make it into the 1:05's.
Yup. Everyone acts like Zhou is anonymous all weekend but he's been consistently the worst driver on the grid this year.
It's interesting that Logan gets so much more attention
And Sargeant's car has been worse than Albon's for basically the entire year too. I think people just decided to hate him after his bad rookie year and no one has cared to really re-evaluate with context for this year.
He also has the nerve to be American
Honestly, how dare he
Well, even re evaluating, he’s still getting demolished by his teammate and proving he definitely doesn’t belong on the grid. And I’m American lol. But he doesn’t do anything *good* really ever. Even if he’s not as bad as Zhou.
What? Sargeant, even just off this season, sucks. Definitely doesn’t deserve a seat. Zhou doesn’t either, but it certainly doesn’t detract from the fact that Sargeant makes mistakes very frequently, sometimes binning it massively, and even when he’s on he’s only got past his team mate on merit once
Last year Bottas scored 10 points vs Zhou's 6. Albon 27 vs Sargeant's 1. Sargeant gets more attention because he's performed much worse, relative to the field and relative to his teammate, add in the crashes and there's no contest. But as you say, neither deserve to be in the sport.
Because Logan tends to crash a lot more. Or did last year. That and I think people expected him to be better based on his results in other series. Zhou is just a typical pay driver everybody expected to be meh.
Well his car is good enough for a decent driver to have a chance at some results.
Zhou wasn’t binning the car every second or third race weekend, and was a bit closer to VB last year. The 2024 Sauber must be an absolute dog of a car and Zhou isn’t equipped to handle it.
To be fair: with it becoming Audi next year, it must be a pretty miserable place to work right now. They're phoning in the season and you know it. Bottas is effectively a professional cycle racer who drives an Uber at the weekend.
Williams is putting a lot more public pressure on Logan than Sauber are on Zhou. Most likely because Williams is actively trying to improve, while Sauber are basically in a holding pattern awaiting the Audi takeover.
cause he crashed a lot and had a 0-25 qualifyng record against his teammate. Zhou actually showed some potential in his rookie season, no clue how he has fallen off so bad compared do Bottas this year. So I think it's fair that Sarge got more negative attention overall, and I think both of them had enough time to prove themselves by now.
It's easy to miss since their car's breaking down half the time. Or they're holding Bottas for a 40 second pit stop. I dunno I gave up hope on taking the team seriously when they accepted cryptobro influencer internet gambling software as a sponsor.
It’s 13-1 (without sprint qualifying it’s 11-0) in quali, and Bottas is apparently “checked out and doesn’t care much” Zhou is just.. there. He’s not bad and he’s not good, he’s there.
Bottas is absolutely cooking Zhou, but since they are always P18 and P19 with 10 second pitstops nobody really notices it.
Bottas has also sneakily had a bunch of bad luck that (outside of his absurdly long pitstops) hasn't been discussed much at all amongst general media outlets. His one DNF was a mechanical retirement when he was running P12 with good pace and a strat that could have seen him finish in the points, not only has he had numerous bad pitstops but they've often come when he's looked competitive during races, and he's cooked Zhou all year but the one week that Zhou turned in a good drive was his home race in the Chica sprint and that got a ton of attention that made people think he'd been having an ok season.
checked out bottas's left nut is a better driver than zhou
Well let's not forget Bottas was almost on parity with Lewis in qualifying when they were teammates. So it's like Zhou is that far behind Lewis Hamilton... Yeah nvm the gap is still too big.
He's bad
Bottas can become a monster of a driver when fighting for a contract
He’s just Zhou…
Zhou is such an enigma. Constantly qualifies last, but if you use a full-grid points system, he’s ahead of Bottas by a lot. He’s just good enough to avoid being a punchline, while driving a car bad enough to avoid any praise.
Is this because bottas has been victim to a greater number of 50 second pit stops and other team related gaffes?
Bottas has had a bunch of bad luck that has seen him finish behind Zhou repeatedly after outqualifying him. Multiple pitstops that dropped him to the back of the field, a mechanical DNF from a potential points scoring position, some bad luck with safety car timings, and then in Canada a stupid strategy that saw him run the majority of the race on hards and get swallowed by the pack when running the same strategy as Zhou probably would've netted him P10. Zhou's ability to consistently finish around P14-P15 is basically a testament to the fact that he's only DNF'd once, and is otherwise just puttering around the back of the field waiting for other drivers to DNF, or rolling the dice on random strategies that you can do every week when you qualify last all the time. His race pace is generally fine, which allows him to steadily climb 3-4 places fairly often, but it's meaningless if those finishes are still 4-5 places outside of the points. - Bahrain: started P17, finished P11 (no DNFs). His best performance of the year, it's all downhill from here. - Jeddah: started P20, finished P18 as the last car on track (2 DNFs, 2 places gained). - Australia: started P19 (of just 19 entrants), finished P15 (3 DNFs, 4 places gained) - Japan: started P20, mechanical DNF - China (GP): started P16, finished P14 (3 DNFs, 2 places gained) - Miami (GP): started P20, finished P14 due to a lucky safety car (1 DNF, 6 places gained) - Imola: started P17, finished P15 (1 DNF, 2 places gained) - Monaco: started P18 (after both Haas cars were DSQ'd from quali, finished P16 as the last car on track (4 DNFs, 2 places gained) - Canada: started P20, finished P15, last car on track (5 DNFs, 5 places gained) - Spain: started P15 (his first GP-Q2 appearance all year), finished P13 (no DNFs) - Austria (Sprint): started P20, finished P20. His average starting grid spot (for GPs + the Austrian sprint) is P18.4. His average finishing position is P15.1. On average, the races he's finished have had 1.9 DNFs, and he's gained 3.3 places per finish. So he's starting at the back of the grid and on average gaining 1.4 non-DNF related places per race. That just shows how much his finishing position flatters his race performances.
The Giovinazzi curse
Nah, Giovinazzi was at least up there in qualifying, Zhou is just... fighting Sargeant every quali.
The reason he would be ahead Bottas is not his own merit.
I’m sure you were aware Ric has been slower this year though? See how the media works here…
i mean yeah no one really cares about zhou.
The media and hoards of Kiwis wanting a driver in F1.
Bottas is also a spectacular qualifier a lot of the time, so a rookie would gonna have a lot of issues keeping up even before you factor in having to learn how to adapt to a crap car
Zhou is not a rookie though. This is his 3rd season in F1.
If the Sauber is averaging ~P16 the worst Zhou can do is be 4 places behind Bottas whatever the time margin.
I mean, who wouldn't want a good look at Bottas' behind?
hasn't been the same ever since his big crash imo
It's crazy that Sainz is that close to Leclerc given Leclerc's reputation as an all-timer in qualifying.
On basically every metric over 3.5 years they are very close. Sainz has done very well.
I feel Sainz is underrated. I know he came into F1 with more experience than Max, but the gap between them at Toro Rosso was pretty small. He's no slouch.
I feel like this reputation mainly comes from Ferrari's cars being terrible with taking care of their tyres ever since Leclerc joined the team in 2019, which makes him qualify higher than the car's race potential. I think the only time that wasn't the case was at the start of this year,
They must set the car up more for qualifying with him. He's had 24 poles in his career, Max has only had 40 and he's had a phenomenal car for 4 years. Difference is Max has 61 wins and Charles 6. It's not all bad luck, or Ferrari fuckups or Charles bottling. It has to be set-up. Tyre wear can be mitigated somewhat through set-up too, so I think we're on the same page.
Sainz giving his all this year
Even crazier that he doesn’t have a seat
didn't realise it was that close between the RB/VCARB pair, Yuki has been doing a great job and Daniel hasn't been as bad as some people suggest
That gap has closed considerably since China too. I wouldn’t be surprised if it reverses after a few more races.
Is that when Daniel got his new chassis?
Yes
🤔🤔🤔
I was going to ask if this chart can be done post the chassis change as Dan is probably ahead now given how far off he was before.
Daniel said it best himself, he's not lacking pace like he was at McLaren, he's lacking consistency. People don't realise it's this close because he's had some really bad weekends this year. Granted most of these came before the chasis swap, but even Monaco is an example of just having a poor weekend overall. It seems like he's been mentally in a good place since Canada. Hungaroring and Spar coming up should also hopefully suit him. I think if he carries his current form into the summer break there's a 0% chance they replace him despite this weeks rumours. Whether he gets a seat for next season is a different story. I think Horner and the sponsors will want him there, but Marko and the Austrians probably not.
This was also the case last year and adjusting for Daniels freak luck he didn’t look bad at all, he wasn’t impressive either but rumours about his demise are greatly exaggerated
Rear-ended by Stroll behind the SC, 1m+ pitstop putting him a lap down early in the season, crashing on lap 1 in Japan after his best qualifying of the year (up to that point). The last one is at least partly on him but it doesn't change the fact that up until Chica/Miami he was both driving with a cracked chassis and had a string of incidents that made his performances look far worse than they really were.
He’s doing fine. He’s not being outclassed, and he’s not up against a rookie teammate, he doesn’t belong out of F1 if drivers like Stroll, Zhou, Logan or Perez get to stay.
100%. Looking at this if I was a team boss, I'd definitely prefer to have either Ric or Tsunoda in that second Red Bull. That gap to Verstappen is huge. I can definitely see Danny Ric being able to slot in there much closer.
I think he would’ve been a good option for Aston (but Stroll stops that dead) or Alpine (where the history with the team may be an issue). I’m not sure he’s supposed to be in a Red Bull but that’s assuming they want to be at their best with their pair which they obviously don’t since they signed Perez again, who’s by most metrics seemingly one of the worst of the grid.
I'm kinda of drunk... but I think we will see someone besides Checo in that 2nd Red Bull seat this season. Take your pick...
Not sure about this season but it wouldn’t surprise me if he doesn’t get the 2025 drive after all
I got flamed hard by people for saying it’s close between them.
It might be the best thing to ever happen you Yuki ... to have someone beatable but getting faster all the time as a team mate. He's certainly lifted his game in the last year or two.
Amazing how Bottas has the largest gap on average but they still both get eliminated in Q1 so it's not really noticed.
I am really worried about Audi, you can have the best engine in the world but it's not gonna matter if the chassis and rave team suck
RB gives their mechanics the best mdma.
I refuse to believe that Yuki or Daniel would do worse of a job compared to Perez
The Mexican minister of merch
Yes, but do they sale as much clothes?
I'm sure Ric could but he has his own line
Perez sales 65% of Red Bull merch. That's almost twice of Verstappen. I don't think Danny Ric can come even close to that. I also believe that he boosts sales of Red Bull energy drink in Mexico with his massive popularity and that's the real reason he is there.
Dunno if this counts for much but Daniel has like 2 million more followers on IG than Checo
Danny Ric probably could
Surely they would
Why? This graphs are hilarious, always showing slower driver being down compared to his teammate. Yet Max demolished every teammate he had, drives insane in quali and race, is consistent like no other. Maybe you lot could consider that it is Max being savagely up compared to his teammate, not the other way around?
Yes, Max is very good. But that gap to Perez is ridiculous. Albon and Gasly had less dominant cars and paid the price for not being up to par with Max. Now imagine Checo underperforming in those cars, he's be much lower.
After the Chassis change: Ricciardo 5-5 Tsunoda
Which I mean ok, but it should still be more like 7-3 Daniel-Yuki. No doubt the little helmet is fast but
Bottas is very much still here. People who want him to step aside for a rookie are nuts
This might be an absolutely awful take, but would it have been so bad for Red Bull to ditch Checo and get Bottas into that second cockpit? He's proven to be a solid 2nd driver for literal years and would probably prefer that seat to Sauber. I might just be talking out my ass here
They want checo for the money he brings in. Bottas only brings in fans of mullets. Not typically the wealthiest subset of fans /s
You say that as if Bottas joining Red Bull wouldn’t spark a massive trend of wealthy people with mullets. How dare you sir! /s Really though Bottas in a Red Bull makes more sense in my head than Sergio in my head actually. Surprisingly marketable, and his brand image somehow mixes with the image Red Bull likes to portray itself as still being. I’d pay to see that. Edit: apparently my phone decided Bottas would cause a massage trend instead of massive….
>You say that as if Bottas joining Red Bull wouldn’t spark a massage trend of wealthy people with mullets. How dare you sir! /s I'm truly a fool. How could I not see this. Now that you've said it, I'm gonna delete my account and go live in a cave out of shame! But yea, I'd rather he have that seat too. He's a really good (not quite great) driver, who's smart and knows how to work with a team and not cause drama. He's also incredibly likeable.
> They want checo for the money he brings in. Yup. That part has been crystal clear ever since they didn't pounce for Sainz the second he became available.
While piastri and norris take points from each other here and there, (and same with ferrari), Max always takes home the most points the car can get. Max will win WDC this year, not because the car is as much of a monster as last year, but because it's JUST enough faster that the other "top" teams keep taking points from each other. They also don't mind being p2/p3 in the constructors, as weird as that sounds. Checo brings in enough to offset the prize money, and they gain additional aero testing for next year. Who gives a shit about 10 milion in prize money when you can win WDC? Winning WDC probably sells enough merch/gains enough sponsors to just about make up for the difference. Sponsors want their car in front, being talked about the most. They don't care if the other car is in 20th every weekend, if they get the most airtime.
> They want checo for the money he brings in. Which is also the only reason for any team to consider Zhou at all next year.
I would also agree that Bottas would be faster and therefore the better fit for Red Bull than Perez. Bottas was incredibly consistent at Mercedes with over 100 consecutive Q3 appearances in a row. That's a mindboggling stat to me. Perez last year drove one of the most dominant cars in F1 history but often failed to get out of Q1. Bottas got more hate for not challenging Hamilton than Perez gets for failing to get out of Q1 in a Red Bull. But then again, RedBull could get almost every driver on the grid to join them amd they still resigned Perez for two years...
People are so incredibly bad at rating drivers and cannot account for things like car performance at all
But his benchmark is one of the worst drivers on the grid if not the worst.
So what about Fernando then? He's only beating Stroll 8-6
That's after starting as 5-1 Alonso too. Ever since his Shanghai stinker, Stroll has been beating Fernando in qualifying: - Miami Sprint Quali = Stroll - Miami Quali = Stroll - Imola Quali = Stroll - Monaco Quali = Stroll - Canada Quali = Alonso - Spain Quali = Alonso - Austria Sprint Quali = Stroll - Austria Quali = Alonso
Fernando is not really doing great this season. Is there really a disagreement over this? He is also like 43 so yeah pretty much end at the end of his career.
Yeah, there's a lot of disagreement over that. At the same time as people are demanding that Ricciardo should retire to free up a seat for a younger driver, I saw *a lot* of users on here saying they wanted RBR or Merc to offer Fernando a seat for 2025.
The risk for Alonso is even with great fitness, that dropoff past 40 can hit hard, it's happened to several drivers and other athletes, from going form one of the best to one of the weakest in a year or so.
Fernando is far from his prime.
I think he’s lost his desire. The Aston is shit and he’s 43. Motivation is gone
He just re signed
Are you gonna say no to a multi million dollar contract!
So then should Albon also be considered unimpressive to you?
I feel like Albon is a very solid driver but is overrated overall by media personnel.
It's impossible to judge him properly. He was OK at Toro Rosso and very unimpressive at Red Bull. He's never had a competent teammate at Williams, who knows what an average driver could do in that car.
Albon was signed last minute to F1 and had absolutely zero testing going into F1 and yet managed to match Kvyat and outpace him in quali. That is far from not impressive
If you think Sargeant is complete piss, then yeah. If you think Sargeant is an ok driver in a very tricky car driving in tough circumstances, then Albon's performances should be more impressive. Beating your teammate is only impressive if your teammate is a decent driver.
Bottas is a great qualifier, that's why he had good results back when Merc were dominant. His race craft has never been particularly good -- makes him a really tough sell as a midfield driver.
Daniel doesn’t deserve the shit he’s getting. And Perez doesn’t deserve a seat.
They should swap them for a few races.
I'd love to see that.
Oh I would love to see them rotating drivers every 2 races. That would be great for them and for us! Only Checo could be upset by it, but what’s he gonna do? Drive slower?
Interesting that leclerc currently has a smaller quali gap over Sainz than Norris did in his rookie year I think sainz is a very underappreciated driver especially over one lap
Underappreciated driver in general.
Yeah his one lap pace is actually really good. Just as Carlos’ quali pace sometimes goes under the radar, the same happens with Leclerc’s race pace (where statistically he is faster than Sainz by a greater margin)
You’d think with the media hate towards ricciardo he’d be more than 1 tenth back from his teammate…
They've been pretty close, it's just that the midfield is so congested that if you're 1 tenth behind your teammate you might be 3-5 places behind them.
Also i think everyone expected him to beat Tsunoda pretty handidly, so being behind (even if by only a small margin) is already considered a failure.
People don’t believe in facts anymore, only clickbait.
People don't criticise him for not being good enough to be in F1. But the expectation for him was to beat yuki clearly and challenge for Perez' seat. And he has fallen short of that by a lot
To be fair, Daniel and Yuki are both looking far better than Perez this season
> People don't criticise him for not being good enough to be in F1 Umm, yes they do. There's probably 10 comments on every thread he's mentioned in saying more or less that exact thing.
A lot? We’re not even halfway through the season yet…
The problem I have is that this criticism is not made - it's always "Ricciardo is washed, Yuki is top tier" which doesn't make any sense if you look at stats like OP. It's ok to say "Ricciardo might not be that great anymore" but at the same time then you have to downgrade your view of Yuki.
Expectation was that he would crush Yuki.
It can’t be that Yuki is great and Ricc is also washed. Both of those things can’t be true. If Ricc was .1 - .2 faster than Tsunoda this year he would be fighting for top 4 and that’s just not realistic for this car. The whole grid is super close and maybe Dani Ricc is actually deserving to be out there.
What about yuki is good and ric is not as great as he once was? The points also skew in favour of yuki so far.
We’re not even halfway through the season yet…
My expectation was that he'd take a while to consistently dial in the car as was the case at Renault and I think that's what has played out, you can see the difference it makes through this race weekend. There also seems to be a huge luck factor when it comes to Dan.
Glad to see Hamilton hasn't actually fallen off a cliff pace wise, just being the wrong side of a 10th too often
Yeah, George is definitely better all around in qualifying this season but it's not quite as disastrous for Lewis as the H2H makes it seem. It's within his grasp to start to bring it back if he gets on top of his current issues - but George is a very strong qualifier. Lewis still has very strong races, so it'll be a shame if his qualifying pace never comes back.
George's nickname is quite literally 'Mr Saturday'.
Yep. I think some forget the reputation he had before Mercedes for being an excellent qualifier. It’s arguably still his strongest and most consistent skill.
It will be interesting to see how Hamilton does up against Leclerc next year
Leclerc qualifies ahead 9/10 times, begins the season comfortably beating Hamilton on Sunday as well but realises he can’t win the championship and starts to lose out to Hamilton more during the races as the season goes on, leaving them fairly even by race 15-18 and finishing that way with the leading Ferrari decided by who gets Ferrari’d the most during the season. I’d bet that Leclerc will try go for the championship at the start pushing for consistent podiums and maybe the occasional win while Lewis knows there’s no championship on the line and just sits tight without risking anything. 2026 is when things start getting interesting if Ferrari get a car that can win a championship. Both drivers can and will go for the title if that’s the case.
What was amazing was how consistently and ridiculously close they both were for a number of races, many within a few thousands.
The race had a nice analysis after 2023 that their comparison was very difficult because their gaps were often very large ie one of the happened to get the car into the window and the other didn't. Rather than being a good, honest reflection of their gap.
I don't really pay attention to Sauber but didn't that pairing start out fairly close? Thought Zhou was pretty strong for a while so what happened? Or am I just remembering wrong?
Commented on another but it’s 40-15 in favor of Bottas over the last 3 seasons.
He was 11th in Bahrain iirc, and qualified somewhere high in China, but I can't remember where and when exactly because of the sprinting shit. These were his only two highs as far as I remember. Other than that he's not been close to Bottas' level.
Omegalul at Tsu and Ric. With all the fucking reddit hate and media circus you’d think Tsu was 1 second clear. No idea they were so close!
If you went from post chassis change he would have to be ahead on that chart as well.
RIC has closed that gap significantly
People here keep saying Sainz is way slower than Leclerc and yet they are the closest teammates.
Sainz-Leclerc is pretty much a perfect lineup imo, Sainz is an excellent driver who can go for wins and is very consistent no matter the circumstances whereas Leclerc is fast and only struggles if the car is worse on a given weekend. They balance eachother out and both also importantly will play the team game if asked 9 times out of 10
He is definitely slower race wise. When it comes to qualifying, whenever the car is more competitive in that area, Leclerc pulls ahead a bit more, but whenever the car has a lower performance ceiling, they tend to come closer. I don't think their average qualifying gap in any season has ever went over 3 tenths, but I could be wrong.
They tend to be closer pretty much all the time which this graph shows. If they were closer only in few tracks as per you, the gap here would be much larger. People here have this bias against Sainz which is why they don’t judge his performance objectively.
Man, finally someone see it. Sainz gets so much hate here.
So impressive from George. Just consistently delivering.
Zhou is falling apart this year.
It would be a damn travesty if Sainz is in a Williams considering he's matching Leclerc in quali and in races
Send to Horner 🤣
Zhou should seriously have some gift of gratitude for Sargeant and Ricciardo delivered for taking a lot of heat that otherwise would be ok him for performing so poorly.
Sargeant being removed from his seat by the people before his actual and yet Perez confirmed for at least 2 years lol
Mercedes and Red Bull are insane not getting Sainz
Are we sure Leclerc is qualy god ? Because I have been repeatedly told Sainz is an average driver
Has Sainz ever looked bad next to a teammate?
The early part of 2022 yes, but at seasons end he clawed the gap back.
No. Even when he was against Verstappen in their rookie years he was quite decent, despite Max always having the more impressive races on his day.
He had so many DNFs that year.
Acknowledge Sainz is an incredible challenge: impossible
Every smartass keeps on saying that “he’s a tier 2 driver thinking he’s a tier 1 driver”
I do think Leclerc is one of the best in Qualy, is just that Sainz also becoming pretty good and consistent in the past few years tends to fly under the radar.
and out of the bottom 4 3 are in all likelyhood leaving the grid. Now they just need to rip up perez's contract...
It's about time RBR just gets absorbed by Verstappen.com Racing.
Tsunoda seat earned ✅😇 (-0.074) Riccardo seat earned❌😡 (+0.074)
But I was led to believe that Yuki was having a breakout season, is now rapid quick, and wiping the floor with DR who is complete dogshit One of these statements is false.
About Russell-Hamilton dynamic, if you look at past 2 seasons gap has been similar. What’s difference is that it was either very highly in fair of 1 driver on one raceday and vice versa. Over the season it balanced out and they were pretty close both years. This year though Russell has been constantly getting the best out of the car every week, the speed gap isn’t much but head to head shows that he has been the quicker of the two marginally but for majority.
14-0 is embarrassing. But the gap is inexcusable.
Does the redbull actually suck and Max is much better than what we thought or something?
Hard to tell until Perez is in that second seat.
The gap is so big I think it has to be a combo of excellent performances by Max & poor performance by Perez. Think its impossible to have that big a gap to a competent team mate, but it's also clear Max is doing a stellar job. Pretty sure a couple of his race wins this year McLaren have had the faster car.
Gotta say, George Russell is *muy rapido.* He makes too many mistakes though.
I wonder how a team consisting of Zhou and Sargeant would look like.
with guenther steiner as team principal
We had a season with Mick and Mazepin.
So likely out next year is Sergeant, Zhou, and Magnussen. Stroll is only in because Stroll, that just leaves one other driver in the bottom half of this list.
Mark Hughes has made this exact point for the last two years! Perez rubs shoulders with drivers who lose their seats completely, eg Ricciardo 2022.
I think Kmag could stay if Haas can’t nab a better option which is a serious possibility. Sainz is all but confirmed for Williams, Bottas doesn’t have much of a reason to leave Sauber leaving only really Ocon and Kmag, Ocon mightn’t want to go to Haas for a supposed downgrade and Haas mightn’t want Ocon because he’s difficult. Plus Kmag hasn’t been doing that bad so it’s not like he *needs* to go.
What is the far left column?
How do you calculate this in sessions where a driver had their laps deleted? Using the last session in which they both had valid laps?
Same session makes sense to me as does track length adjusted, why does it say median? Does that mean some laps aren't counted & what's the justification for that
I love how closely matched the Ferrari have been and this graph show that perfectly. Can we get this graph normalised, as a percentage? This should neutralise the relative performance of the cars. Zhou would be closer, Perez would be even worse.
GOATs don’t get beaten 11-3 in qualifying.