131 replies to this topic

[1player]

In light of the current discussion on the best way for other teams to close the gap with RB, and which action should FIA take, if any, I don't think everyone agrees on what exactly is the secret sauce Red Bull has that other teams can't replicate.

 

Some say it's the car and Adrian Newey himself having created one of the most well-rounded and performant F1 cars ever, others believe Verstappen would win the championship in an Alpha Tauri.

 

Personally I'm firmly in the "it's the car" camp. Verstappen is the best driver on the grid, but he would have a hard time winning the WDC if he were in a 2023 Ferrari, let alone an Alpha Tauri. With the amount of coaching and work engineers do behind the scenes (I posted about that recently...), the driver is little more than an extension of the team of engineers and data scientists in the paddock and at the factory.

 

What do you think?

Edited by 1player, 31 July 2023 - 11:58.

[Lowgrip]

The team.

[Roadhouse]

Hard to quantify with time. But I'd say about 75% car, 25% driver. You need a good car to be quick, but you also need a good driver to extract the maximum, which includes getting the set-up right and being able to drive around a car's shortcomings (which "average" drivers can't).

[Beamer]

A top driver can't win the championship with a bad car. A bad driver can't win the championship with a top car.

Its about team, car, driver and level of execution between all of that

[IrvTheSwerve]

I’m not sure that this is even up for debate? It’s the car. Of course driver skill has some effect, but at this elite level there isn’t too much between them all. This year’s WDC would be driving a Redbull, whoever on the grid was driving it.

[Collombin]

Look at history. Ignore the seasons where the best driver had the best car. Count the number of times the best driver won. Count the number of times the best car won. Is it even close?

[GrumpyYoungMan]

The team.

The team, car, then driver...

[Leibowitz]

Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve won the championship over Michael Schumacher. That sums it up.

[pdac]

It's not an either or. You'll always get a skewed vision of F1 if you think it's about one or the other. It's about the whole (driver, car, reliability, strategy, pit crew, factory facilities, good leadership, team motivation, etc. etc.)

 

There's been many examples in the past where a team with the best car with the best driver have managed to screw things up royally.

Edited by pdac, 31 July 2023 - 12:42.

[AlcidioG]

I don't think there's 1 person out there that believes Max would win the WDC in an Alpha Tauri. But to say it's only the car is not right in my book. Even if everybody was driving a Red Bull I believe Max would be leading the WDC. I think he's just so in tune with his car and himself atm, that nobody would match him. But as has always been the case it can't be proven. For all we know MS was just some mediocre driver who just lucked into some of the greatest cars of his generation and managed 7 WDCs. Maybe Fernando is a mediocre driver who lucked into 2 WDCs. Maybe Lewis is just mediocre lucky driver that he was at Mercedes for their dominant years and had an even worse drive in Rosberg and that's why he's on 7 WDC atm. Maybe Max is the worst of them all and the RB is just out of this world. I suggest you should maybe just start watching spec series.

[lewislorenzo]

Adrian Newey is most important😉

[Astandahl]

The car is 99% of the overall performance in current Formula 1.

[weston]

100% of the message board agrees on something.

[messy]

Car, 100%. That’s why F1 so often sucks ass as an actual sport.

[noikeee]

100% of the message board agrees on something.

We need like to open up a bottle of champagne or something, this is an unprecedented unheard of historical moment.

[Roadhouse]

Adrian Newey is most important😉

Was he secretly working for Mercedes?

[DW46]

We need like to open up a bottle of champagne or something, this is an unprecedented unheard of historical moment.

Quick, shut down the forum, utopia has been achieved.

[pdac]

100% of the message board agrees on something.

 

I disagree

[Cliff]

Of course It's the car, but as it stands nobody would beat Max in this RB as his teammate over a season. Nobody.

[Ali623]

Pretty pointless poll because it's of course the car every time. Ranking different areas of a dominant team by opinion of importance might have been more interesting:

 

The car

The drivers

Team principal

Pit crew

Strategy 

Reliability

Catering

 

and whatever else...

[JvsKVB77]

I’m not sure that this is even up for debate? It’s the car. Of course driver skill has some effect, but at this elite level there isn’t too much between them all. This year’s WDC would be driving a Redbull, whoever on the grid was driving it.

If Redbull would be driving by pare of debutants  De Vries, Sargeant or current Stroll - they probably would not have WDC. But for sure difference of cars at mostly times bigger than difference of drivers. 

[Roadhouse]

This does open up a different topic: "Which cars never got close to their full potential because of a bad driver pairing"

[Burtros]

The driver is the least important part, albeit still important.

It’s the contradiction in F1 having all the focus on the drivers, who really are either victims or beneficiary’s of the quality of their car.

Fwiw this thread in 2020 would never have had any hope of proper debate. 100% of us would be ‘haters’ - really the longer this goes on it really just exposes how terribly some people on here were allowed to behave.

[Alex79]

As Ronny Peterson and Senna showed, a good driver is able to compensate for a mediocre car. As Bottas showed, a mediocre driver can do very well in a good car. As Vettel, Hamilton and Max showed, a good driver and an OP car is a dominant force

[mclarensmps]

The most important factor is the car. It has to be inherently a top 2-3 (if they're close), and then the drivers can make up some of the difference between them. 

[GrumpyYoungMan]

I don't think there's 1 person out there that believes Max would win the WDC in an Alpha Tauri. But to say it's only the car is not right in my book. Even if everybody was driving a Red Bull I believe Max would be leading the WDC. I think he's just so in tune with his car and himself atm, that nobody would match him. But as has always been the case it can't be proven. For all we know MS was just some mediocre driver who just lucked into some of the greatest cars of his generation and managed 7 WDCs. Maybe Fernando is a mediocre driver who lucked into 2 WDCs. Maybe Lewis is just mediocre lucky driver that he was at Mercedes for their dominant years and had an even worse drive in Rosberg and that's why he's on 7 WDC atm. Maybe Max is the worst of them all and the RB is just out of this world. I suggest you should maybe just start watching spec series.

 

The car back then was maybe slightly simpler so it was more balanced between the two?

[F1matt]

Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve won the championship over Michael Schumacher. That sums it up.

 

Schumacher also used his car as a weapon against both drivers as well. This alone shows how important the car is as he never tried to assault Hill or Villeneuve outside the car. 

[Nemo1965]

This seems like an open and shut case (car 90 percent, driver 10 percent) but think about the implications of this sport getting more and more professional. Say, for argument's sake, that these are the best 20 drivers in the world. Say that there are 19 drivers who are 99 percent and one driver is 100 percent. Say, again, hypothetically, that the difference between the fastest car and the slowest car is a second on a 90 second lap. That is 1.1 percent. That means that a driver (10 percent) who is one percent better than the others will dominate.

 

I don't know if I did the maths right, but you catch my drift. If the drivers and material don't differ much from each other (which they do, but we are speculating here!), the percentage of the driver in the total package grows exponentially.

[Anderis]

I wouldn't say any of these two is more important. At least that distinction doesn't seem practical to me.. They are complimentary. You can't do if one of them is missing. The best car can be wasted by an incompetent driver and the best driver will do nothing in a bad car. It works more like a multiplication- you make one multiplier too small and the entire product collapses, regardless of how big the other multiplier is, not like an addition, where you can take away the smaller number and still be left with more than half of the total value.

 

Although performance gaps between cars tend to be biggger than between drivers. But it still doesn't mean you just have to focus on making the car quick and ignore the drivers. You are going to lose without the right drivers anyway.

[P123]

The team, car, then driver...

 

Probably this.  McLaren and Ferrari have squandered good cars by being operationally poor.  An excellent driver will unlikely be enough to overcome a car deficit.  But to bring it all home there needs to be a driver who delivers every race.

[PlatenGlass]

The team, car, then driver...

If we're separating all these out, then the team (pitstops, strategy etc.) is still way behind the car.

[George Costanza]

Car is 80 percent of the performance IMHO.

[flatlandsman]

In formula 1 is has pretty much been the car for decades.  Would Max be winning in a Merc? I doubt it, would Lewis be winning in an RB, probably

 

The current issue is plain to see Newey has designed a car as he did for Vettel, Hakkinen and now Max that only one guy can get the most out of , it is car design to a very tight degree. 

 

Brawn and Byrne did it with Benetton and Ferrari for years, and it is a winning formula, best driver in best car means domination. 

[George Costanza]

In formula 1 is has pretty much been the car for decades. Would Max be winning in a Merc? I doubt it, would Lewis be winning in an RB, probably

The current issue is plain to see Newey has designed a car as he did for Vettel, Hakkinen and now Max that only one guy can get the most out of , it is car design to a very tight degree.

Brawn and Byrne did it with Benetton and Ferrari for years, and it is a winning formula, best driver in best car means domination.

Adrian won championships with all sorts of drivers that all had one thing in common: They all can drive a huge front end car fast. And win. Starting with Nigel in 1992.

[PlatenGlass]

Adrian won championships with all sorts of drivers that all had one thing in common: They all can drive a huge front end car fast. And win. Starting with Nigel in 1992.

 

I'm not sure all Newey champions were particularly known for this. Was Prost? Hill?

[Ruudbackus]

I miss the options team and all of the above. So I cannot vote To me it's the combination of team, driver and car. If either of those suck you won't win championships. If all 3 are top you get dominance

[Lowgrip]

2007 and 2012 or even 2021(2010 would have been a long shot but possible).

With a better team Hamilton would have won the championships those years not withstanding his "mistakes".

RedBull is just something else and you will need a better car to even stand a chance against them.

Their undercut(RedBull) simply work.
Mercedes on the other hand for example can not execute an undercut.

In Qualifying RedBull(again) is always on top of their game while others(Ferrari included) make basic mistakes week in week out.

[Boxerevo]

Car>Team>Driver>driver.

[AncientLurker]

For F1, definitely: Car >>>>> Team >> Driver

 

Put any two current drivers on the grid in the 2023 Red Bull and one of them is leading the championship right now and the team is leading the constructors. It might not be as big a lead as Max has depending on who you put in the car, but they are still winning.

 

The irony is that the drivers are the face of F1, the stars, and get exorbitant salaries, yet in some ways are relatively replaceable except for the truly elite ones.

 

 

Other series will have a different proportion to F1, which I think is one of the most (if not the most) car dependant series.

If we were talking Indycar, it would be more like: Team > Driver >>>>> Car

[jjcale]

As they used to say on another forum about threads like this ..... roll bread.

 

 

Why not just say "is it Max or is it the Car??"

[jjcale]

OK - lets take it seriously .... car > driver > team .

 

If you question why driver is above team - just look at Redbull and compare the two drivers ... they both drive for the same team.

[lewislorenzo]

As they used to say on another forum about threads like this ..... roll bread.


Why not just say "is it Max or is it the Car??"

It has to be Max…

[George Costanza]

I'm not sure all Newey champions were particularly known for this. Was Prost? Hill?

I seem to remember reading about how John Barnard setup the car and Prost did a great job with it. Alain is pretty unique, he could basically drive anything.

I got the whole quote on Alain Prost.

"Alain would set the car up in a way that to any other driver would feel like it had massive understeer, but he had a way of getting the car into the corner early [with his overlapping of braking and cornering], which for a turbo was fantastic, because it meant he could get early on the power and we could give him some traction. Keke, by contrast, was last of the late brakers and really liked to turn the car very quickly. To do that you need a set-up that's a bit light on rear grip – and that just wasn't the way with these cars because it meant you didn't have the traction to use all that huge power."-John Barnard

I think Damon had to adapt because he started his career with Williams so he was able to make it work.

Edited by George Costanza, 31 July 2023 - 15:24.

[Lowgrip]

OK - lets take it seriously .... car > driver > team .

If you question why driver is above team - just look at Redbull and compare the two drivers ... they both drive for the same team.

Herein lies the conundrum.

Mercedes(McLaren also liked their dossier to help the #2 driver) went to great lengths during the 2014 - 2016 to balance the performance between both their drivers such was their advantage over the competition(Aldo Costa, Lowe, Dr Zetsche all alluded to the same).

RedBull simply does not care and would simply back the faster driver to the detriment of the poor #2.

It was the same for Webber who was competent in 2010 and became inept the year after up to the end of his career.

Edited by Lowgrip, 31 July 2023 - 15:25.

[markpenske]

The car is clearly the most important aspect. The real question is are both drivers given the exact same equipment and the best race strategy? 

[dia6olo]

Car all day long, no ifs or buts.

Drivers certainly make a difference when in a car that is there or there abouts but even the likes of Max isn't going to trouble anyone at the sharper end driving the current Williams, Haas, Alfa Romeo or AlphaTauri.

[eibyyz]

"Teddy, buy me two of those..."--James Hunt to Teddy Mayer, referring to the Lotus 79, at Jarama.

[CharlesWinstone]

People think it's the car should ask Valtteri or Checo😁

Without the team without the best people in the correct positions its impossible to built a quick car. Without a quick car it is likely you don't get or keep a top driver.

Team first, then the car (will come) which gives you the chance to hire a top tier driver.

I would love to see one season in which the cars are equal. If the pecking order then still would be the same we would know for sure.

[IrvTheSwerve]

If Redbull would be driving by pare of debutants  De Vries, Sargeant or current Stroll - they probably would not have WDC. But for sure difference of cars at mostly times bigger than difference of drivers. 

 

Hmm...you're probably right...I think Stroll would be in the hunt for a WDC though. De Vries and Sargeant would likely be racking up wins at the very least.

[AlexPrime]

Harmony between car, team and driver is what brings championships.

Right now, Mercedes have the team and the driver, but not the car.
Last year, Ferrari had the driver and the car (pre-Spa), but not the team.
In 1997 Benetton probably had the team and the car from previous season, but not the driver and they plummeted.