ringo wrote: ↑18 Jun 2017, 06:40
Just back tracking to the Perez discussion.
Perez is a top driver, and i believe the treatment he is given for doing what a real racer would do is uncalled for.
Haters gonna hate i guess, but Sergio is a Ferrari quality driver and he has proven that time and time again putting the force india on the podium. Ocon had 1 good race and people are going crazy over it and throwing checo under the bus.
I won't say racism is a factor, but maybe some subliminal form of european jingoism
Perez is the real deal and if i were in his shoes i would do the same thing. I'm not going to step aside and let any rookie driver have a go at a position that i've worked for. Ocon's time will come; for now i would bully him and start the mind games. You cannot give an inch in formula 1 and Perez knew exactly what he was doing. If ocon wants a podium he needs to fight for it. These new drivers come with this entitlement personality, and think it was rather refreshing that perez made ocon cry near the end of the race about "he cannot do that" oh yes he can!
We have seen the same thing from drivers like Alonso, Vettel, Rosberg, Kimi, Hamilton. Perez has that ruthlessness that a champion should have. He did the right thing, and i do indeed believe that his actions make him more desirable for a top team. It only adds to his good results.
I couldn't decide which parts of the article to paste here, so I'm pretty much copy-pasted half of the article. A rookie with 9 full GPs under his belt, he looks like the future champ to me outshining even the (dare I say it) Max Verstappen.
"Six top-10 finishes later and more than a year-and-a-half left on Ocon's Force India deal, the team's decision looks like a genuine masterstroke.
There's frequently a lot of scepticism surrounding any emerging young talent in F1 – some warranted, some less so – if the driver is perceived to be over-hyped.
In Ocon's case, you could mention that he's only beaten Sergio Perez once in qualifying so far, with help from yellow flags in Q1 in Bahrain. He's also only finished ahead of the Mexican once, in Monaco, the only race where Force India didn't score with both or either car.
But his team bosses won't care one bit and Ocon himself surely can't be too disheartened by trailing Perez by 17 points, given how the season so far is unfolding for drivers of similar experience levels.
In a campaign where teammate gaps have largely ballooned across the board thanks to F1's new quicker and tougher-to-drive cars, Ocon has started the season as his team's second driver – but he was closer than many to his number-one teammate and he's been gaining ground inescapably.
In three Q3 appearances, Ocon was a tenth off Perez in Russia, a couple of tenths off in Spain, a tenth off in Canada. The Mexican has an edge still but it is no longer an obvious one.
The Canadian GP row with Perez, which will have shined a spotlight on Ocon's progress, was admittedly helped by the pair being on different strategies, but it is hard to imagine such a situation occurring in the near future at Williams, Renault or McLaren – and not just because two of those three teams are probably not fighting for podiums any time soon.
Equally important is that Ocon has managed to limit the kind of mistakes that you would expect from a relative newcomer in F1's new-generation cars.
The only somewhat major blot on his copybook so far has been a costly FP3 off in Monaco that compromised his qualifying run, but even in that race the Frenchman was still very possibly heading for the points until his race was ruined by an unlucky puncture.
Otherwise, he has been superb, playing a big part in what teammate Perez dubbed as Force India's early-season "big miracles" as the team capitalised on every opportunity – and further bolstering its points reserves now that the car has improved.
Ocon's consistency is no huge surprise to those who recall his title-winning GP3 season, in which the Frenchman – in a series that uses the reversed-grid rule – strung together an extremely unlikely streak of nine consecutive second-place finishes.
And, on a more general note, it would be a massive disservice to the junior single-seater ladder to be at all caught out by the fact that a driver who triumphed in European F3 and GP3 on his first attempt and has been on various F1 teams' radars for ages is - big shock - actually pretty good.
But Ocon seriously stands out compared to 2017 F1 drivers of similar grand prix experience levels – Stoffel Vandoorne's muted start to life at McLaren has been a major source of frustration to those who have seen him dazzle in Formula Renault 3.5 and GP2; Lance Stroll has yet to fully find his feet since his F1 graduation, a confidence-boosting Canadian GP result aside; and Palmer, who acquitted himself decently towards the end of last year, has so far been nowhere near new teammate Hulkenberg.
Yet calling up 20-year-old Ocon, a driver who had nine grands prix under his belt before arriving at the fourth-best team in F1, feels like a bigger gamble than the aforementioned, even with the benefit of hindsight.
So far, the decision has more than paid off. In a team that is seen by many as the best value-for-money operation in Formula 1, the Frenchman has fit in perfectly, maximising opportunities and making sure the outfit can rely on him as a consistent source of valuable points.
He's been progressing rapidly, too, and is on a two-year deal – with deputy team principal Bob Fernley having insisted, even before the season, that Ocon would see out the contract.
A solid start is no guarantee of anything, of course – ask Force India's 2011 rookie Paul di Resta, who impressed early in his F1 career but was out after three seasons.
But for now there's every reason to get excited – and, for Force India, every reason to feel it has won big in the 2016-17 edition of the F1 driver market's game of musical chairs."
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/f1-o ... on-919987/
