venkyhere wrote: ↑03 May 2024, 14:10
The fastest cars are the ones that are jittery and nervous, with a razor sharp front and nervous rear. The driver has to manipulate the car rather than react to it. Any car that isn't setup this way -> every 0.001 of laptime from the engineered limit can't be extracted, something is left on the table.
The only people I have seen do justice to cars setup this way, are Schumacher and Verstappen. No, not Lewis, he needs a bit of understeer to tame the rear. LeClerc is the closest next. Maybe there were drivers before (
that's why the "I have seen" in the sentence above) who were masters at such a setup, but I can't tell anything from footage because pre-1995 was about active suspensions, ABS, Traction control etc.
With this info in mind, the only way Sainz going to Redbull will make sense, is only if he knows Max wont be at RedBull from the end of 2026 (the realistic approach for Max is to wait and see for 1 yr of new rules as to how the RedBull is, and then decide) because as long as Max is the other driver, the car is always going to be built as a nervous being.
Because that's where laptime comes from. If Max remains, then no matter what clauses Sainz puts into his contract, there is no way he is going to beat Max in race conditions (not just quali). It's a question of who can
consistently tame a wild horse, lap after lap, since any amount of domestication is going to slow it down. Just ask all of Max's ex and current teammates, why they can't drive his setup and have to dial in some understeer, and as a result sacrifice laptime.
The fastest cars are not always nervous at all. The fastest car is simply the one that gets around the track the quickest, however that is achieved. Usually this just means the best aero package + competitive engine.
It's an especially strange claim specifically when the Red Bull cars in particular have not been super reactive cars in the past few years, and lean more towards understeer with a
super stable and predictable aerodynamic balance.
Not to mention that being able to handle oversteer-y cars was actually considered one of Lewis' biggest strengths. Just because the Mercs he had in their more dominating era weren't like this(which again goes against your other claim of this being fastest) doesn't mean it's cuz Lewis demanded it or couldn't handle things otherwise.
Generally, cars are not built for specific drivers, and I doubt designers and engineers could really design a car with such specific characteristics to only suit one driver even if they wanted to. It's true some drivers can cope with a less balanced/more nervous car better than others, but this does not mean engineers consider this a desirable trait to bake into the car dynamics and performance. It's almost always going to be the opposite, where they are trying to make a car that is easier and more predictable to drive, and then the drivers/team can play with setup and whatnot to suit the situation and preferences.