billamend wrote: ↑22 Mar 2024, 19:27
Emag wrote: ↑22 Mar 2024, 10:13
Oscar has really stepped it up this year. Impressed with him.
He was faster than Lando in Saudi, and almost neck and neck in Bahrain, which is a very high deg track and experience is invaluable.
He has been great, as expected, but he was NOT faster than Norris. Check the race pace numbers. Norris took a strategy risk that didn’t work, and that’s OK.
It is because of that strategy that the numbers show Lando as the quicker driver. It is the same reason why Lewis was also quicker than George in absolute numbers. The last stint on the softs skews the data in their favor but that doesn't tell you the full picture because for that average laptime, they gave up a "free" pitstop under the safety car.
And of course, Oscar's average laptime was also hurt a lot by spending a significant portion of his second stint behind Lewis due to McLaren's horrid straight line speed.
I always like to call things for what they are and I don't think people should "cherry-pick" data to fit certain narratives. In this case, taking the mean race pace for face value does not show the full picture at all because of the difference in strategies.
Lando is an amazing driver, and until proven otherwise, he will be the benchmark at McLaren. However, he was the slower driver at Saudi. And to be honest, it is good news for McLaren that the driver battle is not so extremely one sided as it has been for the last couple of years.