TBK-Light.com

Those are also my main suspects from all the numbers I have seen, with some outliers from the 1950s. But many of these analytics that look past point and pole number statistics are all locked behind paywalls.

Since Liberty is so behind Vegas, I get the feeling they're just waiting out the contract with Abu Dhabi to make it the de facto F1 finale.
Whatever you say about that event, it definitely has more a "season finale" feeling than a run around a nothing racetrack in a country with zero motorsport pedigree (and doesn't look like it's generated any in the decade or more it's been there)
(I also thought it was funny the Brawn documentary ignored it too, the championship was won in Brazil, there was zero need to explain anything about the "new" Abu Dhabi race on that documentary haha)

Haven't they already committed to bringing back Melbourne as the first race of the season?
Starting at Melbourne and Ending at Vegas could bookend the future calenders nicely.

_________________
RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley

the only thing I remember from that race was Alguersuari missing his pit stall and then running out of fuel

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Motorsports trend for 2024: everything is a bad taste joke now

Ok so now that season is over it is seriously time to evaluate where the Red Bull RB19 stands in the pantheon of greatest cars. The two that always get a mention are the Williams FW14 from 1992 and the McLaren MP4/4 from 1988.

Here is my case for the RB19:

Where it gets tricky is the Williams and McLaren were so far ahead of the field at times, that it actually skews peoples thinking, because you HAVE to take into account the quality of the opposition. More often than not the second placed team was itself a second or so faster than the third. Compared to modern standards the teams behind them were basically equivalent to a backmarker lower formula series team up against an F1 team. The differences in professionalism, technical expertise and budgets were quite laughable compared to today's standards. Transport current Haas into that era and they would be the one's winning everything, such is the colossal gulf between then and now. That is a massive factor for the RB19. They have won everything in a highly competitive and competent environment, with a hefty set of restrictions placed on them to boot!

Yes the RB19 wasn't seconds a lap quicker than the rest, yes it didn't crush every pole lap, yes it was effectively a one car team (so was the Williams, the outlier is the McLaren), but so was the dominance of the RB19, that they essentially stopped developing the car halfway through the season and STILL wiped the floor with the competition.

And I truly believe that we never got to see the true potential of the car. Max was basically in cruise mode the whole time. The only car that we truly got to see the true potential of was the McLaren MP4/4 as Senna and Prost were going at it hammers and tongs to win.

So yes, the FW14 and MP4/4 devastated the competition, but if your competition is akin to a backmarker lower formula team you are going to look good aren't you?

So for me, based purely on the competition it was against, the RB19 is the greatest F1 car of all time. Even though Perez made a right royal hash of his season and looked rather incompetent at times. But then again Patresse in 1992 was doing a Perez decades before Sergio as well. The outlier is McLaren in 1988.

There were 28 races held (sprint and main) and the RB19 won 26 of them.

If Red Bull developed the car, didn't have restrictions placed on them and pushed all the way like McLaren in 88 I am convinced they would have easily been a second a lap quicker.

I am still tempted to say that the RB19 wasnt really dominant. It was mainly Verstappen.

Even Patrese scored mainly podiums with only 2 non-podium finishes and 5 retirements.
Bottas often was comfortably in P2 as well.
McLaren obviously had 2 amazing talents so thats difficult to compare. But I think it is fair to say that Perez, Patrese and Bottas are fairly similar in skills.


But if I am wrong and the car is indeed very dominant then Perez did an amazing bottling job.

one other interesting thing to see is that this year Verstappen rarely lapped cars while in 1992 and 88 they had to lap cars up to lap 5 until the checkered which in part gave a bit of difficulty but today the difficult arises more from the back than from the cars in front, that being fight for position or backmarkers

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Motorsports trend for 2024: everything is a bad taste joke now

Patrese barely squeaked out 2nd in 1992 - he was only 7 points ahead of Berger in 5th (who also had 1 more retirement). Although that may be more because Patrese was washed up by that point.

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Dan Wheldon ¦ 1978-2011
Marco Simoncelli ¦ 1987-2011
Jules Bianchi ¦ 1989-2015
Justin Wilson ¦ 1978-2015

Yeah, I know he's mad and I don't care. I do not care. I did not care then. I do not care now. I'm here to race him.

Yeah but as soon as Verstappen is 10-15 seconds ahead he can immediately go into energy conservation modes and just manage the lead.

And as previously stated, the performance of all cars is closer to each other. And the superlicense does help in getting rid of the cowboys. In 2023, being 2s off pace is slow, 30 years ago that would have qualified you 5th on the grid.

Imagine having a car or driver on the grid today that is constantly 7s off pace.

I think that is the take away. He just completely fell to pieces after Miami. In the last 17 races his average qualifying postion was 10.1. That is pathetic.

I found this website that gives the average qualifying positions. For the overal season Perez's average was 9.09. Piastri was 9.86 and he didn't get an upgraded car until Silverstone. After Silverstone (round 10 onwards) Piastri's average qualy position was 7.84 whilst Perez was 8.84. Norris after GB was 6.84. Hell, even Alonso's average after GB was better than Perez at 8.69.

So yeah, Perez absolutely bottled it. Big time. He was constantly having to come back through the field. Now why that was remains the great mystery. He was going well until Miami. Something clearly happened, either behind the scenes, in Perez's head or as I personally think, a mixture of both.

https://gpracingstats.com/seasons/2023- ... ing-stats/

Perez flattered the car, in making it look only drivable by one man.

Perez is a confidence driver. He had plenty of it after Baku where he beat Max on merit. And then it all went away once Max got serious.

By that same token, Max was clearly upset with himself after Baku and either found another level or had been restricting himself for Perez' sake (let him stay close and keep his confidence high) and decided to take the gloves off.

_________________
Dan Wheldon ¦ 1978-2011
Marco Simoncelli ¦ 1987-2011
Jules Bianchi ¦ 1989-2015
Justin Wilson ¦ 1978-2015

Yeah, I know he's mad and I don't care. I do not care. I did not care then. I do not care now. I'm here to race him.

What was incredible is how error-free season Max had.
If you search Verstappen+2023 on DarcyF1, the only incidents were
- Spun in FP1 in Australia
- Went wide at T13 while leading the race in Australia
- Gently touched the wall during Monaco GP
- Broke front wing while exiting pitbox in Q1 at Silverstone
- Spun in Sprint Shootout at Austin
- Collided with Russell at Las Vegas GP

All of them just minor incidents with no harm. Given how long the season was and how many sessions there were per weekend (FP1, FP2/FP3/Sprint Shootout/Sprint, Qualifying, GP), it's just beyond belief how there were no crashes or big mistakes. I don't know how he does it.

When Schumacher was at Benetton in their championship years the team were only effectively running one car, I wouldn't be surprised if the same was happening at Red Bull to a certain extent.

It´s not rare for two teammates to have a different riding style, and for the team to develop the car in a certain direction. When one driver clearly has a better shot at points, wins and the title, future developments of the car will favor that driver. If the teammate isn´t flexible enough, he´ll never catch up.
Happened many times in the past, will happen again in the future.

We as fans can´t know if Perez started to lose his form, or if the car was (understandibly) developped to get the best out of Verstappen and Perez couldn´t keep up.

Albon made a good analogy on Jake Humphrey's podcast the other day. Max drives the car like his mouse sensitity is all the way up. If you're not used to that or your style doesn't match, you can't keep up with him in the same car.

Yeah, the entire team, from Adrian Newey's sketch to the pit stops is designed around exactly what Max wants and nothing else.
Unless you happen to have a statistically impossible EXACTLY THE SAME driving style as Max (and exactly the same height, weight and whatever else goes into it too), you won't stand a chance, and Red Bull will make zero accomadations for you

And a lot of young drivers careers have been sacrificed at this altar.
The closest they got to someone challenging Max in the same car was Ricciardo and even he saw which way the wind was blowing and got out when he could.
There was just no way they would ever support a Mercedes style "we have the dominant car so we'll let our drivers race" championship and he knew he wouldn't be the one getting the preferential treatment should the dominance come, so he knew his only chance to be a champion was to "do a Schumacher" and try and get another team built around him and hope and pray they came good.
OR he did it for the money, who knows. (Can't blame him if he did either tbf)

Saying that, Perez isn't that good either, he's probably a confidence driver, goes into each year thinking he can take it to Max, has some early results that give him a boost so it looks closer than it is, then makes a small mistake that snowballs into bigger mistakes all the while his teammate is running perfectly, drops his head more and loses performance, feels the pressure, makes more mistakes, loses more confidence.....and the snowball is cascading down the mountain and he can't do anything to stop it.
He should probably get out for his own sanity too, but the question is, where? No-where else will give him even the chance to win the one or two races a year he's allowed to mop up if Max is having a bad day....
He'll be there until he retires or they fire him (or they fire him and he pretends he was gonna retire all along. Or Stroll Snr will sell AM and his Telmex backers will buy that team for him to drive/team manage)

_________________
RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley

Perez had a good start to the season, but then he started thinking he could challenge for the title and it all went to shit in Melbourne. He is a good driver, but he should not be thinking he can win a title. If he just puts his mind to finishing second and win a race or 2 when Max has a rare dnf he will keep the seat for another few years.

If he's smart, he just accepts his number 2 role and wins a race or 2 every year and adds good money to his bank account.

Also don´t forget why Perez won 2 races early in the season:
In Jeddah, Verstappen had a technical failure in qualifying so he only started 15th. In Baku he was leading, a yellow flag happened and Verstappen came in to pit, and then the yellow changed to SC so Perez lost less time and took the lead. The entire world had predicted that this would be a SC, except for Red Bull.
It is safe to say that in normal circumstances, Verstappen would probably have won both and there would not have been talks about Perez "having a shot at the title".

and now for some end of the year stats

DRIVERS

Max Verstappen stats
.19 wins (breaks his own record from last year)
-won 86.36% of all races this season (breaks a 71 year record stabilished by Ascari in 1952 - 75%)
-won 10 races in a row (breaks 2013 record of Sebastian Vettel of 9)
-lead 1003 laps in one year and completed all laps in the season (first driver to break 4 figures in that stat - previous record was also from Vettel, but in 2011)
-lead 75.70% of laps (breaks record from Clark in 1963 - 71.47%)
-lead 4914km this season (73.34% - also breaks Clark record from 1963 of 72.06%)
-won 575 points, margin of 290 to 2nd placed driver (breaks his own record from last year)
-earned 92.74% of points available in the season (breaks record from 2002 in the post discards era)
-first time since 2020 a champion driver earned more points than the 2nd best placed team in Constructors Championship

TEAMS

Red Bull stats
.21 wins out of 22 - 95.45% (breaks 1988 McLaren long standing record of 93.75%)
.860 points won (breaks 2016 Mercedes record of 765)
.lead 86.72% of all laps in the season - 1149 laps total (breaks 2016 Mercedes record of 83.20%)
.lead for 5782km out of 6700km - 86.30% (another 2016 Mercedes record broke of 84.25%)

MISC
Misc stats
-Charles Leclerc started 5 times on pole position and failed to win all of it
-Lando Norris equaled Nick Heidfeld for podiums without a win (13)
-first time since 1952 that neither a british driver or constructor won a race
-with Sainz victory in Singapore, Ferrari have 58 seasons with at least one victory

final thoughts: only a handful of records still stand away from today's grid (mostly impossible)

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Motorsports trend for 2024: everything is a bad taste joke now

.

Love these, but one stat I read:

Haas are the best performing team in F1 history to finish last, on 12 points.