re: 2022 Formula 1 Season Thread

An Indycar is much much closer to F1 than a Cup car when talking about cornering and braking forces.

Especially at the time those comparisons were done. Hell, I saw a comparison test a while back where a ZR1 Vette on it's stock street tires easily outbraked a Cup car. Seems it's lap time was fairly close as well around some road course.

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where a ZR1 Vette on it's stock street tires easily outbraked a Cup car. Seems it's lap time was fairly close as well around some road course.

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Not doubting you, that could be the case.

Now, how many laps could the stock Vette do and still outperform the Cup car? Probably not that many and certainly not a full race.

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There's the F1 car and then there's all other forms of motorsports

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I think yes and no.

Certainly within its defined confines the F1 car is the pinnacle.

For overall technical brilliance the F1 cars are without peer I think.

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Well put ("within its defined confines"), and to further add to this line of analysis, I have a few things to add. First, an F1 car is not the ultimate race car. If you gave a race car designer a clean sheet of paper and asked him to design the ultimate (road course) race car, it would look closer to an LMP1 car, and nothing like an F1 car. Open wheel cars have terrible aerodynamics. This is one reason why there is such a wide separation between the fastest and slowest teams: the richer teams and teams with the most brilliant designers and guys named Adrian Newey are the ones who best solve the tricky aerodynamic issues of F1 cars.

When Porsche pulled out of the WEC after 2017, they came up with the brilliant idea to unleash the 919 Hybrid by removing WEC power and aero constraints and tweaking it to fulfill its real potential. The 919 Hybrid Evo then went on a 2018 "Tribute" tour. At its first stop at Spa, it promptly set the lap record, beating the F1 lap record by almost a second. It then set the Nordschleife lap record and still holds it by 45 seconds. F1 is the fastest race car only because they have a design mandate that they must be the fastest race car. If WEC set a mandate that the top class must be faster than F1, they could achieve it with smaller budgets than F1 because aerodynamics is easier with a properly designed race car (i.e., a car with fenders).

However, this is a tangent that doesn't address the real question, which is, are drivers who come up through the European system (F3, F2) better equipped for success in F1 than drivers who come up through the American system (Indy Lights, IndyCar)?

In F1 there is a clear bias towards drivers who came up racing in Europe. Interestingly, the three IndyCar drivers testing for McLaren, Alex Palou, Pato O'Ward, and Colton Herta, all have experience racing in Europe before coming to IndyCar.

IndyCar detractors like to point to IndyCar champions who failed in Europe, like Cristiano da Matta and Sébastien Bourdais. With so few data points, it's easy to pick and choose your proof to make your point. With F1 it can be very difficult to make accurate assessments with drivers who only last a year or two. I have two examples of long-time F1 drivers to make my point.

From 2010-2013 Sebastian Vettel in a Red Bull dominated the driver's championship and dominated his teammate Webber. Two of the years he had hard-fought wins over Alonso in a Ferrari, and two of the years he ran away with the championship, including 2013 when he finished the season with nine straight wins. Then in 2014 the new hybrid car was introduced. Two of its features compared to the previous generation was that it had a lot more low-end torque, and it generated less downforce. Everyone agreed that the cars were harder to drive. Vettel had a new teammate, Daniel Ricciardo, and Ricciardo finished P3 in the championship with 238 points (behind the two Mercedes), and Vettel finished P5 in the championship with 167 points. Was Ricciardo that much better than the four-time world champion? It's probably more accurate to say that Vettel's driving style was very much suited to the characteristics of the previous generation car, and he needed more time to adjust to the new car. Vettel then went to Ferrari and finished P3, P4, P2, and P2 over the next four years.

Speaking of Ricciardo, he did well in the Red Bull while the team was a bit up and down during the years of Mercedes dominance. He beat Max in 2017 (Max's first full year on the team) but Max surpassed him in 2018. Ricciardo insisted that Red Bull was favoring Max, so he moved to Renault, where he finished an impressive P5 with 119 points in 2020 (his teammate Ocon finished P12 with 62 points). So his reputation was still as a top driver in 2020. Then he made the disastrous move to McLaren, where Lando Norris has cleaned his clock for the last two seasons. Did Ricciardo suddenly become a bad driver? It's probably more accurate to say that he just couldn't adjust to the McLaren's handling characterstics. However he had two years to adjust so I'm sure his reputation has taken a hit.

My obvious point is that even proven drivers can have terrible years when going to another team or when there is a major rules update. Now imagine being a new driver in the series. You can end up in a car that doesn't suit you at all, but since you don't already have a good F1 reputation, people will assume you just aren't good enough for F1. The F1 paddock is particularly skeptical of IndyCar drivers.

So would the great recent IndyCar drivers have done well in F1? It's unknown, but these are the two major factors to consider. 1) Guys like Dixon and Newgarden have proven to be consistently good drivers over the course of a championship in a tough spec series where many drivers have a chance to win. In this regard, IndyCar is a more difficult series than F1 because in F1 in any given year, there are only six to eight drivers with a reasonable chance to win races. 2) In F1 from year to year, a driver may drive a car that's very different from the last car he drove (either a new car on the same team, or by switching teams), while an IndyCar driver sees a lot more consistency from year to year. Some F1 drivers have the reputation of being able to drive a good car or a bad car, and some have the reputation of only being able to drive a car that suits them. The consistency of an IndyCar from year to year might be one reason why it's hard to evaluate the drivers for F1.

tl;dr The complexity of racing makes it difficult (and dishonest) to come to quick conclusions when comparing drivers.

Edit: Here's a whole twitter thread of people talking about drivers who struggled in particular series but then later thrived. Buxton has a couple of interesting comments: https://twitter.com/virtualstatman/status/1570341355687215104

Hopefully Singapore delivers a better race. The past few races have been probably the most boring races all year. It kind of sucks when everybody on the planet knows who is going to win the race even before it starts. Hopefully someone can at least give Max a run for his money.

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$55 MM a year...

ESPN article

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I saw twitter is saying de vries to AT. Maybe Latifi survives.

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Hopefully someone can at least give Max a run for his money.

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It feels like the only way Max doesn’t win out is if his engine blows up or someone crashes into him, and he’s gotten so good at staying out of trouble.

Ferrari are paper tigers at this point.

Have to wonder what the Merc connection will be with de vries. If there will still be anything.

Well we were right about Las Vegas being on Saturday night.

Late in the season for Vegas. Weather chilly?

Seems like the title may be decided by the time they get there knocking some of the luster off.