Formula 1 2021 - General Discussion Thread (Read 1st post rules)

On the red bull driver situation, does anyone else think its a bit wild that a complete journeyman like Kvyat got 2 stints in the RB, but they're not considering Gasley for the red bull seat?

I don't object to Perez as he's been ok as a no.2 driver and even sneaked a lucky win for the team one of the days he was third fastest driver on track. But I'd certainly rate Gasley at least equal to Perez* and Gasley is a RB driver and surely has far more potential than Perez.

I wonder if they'll consider Gasley for 2023. If he keeps up his current form then someone will surely be offering him a decent drive.

*I'd rate Gasley ahead of Perez

It also frees up loads of money for paying tossers to spam social media with PR.

Perez quali times would be similarly terrible. Race pace would probably be a bit better. The fact that he has the joint best car means he can make up for his terrible qualifying. They have a good engine this year too which makes overtaking much more achievable. The likes of Albon were stuck down the grid and couldn't advance. I don't think Perez is doing miles better if you levelled the cars, but that's not how it works. Perez won a race. Mostly due to luck, and people like him. He's rated much higher than his driving deserves.

I don't think Perez was ever "well established as one of the fastest drivers on the grid". When people ranked drivers into clusters they would usually have had ham and max in thr top tier, then the likes of leclerc, Ricciardo, Noris. Nobody was including perez in that second tier. He was well established as probably towards the top of the cluster of drivers who are average or above average.

His popularity makes people rate him better than his performance deserve and the win last year drive his rankings even higher but he's not a top driver. For example, Bottas is having a very poor season by his standards and is about as fast as Perez, but few in these threads would rate them as being about the same precisely because Bottas isn't a popular driver on these threads.

I've seen Bottas ranked as the 3rd slowest driver on the grid, in these threads. That's bonkers. He's probably faster than perez when he's not having a poor season. They're certainly about the same overall and nobody is claiming that Bottas was well established as one of the top drivers.

Perez is a grand no.2. And he's (as a seasoned pro) getting more out of the RB than Gasley did (as a rookie). So he's worth another year in the RB. But I'd bet on Gasley becoming a much better driver than Perez.

You love it.

You never fail to tune in. Never manage to find an argument against what I've said though. If it was wrong, then surely it would be easy to refute. But you don't, because it's pretty true. Drivers who are similar in terms of speed are ranked very differently because of their popularity.

Perez is a big beneficiary of that dynamic and Bottas is the opposite. Even though they're about the same in terms of speed ( and points this year)

As a long time fan of Perez, I'm scratching my head at the description of Perez as popular. I haven't seen much evidence of that on here over the years. Many here considered him just a pay driver who was only on the grid because of Carlos Slim's money.

And before that he was the guy who 'tried to kill' Ocon after their incident at Spa or the guy who got a chance in a big team (Mclaren) and blew it.

Perez joined McLaren at the worst possible time, they had a big reputation and big expectations but the car was utterly terrible that year.

As a near rookie, he actually wasn’t too far off Button who was a well established team leader at that point having seen off Hamilton who he outscored over the previous three seasons together.

Perez lost the qualifying head to head with Jenson by just 10-9. His biggest issue was fighting Jenson too hard in the races leading to a couple of collisions, something he repeated with Ocon but seems to have matured out of in more recent years.

Anyway, I'm wondering how many here have shunted an F1 race weekend way down their list of holiday ideas.

The sad fact is that if F1 faced any sort of backlash from the Belgian public for this, Spa will get its slot filled by Sochi, and we'll get another race at somewhere built by sla-I mean, migrant workers.

Maybe before the full new rules are introduced, someone will ask "what if it rains?".

Jack up the ride height and put more reliance on ground effect to take from the aero effect and difficulty overtaking.

F1 is a confused sport. It's lost its place as the forefront of motorsport innovation. That's just the natural evolution of things, I suppose.

Bit I'd agree the fact that the cars can't race in some rain is ridiculous. They should be able to raise the ride height of the cars for rain.

Yeah the FIA never actually allow them to race in conditions that are wet enough for the wet tyres so hard to see what Pirelli can do there.

Motorsport.com: F1 set for talks over rule changes after Belgian GP "farce".

Suggestion here is that they're going to review it to ensure they don't award points without proper racing in the future. I suppose they'll just include a clause on your ticket that there aren't refunds if the race can't go ahead.

They're also suggesting looking at the possibility of holding the race on another day. I'd doubt that's likely to happen.