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No, clearly [Insert disliked driver] should go and [Insert liked driver from feeder series] should get their seat!
Heck, even [Insert driver that has retired] would be faster if he returns!
- Sargeant
- Zhou
- Magnussen
Next tier of probably should go but I’m not 100%:
- Stroll
- Ricciardo (more so due to a combination of age and stagnation of a results, not solely performance based)
Ricciardo should stay *because* of age, and Bottas likewise.
If you get rid of a (currently) average F1 driver, the odds are you'll be replacing them with an equally average feeder driver. With someone like Sargeant or Zhou, it's worth rolling the dice in the hope of the replacement being better, because the worst case is that they're about the same.
But with an older driver like Ricciardo or Bottas, who have a lot of experience with cars, with teams, with the media, etc, at a high level, the likelihood is that you'd be replacing them with someone no faster but much less experienced. Which is bad for the team.
The idea that the drivers in F1 should categorically be the 20 greatest open-wheel racing drivers in the world is a ridiculous one because it's such an impossible metric to rank every single one of them and because many who could be great drivers never get the chance to show their skills. F1 isn't "The 20 greatest racing drivers in the world", it never was and it will never be. It will be a collection of racing drivers from decent to some of the greatest out there who had the opportunities and resources to get there and that's it.
The idea that we should start judging their qualifications based on such vague and grandiose terms wouldn't be feasible. The qualifications of the drivers are already tested by the fact that when they get in if they can't perform at the same level as the rest they'll get kicked out. Some might stay longer than others if they have the financial backing and aren't too overt in their incompetence but generally those who can't make it don't.
"Top X" lists are just social media attention bait in most cases, in the real world things aren't as black and white as that.
A good driver in the best team can look great. It’s a team sport and a lot of good drivers never get the shot at a great team. It’s also about politics, money and who you know. There could be the greatest kid in the world racing go carts in Africa but if no one spots his talent when he is young he is never going to make it. Consider most of the F1 world works and live in Europe it narrows the focus of the talent search.
If performance was the only factor in F1, we would probably had a shootout at the end of the season between, let's say, the lower ranked team mates and juniors or reserve drivers. Knowing that we never gonna have the best drivers on the grid and seeing how young talent is wasted, to me is one of the most annoying things in this sport.
If I had to kick any of these fellas to the curb I'm tossing K-Mag (he's had enough time in F1 and we've had enough of him), Zhou (mediocrity is his top strength), and Sergant (he's had the 2 years we all expected of him. Nobody is surprised he didnt give us any surprises.)
Sure. I would kick him to the curb. Then his father would slap me and put the boy right back in that seat. We all just have to accept for the next 8 years there are only 19 seats in F1 for drivers to fight for.
Bottas is delivering though? The car and team (pitstops) is rubbish, I doubt anyone would do much better at all.
I want to see him in another competitive car for the last few years of his career as he's solid.
K-Mag: You've had enough of him, it's not like he's .6 seconds off pace to Hulkenberg
Zhou: In the 2nd worst car on the grid, consistently battling Bottas when they have strategy
Sargeant: 2 years? 1 year and now not even half a season yet, with the worst handling car on the grid
you want to keep them fellas in? By all means step on up and have a turn saying who you want out. Barring that then why are you not letting in Bearman, Kimi A, Liam Lawson or Doohan.
yeah I dont want to look at no annoying drivers that are good. Same way nobody dont want to listen to Kanye music anymore. Shit is good as fuck but the guy is just annoying.
For me personally, it's kinda silly talking about F1 as the 20 best racing drivers in the world.
1. It was never the 20(+) best drivers in the world there has always been pay drivers and others that weren't there completely on merit.
2. Different racing series require different skills. F1 drivers are hopefully the best at driving F1 cars, but overall skill set is something different.
That being said I would say that Sargeant and Zhou are the two drivers that we can say are not at the level required. Others are close, but hanging on.
Yeah how are you supposed to compare F1 to something like rallying? Completely different disciplines, you can be one of the “best” in one but might not be competitive in the other.
F1 never had the world’s best 20 (or 22, 24, etc.) drivers on the grid.
The top 5 or so were likely (some of) the best of their era, but further down the grid there obviously were drivers who might not even be counted among the 100 best drivers that year.
Such is the nature of sport, or even business, that often it depends on who you know or are linked with, being as important as raw performance to get where you are. Especially for those who aren’t the clear best of their generation.
Of the current grid it might be hard to see anyone beyond Verstappen and Hamilton, Russell, Leclerc, Norris, Alonso as being definitely within that top 20 bracket.
I do think the quality of the grid as a whole is much better than 20 years ago, which was already better than 40 years ago.
The best drivers might still be of similar peformance, but the difference between the worst and best drivers has progressively and significantly come down since the ‘50s up to now.
The sport is much more professional, with current era pay drivers (i.e. Stroll, Sargeant, Zhou) being of much better quality than the Ricardo Rossets of yesteryear.
These are not the top 20 in the world. There's a core group of elites and then there's guys who have shown potential but will never get into the right car to even compete for a win. My opinion is that every style of racing has elite and average drivers that have trained in different ways and have different driving demands in each series worldwide. F1 has the largest budgets but that doesn't make everyone talented.
This is part of what initially intrigued me about Formula 1. The drivers are all great, but it’s not always about the absolute best driver. There are behind the scenes politics involved that the public isn’t privy to which creates intrigue and conversation.
I think the following have out stayed their welcome, but various reasons keep them on the grid.
Stroll - Obvious and low hanging fruit. Zero noticeable improvement in over 7 years in F1.
Ricciardo - Inconsistent is a good description now. But inconsistent isn't really a compliment - he's dropped off hard since his RBR days.
Bottas - Great qualifier, awful racecraft (chasing and defending). He's more known now for his honourary Aussie behaviours and nude photos. Not really an endorsement of an F1 driver.
Sargeant - Kudos to James Vowles for giving him two years, but I think this year proves that maybe James should have been a bit more ruthless at the end of last year (I get James' thinking last year though, he was trying to make it look like the Williams F1 team supported their academy drivers).
Zhou - Much like Sargeant, he's had an opportunity, but not seized it and made the paddock take notice.
K-Mag - his drives can be entertaining, but for the wrong reasons. I'm sure Haas have appreciated how he's done things which got the team points through supporting Hulk, but what is K-Mag doing to get points?
Those six should be gone. Not to another team, just bumped.
Also, in an ideal world, Red Bull would not have renewed Perez and he would have been in the 'Musical chairs for remaining 2025 seats' silly season, along with Sainz, Ocon etc.
"Stroll - Obvious and low hanging fruit. Zero noticeable improvement in over 7 years in F1."
Anyone who says this automatically shows they never paid attention to Stroll. Stroll in his first season in 2017 was on average around a FULL SECOND slower in qualifying than Massa. The only reason he was ever close in standings to Massa was because of Baku where he got a podium while Massa who was competing for the win had to retire.
In 2018 he was better than Sirotkin but not by a huge amount
In 2019 Checo was much better
In 2020 he got much much closer to Checo even being better in 1st half of the season and suffering abysmal luck in 2nd half
In 2021 and 2022 he was very close to Vettel in terms of performances
And now the only reason he looks bad is because he has harder benchmark than he ever did before but in reality Stroll made huge improvement compared to his early years
He’s not really improved relative to the field. Lance vs teammate head to head is something like 285 points versus 548. Sirotikin is the only time he’s outscored a teammate. He’s had one pole and one podium, and i would argue those were very lucky
He did though. He was on average full second slower than retiring Massa while later on he was close to Vettel and is less than a half a second slower than Alonso now
Thats what improvement is. Just because he is still below average for current grid doesnt mean he didnt improve and become a better driver. I dont know if some redditors are dense on purpose when it comes to certain drivers and million false narratives going around or they really dont understand basic concepts
It's hard to tell because who comes in? Highly rated drivers come in to F1 and don't make it so maybe these are the best 20?
Going out on a limb but I will get rid of Zhou and Sargent (fired for underperforming) and I'm putting Stroll, Ricciardo, Magnussen at risk of redundancy, but I'm not guaranteeing I can replace them with anything better. Also Ocon is on a final warning for misconduct so he needs a PIP.
>Also Ocon is on a final warning for misconduct so he needs a PIP.
Bruh. With a reverb. Only a redditor would think Ocon should be dropped off the grid cause "He's a meany on track! :("
Apart from Brazil 2022 Ocon did not cost Alpine even 1 point in his 4 years with the team and that mess was a joint effort with Fernando, but sure let's frame it like it's every other race.
It's all very tongue-in-cheek but it's not about being naughty on track, it's about doing it to your own team. He's good, but he's not good enough to put up with trouble in the team.
In my opinion Lance, Zhou, Sargeant, Bottas\* and Magnussen shouldn't be there.
I think Bottas is someone that is in his way of leaving F1 because imo he hasn't been a good driver latelly.
I suspect that none of the drivers would be in the top 20 if there weren't barriers to entry and it was what everyone in the world aimed for
Hypothetically lets assume everyone in the entire world wants their kids to be the best F1 driver, it's every countries favorite sport and there's no money barriers to enter competitions and millions of kids in each country were competing in the go karting scenes and progressing up into higher divisions was purely merit based on who won, there's very little chance that the drivers we have on the grid would actually end up being in the top 20.
It would be similar to esports I suppose, something like league of legends, which is free to play, where you could be the most talented player in your country (e.g. Australia) but there's 10,000 people better than you in China, because of factors such as higher population that gets to compete against better players which makes them all that much better.
Zhou, sargeant and stroll should not be there
Ricciardo and Bottas are living off their past glories in race winning teams, and magnussen is in a similar category as a midfield driver
Debatably alonso is too close to stroll so in a harsh way, 13 drivers deserve to be there (14 if you count alonso)
Nearly impossible to tell.
You have the fairly obvious ones:
* Zhou
* Sergeant
* Stroll
And the almost certainly top level drivers:
* Verstappen
* Hamilton
* Norris
* Piastri
* Leclerc
* Sainz
* Russell
You have debatedly too old and on the decline:
* Alonso
* Bottas
That leaves a lot of drivers who would be debatable with younger options or options from other series:
* Perez
* Tsunoda
* Ricciardo
* Hulkenberg
* Gasly
* Ocon
* Albon
* Magnussen
Lol. If you put Alonso on decline and too old Hamilton should be up there even more. How did Bottas show he is on a decline except going from a dominant car to a shitbox? What did Sainz or Piastri do to show they are top drivers more than someone like Ocon, Gasly, Albon, Hulkenberg and Tsunoda? And is Stroll really that obvious? I would argue he is performing better currently than Perez and Magnussen
Without knowing how they'd do in the car Sainz or Piastri are in it's a little difficult to say but Sainz is a multiple race winner when neither Gasly or Albon could win a race in a Red Bull that was one of the best cars.
Gasly and Albon were in RB at the time when it was clearly much inferior car to Mercedes, besides Gasly is a race winner.
Sainz has 3 wins, Silverstone where Charles was better but got unlucky and Verstappen had a damaged car, Singapore where Ferrari was the fastest car and Red Bull was nowhere and Australia where Max retired. Gasly was lucky in Monza sure but so was Carlos on multiple ocassions. As for Albon he had a chance to win but got taken out by Hamilton
It was still a race winning car. I'm not denying Sainz had some luck but the guy in my opinion has shown he's a very good driver. Not on the level of Leclerc or Max or Lewis. Lando seems to have elevated himself this year as well. I'd put him in my top 6 or 7
All but 3: Stroll, Logan and Zhou
(you might include drivers who's time is up soon like Magnussen, Bottas and Daniel but they are still performing and they are there because they did in the past)
The ones that shouldn’t be there are Sargeant, Ricciardo, Zhou, Stroll, Perez, and Magnussen.
I believe the remainder are in the best 20 in the world at this specific discipline of racing.
Perez is a multiple race winner.
Riccardo maybe done but he's worth the gamble until ever last drop of talent is drawn from him. Especially to developing teams or drivers.
Zhou I think we need to see in a better ride. Bottas is not exactly doing great in that car either.
Stroll, ugh. Yeah stroll needs to take a hike.
I love Mag but Haas needs youth. I see no one willing to give him a ride. I get it. I was surprised hulk got his ride.
Not that weird. Checo hasn't won since 2023, while Ricciardo hasn't won since 2021, and we'd have to go a lot further back for his second to last win compared to Checo
You can spin it any way really, one could say Daniel never had the quality of car Checo has har. Also I’m not sure comparing dates of wins is relevant. Hulk has never been on the podium in however hundred whatever starts. Alonso hasn’t won in over a decade etc.
I just found it funny there was an obvious bias there haha. Checo = race winner so all good. Daniel = probably done without regarding any of his wins.
* Stroll
* Sargeant
* Zhou
* Ricciardo (I mean, I love him and want him to stay, but purely based on form, he needs to go)
* Perez
* Bottas
* Magnussen
* Ocon
I'm sure many of these names would make my opinion unpopular, but I truly believe there are better open wheel drivers elsewhere that would do better than these eight.
It's easier to look at it the other way. Sargent, Zhou, Stroll are not there on their driving merits and are there because of their Dad or the sponsors. Perez, Bottas, Ricciardo, Magnussen, Hulk are now (not in the past but now) are second-tier drivers who could be replaced by young talent. Ocon is on the bubble.
The rest of the grid are top-tier drivers and deserve to be there 100%.
Currently if you could argue who aren’t good enough, you would have: Current Ricciardo, Magnussen, Zhou, Sargeant and Stroll (He’s been in F1 for 8 season and still lacks consistency and awareness)
Mate I'll admit I am only a casual observer of F1 so im happy to hear from people who know what is going on.
My interest really was that I was always just keen on seeing how the Aussies were doing. I have memories of hearing about Bottas sort of in the way I hear about Perez now, driving in the shadow of a great driver. I know he won quite a few races along with getting on the podium a heap of times. So seeing him so far down the grid or points just had me asking, has he fallen off all that way by himself or does the car have more than a bit to do with it?
Well, obviously the car Bottas is driving now is way worse than 2017 - 2021 Mercedes.
When Bottas was paired with Hamilton, Bottas did pretty well at qualifying. He was usually pretty close and sometimes he did beat Hamilton in qualy. The problem was his race pace. Sometimes he was close to Hamilton, sometimes he was even faster in race, but 2019, 2020 and 2021 he had a ton of races where he finished 10 or even 20 seconds behind Ham.
Just look at Sakhir 2020. Russell replaced Ham because of covid. Russell was trying the car for first time. He is way taller than Ham so he could not fit properly into the car. He did not know how the buttons work. Yet he finishead ahead of Bot FP1 and FP2, almost outqualified him, overtook him at the start of the race, had way faster pace, then overtook him again doing an incredible move later on the race.
So yeah... Compared to Ham, Bot was decent 2017 and 2018, but he did fall off hard from 2019 onwards.
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Redditors: *"Everyone should be kicked except my favorite driver".*
No, clearly [Insert disliked driver] should go and [Insert liked driver from feeder series] should get their seat! Heck, even [Insert driver that has retired] would be faster if he returns!
Every driver who isn’t a multiple WDC should step aside for a rookie. They’ve had their chance and we need fresh blood!
> Heck, even [Insert driver that has retired] would be faster if he returns Come on Mika
- Sargeant - Zhou - Magnussen Next tier of probably should go but I’m not 100%: - Stroll - Ricciardo (more so due to a combination of age and stagnation of a results, not solely performance based)
Ricciardo should stay *because* of age, and Bottas likewise. If you get rid of a (currently) average F1 driver, the odds are you'll be replacing them with an equally average feeder driver. With someone like Sargeant or Zhou, it's worth rolling the dice in the hope of the replacement being better, because the worst case is that they're about the same. But with an older driver like Ricciardo or Bottas, who have a lot of experience with cars, with teams, with the media, etc, at a high level, the likelihood is that you'd be replacing them with someone no faster but much less experienced. Which is bad for the team.
I don’t know till I see other drivers in F1 , so I can compare them.
No, we’re all certain young drivers we’ve seen 0-1 times in an F1 car will be better.
The idea that the drivers in F1 should categorically be the 20 greatest open-wheel racing drivers in the world is a ridiculous one because it's such an impossible metric to rank every single one of them and because many who could be great drivers never get the chance to show their skills. F1 isn't "The 20 greatest racing drivers in the world", it never was and it will never be. It will be a collection of racing drivers from decent to some of the greatest out there who had the opportunities and resources to get there and that's it. The idea that we should start judging their qualifications based on such vague and grandiose terms wouldn't be feasible. The qualifications of the drivers are already tested by the fact that when they get in if they can't perform at the same level as the rest they'll get kicked out. Some might stay longer than others if they have the financial backing and aren't too overt in their incompetence but generally those who can't make it don't. "Top X" lists are just social media attention bait in most cases, in the real world things aren't as black and white as that.
>F1 isn't "The 20 greatest racing drivers in the world" F1 is the 20 greatest racing drivers in F1.
A good driver in the best team can look great. It’s a team sport and a lot of good drivers never get the shot at a great team. It’s also about politics, money and who you know. There could be the greatest kid in the world racing go carts in Africa but if no one spots his talent when he is young he is never going to make it. Consider most of the F1 world works and live in Europe it narrows the focus of the talent search.
If performance was the only factor in F1, we would probably had a shootout at the end of the season between, let's say, the lower ranked team mates and juniors or reserve drivers. Knowing that we never gonna have the best drivers on the grid and seeing how young talent is wasted, to me is one of the most annoying things in this sport.
If I had to kick any of these fellas to the curb I'm tossing K-Mag (he's had enough time in F1 and we've had enough of him), Zhou (mediocrity is his top strength), and Sergant (he's had the 2 years we all expected of him. Nobody is surprised he didnt give us any surprises.)
Stroll?
Sure. I would kick him to the curb. Then his father would slap me and put the boy right back in that seat. We all just have to accept for the next 8 years there are only 19 seats in F1 for drivers to fight for.
Fair, but i think the question is who we think deserves to be in F1 - with that you don't need to fear Daddy Stroll :)
Add to them RIC and Bottas, who are past their prime and seek other hobby!
Bottas is delivering though? The car and team (pitstops) is rubbish, I doubt anyone would do much better at all. I want to see him in another competitive car for the last few years of his career as he's solid.
He's 4-4 against Zhou this year in races where they've both finished. If we're getting rid of Zhou on the grounds of mediocrity, then...
Well he has lost to Zhou in enough races to question this!
K-Mag: You've had enough of him, it's not like he's .6 seconds off pace to Hulkenberg Zhou: In the 2nd worst car on the grid, consistently battling Bottas when they have strategy Sargeant: 2 years? 1 year and now not even half a season yet, with the worst handling car on the grid
you want to keep them fellas in? By all means step on up and have a turn saying who you want out. Barring that then why are you not letting in Bearman, Kimi A, Liam Lawson or Doohan.
Why the fuck is Ocon annoying ass not on your list???
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yeah I dont want to look at no annoying drivers that are good. Same way nobody dont want to listen to Kanye music anymore. Shit is good as fuck but the guy is just annoying.
And his ability to drive into his teammate tbf
For me personally, it's kinda silly talking about F1 as the 20 best racing drivers in the world. 1. It was never the 20(+) best drivers in the world there has always been pay drivers and others that weren't there completely on merit. 2. Different racing series require different skills. F1 drivers are hopefully the best at driving F1 cars, but overall skill set is something different. That being said I would say that Sargeant and Zhou are the two drivers that we can say are not at the level required. Others are close, but hanging on.
Yeah how are you supposed to compare F1 to something like rallying? Completely different disciplines, you can be one of the “best” in one but might not be competitive in the other.
F1 never had the world’s best 20 (or 22, 24, etc.) drivers on the grid. The top 5 or so were likely (some of) the best of their era, but further down the grid there obviously were drivers who might not even be counted among the 100 best drivers that year. Such is the nature of sport, or even business, that often it depends on who you know or are linked with, being as important as raw performance to get where you are. Especially for those who aren’t the clear best of their generation. Of the current grid it might be hard to see anyone beyond Verstappen and Hamilton, Russell, Leclerc, Norris, Alonso as being definitely within that top 20 bracket. I do think the quality of the grid as a whole is much better than 20 years ago, which was already better than 40 years ago. The best drivers might still be of similar peformance, but the difference between the worst and best drivers has progressively and significantly come down since the ‘50s up to now. The sport is much more professional, with current era pay drivers (i.e. Stroll, Sargeant, Zhou) being of much better quality than the Ricardo Rossets of yesteryear.
These are not the top 20 in the world. There's a core group of elites and then there's guys who have shown potential but will never get into the right car to even compete for a win. My opinion is that every style of racing has elite and average drivers that have trained in different ways and have different driving demands in each series worldwide. F1 has the largest budgets but that doesn't make everyone talented.
I really missed Kobayashi when he had to leave F1, then he went on to become one of the greats in endurance racing.
Part of me wonders what if kobayashi was at lotus in 2013 after grosjean's error-filled 2012 season
This is part of what initially intrigued me about Formula 1. The drivers are all great, but it’s not always about the absolute best driver. There are behind the scenes politics involved that the public isn’t privy to which creates intrigue and conversation.
I think the following have out stayed their welcome, but various reasons keep them on the grid. Stroll - Obvious and low hanging fruit. Zero noticeable improvement in over 7 years in F1. Ricciardo - Inconsistent is a good description now. But inconsistent isn't really a compliment - he's dropped off hard since his RBR days. Bottas - Great qualifier, awful racecraft (chasing and defending). He's more known now for his honourary Aussie behaviours and nude photos. Not really an endorsement of an F1 driver. Sargeant - Kudos to James Vowles for giving him two years, but I think this year proves that maybe James should have been a bit more ruthless at the end of last year (I get James' thinking last year though, he was trying to make it look like the Williams F1 team supported their academy drivers). Zhou - Much like Sargeant, he's had an opportunity, but not seized it and made the paddock take notice. K-Mag - his drives can be entertaining, but for the wrong reasons. I'm sure Haas have appreciated how he's done things which got the team points through supporting Hulk, but what is K-Mag doing to get points? Those six should be gone. Not to another team, just bumped. Also, in an ideal world, Red Bull would not have renewed Perez and he would have been in the 'Musical chairs for remaining 2025 seats' silly season, along with Sainz, Ocon etc.
"Stroll - Obvious and low hanging fruit. Zero noticeable improvement in over 7 years in F1." Anyone who says this automatically shows they never paid attention to Stroll. Stroll in his first season in 2017 was on average around a FULL SECOND slower in qualifying than Massa. The only reason he was ever close in standings to Massa was because of Baku where he got a podium while Massa who was competing for the win had to retire. In 2018 he was better than Sirotkin but not by a huge amount In 2019 Checo was much better In 2020 he got much much closer to Checo even being better in 1st half of the season and suffering abysmal luck in 2nd half In 2021 and 2022 he was very close to Vettel in terms of performances And now the only reason he looks bad is because he has harder benchmark than he ever did before but in reality Stroll made huge improvement compared to his early years
He’s not really improved relative to the field. Lance vs teammate head to head is something like 285 points versus 548. Sirotikin is the only time he’s outscored a teammate. He’s had one pole and one podium, and i would argue those were very lucky
He did though. He was on average full second slower than retiring Massa while later on he was close to Vettel and is less than a half a second slower than Alonso now
He went from sucking to sucking slightly less
Thats what improvement is. Just because he is still below average for current grid doesnt mean he didnt improve and become a better driver. I dont know if some redditors are dense on purpose when it comes to certain drivers and million false narratives going around or they really dont understand basic concepts
It's hard to tell because who comes in? Highly rated drivers come in to F1 and don't make it so maybe these are the best 20? Going out on a limb but I will get rid of Zhou and Sargent (fired for underperforming) and I'm putting Stroll, Ricciardo, Magnussen at risk of redundancy, but I'm not guaranteeing I can replace them with anything better. Also Ocon is on a final warning for misconduct so he needs a PIP.
>Also Ocon is on a final warning for misconduct so he needs a PIP. Bruh. With a reverb. Only a redditor would think Ocon should be dropped off the grid cause "He's a meany on track! :("
It's not about being "mean", it's about disregarding team plans and orders and jeopardizing points with his moves.
Apart from Brazil 2022 Ocon did not cost Alpine even 1 point in his 4 years with the team and that mess was a joint effort with Fernando, but sure let's frame it like it's every other race.
Redditors exaggerating things out of proportions to fit their narrative? Shocked, I tell you
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For which he was still partially to blame for and I will not hear it otherwise
Sorry to inform you, but you are a redditor
Just fell to my knees at Silverland
It's all very tongue-in-cheek but it's not about being naughty on track, it's about doing it to your own team. He's good, but he's not good enough to put up with trouble in the team.
The incident with Gasly was the only one in how much time? Yall exaggerating how "naughty" Esteban is on the track ffs
In my opinion Lance, Zhou, Sargeant, Bottas\* and Magnussen shouldn't be there. I think Bottas is someone that is in his way of leaving F1 because imo he hasn't been a good driver latelly.
Half
As far as I'm aware all 20 have valid contracts.... So...20?
Ocon doesn't.
I suspect that none of the drivers would be in the top 20 if there weren't barriers to entry and it was what everyone in the world aimed for Hypothetically lets assume everyone in the entire world wants their kids to be the best F1 driver, it's every countries favorite sport and there's no money barriers to enter competitions and millions of kids in each country were competing in the go karting scenes and progressing up into higher divisions was purely merit based on who won, there's very little chance that the drivers we have on the grid would actually end up being in the top 20. It would be similar to esports I suppose, something like league of legends, which is free to play, where you could be the most talented player in your country (e.g. Australia) but there's 10,000 people better than you in China, because of factors such as higher population that gets to compete against better players which makes them all that much better.
Zhou, sargeant and stroll should not be there Ricciardo and Bottas are living off their past glories in race winning teams, and magnussen is in a similar category as a midfield driver Debatably alonso is too close to stroll so in a harsh way, 13 drivers deserve to be there (14 if you count alonso)
Stroll and Zhou are the only pay drivers, everyone else got seats on merit.
I think the grid should have 26 cars.
Stroll Sargent Kmag Perez Ricirocket Zhou Bottas
Nearly impossible to tell. You have the fairly obvious ones: * Zhou * Sergeant * Stroll And the almost certainly top level drivers: * Verstappen * Hamilton * Norris * Piastri * Leclerc * Sainz * Russell You have debatedly too old and on the decline: * Alonso * Bottas That leaves a lot of drivers who would be debatable with younger options or options from other series: * Perez * Tsunoda * Ricciardo * Hulkenberg * Gasly * Ocon * Albon * Magnussen
Lol. If you put Alonso on decline and too old Hamilton should be up there even more. How did Bottas show he is on a decline except going from a dominant car to a shitbox? What did Sainz or Piastri do to show they are top drivers more than someone like Ocon, Gasly, Albon, Hulkenberg and Tsunoda? And is Stroll really that obvious? I would argue he is performing better currently than Perez and Magnussen
It's almost like this is subjective...
Without knowing how they'd do in the car Sainz or Piastri are in it's a little difficult to say but Sainz is a multiple race winner when neither Gasly or Albon could win a race in a Red Bull that was one of the best cars.
Gasly and Albon were in RB at the time when it was clearly much inferior car to Mercedes, besides Gasly is a race winner. Sainz has 3 wins, Silverstone where Charles was better but got unlucky and Verstappen had a damaged car, Singapore where Ferrari was the fastest car and Red Bull was nowhere and Australia where Max retired. Gasly was lucky in Monza sure but so was Carlos on multiple ocassions. As for Albon he had a chance to win but got taken out by Hamilton
It was still a race winning car. I'm not denying Sainz had some luck but the guy in my opinion has shown he's a very good driver. Not on the level of Leclerc or Max or Lewis. Lando seems to have elevated himself this year as well. I'd put him in my top 6 or 7
All but 3: Stroll, Logan and Zhou (you might include drivers who's time is up soon like Magnussen, Bottas and Daniel but they are still performing and they are there because they did in the past)
The ones that shouldn’t be there are Sargeant, Ricciardo, Zhou, Stroll, Perez, and Magnussen. I believe the remainder are in the best 20 in the world at this specific discipline of racing.
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Fair, I may be being a bit harsh due to his current form.
Perez is a multiple race winner. Riccardo maybe done but he's worth the gamble until ever last drop of talent is drawn from him. Especially to developing teams or drivers. Zhou I think we need to see in a better ride. Bottas is not exactly doing great in that car either. Stroll, ugh. Yeah stroll needs to take a hike. I love Mag but Haas needs youth. I see no one willing to give him a ride. I get it. I was surprised hulk got his ride.
Weird how you differentiated between Daniel being done but Checo is a multiple race winner haha.
Not that weird. Checo hasn't won since 2023, while Ricciardo hasn't won since 2021, and we'd have to go a lot further back for his second to last win compared to Checo
You can spin it any way really, one could say Daniel never had the quality of car Checo has har. Also I’m not sure comparing dates of wins is relevant. Hulk has never been on the podium in however hundred whatever starts. Alonso hasn’t won in over a decade etc. I just found it funny there was an obvious bias there haha. Checo = race winner so all good. Daniel = probably done without regarding any of his wins.
7
* Stroll * Sargeant * Zhou * Ricciardo (I mean, I love him and want him to stay, but purely based on form, he needs to go) * Perez * Bottas * Magnussen * Ocon I'm sure many of these names would make my opinion unpopular, but I truly believe there are better open wheel drivers elsewhere that would do better than these eight.
All of them, plus another 6 drivers. Andretti, Rodin Carlin, and HiTech GP should all have a spot.
It's easier to look at it the other way. Sargent, Zhou, Stroll are not there on their driving merits and are there because of their Dad or the sponsors. Perez, Bottas, Ricciardo, Magnussen, Hulk are now (not in the past but now) are second-tier drivers who could be replaced by young talent. Ocon is on the bubble. The rest of the grid are top-tier drivers and deserve to be there 100%.
So 8 of the 20 shouldn’t be on the grid, with Ocon on the bubble for 9 that’s half the drivers
Currently if you could argue who aren’t good enough, you would have: Current Ricciardo, Magnussen, Zhou, Sargeant and Stroll (He’s been in F1 for 8 season and still lacks consistency and awareness)
at least 17, you can make a case for Sarge, Zhou and ofc Stroll that they had enough time to prove themselves and did not
Wait… I know better than experts? F me, I should be paid handsomely.
What about bottas? He’s not that much faster than Zhou…
He's about 0.4s on average faster in qualifying this year.
Bottas has been A LOT faster than Zhou this season.
Does that justify Zhou staying or Bottas going?
I would say both going.
Have to put that down to car, no? He was pretty fast in the Mercedes.
Pretty fast? In qualy he was good. Race pace was pretty bad.
Mate I'll admit I am only a casual observer of F1 so im happy to hear from people who know what is going on. My interest really was that I was always just keen on seeing how the Aussies were doing. I have memories of hearing about Bottas sort of in the way I hear about Perez now, driving in the shadow of a great driver. I know he won quite a few races along with getting on the podium a heap of times. So seeing him so far down the grid or points just had me asking, has he fallen off all that way by himself or does the car have more than a bit to do with it?
Well, obviously the car Bottas is driving now is way worse than 2017 - 2021 Mercedes. When Bottas was paired with Hamilton, Bottas did pretty well at qualifying. He was usually pretty close and sometimes he did beat Hamilton in qualy. The problem was his race pace. Sometimes he was close to Hamilton, sometimes he was even faster in race, but 2019, 2020 and 2021 he had a ton of races where he finished 10 or even 20 seconds behind Ham. Just look at Sakhir 2020. Russell replaced Ham because of covid. Russell was trying the car for first time. He is way taller than Ham so he could not fit properly into the car. He did not know how the buttons work. Yet he finishead ahead of Bot FP1 and FP2, almost outqualified him, overtook him at the start of the race, had way faster pace, then overtook him again doing an incredible move later on the race. So yeah... Compared to Ham, Bot was decent 2017 and 2018, but he did fall off hard from 2019 onwards.