Emag wrote: ↑05 Jun 2021, 23:15
I agree, Ferrari seems to have a well-rounded car, but I still think McLaren can fight for P3. But Ricciardo is desperately needed to step up at this point.
Last year, RP was the faster car (often by a bigger margin than Ferrari is right now), but McLaren still beat them with pure consistency. The problem this year is that only Lando is consistent. Daniel is all over the place in terms of pace, but even when he has a good day (Spain), he still isn't showing any "spectacular" pace like Lando has often done this year.
In terms of statistics, if you define Daniel's pace as a random variable, it is both kind of low in terms of mean, and it also has a big standard deviation. Just not good, no matter how you look at it.
If you told me last year Daniel was going to struggle this much, I honestly would have had a hard time believing you. It's just bizarre to me. This can't be the extent of Daniel's capabilities, it just can't. We are talking about the only driver who has taken the fight to Max in the RedBull. The driver who outperformed both of his teammates at Renault. The driver who made a a 4-time world champion look bad at only his first season with a competitive team.
I just refuse to believe this is all that Daniel has got. The driver who accomplished all of the aforementioned feats cannot be >0.5s off the pace from Lando. It would be understandable if Lando was some sort of a god, generational talent. But the thing is we have a reference in him with Carlos. And we also have a reference between Carlos and Charles. So, yeah, we can conclusively say that Lando is more than a decent driver. It's just that Daniel has previously shown that he is at least that himself.
Just puzzling and disappointing at the moment. I really, really hope he picks up the pace soon. A couple more weekends like this, and it will be extremely difficult to keep the fight to Ferrari when they have two drivers delivering their top game every race.
Yeah I pretty much run with everything you say there.
It is indeed a reversal this year in that we won out on the driver lineup last year, and this year that flaw is now with us. We need both drivers firing to fight Ferrari and even then it is tough, so if Daniel doesn't come through, we are P4, simple as that.
Your logic that Daniels performance is the outlier is probably true, I guess another way to look at it, the car is as good as its fastest driver, in which case it is reasonably close to the Ferrari, but behind.
With limited development to come, it is a hard slog to the end of the season.
BUT, we have made amazing progress year on year still, and Ferrari's season last year itself was an outlier than cannot be taken for granted. Their comeback is superb (But I'm waiting for a certain someone to put their tin hat on again as soon as they have finished banging on about flexi wings), and they have shown their class this year and have one of the strongest driver lineups in F1 right now.