venkyhere wrote: ↑24 Apr 2024, 17:37
To be very honest, I am no longer interested in quali. Except Monaco.
It is particularly satisfying to watch a 'coming from behind' winner in a race.
The strength of Verstappen is his ability to go fast without hurting tyres. Even when tyres are terribly gone, he still finds pace to hold on. This is because of tremendous 6th sense of grip, to choose the line to drive the car through a corner,
before the corner, rather than whilst already in it. To my eyes, such ability to squeeze everything from the tyres, even when they are dead, I have seen with Hamilton and Ocon, other than Verstappen. I also believe Perez is wrongly given the title of 'tyre whisperer'. He does that only when there are 90 degree turns. The real tyre whisperers, according to me, are VER, HAM, OCO
I tend to see tire management as mostly a car trait much more than a driver trait. Sure Max makes the difference between his teammates but beyond that it doesn't mean much to me. I also think there are many fast drivers -- around 5 on the grid that can compete regularly with Max over a lap. That said, the best metric for judging drivers is consistency in my opinion. Max is a robot in that. Never seen someone as consistent week-in week-out (maybe except a couple of years during Michael's domination) that his bad weekends are the ones like China where he doesn't get a sprint pole. I believe any driver would find it very hard to beat Max over a season given Max is the benchmark in terms of pace and consistency and while the former is attainable by many the latter is next to impossible to attain. It requires great adaptability to tracks and maintaining consistency even when the car isn't in its best window. Max is great at that, probably the best-ever at that really.
Even in a title battle he showed he can optimize almost every weekend - P2 was his worst finishing position without car damage. That is almost impossible for any other driver on the grid imo.
That said, it's still a motorsport, and as great as Max is, he needs a car as good as this Red Bull to win as much as he has been doing.