The car means so much but is Yuki really better than Stroll? I dunno

Yuki's been no worse than Riccardo this season (probably a bit better) - Yuki has more points and has less up and downs. If you think Yuki is no better than Stroll then I'd say that you'd have to also say Danny is no better than Stroll. And even if you think both are the same that still puts Stroll in the bottom 5 of drivers.

At this point in Danny’s career I’d say they are pretty close

Mostly agree except I'd put Stroll together with the "better group". Though I'd say in that group Danny, Hulk, Bottas are at the tail end of their career. They reason why they aren't in the top group is because they each have some kind of blind spot in their abilities.

I don't think there are really any bad drivers on the grid, outside of the top drivers you can swap most of them around and performance given is car based. Yuki took 2 years to settle down but he's a perfectly serviceable driver now in any team.

My rating of the worst driver on the grid now is probably Kmag.
With Zhou I feel like he really hasn't been given a chance. When the Alfa Sauber was good, he was too green. He's gotten better imo but the Sauber cars have dropped off significantly.

The not great drivers like Latifi, Kyvat are out, and the truly bad like Mazespin will never race again.

Mick will also likely never get another shot either.

Will he interesting to see how AM proceeds now that they have Newey, if you have a top car, eventually you’ll have to give up on Lance

every single thing Lawrence has done has been to get his son to the top. It's not about winning F1 - it's about Lance winning F1.

he's not giving up on Lance. If Lance bails - which I could certainly see happening, than that's different. I'd bet they bail out completely.

Lance is interesting. Manufactured talent? - sure. Educated? absolutely. Everything has been done to make an everyman a competitive F1 driver.

Super interesting really. Can you get to the very top of a sport through hard work and unlimited opportunity, or is there an intangible instinct that can not be taught (or bought). He's never had to fight for a spot, never really had to risk it all. Is that part of getting there also?

Wasn’t he like multiple winning F3 and F2?

With an argument like that I always think back to those videos of Richard Hammond trying to drive one of the Rennault F1 cars. He was given ample time on the track with it and still barely got the hang of it by the end of the day. And he’s about As close to a “professional” driver as you’ll find

Not to say over years of training you couldn’t get the braking down etc. but to think Lawrence simply bought Lance’s way into F1 is a bit disingenuous imo. And I’m not a lance fan

yes. his dad owned those teams too but yes. there's absolutely no way you can get anywhere near an F1 car without decades of training. Lance is one of the best drivers in the world. Let's make up numbers - top 1000 in the world? top 500 maybe?

your richard hammond anaology doesn't really work. he hasn't been constantly instructed by the best people in the industry that money can buy since he was 10 years old.

my point is - Lance has not shown that he has the innate instinctive talent to be the best driver in the world.

I am not 100% convinced of this. From everything I've heard the guy is a ruthless businessman. If there is potential for ROI in the company, even if Lance bails I think he sticks with it.

F1 team valuations are only going up, I don't think the businessman in Lawrence would give up on those returns and even just the cachet of being an F1 team owner.

If it’s just about ego dick wagging, owning the F1 team is wayyyy bigger than owning AM imo

Anyone who gets to drive an F1 car at an F1 event is a pretty serious, immensely talented driver so while Lance might be bottom 5 of active F1 drivers he's still probably a top 100 driver in the world (15 from F1, 15-25 from Indycar, 20-30 from Sports cars, 30 from NASCAR, etc)

It's like the story of NBA bench warmer, Brian Scalabrine, who did the "Scallenge" where he played former college players and other rec leaguers and destroyed them (https://www.basketballnetwork.net/ol...-the-scallenge). Brian was a bum in the NBA like Stroll but he was no bum when it came to basketball in general.

For the record, Stroll did not have "decades" of training for F1 - he only had raced karts/cars for 9 years before hitting F1 but point taken. It takes years of development (and success) to even be in the convo for F1.

Stroll, Latifi, and Sargent have nothing to be ashamed of if they can't cut it in F1. If they wanted to they can still make millions racing in Indycar or in Sportscars and they'd probably win tonnes of races.

you're right - you forget how young these guys are. it's been a long time that the Strolls have been dedicated to getting Lance to the top - but not decades. None of the current drivers spent decades getting there.

As I said - Lance is one of the best drivers in the world - he was given the tools and means to become that. But he hasn't shown that he can get over the hump. My query was that is it enough to just receive the tools, and opportunity or do you have to have some unquantifiable extra to get to the top. I think you do.

Agreed, its really that last 5% that puts you over the top. Some drivers just have it, and some just don't.

It'll be really interesting though to see if money and happenstance can compensate for that final 5%. We're really watching history unfold with this Aston Martin Project.

Since this thread is talking about Lance's talent (or lack thereof), this video is pertinent:

Huge results for Colapinto also great to see Oscar near the top again

I don’t really get what happened with Lando? The YouTube highlights didn’t really show much and it looked like he was stil on the hot lap when he pitted? Was it because he exceeded track limits on that corner?

He had to lift due to the yellow in S3

Lol Williams was too excited about getting 2 cars in Q3 they forgot how to function and left the fan on Albon's airbox

Here's the onboard, I didn't see the yellow either on the original broadcast

Yea the YouTube highlights were like Lando caused it that’s why he went off but it was just going over that curb they showed so figured that couldn’t have been it

Oscar! What a drive!

Might have been the best race of the season so far

It was a great race! I'm glad I woke up at 4am for it.

Then I was upset at the penultimate lap as a Sainz fan who forever lives in Spain minus the S

It seems like it's always Perez who gets in these type of crashes. He squeezes at the wrong places which ends up taking both cars out.

Piastri hilarious in the cool down room

https://dubz.co/c/17cd4e


"they've not been the best friends this weekend. They finally finished the job"