McL-H wrote: ↑13 Nov 2021, 22:54
No point in keeping bitching about Daniel. He has proven himself to be a good opponent to the best driver in current F1. He won us a race for the first time in 9 years. He has improved a lot this season. Is much closer in qualifying. But obviously the car is still not suiting him. We know that now. It is not as if he is not trying and it is not as if we can alter the car or ditch Daniel tomorrow. So complaining doesn’t bring us any further. It is sports, and sometime we win, sometime we lose. Our job is to support the team and our drivers. They are doing the best they can.
So much whining about Rics abysmal performance this weekend so far but is it really that bad?
Ric qualified half a tenth behind Lando 1 spot behind. So both Mclarens basically got the maximum out of the car in qualifying.
Ric though starts on the dirty side compared to Norris. Both seemed to get off the line well but Ric went on the inside and Lando on the outside. RIc got stuck and boxed in behind Gasly and lost places. It really came down to luck losing positions in how the first few corners unfolded. Not a poor start or anything you can blame Ric on. Then Ric got stuck in a DRS train the entire race with Vettel ahead with DRS also and a Merc engine.
Ric seemed to have more pace but not able to get through.
Perez in comparison had a shocker. He had a much much faster car and slipstream and DRS and still could not get through.
Rics result was not as good as Landos but hardly anything i can see Ric did wrong to say he made some huge mistakes or poor qualifying or poor race pace or anything concrete. The result was basically fixed after the first few corners.
Lets see what will happen in the actual race before we can pass the full judgement on Rics weekend.
Ayrton Senna: Pure driving, pure racing, that´s what makes me happy.