What was impressive from a RB (Max) point of view was their consistency.Ryar wrote: ↑18 Dec 2021, 17:59All of this could have been of nought if Max wouldn't have suffered in Baku, Silverstone, Hungary, Italy (slow stop due to adhoc pit stop rule introduction) and the consequence of engine penalties for no fault of their own. RB could have used the option of using an extra engine more strategically, than being forced on. If Max would have had a trouble free season, the championship could have been over long back and we wouldn't be speculating the rise of Mercedes power for the last few races and both teams would have moved on to 2022.
In fact, if anything this season was a rude awakening for Mercedes on their PU front. So much unreliability and they had to run their engines full power for most part of the race on most races, which they hadn't done ever in hybrid era. They were forced to spend more time for 2021 than they would have liked, as in earlier years. This has been the year of Honda, who have not just brought power on par with Mercedes, but reliability far exceeding that of Mercedes. For me personally, I was completely hopeless for such a used engine to be even be competitive in Saudi and Abu Dhabi, compared to a brand new Mercedes engine and for the dubious (arguable) rear wing. I am sure in time, there would be some news of how Mercedes managed to turn up the engine power since Silverstone and more particularly from Brazil.
While Merc had some very bad day where they were just not understanding the car and were not even able to put up a fight with RB, Max and RB have had very few days like this.
Merc were absolutely nowhere in Monaco (especially Hamilton), same in Baku (even if they were able to be ahead of Ferrari/McLaren unlike Monaco). They were nowhere near Max in both rounds in Austria, and where even outqualified by a McLaren...
Once the car improved at the Silverstone and they begun to understand the car "day off" happened less except for their horrendous race pace in Mexico which was more due to the nature of the track I believe.
I think that's what ultimately give the advantage to Verstappen, and should've given them WCC if Perez was better in qualy. I took a look at Verstappen stat this year and he never finished outside of top 2 when he finished a race... This is unreal consistency and that's what you need when it's a 1v1 fight in the driver championship. Hamilton, for all his talent, and Merc, were not able to do that at the beggining of the year.