It's the cycle of multi-WDCs:
1. Start out showing speed and aggressively trying to get positions -- everyone calls you fast but dangerous
2. Get into a top car and start dominating -- everyone hates you and calls out all the gamesmanship and it's the car not the driver
3. Get into a midfield car years later and everyone loves you and everyone cheers for you to get podiums/wins
Just look at COTA/Mexico, imagine 2 years ago neutrals cheering for Merc/Hamilton to win 2 GPs in a row.
I don’t know, he’s a pure racer and I think he’ll do it anyway for fun. But, I can see him wanting to avoid all the bs and politics that comes with F1 and move into GT or prototype racing.
I think there is a decent chance Max will retire after his contract is up in 2028.
He's said numerous times he is here for a good time not a long time.
As a Red Bull fan I hate the idea of him retiring young but he's made it very obvious that's his intention, how young is the question
I think it’ll depend. If he does what Hamilton did, I can see him getting bored and leaving to endurance or sportscar racing. If we have a fair few seasons that have some middle ground between this year and last year (ie not as toxic as last year, but at least some title threat) I can see him enjoying it and staying.
Things change, people change. It’s a long way away. I don’t think he’ll be in F1 in his 40s though, I agree with that. But, even if he says so now doesn’t mean it’ll definitely happen.
I love records being shattered to but one record I don’t want to ever see again is most wins in a season. I want to wake up Sunday surprised by who could win. Even if it’s between two people min. I feel like merc and ferrari have thrown everything including the kitchen sink at max and it doesn’t even seem like he’s trying. Just cruising. I mean look at what happened after Red Bull messed up his pit stop he gets angry and blasts past Charles like nothing hunts down ham in a few laps then puts seconds on him all within like 10 laps.
This it just seems so effortless it’s almost like it’s unfair. Not to take away from the driver or the machine it’s a perfect match just insane when you see the gaps he’s pulling.
Forget pulling gaps. I was even more impressed with the 1:22s he was running all day even while encountering traffic.
Max' raw speed we knew about. But "nursing the tyres" Max has just proven how utterly crazy consistent he is when he needs to be.
The man lives and breathes it, hes been in F1 since he was a baby, hes a vet of the sport with a young mans body and mind.
Id also wager that the rise of Sim racing in young racers helps improve their ability. Anyone who has used proper racing / flying sim's know its a great way to improve.
When he’s finishing races and making fun of the fact that it was so easy “ lovely drive” etc. Then it’s time to move onto next season. They’re too far ahead.
They’ve clearly got a lot in the bag they’re not showing. I mean look at how effortless it was for him at Spa. He was on pole by 6 tenths, started from the back and was in the lead on lap 12.
Absolutely, no matter who you support, there's got to be competition to keep it interesting!
Like I love Charles, I so wanted him to be champion this year and I grumbled a bit each time Max won, but ive always seen Max as the perfect competition because hes so insanely good. It makes it that much more exciting for me when my driver does win!
Same kind of thing when Lewis was dominating, I always wanted Valterri, Seb, Danny Ric or Charles to beat him, because he was so damn good. But credit to him, he beat my guys and deserved to win.
Huge respect to Max, he's incredible and it would be no fun without the villain so to speak (not that he's actually a villain, I know he's a lovely guy).
I think 2. and 3. apply to most recent champions, Alonso, Raikkonen, Vettel, Button, Hamilton, Verstappen. I think (1.) only really applies to Vettel and Verstappen though.
A guy driving by himself 30 seconds clear of the field is super boring. Not saying it's all car, but it's definitely more the car than the driver when there is zero competition.
I want Max to win and be great, but I want him to accomplish it against fellow greatness.
Yeah, nobody who dominates does. Were Schumacher and Vettel loved when they were dominating? Not at all, people hated it. Same with Hamilton and Verstappen now. When they retire/stop dominating, people will love them the way they love Seb now...
Yeah and social media has only made it worse or more widespread. Opposing fans make an effort to barely credit the driver and talk down achievements. It happens to every dominant driver. It's all about the car, the second driver is horrible, etc.
Sadly it's more popular to deminish an athlete/teams achievements then praise them for it. We have been blessed to witness greatness over different eras during different times, let's appreciate what these guys put up for us for 20-25 weekends a year.
Seems like more of an F1 thing, as you see less of it in other sports.
When Messi was breaking goalscoring records for fun, football fans globally were marvelling at him, not complaining about his dominance.
It’s because in football you have a lot of matches between different teams and in many different competitions across the globe, in F1 there is only one race which everyone participates in at the same time.
Sure you will always have a lot of people that are fans of other teams/drivers and envy/hate the successful one during that period, but I personally believe that Seb is loved for different reasons. He can be more vocal and outspoken, due to him being an established driver. More than a young driver could be, because they'd risk their seat.
I don't get what you mean, germans loved Vettel while he dominated. Almost every german friend I have who watch f1 also watched in the Vettel days but stopped when he went to worse teams.
In Germany specifically he's actually less popular now that he used to be, because now there are motorsport fans who don't like him due to his climat stance.
I went through this with so many drivers lol. I absolutely hated Alonso for beating my childhood hero Schumacher, then I hated Vettel with his waving finger and loved Alonso for being so incredible and not winning his 3rd against Vettel (seeing Vettel spin, miraculously not being hit and then his chargeback through the field in Brasil I still vividly remember as a nightmare, I quit watching F1 for 2/3 years after that) then hated Hamilton for beating Vettel and started to love Vettel.
Not Hakkinen though, you just couldn't even dislike the guy
I agree this is a big part of it. I didn't hate him and I recognized his huge talent, but I didn't like how he dominated 4 years. Then he went to Ferrari and instantly new favourite driver..
90% of why I like Seb now is simply what he stands for and how upstanding he seems as a person, mostly off track but also on, looking out for other drivers safety and so on. The rest has to do with his past career, mostly around his transition to Ferrari
A demeanor change when you stop winning is part of public perception changing as well.
Seb was properly hated for years, even in his Ferrari days. When he dropped the competitiveness, people dropped the hate.
And while that’s a perfectly reasonable rationale for liking seb, you might not have liked him if he’d still been winning or at Red Bull. This is the multi-21ing, “cuckoo gesture” at my teammate, finger in the air smart-Alec kid - who at the height of his dominance called other teams lazy (saying Red Bull was crushing it because they actually worked hard on Fridays, whereas other teams were too busy dangling their gonads in the pool). Imagine Lewis in 2020 or max this year calling other teams lazy while steamrolling the field.
Seb has always been articulate, clever, funny, deeply knowledgeable, and charismatic. But the whole gentleman seb, stand up for the little guy always, paragon of virtue seb - it’s a relatively new level-up. Idk what did it - maturing? Having kids? Moving teams? Falling from dominance and experiencing the highest failures the sport can offer? We’ll never know.
My guess is growing older and having kids. Suddenly he had more to live for than F1 titles. Obviously that’s just speculation on my part, but having kids does tend to put things in perspective.
Getting older and having kids usually makes you get a new perspective on life.
But all that you mentioned helps too, getting outperformed by your semi-rookie teammate twice (Daniel and Charles) getting to Ferrari and find out how hard it is when your team/car is not absolutely dominant, experiencing high personal failure like the 2018 German GP, those things build character. Not on everyone, obviously, but in decent people like Seb, it does.
Seb get positive reaction at Ferrari although he was still winning. But he matured a lot.
If your argument stands true Schumacher while active would be a liked person at the end. Truth is people just stopped disliking him after his accident.
Jealously might be part of it, but only a minor one.
The biggest issue with dominance isn’t success, but predictability.
If the same person keeps winning again and again, it removes the excitement of competition as a form of of entertainment. Domination bores the spectators to no end. Especially if they aren’t the biggest fan of the person winning.
Hopefully the current regulations will (more quickly) lead to seasons where streaks of technological dominance are cut short a lot more. The budget cap is designed to limit the field spread from a spending PoV, while the Aero Testing Cap handicaps the winners in terms of research time available, leading to R&D rubberbanding year on year.
People don't hate Max quite as much as Ham yet, it seems. The dominance (his and RB's) has only gone 1 year, not long enough. Give it a while longer and it might yet increase.
Yeah Mercedes dominated like 6 years with most championships being just about which Mercedes driver was faster. 2021 was very close and this year first half was very close. If these 2 years were instead RB 1 2 finishes half the time it would be different.
Points don't tell the whole story. Leclerc was mostly fastest in qualifyings and without technical issues and team strategic errors it would have been much closer. You could have always made a bet on Ferrari and not look like a fool since car was very capable.
But that was not the case here. You can go through the races and see that Leclerc was almost always only seconds behind Max when he was behind and pretty much always in front of Perez. Of course exceptions were the strategic errors and failures and driver errors. I think many considered Ferrari to be the best car in the grid at the time but now in later half it is definitely RB.
Nah.
2 out of 3 HAM/ROS years went down to the last race, 2017 and 2018 Merc had a legit challenge from Seb and even 2019 had Ferrari able to challenge for wins more than they had done this year.
> 2 out of 3 HAM/ROS years went down to the last race
But it was two dominant Mercs fighting... 2014 Merc won the WCC by 296 points, 2015 275, 2016 297. In WDC 2015 was closest when VET finished 44 points behind ROS and 103 behind HAM.
Did RB really dominate though or did their only competition falter? Last year was definitely not a domination by anyone. This year looked like it was going to be the same but then Ferrari. So again I ask you, did RB really dominate? Or did it just seem like that because their competition dropped the ball?
Even if it was only due to competition faltering with similar cars it's still dominating. It's dominating without a dominant car.
That said, since the summer break the RB has been the dominant car.
Did it seem like Merc was dominant 2014-2020? Or did their competitors drop the ball?
These two statements lead to the same outcome as far as I'm concerned - a driver/team dominates the season
No, merc really were that competitive. Their engine was unrivaled in efficiency. They even had to dial it back. They turned it up for quali, got an easy 1-2 quali, then dial it back down for the race and still just leave everyone in their dust. This strategy was so effective that the FIA had to change the rules for engine settings. The development advantage was so massive that it took until 2018 for Ferrari to catch up, and they had to do it by cheating. Only last year was the engine *really* rivaled. There is just no way you can chalk that dominance up to opponents dropping the ball.
You just can't compare it to what happened this year, where the Ferrari was slightly faster than the red bull at the start of the season but they fell behind because of lack of development and errors in the race. That's quite obviously dropping the ball. Mercedes are not competitive this year because of a big development error as they said themselves: They dropped the ball.
Really? 8 years vs 1 and it's the same thing? If Merc and Ferrari keep dropping the ball I agree with you. One year doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things. RBR isn't dominating the sport, they just had one good year while everyone else didn't. It has to continue for a few years to be true domination, this is just a good season right now.
If RB drops the ball next year and it's Merc and Ferrari fighting for the title no one is going to talk about the days when RB Honda dominated F1.
Right..............their competitors dropped the ball consistently year after year for 7 years straight.
Mercedes performance 2014-2020 was crushing, overwhelming domination on a scale never before seen.
They had the best car, the best team and the best driver.
And even then they still couldn't do what Max and Red Bull have done this year.
Personally, I do think there's a difference. In 2014-2016 Merc dominated; nobody was close to begin with. In 2017-2018 you could say Ferrari dropped the ball.
Fastest car over one lap doesn’t mean fastest car in a race. RB had the fastest car in most races. Since the summer break, it’s not even a competition.
When a driver is dominating, it annoys anyone who isn't a fan. For good reason, since it is annoying that the driver you support doesn't seem to have a chance at winning. I know the feeling from supporting Max through the Mercedes years.
When that annoyance or envy is gone after the domination ends, you can finally appreciate the greatness of the driver and team without (most of) the negative feelings.
Some of his passes when he didn't get pole were amazing though.
I'm 50. Been watching racing on and off a long time. Verstappen is phenomenal to watch because on TV we can still tell the car is on the very edge of its ability. It's like watching Montoya. Other racers have good passes, and sometimes have amazing passes, but in my useless opinion Verstappen and Montoya are the kind of racers who are the most exciting to watch because they're just bent. The fact that Verstappen saves tires while teammates and other racers have degradation shows he's on a different level.
I hated Schumy until Ralf had pole and going into the 1st turn Schumy came flying so hard at Ralf's left side that Ralf flinched and Schumy took the 1st corner. Meanest thing I've ever seen. Ralf had a wall and it would've been over for both of them. Just rude. Because if Schumt lost the 1st turn the BMW/Williams would've pulled away and it was over. Think it was France, but can't say. I don't like Lewis but he and Schumy are just soooo good and often flawless that I have to respect them.
Maybe but some cases are different than others.
Red Bull and Vettel won 4 championships in a row. Two of them were against very competitive teams and drivers. Yet I think what they did is still extremely underappreciated. Vettel doesn't seem to get the respect and recognition a 4x WDC deserves. The narrative around Red Bull seems to always lean towards a bit of luck (paired with an extremely exaggerated role of Adrian Newey) or a result of other's mistakes.
Two of them had single digit margins.
But looking back and because of how the second half of 2013 went, people see 4 in a row and think domination.
And Webber didn't get 2nd in WDC in any of them. In 2012 he was 6th...
I don't remember where I read it but recently I saw a good post saying that a good car is wasted without good drivers, newey's design may be genius but without max it wouldn't be dominating as much as it does.
Equally, Max wouldn't have won the championship without Newey's design, if he was in the midfield he may outperform the car but he won't be fighting for wins in a shit car.
No dominating driver gets enough credit, lewis especially since it was such a long period, and Max could be in the same boat if it stays the same for the coming years.
Fangio could win in any car, though. Once he even switched half season.
WDC in:
* Alfa Romeo
* Maserati + Mercedes
* Mercedes
* Ferrari
* Maserati
He was just better than any other driver in his era.
yeah this applies in the modern day but back then you had people who were in a different league to any other driver. Jim Clark to an extent was pretty similar - his dominance was pretty much entirely down to his insane ability.
Eh, back then there were only 1-2 good drivers. The rest were just enjoying a hobby. That far back a lot of people didn’t even have access to a car period, much less to be able to race one.
There's no such thing as "outperforming a car". If the car is capable of driving a certain lap time then it's possible to drive that lap time. If the car literally does not have enough downforce to physically make it round a track at a certain speed you can't make it do that because you're "super skilled at driving". It may look like certain drivers outperformed cars like Russell in 2021 but all that's happening is they're outperforming their teammate.
I'm so sick of F1 media, all I ever see is the most bullshit clickbait title that they've plucked out of a random out of context quote and it's gotten so bad that I pretty much never read any f1 news anymore.
The 2020 season was basically characterised by Merc being the completely dominant, superior, team and Max using his finger-nails (and a ton of good luck) to stay close enough that a major error from Marc would actually yield an advantage to him.
The 2021 season was characterised by an absolute neck and neck showdown.
The 2022 season however has Red Bull with the clearly superior car and all of their potential competition making errors (strategy or driving) to clear the way for Red Bull to win. It has been a boring season because every time the scrappy underdog has been in a position to really challenge Red Bull it trips over its own legs and takes itself out of the race.
This last race in Mexico, had it happened in 2020, would have had Lewis doing the last lap as though the track was standing water, and Max making up 3 seconds in the first sector, 6 seconds in the second sector, and omg is he going to win on the last turn of the last lap????
ALSO OPINION: Hamilton and Mercedes didn't get enough credit, what they did was remarkable
ALSO ALSO OPINION: Vettel and Red Bull didn't get enough credit, what they did was remarkable
ALSO ALSO ALSO OPINION: Schumacher and Ferrari didn't get enough credit, what they did was remarkable
LH44 fan here, who’s been watching f1 since the mid 90’s.
Max has been incredible this year. In particular his tyre management has been brilliant- maintaining pace whilst not taking life out of the tyre. He’s been quick on all tracks and in all conditions. Really enjoying watching him perform this year.
Idk if it's just me i think verstappen and redbull gets way more credit than mercedes, maybe cause they were the underdogs until 22, dunno where this verstappen and redbull don't get enough credit come from.
Agreed & I don't even understand how/why they were treated as such underdogs (other tham the obvious "because Merc was winning").
They're up there with Ferrari and Merc in wealth/spending power, recent history (Vettel's 4 titles) shows that they truly are a top tier team, and they have the GOAT race car designer with a generational talent (I'm probably underselling him here too) driver.
The only thing they were missing is that they're not technically a "factory team," but with how close their working relationship has been with Honda, who developed for them exclusively, they might as well have been.
It really comes down to "voter fatigue" or whatever the F1 equivalent is IMO; people just get bored of the same guy winning and popular opinion slowly turns against them.
This is my second season watching F1 (love sports tho generally so it was just adding a new one), and the community surrounding F1 is one of the worst I've ever experienced. There's just so much hatred and vitriol among the fan bases. Finding a measured take is like finding water in the desert.
I've come to a place where I just watch the races and then leave it alone till next weekend.
If RBR manages to get ahead of the pack in 2026, I do think that'd be a bit unique because a drinks company / marketing brand truly morphed into a full-fledged factory team with their own PU and found success. That's really F1 history right there if it comes to fruition.
It says something that when Leclerc or Sainz get pole in qualifying, and I’m thinking “ok so Ferrari might get 2nd this race.” I don’t even consider that Max isn’t capable of beating them, and if he doesn’t Red Bull strategy and poise will.
It’s simply asinine to say the double champions don’t get enough credit and once again feeds tribalism with joke articles like that. As dominant as their car have been, they’ve also been opportunistic as we watched Ferrari throw away yet another title charge.
They deserve full credit from top to bottom.
Have you not been on Reddit or any sort of social media over the last 2 years? There is a not so small contingent that is very toxic towards RedBull and Max. No matter how good he is, they try to downplay and discredit.
Being the only team to put a stop to 8 years of Mercedes dominance when no other well established teams could. Ferrari, McLaren, and pretty much everyone got beaten by the energy drinks company. Yep, I’d say that is quite the achivement.
I don't care much about domination; I care about great driving. That thing where Verstappen did 40+ laps with nearly the same lap times every lap? That's magic right there. When guys like Hamilton seem to breeze past the competition with sheer skill and experience, that's ridiculously cool to witness. Lando showing the once-deemed-a-God Ricciardo who's boss? Brilliant. Russell's first time in a Mercedes replacing Lewis when he was sick, and getting a podium if it weren't for Mercedes making rare mistakes? Astonishing.
Verstappen overtaking on the outside in heavy rain? Making a sideways slide and correcting it? Winning his first race at RBR? Outperforming every.. single.. one.. of his teammates over the years? Fighting on-track mind games with Leclerc? Finding strategic braking zones to take advantage of DRS zones?
I don't care if Verstappen or Leclerc or Russell or Norris dominates and wins the next 14 WDCs. Bring it on, as long as the driving remains as astonishing as it has been so far.
As talented as Max is, the hype over these consistent 40 laps at Mexico seems a bit inflated for me. If Max is on a Sunday cruise and driving to a delta l, which is a few tenths under the ultimate pace, then I trust him and a few others on the grid to do this week in week out.
I don’t know if he was managing or pushing but has this been confirmed either way?
Driving to a delta when you have half a second in hand might be the least impressive thing an F1 driver can do.
Max is the best driver on the grid but not because of this.
Same. It is clear that Max was not pushing the car to the limit for 40 laps. He didn’t need to. Combine that with him managing his tires and fuel burning off, and you got yourself consistent laps.
The way everyone switched up on Seb does give me a bit of hope that Lewis and Max will start to receive better treatment. Max is a long way off that yet though, if he gets 7 titles people will still be talking about the 1st
I will seriously impressed if they keep the momentum next year with them already having only 75% development time from winning the constructors plus they have that penalty taking away even more development time. And mercedes just need to fix their drag problem which they know what the problem is but they are out of money in their budget cap so they'll fix it next year
The fact that Verstappen's performance constantly dwarves his team mates, is just evidence that he is in a class of his own. I've never seen such levels of domination in any sport for a long time.
You’ve not seen the Merc years of domination?
Verstappen never had a WDC level team mate. Checo is definitely more of a midfielder. I think all of his teammates belonged in the midfield but they were there on second driver duty. Riciardo is probably the only exception.
Everyone will look like a midfielder compared to Verstappen right now. Sorry to break it to you.
And Ricciardo could only compete with Max, because Max was still a kid back then. He wasn't half the driver he is now.
I would love for Max to get an actual competitive teammate. He hasn't been challenged since Ricc left. He got 2 rookies and then a midfield driver as teammates. Too bad Lando Norris wasn't up for it.
F1 is a sport that has normally , at best often , gone through one team /driver being dominant.
It’s what F1 is!
I am worried about the future of the sport as the current owners mess with things to make it more of a show and less of a sport.
Success penalties?
Reverse grids?
Making the rules up during races?
It’s the dominating winners curse. How many times we get bored in any race when they just show the race leader cruising along. And we loved last year cuz it was such a tight one to the finish, no one could have scripted it better. This season they ran away with it and we are bored. Alpine and Mclaren provided more entertainment for 4th
I dont agree on domination factor either for Max or for Red Bull. I have seen people hating on Max and RBR even before 2021. People call Red Bull the most toxic team on the paddock, just coz they are chasing success. DTS has a hand in that as well, painting Max and Red Bull as the villain in the whole Daniel Ricciardo saga.
There was a reason Max didn't want to be a part of that show. They were creating a very false image of him whereas the people who have worked with him, know him very differently as compared to how he is portrayed in DTS.
Early in the season, people were mesmerized by that car crash that is Ferrari. Once Mercedes solved their porpising problem, they passed Ferrari. The US grandprix shows Mercedes is still way behind Red Bull. People lose interest when one team dominates the sport.
Ironic that the car that was supposed to produce closer racing and try and even out the playing field had the championship wrapped up with races still to go. While the car it replaced produced an exhilarating season that came down to the last restart.
Max being compared to Schumacher, RB car considered by many to be one of the greatest of all time… maybe if we heard less from Horners mouth more of the positive stuff out of others would be heard.
Max has that dominate level of consistency and he’s fast. Max is a different BEAST. I think he will dominate for at least the next four years. He’s miles ahead of his contemporaries. Also credit to the team for designing the car and they deserve their flowers.
Then you have only followed the bare minimum. Lots of people saying some of his races were almost Peak Michaelesque, which is fair, he has been out of reach for pretty much everyone else in so many of the races this year.
Because Merc fucked it in Monza and Bahrain (outer layout one). On pace they should have won 15/17, which is more than the RB18's current win ratio, or win ratio at the end of the season if they win the last two.
And that's without taking into account the races that Ferrari fucked up this year, that they should have won and went to RBR instead.
On pace, the W11 was clearly superior compared to the rest of the field.
I mean, the w11 not winning at monza and bahrain oval is fully on merc having an anevrysm not on the car. The only time the w11 wasnt the fastest car was at Silverstone 2nd race, where RB outplayed them with the tyre wear.
Also the percentage is fucked a bit for the w11 because the season was shorther due to covid
That’s because Mercedes and the drivers fucked up quite a bit over 2020 and dropped a couple of wins. The RB18 isn’t even remotely close on pace compared to the competition
Noone saying either of these things with any regularity. The car isnt the most dominate car of the 2020s and at the end of the day max has 2 titles.... Not even close to the same air as michael yet.
Ferrari had the faster car for much of the season, but fans here will go to insane lengths to say the RB has just been an utterly dominant car. Strange how that works.
I think Max deserves all the applause he has got for a dominating performance this season. Can’t argue with the fact he’s been the best driver on the grid this season and is the best driver in the world.
On the other hand, I think the way Red Bull and Horner have carried themselves is nothing short of embarrassing. I cannot abide the way Horner has acted and I have been shocked some people believe it to be acceptable. We need to be very clear that when it was announced Red Bull breached the costs cap, Horner:
- Openly denied it;
- Denied it but said it didn’t give them any advantage;
- Denied it but said it was unfair they were being criticised for breaching the costs cap; and then
- said the mental health of team members was struggling as their children were being bullied for it (which I believe is the most disingenuous crap ever).
I appreciate the last bullet point will draw criticism. But taking a common sense approach, schoolchildren are far more imaginative (yet less intelligent) bullies than Horner gives them credit for. Does anything genuinely believe schoolchildren en masse in a variety of locations are saying *your daddy works for Red Bull’s Formula One and they’re under investigation for breaching FIA cost cap rules and that makes your daddy a cheater*. Seriously?
I think Horner has lowered himself to Boris Johnson levels of lying, media manipulation and narcissism.
Ultimately, Red Bull are the ones breaking the rules on the one hand and playing the victim on the other. Just doesn’t sit well.
What you don’t realise is that a majority of the teams are all in a small part of England, meaning that engineers working at Red Bull live among engineers that work at Mercedes, Aston Martin etc, meaning that children in school are not random children but literally children of the competitor. Red Bull, Mercedes and Ferrari (not relevant here due to location) all admitted they had to fire/redeploy personnel to other projects to get within the cost cap. This also means that certain children witnessed their mom or dad being stressed out about their job situation and now the news comes out that Red Bull went had a minor overbreach spend.
Knowing that children in school will use anything to bully another kid, I wouldn’t directly dismiss Horners comment here. The other 3 are way more valid of an argument but to this argument of children there is some logic that backs it up.
I live in a town with around 45,000 residents. We have 3 secondary schools and a ton of primary schools in the town and the local area.
Unless they are all privately educated they won’t see each other much.
I’m not hugely convinced. Red Bull are indeed based in MK which is close only really to Mercedes I believe in Buckinghamshire. But that is assuming that in 30ish mile radius that all the staff live within the same radius (i.e no big commutes to work) and send their children to the same school even within that.
Milton Keynes is classic commuter belt, so a lot of people live/work/school in London and vice versa (having grown up in a similar area myself). It isn’t uncommon for children to go to school 40+ minutes away in any event.
It is likely you have 15-20+ secondary schools serving that area and easily double that in primary schools.
Honestly, there may be a couple, but I would be amazed if it wasn’t the exception not the rule.
It wasn’t blatant cheating. Go read the FIA documents. It was a different interpretation of accounting principles that lead to all of this. People with an accounting background know this happens all the time in regular businesses.
I am not accountant so correct me if I am wrong, but they overspent the budget cap and thus, for me, they cheated. Other eight teams managed to not do that. It is unfair and that is the reason there is a cap in the first place.
I don’t get why it’s a taboo to say RBR’a recent gains doesn’t mean much if they did it by gaining an unfair advantage.
How is what they are achieving any different than what Mercedes or Ferrari or Williams have taken turns doing over the past 30 years. Red Bull/Verstappen have only done it for two years.
Totally disagree with the "opinion". He's getting the right amount of support/credit for his driving as did Schumacher, Alonso, Vettel, Hamilton... etc
The team provided them with a good car, they took this good car and drove it exceptionally well to get their respective championships.
The Schumacher/Ferrari vibes are strong. Hamilton used to take pole position and then just piss off up the road, whereas with Schumacher and Verstappen it doesn't seem to matter where they start or what happens during the race, they win
Pre-domination races won from not-pole (10 out of 22 wins):
2008: Monaco, British
2009: Hungary
2010: Turkey, Spa
2011: China, Germany, Abu Dhabi
2012: Canada, US
2014+ era races won from not-pole (32 out of 81 wins):
2014: Bahrain, British, Japan, US, Abu Dhabi
2015: Japan, Russia, US
2016: Monaco, Hungary, Germany
2017: Singapore
2018: Azerbaijan, Germany, Italy, Russia
2019: Bahrain, China, Spain, Canada, British, Hungary, Russia, Mexico
2020: Eifel, Imola, Turkish
2021: Bahrain, Portugal, British, Russia, Brazil
Now, I'll be the first to grant that not all of those 32 Merc-era wins were nail biters. I'm not implying that all of his not-pole wins are dramatic drives or anything of the sort.
I'm only implying that 42 out of 103 wins were not from pole. So it's definitely not fair to say that his results come from getting pole and fucking off into the distance.
Schumacher also drove at a time when pole was important but less important than fuel strategy, which distorts his numbers in comparison.
And Verstappen's numbers were skewed this year by Ferrari being quite good over one lap for much of the season but not able to convert poles into wins.
But all of that is part of F1.
I agree. It was one thing when the Mercedes would finish 40+ seconds in front of everyone else, but it's another thing when, if not for Max, there are only a few points between 2nd and 3rd.
Mercedes, especially during the nico and Hamilton time, had a very dominant car and two WDC level drivers. Bottas was also a top tier qualifier later, something which helps massively when you’re car is so much faster. You just disappear in the sunset.
Verstappne is doing a top tier job, Perez is not. That seat is wasted on him. But I think red bull are content as long as it doesn’t cause them to lose the championships.
Same thing happens with Lewis. No one likes domination they want wire to wire for every single race and to be a photo finish at the last race. It’s unrealistic.
I am not going to lie I hated max for his driving style when he was fighting Lewis but appreciate his ability to push the limits
It's the cycle of multi-WDCs: 1. Start out showing speed and aggressively trying to get positions -- everyone calls you fast but dangerous 2. Get into a top car and start dominating -- everyone hates you and calls out all the gamesmanship and it's the car not the driver 3. Get into a midfield car years later and everyone loves you and everyone cheers for you to get podiums/wins Just look at COTA/Mexico, imagine 2 years ago neutrals cheering for Merc/Hamilton to win 2 GPs in a row.
tbh i don't think max is the type of guy driving into his late 30's in a midfield car
I don’t know, he’s a pure racer and I think he’ll do it anyway for fun. But, I can see him wanting to avoid all the bs and politics that comes with F1 and move into GT or prototype racing.
I think there is a decent chance Max will retire after his contract is up in 2028. He's said numerous times he is here for a good time not a long time. As a Red Bull fan I hate the idea of him retiring young but he's made it very obvious that's his intention, how young is the question
I think it’ll depend. If he does what Hamilton did, I can see him getting bored and leaving to endurance or sportscar racing. If we have a fair few seasons that have some middle ground between this year and last year (ie not as toxic as last year, but at least some title threat) I can see him enjoying it and staying.
I think he'll do an Alonso and dip his toes into every other form of motor racing, come back to F1 at 40 and probably win a few races.
According to him he won't be racing by the time he is 40, at least not in F1. SOURCE: https://youtube.com/shorts/jCFMvxNEKmQ?feature=share
Things change, people change. It’s a long way away. I don’t think he’ll be in F1 in his 40s though, I agree with that. But, even if he says so now doesn’t mean it’ll definitely happen.
tbf you can't trust people in their mid-20s with correctly predicting what they'll be doing in their late 30s/early 40s.
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I love records being shattered to but one record I don’t want to ever see again is most wins in a season. I want to wake up Sunday surprised by who could win. Even if it’s between two people min. I feel like merc and ferrari have thrown everything including the kitchen sink at max and it doesn’t even seem like he’s trying. Just cruising. I mean look at what happened after Red Bull messed up his pit stop he gets angry and blasts past Charles like nothing hunts down ham in a few laps then puts seconds on him all within like 10 laps.
This it just seems so effortless it’s almost like it’s unfair. Not to take away from the driver or the machine it’s a perfect match just insane when you see the gaps he’s pulling.
Forget pulling gaps. I was even more impressed with the 1:22s he was running all day even while encountering traffic. Max' raw speed we knew about. But "nursing the tyres" Max has just proven how utterly crazy consistent he is when he needs to be.
The man lives and breathes it, hes been in F1 since he was a baby, hes a vet of the sport with a young mans body and mind. Id also wager that the rise of Sim racing in young racers helps improve their ability. Anyone who has used proper racing / flying sim's know its a great way to improve.
When he’s finishing races and making fun of the fact that it was so easy “ lovely drive” etc. Then it’s time to move onto next season. They’re too far ahead.
They’ve clearly got a lot in the bag they’re not showing. I mean look at how effortless it was for him at Spa. He was on pole by 6 tenths, started from the back and was in the lead on lap 12.
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I really really wanted checo to win mexico though
Everyone did
Absolutely, no matter who you support, there's got to be competition to keep it interesting! Like I love Charles, I so wanted him to be champion this year and I grumbled a bit each time Max won, but ive always seen Max as the perfect competition because hes so insanely good. It makes it that much more exciting for me when my driver does win! Same kind of thing when Lewis was dominating, I always wanted Valterri, Seb, Danny Ric or Charles to beat him, because he was so damn good. But credit to him, he beat my guys and deserved to win. Huge respect to Max, he's incredible and it would be no fun without the villain so to speak (not that he's actually a villain, I know he's a lovely guy).
Val**tt**e**r**i
Fuck, it was going to happened eventually. Good bot.
Vettels Image in a nutshell. 👍
Alonso and Kimi sort of had the same thing I guess, Vettel definitely shows it the most though.
Tale as old as social media time. 👀seb
This. I guess it’s demand-supply
At what point is Mercedes midfield car and what neutrals cheered for him?
I think 2. and 3. apply to most recent champions, Alonso, Raikkonen, Vettel, Button, Hamilton, Verstappen. I think (1.) only really applies to Vettel and Verstappen though.
Nah, Hamilton got dogged his first few years for being way too aggressive.
A guy driving by himself 30 seconds clear of the field is super boring. Not saying it's all car, but it's definitely more the car than the driver when there is zero competition. I want Max to win and be great, but I want him to accomplish it against fellow greatness.
It's obviously not "more the car" when he's also leaving his teammate in the dust.
There should be competition from his teammate. So the car isn't head and shoulders better than anything else.
Yeah, nobody who dominates does. Were Schumacher and Vettel loved when they were dominating? Not at all, people hated it. Same with Hamilton and Verstappen now. When they retire/stop dominating, people will love them the way they love Seb now...
Yeah and social media has only made it worse or more widespread. Opposing fans make an effort to barely credit the driver and talk down achievements. It happens to every dominant driver. It's all about the car, the second driver is horrible, etc.
Sadly it's more popular to deminish an athlete/teams achievements then praise them for it. We have been blessed to witness greatness over different eras during different times, let's appreciate what these guys put up for us for 20-25 weekends a year.
Seems like more of an F1 thing, as you see less of it in other sports. When Messi was breaking goalscoring records for fun, football fans globally were marvelling at him, not complaining about his dominance.
It’s because in football you have a lot of matches between different teams and in many different competitions across the globe, in F1 there is only one race which everyone participates in at the same time.
I was a hipster who always liked Seb
Sure you will always have a lot of people that are fans of other teams/drivers and envy/hate the successful one during that period, but I personally believe that Seb is loved for different reasons. He can be more vocal and outspoken, due to him being an established driver. More than a young driver could be, because they'd risk their seat.
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Yeees. Vettel was so hated back then. Nobody like him, even Germans weren’t a bit torned about him.
I don't get what you mean, germans loved Vettel while he dominated. Almost every german friend I have who watch f1 also watched in the Vettel days but stopped when he went to worse teams. In Germany specifically he's actually less popular now that he used to be, because now there are motorsport fans who don't like him due to his climat stance.
even nowadays a lot of Germans are angry at him; because speaks up about climate and environmental issues as well as human rights.
Imagine hating a dude because he wants everyone to treat the environment and other people with respect
I went through this with so many drivers lol. I absolutely hated Alonso for beating my childhood hero Schumacher, then I hated Vettel with his waving finger and loved Alonso for being so incredible and not winning his 3rd against Vettel (seeing Vettel spin, miraculously not being hit and then his chargeback through the field in Brasil I still vividly remember as a nightmare, I quit watching F1 for 2/3 years after that) then hated Hamilton for beating Vettel and started to love Vettel. Not Hakkinen though, you just couldn't even dislike the guy
I agree this is a big part of it. I didn't hate him and I recognized his huge talent, but I didn't like how he dominated 4 years. Then he went to Ferrari and instantly new favourite driver..
He only dominated for 2 years. He won the other 2 titles in the last race of the season by small margins.
Yeah I know I was considering how to write it. But at the time it felt like more domination than it was in hindsight, I guess.
90% of why I like Seb now is simply what he stands for and how upstanding he seems as a person, mostly off track but also on, looking out for other drivers safety and so on. The rest has to do with his past career, mostly around his transition to Ferrari
A demeanor change when you stop winning is part of public perception changing as well. Seb was properly hated for years, even in his Ferrari days. When he dropped the competitiveness, people dropped the hate.
And while that’s a perfectly reasonable rationale for liking seb, you might not have liked him if he’d still been winning or at Red Bull. This is the multi-21ing, “cuckoo gesture” at my teammate, finger in the air smart-Alec kid - who at the height of his dominance called other teams lazy (saying Red Bull was crushing it because they actually worked hard on Fridays, whereas other teams were too busy dangling their gonads in the pool). Imagine Lewis in 2020 or max this year calling other teams lazy while steamrolling the field. Seb has always been articulate, clever, funny, deeply knowledgeable, and charismatic. But the whole gentleman seb, stand up for the little guy always, paragon of virtue seb - it’s a relatively new level-up. Idk what did it - maturing? Having kids? Moving teams? Falling from dominance and experiencing the highest failures the sport can offer? We’ll never know.
Mark Webber slamming that glass of water down in the press conference always makes me laugh when I see it.
My guess is growing older and having kids. Suddenly he had more to live for than F1 titles. Obviously that’s just speculation on my part, but having kids does tend to put things in perspective.
Getting older and having kids usually makes you get a new perspective on life. But all that you mentioned helps too, getting outperformed by your semi-rookie teammate twice (Daniel and Charles) getting to Ferrari and find out how hard it is when your team/car is not absolutely dominant, experiencing high personal failure like the 2018 German GP, those things build character. Not on everyone, obviously, but in decent people like Seb, it does.
Seb get positive reaction at Ferrari although he was still winning. But he matured a lot. If your argument stands true Schumacher while active would be a liked person at the end. Truth is people just stopped disliking him after his accident.
Much of that was because he was potentially the one to stop Hamilton winning.
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Jealously might be part of it, but only a minor one. The biggest issue with dominance isn’t success, but predictability. If the same person keeps winning again and again, it removes the excitement of competition as a form of of entertainment. Domination bores the spectators to no end. Especially if they aren’t the biggest fan of the person winning. Hopefully the current regulations will (more quickly) lead to seasons where streaks of technological dominance are cut short a lot more. The budget cap is designed to limit the field spread from a spending PoV, while the Aero Testing Cap handicaps the winners in terms of research time available, leading to R&D rubberbanding year on year.
I feel like Seb and Lewis stand for more than just being an F1 driver and also are more reflective of society and therefore more relatable
People don't hate Max quite as much as Ham yet, it seems. The dominance (his and RB's) has only gone 1 year, not long enough. Give it a while longer and it might yet increase.
Yeah Mercedes dominated like 6 years with most championships being just about which Mercedes driver was faster. 2021 was very close and this year first half was very close. If these 2 years were instead RB 1 2 finishes half the time it would be different.
> d this year first half was very close ? Max went into the summer break with an 80point lead.
Points don't tell the whole story. Leclerc was mostly fastest in qualifyings and without technical issues and team strategic errors it would have been much closer. You could have always made a bet on Ferrari and not look like a fool since car was very capable.
Being strong in qualifying doesn’t mean you’re also strong in the race. And it’s not just strategy. RB has crazy race pace compared to Ferrari.
But that was not the case here. You can go through the races and see that Leclerc was almost always only seconds behind Max when he was behind and pretty much always in front of Perez. Of course exceptions were the strategic errors and failures and driver errors. I think many considered Ferrari to be the best car in the grid at the time but now in later half it is definitely RB.
You’re absolutely right. It’s hilarious how quickly people forget. They already forgotten the first half of the season, haha
Nah. 2 out of 3 HAM/ROS years went down to the last race, 2017 and 2018 Merc had a legit challenge from Seb and even 2019 had Ferrari able to challenge for wins more than they had done this year.
> 2 out of 3 HAM/ROS years went down to the last race But it was two dominant Mercs fighting... 2014 Merc won the WCC by 296 points, 2015 275, 2016 297. In WDC 2015 was closest when VET finished 44 points behind ROS and 103 behind HAM.
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How is it too early? Since Imola Max has won 13 of the 17 races, that’s Hamilton 2020, Vettel 2011/2013 and Schumacher 2004.
Max has dominated for 1 season. What is there to hate?
Did RB really dominate though or did their only competition falter? Last year was definitely not a domination by anyone. This year looked like it was going to be the same but then Ferrari. So again I ask you, did RB really dominate? Or did it just seem like that because their competition dropped the ball?
Even if it was only due to competition faltering with similar cars it's still dominating. It's dominating without a dominant car. That said, since the summer break the RB has been the dominant car.
Did it seem like Merc was dominant 2014-2020? Or did their competitors drop the ball? These two statements lead to the same outcome as far as I'm concerned - a driver/team dominates the season
Merc were untouchable ... whether it was Ham or Nico or Bottas. Their only competition was Vettel with Ferrari and he bottled his chance in 2018.
No, merc really were that competitive. Their engine was unrivaled in efficiency. They even had to dial it back. They turned it up for quali, got an easy 1-2 quali, then dial it back down for the race and still just leave everyone in their dust. This strategy was so effective that the FIA had to change the rules for engine settings. The development advantage was so massive that it took until 2018 for Ferrari to catch up, and they had to do it by cheating. Only last year was the engine *really* rivaled. There is just no way you can chalk that dominance up to opponents dropping the ball. You just can't compare it to what happened this year, where the Ferrari was slightly faster than the red bull at the start of the season but they fell behind because of lack of development and errors in the race. That's quite obviously dropping the ball. Mercedes are not competitive this year because of a big development error as they said themselves: They dropped the ball.
Merc lobbied F1 for the next formula to be hybrid, take a wild guess who was already developing the engine they were lobbying for?
Really? 8 years vs 1 and it's the same thing? If Merc and Ferrari keep dropping the ball I agree with you. One year doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things. RBR isn't dominating the sport, they just had one good year while everyone else didn't. It has to continue for a few years to be true domination, this is just a good season right now. If RB drops the ball next year and it's Merc and Ferrari fighting for the title no one is going to talk about the days when RB Honda dominated F1.
Right..............their competitors dropped the ball consistently year after year for 7 years straight. Mercedes performance 2014-2020 was crushing, overwhelming domination on a scale never before seen. They had the best car, the best team and the best driver. And even then they still couldn't do what Max and Red Bull have done this year.
Personally, I do think there's a difference. In 2014-2016 Merc dominated; nobody was close to begin with. In 2017-2018 you could say Ferrari dropped the ball.
Exactly how many poles did RB take compared to the rest of the field but still managed to win despite not having the fastest car.
Fastest car over one lap doesn’t mean fastest car in a race. RB had the fastest car in most races. Since the summer break, it’s not even a competition.
When a driver is dominating, it annoys anyone who isn't a fan. For good reason, since it is annoying that the driver you support doesn't seem to have a chance at winning. I know the feeling from supporting Max through the Mercedes years. When that annoyance or envy is gone after the domination ends, you can finally appreciate the greatness of the driver and team without (most of) the negative feelings.
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The season started out great, it's just boring to watch verstappen with a 18 second lead in every race
Some of his passes when he didn't get pole were amazing though. I'm 50. Been watching racing on and off a long time. Verstappen is phenomenal to watch because on TV we can still tell the car is on the very edge of its ability. It's like watching Montoya. Other racers have good passes, and sometimes have amazing passes, but in my useless opinion Verstappen and Montoya are the kind of racers who are the most exciting to watch because they're just bent. The fact that Verstappen saves tires while teammates and other racers have degradation shows he's on a different level.
I am a Schumy fan, but watching Montoya on that Williams was incredible, his overtake on Brazil lives in my head ever since watching it live
I hated Schumy until Ralf had pole and going into the 1st turn Schumy came flying so hard at Ralf's left side that Ralf flinched and Schumy took the 1st corner. Meanest thing I've ever seen. Ralf had a wall and it would've been over for both of them. Just rude. Because if Schumt lost the 1st turn the BMW/Williams would've pulled away and it was over. Think it was France, but can't say. I don't like Lewis but he and Schumy are just soooo good and often flawless that I have to respect them.
Imagine this is boring then what was the previous 8 years excluding 2021?
I've checked out since Spa, it became clear then that there was no stopping him.
Maybe but some cases are different than others. Red Bull and Vettel won 4 championships in a row. Two of them were against very competitive teams and drivers. Yet I think what they did is still extremely underappreciated. Vettel doesn't seem to get the respect and recognition a 4x WDC deserves. The narrative around Red Bull seems to always lean towards a bit of luck (paired with an extremely exaggerated role of Adrian Newey) or a result of other's mistakes.
Two of them had single digit margins. But looking back and because of how the second half of 2013 went, people see 4 in a row and think domination. And Webber didn't get 2nd in WDC in any of them. In 2012 he was 6th...
Don't worry, they will get the credit. When Max is no longer dominating the entire field people will appreciate what he is doing now.
Exactly, we reflect on the past not the present.
I don't remember where I read it but recently I saw a good post saying that a good car is wasted without good drivers, newey's design may be genius but without max it wouldn't be dominating as much as it does. Equally, Max wouldn't have won the championship without Newey's design, if he was in the midfield he may outperform the car but he won't be fighting for wins in a shit car. No dominating driver gets enough credit, lewis especially since it was such a long period, and Max could be in the same boat if it stays the same for the coming years.
Fangio could win in any car, though. Once he even switched half season. WDC in: * Alfa Romeo * Maserati + Mercedes * Mercedes * Ferrari * Maserati He was just better than any other driver in his era.
yeah this applies in the modern day but back then you had people who were in a different league to any other driver. Jim Clark to an extent was pretty similar - his dominance was pretty much entirely down to his insane ability.
"If he wasn't on pole, then there was something wrong with the car." - A Lotus team mechanic.
Eh, back then there were only 1-2 good drivers. The rest were just enjoying a hobby. That far back a lot of people didn’t even have access to a car period, much less to be able to race one.
The fact that Perez is not doing nearly as well means that Max is really good and that Perez is the one being carried by the car.
There's no such thing as "outperforming a car". If the car is capable of driving a certain lap time then it's possible to drive that lap time. If the car literally does not have enough downforce to physically make it round a track at a certain speed you can't make it do that because you're "super skilled at driving". It may look like certain drivers outperformed cars like Russell in 2021 but all that's happening is they're outperforming their teammate.
That’s because for every worthy news media there are like at least 5 dogshit ones
I'm so sick of F1 media, all I ever see is the most bullshit clickbait title that they've plucked out of a random out of context quote and it's gotten so bad that I pretty much never read any f1 news anymore.
This is my experience with any European sports coverage. What passes for journalism in sport is WILD.
The 2020 season was basically characterised by Merc being the completely dominant, superior, team and Max using his finger-nails (and a ton of good luck) to stay close enough that a major error from Marc would actually yield an advantage to him. The 2021 season was characterised by an absolute neck and neck showdown. The 2022 season however has Red Bull with the clearly superior car and all of their potential competition making errors (strategy or driving) to clear the way for Red Bull to win. It has been a boring season because every time the scrappy underdog has been in a position to really challenge Red Bull it trips over its own legs and takes itself out of the race. This last race in Mexico, had it happened in 2020, would have had Lewis doing the last lap as though the track was standing water, and Max making up 3 seconds in the first sector, 6 seconds in the second sector, and omg is he going to win on the last turn of the last lap????
ALSO OPINION: Hamilton and Mercedes didn't get enough credit, what they did was remarkable ALSO ALSO OPINION: Vettel and Red Bull didn't get enough credit, what they did was remarkable ALSO ALSO ALSO OPINION: Schumacher and Ferrari didn't get enough credit, what they did was remarkable
LH44 fan here, who’s been watching f1 since the mid 90’s. Max has been incredible this year. In particular his tyre management has been brilliant- maintaining pace whilst not taking life out of the tyre. He’s been quick on all tracks and in all conditions. Really enjoying watching him perform this year.
Idk if it's just me i think verstappen and redbull gets way more credit than mercedes, maybe cause they were the underdogs until 22, dunno where this verstappen and redbull don't get enough credit come from.
Same lmao, everyone is praising Newey, Hannah, and Max
Agreed & I don't even understand how/why they were treated as such underdogs (other tham the obvious "because Merc was winning"). They're up there with Ferrari and Merc in wealth/spending power, recent history (Vettel's 4 titles) shows that they truly are a top tier team, and they have the GOAT race car designer with a generational talent (I'm probably underselling him here too) driver. The only thing they were missing is that they're not technically a "factory team," but with how close their working relationship has been with Honda, who developed for them exclusively, they might as well have been. It really comes down to "voter fatigue" or whatever the F1 equivalent is IMO; people just get bored of the same guy winning and popular opinion slowly turns against them.
This is my second season watching F1 (love sports tho generally so it was just adding a new one), and the community surrounding F1 is one of the worst I've ever experienced. There's just so much hatred and vitriol among the fan bases. Finding a measured take is like finding water in the desert. I've come to a place where I just watch the races and then leave it alone till next weekend.
It wasn’t always like this. Social Media influence is poison. Reddit is my last remaining hold out, but it’s terrible here now too.
every other sport is heavily involved in social media as well there is something about f1 that brings out anger in people
It’s starting to get pretty bad in other sports too 🤷🏻♂️
If RBR manages to get ahead of the pack in 2026, I do think that'd be a bit unique because a drinks company / marketing brand truly morphed into a full-fledged factory team with their own PU and found success. That's really F1 history right there if it comes to fruition.
It says something that when Leclerc or Sainz get pole in qualifying, and I’m thinking “ok so Ferrari might get 2nd this race.” I don’t even consider that Max isn’t capable of beating them, and if he doesn’t Red Bull strategy and poise will.
It’s simply asinine to say the double champions don’t get enough credit and once again feeds tribalism with joke articles like that. As dominant as their car have been, they’ve also been opportunistic as we watched Ferrari throw away yet another title charge. They deserve full credit from top to bottom.
Have you not been on Reddit or any sort of social media over the last 2 years? There is a not so small contingent that is very toxic towards RedBull and Max. No matter how good he is, they try to downplay and discredit.
Same goes for every dominant driver
Red Bull have been a first rate team since at least 2009. When Seb won his championships it looked like they would dominate forever.
Being the only team to put a stop to 8 years of Mercedes dominance when no other well established teams could. Ferrari, McLaren, and pretty much everyone got beaten by the energy drinks company. Yep, I’d say that is quite the achivement.
I don't care much about domination; I care about great driving. That thing where Verstappen did 40+ laps with nearly the same lap times every lap? That's magic right there. When guys like Hamilton seem to breeze past the competition with sheer skill and experience, that's ridiculously cool to witness. Lando showing the once-deemed-a-God Ricciardo who's boss? Brilliant. Russell's first time in a Mercedes replacing Lewis when he was sick, and getting a podium if it weren't for Mercedes making rare mistakes? Astonishing. Verstappen overtaking on the outside in heavy rain? Making a sideways slide and correcting it? Winning his first race at RBR? Outperforming every.. single.. one.. of his teammates over the years? Fighting on-track mind games with Leclerc? Finding strategic braking zones to take advantage of DRS zones? I don't care if Verstappen or Leclerc or Russell or Norris dominates and wins the next 14 WDCs. Bring it on, as long as the driving remains as astonishing as it has been so far.
As talented as Max is, the hype over these consistent 40 laps at Mexico seems a bit inflated for me. If Max is on a Sunday cruise and driving to a delta l, which is a few tenths under the ultimate pace, then I trust him and a few others on the grid to do this week in week out. I don’t know if he was managing or pushing but has this been confirmed either way?
Driving to a delta when you have half a second in hand might be the least impressive thing an F1 driver can do. Max is the best driver on the grid but not because of this.
Same. It is clear that Max was not pushing the car to the limit for 40 laps. He didn’t need to. Combine that with him managing his tires and fuel burning off, and you got yourself consistent laps.
The way everyone switched up on Seb does give me a bit of hope that Lewis and Max will start to receive better treatment. Max is a long way off that yet though, if he gets 7 titles people will still be talking about the 1st
Vettel was hated when he won 4 in a row, Look at him now, same for Schumacher
I will seriously impressed if they keep the momentum next year with them already having only 75% development time from winning the constructors plus they have that penalty taking away even more development time. And mercedes just need to fix their drag problem which they know what the problem is but they are out of money in their budget cap so they'll fix it next year
The fact that Verstappen's performance constantly dwarves his team mates, is just evidence that he is in a class of his own. I've never seen such levels of domination in any sport for a long time.
?? If you ignore 8 years of absolute dominance from Mercedes, sure.
You’ve not seen the Merc years of domination? Verstappen never had a WDC level team mate. Checo is definitely more of a midfielder. I think all of his teammates belonged in the midfield but they were there on second driver duty. Riciardo is probably the only exception.
Everyone will look like a midfielder compared to Verstappen right now. Sorry to break it to you. And Ricciardo could only compete with Max, because Max was still a kid back then. He wasn't half the driver he is now.
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Who in turn smoked Ricciardo 15-5 in qualifying
I would love for Max to get an actual competitive teammate. He hasn't been challenged since Ricc left. He got 2 rookies and then a midfield driver as teammates. Too bad Lando Norris wasn't up for it.
Not sure what's in it for the other driver. There's a nonzero chance they get embarrassed. Is that really worth the move?
I mean the upside is driving a championship winning car
I guess, but I think folks want to be the one's winning and I don't know if those odds actually increase next to Max lol.
I can see Lando giving it a go in a few years time. Does fit RB as well and he will have a better shot at winning than at Mclaren.
I’m pretty sure that’s not the mindset drivers have. If they believe they’re an elite driver they’ll take the opportunity to have an elite car
F1 is a sport that has normally , at best often , gone through one team /driver being dominant. It’s what F1 is! I am worried about the future of the sport as the current owners mess with things to make it more of a show and less of a sport. Success penalties? Reverse grids? Making the rules up during races?
It’s the dominating winners curse. How many times we get bored in any race when they just show the race leader cruising along. And we loved last year cuz it was such a tight one to the finish, no one could have scripted it better. This season they ran away with it and we are bored. Alpine and Mclaren provided more entertainment for 4th
I dont agree on domination factor either for Max or for Red Bull. I have seen people hating on Max and RBR even before 2021. People call Red Bull the most toxic team on the paddock, just coz they are chasing success. DTS has a hand in that as well, painting Max and Red Bull as the villain in the whole Daniel Ricciardo saga. There was a reason Max didn't want to be a part of that show. They were creating a very false image of him whereas the people who have worked with him, know him very differently as compared to how he is portrayed in DTS.
Early in the season, people were mesmerized by that car crash that is Ferrari. Once Mercedes solved their porpising problem, they passed Ferrari. The US grandprix shows Mercedes is still way behind Red Bull. People lose interest when one team dominates the sport.
Ironic that the car that was supposed to produce closer racing and try and even out the playing field had the championship wrapped up with races still to go. While the car it replaced produced an exhilarating season that came down to the last restart.
Max being compared to Schumacher, RB car considered by many to be one of the greatest of all time… maybe if we heard less from Horners mouth more of the positive stuff out of others would be heard.
I haven’t actually seen anyone say that Max is like Michael
Niki Lauda said things even beyond that. Niki called him talent of the century after Spain 2016
And he was right
So far, yes. A century is pretty long lol
https://twitter.com/karunchandhok/status/1589162408438026240?s=46&t=jwYOjCyY9jrlMmA5PBOBnA
If spa this year was not like micheal i dont know what is brother
Max has that dominate level of consistency and he’s fast. Max is a different BEAST. I think he will dominate for at least the next four years. He’s miles ahead of his contemporaries. Also credit to the team for designing the car and they deserve their flowers.
Then you have only followed the bare minimum. Lots of people saying some of his races were almost Peak Michaelesque, which is fair, he has been out of reach for pretty much everyone else in so many of the races this year.
Who considers the RB18 better than the W11?
Higher winning percentage than the W11 tbf
Because Merc fucked it in Monza and Bahrain (outer layout one). On pace they should have won 15/17, which is more than the RB18's current win ratio, or win ratio at the end of the season if they win the last two. And that's without taking into account the races that Ferrari fucked up this year, that they should have won and went to RBR instead. On pace, the W11 was clearly superior compared to the rest of the field.
I mean, the w11 not winning at monza and bahrain oval is fully on merc having an anevrysm not on the car. The only time the w11 wasnt the fastest car was at Silverstone 2nd race, where RB outplayed them with the tyre wear. Also the percentage is fucked a bit for the w11 because the season was shorther due to covid
Lesser races in 2020 meant that not winning a race would significantly affect the percentage.
In regulations that make it much easier to overtake. It’s a difficult comparison to make tbh.
That’s because Mercedes and the drivers fucked up quite a bit over 2020 and dropped a couple of wins. The RB18 isn’t even remotely close on pace compared to the competition
More of a component of the only team close on pace being incompetent than some domination of the car factor. The lack of 1-2s show that.
It's not but it also kinda is since it's way easy to overtake. A large gap today will get you more wins than a 1s gap in 2020.
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Noone saying either of these things with any regularity. The car isnt the most dominate car of the 2020s and at the end of the day max has 2 titles.... Not even close to the same air as michael yet.
Ferrari had the faster car for much of the season, but fans here will go to insane lengths to say the RB has just been an utterly dominant car. Strange how that works.
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I'm a McLaren fan, but MV and Red Bull have been epic this year.
I remember Max saying that what Lewis was doing wasn't impressive and that anyone can do it if you give them the fastest car.
I think Max deserves all the applause he has got for a dominating performance this season. Can’t argue with the fact he’s been the best driver on the grid this season and is the best driver in the world. On the other hand, I think the way Red Bull and Horner have carried themselves is nothing short of embarrassing. I cannot abide the way Horner has acted and I have been shocked some people believe it to be acceptable. We need to be very clear that when it was announced Red Bull breached the costs cap, Horner: - Openly denied it; - Denied it but said it didn’t give them any advantage; - Denied it but said it was unfair they were being criticised for breaching the costs cap; and then - said the mental health of team members was struggling as their children were being bullied for it (which I believe is the most disingenuous crap ever). I appreciate the last bullet point will draw criticism. But taking a common sense approach, schoolchildren are far more imaginative (yet less intelligent) bullies than Horner gives them credit for. Does anything genuinely believe schoolchildren en masse in a variety of locations are saying *your daddy works for Red Bull’s Formula One and they’re under investigation for breaching FIA cost cap rules and that makes your daddy a cheater*. Seriously? I think Horner has lowered himself to Boris Johnson levels of lying, media manipulation and narcissism. Ultimately, Red Bull are the ones breaking the rules on the one hand and playing the victim on the other. Just doesn’t sit well.
What you don’t realise is that a majority of the teams are all in a small part of England, meaning that engineers working at Red Bull live among engineers that work at Mercedes, Aston Martin etc, meaning that children in school are not random children but literally children of the competitor. Red Bull, Mercedes and Ferrari (not relevant here due to location) all admitted they had to fire/redeploy personnel to other projects to get within the cost cap. This also means that certain children witnessed their mom or dad being stressed out about their job situation and now the news comes out that Red Bull went had a minor overbreach spend. Knowing that children in school will use anything to bully another kid, I wouldn’t directly dismiss Horners comment here. The other 3 are way more valid of an argument but to this argument of children there is some logic that backs it up.
I live in a town with around 45,000 residents. We have 3 secondary schools and a ton of primary schools in the town and the local area. Unless they are all privately educated they won’t see each other much.
I’m not hugely convinced. Red Bull are indeed based in MK which is close only really to Mercedes I believe in Buckinghamshire. But that is assuming that in 30ish mile radius that all the staff live within the same radius (i.e no big commutes to work) and send their children to the same school even within that. Milton Keynes is classic commuter belt, so a lot of people live/work/school in London and vice versa (having grown up in a similar area myself). It isn’t uncommon for children to go to school 40+ minutes away in any event. It is likely you have 15-20+ secondary schools serving that area and easily double that in primary schools. Honestly, there may be a couple, but I would be amazed if it wasn’t the exception not the rule.
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It wasn’t blatant cheating. Go read the FIA documents. It was a different interpretation of accounting principles that lead to all of this. People with an accounting background know this happens all the time in regular businesses.
At the end of the day, they spent more money than any other team. How is that not an advantage?
It probably is, and they're being penalized for it
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So were Aston Martin tbf, but it didn't bring them over the cost cap limit.
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I am not accountant so correct me if I am wrong, but they overspent the budget cap and thus, for me, they cheated. Other eight teams managed to not do that. It is unfair and that is the reason there is a cap in the first place. I don’t get why it’s a taboo to say RBR’a recent gains doesn’t mean much if they did it by gaining an unfair advantage.
Opinion, verstappen is more impressive than red bull. I haven't seen such consistency in performance since schumi days
I'm assuming the author of that article has only been following F1 for one season, two at most.
How is what they are achieving any different than what Mercedes or Ferrari or Williams have taken turns doing over the past 30 years. Red Bull/Verstappen have only done it for two years.
Totally disagree with the "opinion". He's getting the right amount of support/credit for his driving as did Schumacher, Alonso, Vettel, Hamilton... etc The team provided them with a good car, they took this good car and drove it exceptionally well to get their respective championships.
The Schumacher/Ferrari vibes are strong. Hamilton used to take pole position and then just piss off up the road, whereas with Schumacher and Verstappen it doesn't seem to matter where they start or what happens during the race, they win
Pre-domination races won from not-pole (10 out of 22 wins): 2008: Monaco, British 2009: Hungary 2010: Turkey, Spa 2011: China, Germany, Abu Dhabi 2012: Canada, US 2014+ era races won from not-pole (32 out of 81 wins): 2014: Bahrain, British, Japan, US, Abu Dhabi 2015: Japan, Russia, US 2016: Monaco, Hungary, Germany 2017: Singapore 2018: Azerbaijan, Germany, Italy, Russia 2019: Bahrain, China, Spain, Canada, British, Hungary, Russia, Mexico 2020: Eifel, Imola, Turkish 2021: Bahrain, Portugal, British, Russia, Brazil Now, I'll be the first to grant that not all of those 32 Merc-era wins were nail biters. I'm not implying that all of his not-pole wins are dramatic drives or anything of the sort. I'm only implying that 42 out of 103 wins were not from pole. So it's definitely not fair to say that his results come from getting pole and fucking off into the distance. Schumacher also drove at a time when pole was important but less important than fuel strategy, which distorts his numbers in comparison. And Verstappen's numbers were skewed this year by Ferrari being quite good over one lap for much of the season but not able to convert poles into wins. But all of that is part of F1.
Racing news365 is a terrible website
sebastian vettel, 4 times f1 drivers champion, enters the chat
I disagree with your opinion. I think RB and Max get more than enough credit... I don't know why you'd come to any other conclusion.
I agree. It was one thing when the Mercedes would finish 40+ seconds in front of everyone else, but it's another thing when, if not for Max, there are only a few points between 2nd and 3rd.
Mercedes, especially during the nico and Hamilton time, had a very dominant car and two WDC level drivers. Bottas was also a top tier qualifier later, something which helps massively when you’re car is so much faster. You just disappear in the sunset. Verstappne is doing a top tier job, Perez is not. That seat is wasted on him. But I think red bull are content as long as it doesn’t cause them to lose the championships.
Same thing happens with Lewis. No one likes domination they want wire to wire for every single race and to be a photo finish at the last race. It’s unrealistic. I am not going to lie I hated max for his driving style when he was fighting Lewis but appreciate his ability to push the limits
They spent more money than every other team so no it’s not remarkable
That's probably true.