Agree with you. Carlos strong point in 2021 was his consistency and the way he was driving with a cool head, and avoid chaos. That's mainly what allowed him to outscore Charles, rather than raw performance.Vanja #66 wrote: ↑30 Jul 2023, 16:48Make that 51 points with today's door slamming over Piastri, and a DNF mistake. Unbelievable... P4 was very much possible and P5 was easily in the bag.Vanja #66 wrote: ↑16 Jul 2023, 15:30The reality is Carlos is simply not delivering. He lost 39 points in races so far this season, all on his own. The only improvement from last year is that he's not making DNF mistakes, at least not yet. There hadn't been a driver in Ferrari that made so many mistakes in the last 25 years, at least.
Solid pace from Leclerc, unexpected after Q for me, I was sure they will be eating the tyres sooner than Merc and not to mention RB. I still think they could have gotten P4 in Hungary without that horrid pit stop for Leclerc, but the gap would have been huge in any case. Not sure what's going on with the tyres, maybe they made a better setup than Merc with no dry practice basically. 3rd podium for Leclerc, it's gonna be hard to get to P3 in WDC but if his wall makes no mistakes in the next 10 races they can recover the gap to Hamilton and I believe Alonso will be a sitting duck with AMR23 going steadily backwards on pace.
We can't talk about luck anymore, he gets overwhelmed on the start and makes mistakes so often. He slammed the door on Russell in Texas last year and he did it again today. If he didn't lock up there could have been some debate. He had a lot of room on the outside to Hamilton on entry to give space to Piastri who was closing in and did not make any mistake on braking, so we really can't say it was Piastri dive bombing. By the apex, Hamilton took the room on the inside he was given and Sainz was already taking the tight line and completely ignored Piastri. It was unlucky for Piastri, not Sainz.
This year, he lost it, even if it's better than last year when he DNF for no reasons.
This Ferrari is far from perfect but I believe it's consistently faster than Merc (even if Hamilton makes it looks good) and AM since Canada. It's only due to operational mistakes and bozo moments that Ferrari isn't closer in both championship.
Charles had more bad luck with one mechanical DNF so he has an excuse, but Carlos should be fighting with Alonso and Hamilton in the WDC.