HPD wrote: ↑30 Sep 2019, 14:14
marmer wrote: ↑30 Sep 2019, 13:01
Manoah2u wrote: ↑30 Sep 2019, 12:04
not sure if being serious or trolling.
Albon's done more in Sochi than Gasly made in his entire F1 career.
not sure if being incorrect or flippant. gasly has finished 4th so not quite lol
Albon is better suited to RB15. This does not mean that Gasly is bad.
But it doesn't matter if Gasly is good or better than Albon, if he can't drive the RB15 we are arguing in vain.
Albon is doing a good job with the RB15. But I still don't see anything "spectacular" in Albon.
I agree with you, mostly.
I think objectively, that saying Albon has not been spectacular is correct. He has been good bordering very good, and I think that is probably going to be enough to secure a seat in 2020 (considering his age and the stage of his career).
Below is purely my opinion with no real data, so take it with a grain of salt...
The RB15 appears to be quite a pointy car. Considering the sizes of various areas of the current cars (front wing, rear wing and diffuser), the car is going to be rear DF limited without adding significant rear wing angle (and therefore taking a significant hit in terms of efficiency). There are essentially 3 ways to reply to this problem: Add the RW anyway and live with the added drag (Mercedes), reduce the contribution from the FW and live with the overall loss of DF (loosely speaking the Ferrari and Alfa way of thinking), or crank the front to 11, adjust the rear for the circuit, and pray to whatever God(s) you believe in that at least one of the slabs of meat you sit in between the axles of your two cars is able to consistently cope with the entry oversteer

(Red Bull).
The more talented the driver the more they will be able to cope with the OS at entry, and maximize the benefits of having more front downforce in the mid-exit phases. Clearly Max can take advantage of this and the search is on for someone else who can to pilot the second car. I think it is a tricky thing to do, so most drivers (even very talented ones) will have trouble performing immediately, as Gasly and Albon have. For me, the difference between the two has been in the improvements of each through the respective race weekends. Generally, Gasly seemed to get what he could put of the car immediately and fail to improve as the weekend went on. He did show improvement over the 1/2 season he spent in the car, but in the time scale of F1, it came off as underwhelming. Albon seems to improve throughout the race weekend, as he adapts to driving the car at each specific circuit. I think his is a pattern more likely to produce results on his second visit to a track in a similarly designed car, and hence I think he is the best option of those available for next year.
On a side note I think the Mercedes approach of adding rear downforce is generally the best as it reduces the requirement of grip from tires necessary to result in the same mu with the road surface and therefore is better for tire life. It also reduces the teams dependency on driver ability (especially helpful for the manufacturer's championship).