47 races........longest run in F1 history..........and also tied for 2nd with another streak of 33 without a DNF.
This. Max stagnated somewhat in his development & after RB told Jos to bugger off during race weekends, he improved significantly. Jos is great at being a pitbull/****** (choose according to your judgement of his character) in the press and contract negotiations, but has nothing to teach Max anymore to help him further his career on-track.
Sainz has this opinion - https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/153729/sainz-few-f1-drivers-would-beat-hamilton-at-mercedes Carlos Sainz Jr believes very few of the current Formula 1 drivers would be able to beat Lewis Hamilton as his Mercedes team-mate but would win races with his car. Hamilton wrapped up his seventh world title after one of his most dominant campaigns in his career, capped by a brilliant comeback win in the Turkish Grand Prix, to mark his 10th victory in 14 races so far in 2020. Six of Hamilton's seven titles have come in the V6 hybrid era, in which his Mercedes team has been the dominant force. That reignited the debate on the role both car and driver play in Hamilton's record-breaking success. Paddy Lowe, who was Hamilton's technical director at McLaren and Mercedes, told Autosport earlier this month that Hamilton's success is predominantly "down to his driving", praising the Briton's consistency and endurance across his career. Sainz asserted that "90% [of the grid] would not beat Hamilton at Mercedes", but that any driver on the current grid would be able to win with the Mercedes W11 if Hamilton was removed from the equation. "As team-mates, with that car, very few people would be able to beat Hamilton during a 20-race season," the McLaren driver said in Turkey. "But if you remove Hamilton from the grid, any of the current F1 drivers would win with the Mercedes.
My feeling is that at the beginning of the 20 race season, a driver new to the Mercedes car would spend several Grand Prix learning how to extract the best out of the machine, while Lewis Hamilton would be at his best from race 1. So the odds seem to be stacked against the new driver in that scenario. But from from the beginning of season 2, the same driver would not be new to the car any more, so could compete with Lewis Hamilton on equal terms, at least without the excuse of the learning curve.
This is true. Very. Driver will always need to adapt to a new car, team and systems/procedures of operation in the car and in the organization. There is growing pain which takes time. That is why a driver will not just sit and exceed immediately. Its the speed of 'adaptation' that is needed/measured on a comparative basis. Add limited testing and that adaptation period will be of a longer duration.
Hamilton went to Mercedes 2013. He beat Rosberg the first year despite Rosberg having a 3 year head start with the team.
According to Sainz, 10% of the current grid could beat Hamilton as team mate. Bottas is not in that 10%
Correct, it says how good Lewis Hamilton was in 2013. The same can be said about Sebastian Vettel coming in RBR in 2009 and finishing ahead of Mark Webber who was in that team since 2007.
If after 300-400 laps, a driver does not have a good feel fo the car and understand how to push it to its limits, that driver will never excel in F1.
I am not convinced a driver can optimize his /her performance with a new car after a couple of days of testing to reach the level where Lewis Hamilton operates today with that car. DF1 explained it much better than I can do:
We also need to remember that Lewis engineers have the edge. That's why he got upset when Rosberg borrowed them in 2016.
Agreed, and in addition Lewis Hamilton has had ample opportunity over the years to have his driver inputs well understood by the racing team and by the design team, something a completely new driver - unless he/she is the equivalent of a F1 genius - cannot match in the short term.
Agree. It is however possible with a genius. IIRC when Schumacher arrived at Benetton he was immediately faster than his 3 x WDC team mate Piquet.
With pre-season testing limited to just a single car, Sainz feels the fact that drivers will get just one-and-a-half days of running each before the start of 2021 is too limited to get on top of things. "I can already tell you that one-day-and-a-half in an F1 car, these complex F1 cars, is not enough to prepare for an F1 season," he explained. "You don't get to know the tricks of the car, or the steering wheel, even though you do a lot of simulator [runs]. "[You need] to get to know the crew, so one-day-and-a-half is very, very little and probably not enough. "But it is what it is. We will have to adapt and we will need to find a way to make sure we are as prepared as possible within the limits [of the regulations]." https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/153769/sainz-could-test-2018-ferrari-to-get-used-to-team
Worth noting that this was Piquets last season though. He was past his prime and probably not as motivated as he could have been. He was about the same age as Schumacher was when he made his return with Mercedes. Small wonder the new wonderchild beat him just like LeClerc is spanking Vettel now (now that I think about it, Schumacher vs Piquet, Hamilton vs Alonso and LeClerc vs Vettel are sort of similar situations)
I mean beat him is a strong word. It’s a tie really in points scores Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk