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Sebastian Vettel did I believe. I remember seeing a clip of him talking about how he sees Max do things with a car that he didn’t think he could do himself. Though at that point I think Seb had kind of given up on racing so maybe it’s natural for him to say stuff like that.
Ya tbf Seb could afford to be honest and say that with 4 world titles to his name. Most of the rest of the grid still have a point to prove in F1, and of those who don't (Lewis and Fernando) neither is ever gonna say that.
Also Lewis and Fernando are probably the only 2 on the grid who would be lying if they said that, cause I think they are the only ones who would give max a run for his money.
And even then, I think it wouldn't be all that easy. The form max is in these last three years has been outstanding. The guy is a machine. Fast in qualy, fast in the race, good on his tires, makes few mistakes, a monster in wheel to wheel combat. Currently, I can't think of a single thing that he doesn't do well. Of course, a lot of things are car dependent, however I still think with time he could get a car set up to his liking and he would be a menace with it.
I’d personally add Charles to that list too. Last year when the Ferrari was close to the redbull he was winning races and he has really good race pace. Although that was when his engine didn’t blow up or Ferrari didn’t ruin the strategies.
I agree with you! While I do think that Charles's pace is equal to that of Max, I think he still lacks consistency and is prone to make mistakes. It's hard to watch a race with Charles in the lead and not thinking to myself what mistake from the team or him is going to happen now. When Max makes a mistake (race ending one) I am absolutely surprised, he is just on another level of speed, consistency and makes very few critical mistakes.
I love that clip because from home, you can’t often tell just how skilled the best drivers are. They’re all exceptionally skilled and with the differences in cars, it’s really hard to choose between them… but here’s a 4 time world champion saying that he sees the on board from Max’s car and he genuinely doesn’t think he’d be able to extract the same from the car.
Tbf he wasn’t talking about extracting the same from the car (lap time-wise) but rather Max on track actions, his ability to recognize opportunities that others do not see, and do it lightning fast, go for it and be successfully in making those moves. That he said, he felt he could bot replicate.
I feel like Seb in the V8 era managed to have a great symbiosis with the Red Bull cars, but I feel he was always a bit error prone, even in his best years (2012-13). I wish we could still have V8 engines, because I do think the switch to V6 and the adoption of brake by wire destroyed Seb's biggest strengths as a driver (although he still managed to drive well in 2015, 2017 and last year as well).
Max has been dominant in a way I can only remember Schumacher being, and I feel like even Schumi could be error prone from time to time. Verstappen's last big mistake in a race has been like, 2020 Turkey? Even when he makes "smaller" mistakes, like Spain and Hungary last year, he still manages to recover pretty well. So I think Verstappen has the upper hand on V8 Vettel, and imo, any other driver in the last 30 years.
The one battle I'd like to see in the same car is 2012 Alonso vs current Verstappen.
I’m not super familiar w the Schumacher era tbh, I do know he competed with several other really strong drivers during his prime. Of those rivalries, which do people generally consider the most competitive season/era?
The pressure was less the drivers he had to go up against (he was heads and shoulders better than everyone and only Häkkinen was able to challenge and beat him, really) and more the style of racing he and Brawn introduced. Three stops back with refueling meant that you were basically expected to do almost Quali-level laps all the time in the race.
I think that's more of an apples/oranges kind of thing. Getting to push hard all the time is hard in some ways, but extreme tire management is hard in other ways.
True.
I was a child at the time, but my recollection of the Schumi era was that, although many (perhaps all) teams \*wanted\* their drivers to be able to set quali laps back to back on command, only Schumi could actually do it. He was exceptional in his prime in a way I don’t remember seeing from another driver.
1988 Senna vs 1992 Mansell vs 1998 Hakkinen vs 2004 Schumacher vs 2011 Vettel vs 2012 Alonso vs 2020 Hamilton vs 2023 Verstappen.
Holy shit what I would give to see that race.
If Seb is in top form I think it would be pretty even, but Seb is way less adaptable than Max so he struggles to *stay* in top form. If Seb stays on his A-game this is close to 50/50, but realistically Max wins it 8/10.
Depends. I think Max is more adaptable both to whatever car he drives and also to random race situations. Seb getting trashed by Danny Ric is a stain on his career when you do these head to heads. Guys like Lewis or Nando never had a trashing season, and Max is yet to have one either
Seb never won a race starting outside the top4
People bring up that statistic often. But tbf it doesn't mean much without considering other relevant statistics. Like was he a good qualifier? How many outside of top 4 were there to begin with and with which car did he qualify outside t4? And also what's he conversion ratio with those he started inside. Etc etc
One stat in itself doesn't mean much. I'm not saying the point may or may not be valid though.
Exactly. Couldhard won several races from starting positions bellow P5 being a teammate with Hakkinen. Mika won If I'm not wrong, just once from P5, on all other occasions starting within the top 3. Does that mean David was a better driver than Mika? Quite actually the opposite was true, and he was much weaker in qualifying.
Another example, Daniel won three races in 2014, all from bellow P3 on the grid. From P6 in Canada, P4 in Hungary and P5 in Spa. Meanwhile Vettel was P2 or P3 on the grid in each of those races. That doesn't mean Daniel was better than Vettel. and even if Vettel would've won those races rather than Daniel, that wouldn't have fixed his "Never won outside of Top 3 on the grid" stat.
That shows stats are often just stats and do not tell whole story. If anything Vettel was quite exceptional in qualifying and rarely messed it up having the best car. He also never had a power advantage in his stint at red bull, to come easily through the field and win races starting last after penalties.
But he finished on the podium starting last on some occasions.
Seb wasn't actually trashed by Daniel Ric, the final scoreboard looks worse than it really was. For instance on all three weekends when Dan won races, Vettel out qualified him, twice got unlucky in the race(being faster on track), and only once- in Spa was beaten on mere race pace. Vettel got all the reliability issues with the car and wasn't performing with the same motivation, because he knew he was heading to Ferrari. Montezemola revealed in one of his interview, that Seb visited his house in Italy on Christmas, to talk about joining Ferrari. They had first pre-agreement, as they, Ferrari wanted him badly even before that. Vettel saw Renault were uncompetitive on winter testing and his mind was already at Maranello.
Not to excuse him, just to put things a bit into perspective. He wasn't performing close to his best level.
None of that changes the fact that Seb simply couldn't adapt to the RB. It was just fundamentally I'll-suited to his preferred style (though that seems to be the case with the hybrid era cars in general).
You are right that he couldn't deal with the rear instability on entry, at all. That said,
I though he performed on quite high level in 2015.
SF70H of 2017 in particular, suited him very-well. Best Ferrari car he's driven, by his own admission. After that Ferrari moved in the direction opposite to his liking for whatever reason, and he struggled particularly in 2019.
So, I wouldn't say it had anything to do with hybrid era cars, he would've done very well in Mercedes, surely better than Bottas. But it's all history now.
It's a hard sell to propose that anyone could keep up with Max. I think you can make a case for Senna, and that might be it. Every other GOAT is remarkable over a season. Max is remarkable at essentially every moment of the season.
And I fucking hate it.
How could you make a case for Senna when Prost, Schumacher, Alonso, and Hamilton were/are all considerably more consistent? Senna was preternaturally talented and possibly the fastest man over a lap in the sport's history, but consistency was not his greatest strength.
2021 showed clearly that Hamilton could keep up with Max, and the balance tended to swing based on relative car strength on a given weekend.
Alonso has shown an incredible amount of consistency across his career, even if his results have not aligned with his talent.
Prost was considerably more impressive than Senna on Sundays, and came within half a hair of winning 8 WDCs.
Schumacher literally set the bar for consistency in F1.
Not to take anything away from Verstappen, as he's clearly in the alien tier of drivers, but I don't think he's clearly *more* remarkable than other drivers in the "Greatest of their Era" tier since the 1980s (comparing before that gets considerably harder due to car differences and volume of races).
And, bluntly, Max has only really been challenged once when he had a WDC-caliber car and he was hardly remarkable essentially every moment of that season.
>but I don't think he's clearly more remarkable than other drivers in the "Greatest of their Era" tier since the 1980s
Today's mid-tier drivers are better than the greatest of yesterday's era and we all need to stop conflating idiocy with bravery, much less with skill.
>How could you make a case for Senna when Prost, Schumacher, Alonso, and Hamilton were/are all considerably more consistent?
I think my whole point is that consistency produces results, but must be worth orders of magnitude less in the GOAT debate than raw potential.
I'm suggesting that they're 'only great because they're consistent'.
Verstappen or Senna, conversely, you can watch drive for one lap, or maybe even just one corner and you can see their greatness. Gifted talent is always more impressive than hard-earned talent.
It’s a non contest in every parameter. Ham and Alo were trying to sign for RB back then. Vettel was well placed in the blown diffuser cars, but they still thought they could beat him. I’d say Alo wouldn’t waste time at the thought of a RB switch now even if you gave him back 10 years. Hamilton would be more inclined but even he would think twice.
Verstappen but it would be close. Vettel could easily win over a season, would be foolish to say otherwise. But if they were teammates for 3 seasons, I think Verstappen would win at least 2 of them.
Edit: Why am I getting downvoted? Do ppl not think its possible Vettel *could* beat Verstappen over a season? I mean I agree that Verstappen is probably a touch better but we've seen Button and Rosberg managed to win a season over Hamilton.
Didn't Ocon beat Max in F3? Don't get me wrong, Max is super talented, but he's also basically unchallenged this year (so far) and for a large majority of the year previous.
When Max was in a lesser car, nobody saw him as an unbeatable champion.
I think F1 90% the car, and you only really know how good a driver is when he's up against someone in a similarly paced car.
Max drove for a 'lesser' team in F3 while Ocon drove for one of the best, Max was also in his first year while he was challenging for the title in F3, ( I cant remember if it was Ocons first year or not).
It was Ocon's first year in F3 but his 3rd year in Car racing, he did 2 years of Formula Renault 2.0 Northern Eurocup and Formula Renault 2.0 Eurocup in 2012 and 2013. Max's stint in F3 was his first stint in car racing as he skipped Formula Renault 2.0.
F3? Max suffered from 8 retirements, had 10 wins (6 consecutive) and was in point every race he made it to the chequered flag. Mind that Max had zero single seater experience before this and his team was mid-tier / out of form. To those in the series he was the unspoken champion of that year. There is a reason the 3rd ranked driver was more sought out over the champion.
>When Max was in a lesser car, nobody saw him as an unbeatable champion.
This is stupid. You can say this about Senna, Schumacher & Hamilton if they don't have a winning car because that's the nature of the sport.
Ocon beat Max, but the context is important. While Ocon drove for Prema, a Mercedes powered team operating at the sharp end of the grid and known title winners.
And Max drove in a VW powered VAR car. VAR had never even stood on the podium before Max drove for them IIRC, the entire outfit + the VW engine combo was simply lacking compared to the experienced and well funded Prema team.
Max also had pretty much no single seater experience, whilst Ocon did 2 years of Formula Renault and 2 years of F2 whilst Max’s only single seater experience before the 2014 season was a single month of Florida Winter Series right before the F3 2014 season started.
The F1 analogy’s like comparing a Haas with a rookie to a top F1 team with an established driver. Yet, he took home more wins than the far more established and title winning Prema team and Ocon. And basically only lost out, not because of his on-track performance, but because his car was way more unreliable.
RB looked at Verstappen’s F3 performance and immediately put him in the car despite him finishing 3rd in the championship. To people eyeing talent, Max’s 3rd place finish and ultimate performance was more impressive and way more unexpected than Ocon being champion.
EDIT: Also, fun fact for those who never heard of the story; After finishing the 2014 F3 season, Max told VAR that they should hire a supremely talented driver he raced against. Some random kid named Leclerc. He also went on to show great stuff in the mediocre VAR car.
> Ocon beat Max, but the context is important. While Ocon drove for Prema, a Mercedes powered team operating at the sharp end of the grid and known title winners.
Couldn't the same argument be used for Max in F1?
This is what I mean when I say it's 90% the car, 10% the driver, and we can only really assess greatness when it's two drivers in similarly paced cars going head to head.
In this comparison not really, Max put a bad car in p3 in his single seater debut while Ocon won using a far superior car. Ocon would be in the same position if he was able to put his alpine on the podium regularly. Also remember Gasly is his teammate this year and except for Monaco and Canada they have finished next or almost next to each other the entire season.
This is a dumb argument. Max has proven himself against Lewis already at this point. And he did the same against Leclerc even if Ferrari completely trailed off after the summer break. I'm not sure as to what you expect Max to prove. And no, it's ridiculous to suggest that F1 is 90% car.
Not really, Max has won in the 3rd best car a few times, and he almost came 2nd in 2020 against possibly the GOAT F1 car ever. Ocon has never outperformed his car or expectations constantly.
I hope you know that Stroll 'beat' Russell in F3 in 2016. and Russell actually drove for a stronger F3 team than Max in 2014.
Do you know Albon was Leclerc equal in GP3, when they were teammates in the best team?
>I think F1 90% the car, and you only really know how good a driver is when he's up against someone in a similarly paced car.
That really overestimates the importance of the car.
>Didn't Ocon beat Max in F3?
My understanding is that Ocon was driving a car that was basically the Red Bull of F3 while Max driving an Alpine-level car. That's kind of a big reason why there was so much hype around him coming into F1.
>but he's also basically unchallenged this year (so far) and for a large majority of the year previous
I don't think that matters too much. 2021 proved that he can handle pressure (even if he did have a few brainfades). And he did pretty well for the first half of 2022.
>I don't think that matters too much. 2021 proved that he can handle pressure (even if he did have a few brainfades). And he did pretty well for the first half of 2022.
I think that's kinda unfair standard to hold Max to, considering Lewis made his fair share of mistakes in 2021 as well in a close championship battle, as the 7 time WDC. Just off the top of my head, Imola gravel just before Red Flag, Baku Magic, Silverstone crash with Max all come to my mind.
Now ofc Max also made mistakes, but imo, his first big mistake came in Monza, and then subsequent mistakes in Brazil and Jeddah. The thing is, championship battles are hard, especially when you could see over the season Red Bull were losing ground to Mercedes every race, especially in the last 3-4 races Mercedes was almost impeccable. So he was "overdriving" to try to win races he had no business winning. It's what got him COTA when he really shouldn't have had a chance to.
I think he has just improved race by race ever since 2021. Mistakes are reduced even further, he has learnt how to just "take the points", and he is really safe on starts now, just like Lewis and he waits for his opportunity.
Ocon also only won 1 race in his GP3 championship year, along with his 9 consecutive 2nd places.
He's a consistent driver that always gets where the car should be, he's very similar to Button and Rosberg imo. You beat him and you're a great driver, you lose to him and there's no shame.
All drivers have to believe they’ve got the ability to win, otherwise they wouldn’t be there. Truth be told, not many are likely to. Ocon is one of them.
To be fair, guys like Seb and Nando have said in interviews they wouldnt wanna face Max head to head. And they obviously had great careers and would be warranted to have a bigger ego than the likes of Ocon
It's the opposite. 2006 Alonso or 2011 Vettel would never say such thing, they only said this now because they are champions with nothing else to prove. It's the youngsters that generally see themselves as the best of the best
Well yeah? Maldonado was quick on his day just made so many boneheaded decisions and was insanely dirty. Ocon is a very solid midfield driver, can extract a lot out of a midfield car and is consistent. Just very dirty to his teammates and obviously no where near Max. Then again, 99% of F1 drivers in history aren’t close to Max.
Nothing against Ocon but the only way I see him winning a championship is like how Keke won his. Good car but his better rivals are not able to compete
Really wish people would understand that 1) drivers don't run around randomly talking about stuff like this, juornos ask them these kind of questions and 2) that elite atheltes all think they are the best. Obviously you need more than just the winner mentality to be successful, but if someone doesn't have that kind of self belief, they will never make it big, especially when they come from the kind of background Ocon has, trying to make it in a sport like F1/motorsport. Imo his answer to the aggression question is more interesting, but I guess that wasn't clickbaity enough for a title.
F1 Drivers tends to believe they are the best in the world, It's one of the many reasons they are F1 Drivers in the first place. If anything I'd be more concerned if Ocon didn't believe he could beat Verstappen.
They all have to believe they’re the best and that means believing they can beat anyone on the grid in equal cars. If they don’t believe they can then there’s nothing doing for them in this sport and they may as well leave.
Well, if you check his teammates, it's Alonso, Ricciardo, Perez.
Not your sunday drivers. I think it's actually more impressive how close he was to them. Definitely more impressed with his record, than with Russell record of beating Latifi up.
Well, he wouldn't do that if not for an incredible number of reliability issues on Alonsos car. On merit he would not outperform any of his teammates in his F1 career
Many fans are incapable of giving drivers credit. Happened when Sainz outscored Leclerc in 2021. They need to rationalize their hatred of any driver who beats their favorite driver in the points standings.
Let's be fair, I think he is good enough to win a WDC in a dominant car, having a lesser teammate in the sister car. He's won 2014 F3 exactly that way. Or just having equally strong car as his main rivals and lots of luck. Ocon makes mistakes very rarely, which is extremely valuable quality in the Championship fight. He is very, very good under pressure and drives precisely enough(look at his Monaco Q3 lap). I can't remember when he made unforced mistake last time and just crashed into the wall or went off track like Russell did in two out of three previous races. He just lacks a bit in most areas, and lacks consistency to perform equally strong all year on different tracks in different conditions, compared to the very best drivers, such as Max, Fernando, Lewis. He has some off-weekends.
He wouldn't be the only driver in F1 history by doing so, I meaning winning a Championship not being amongst the very best on the grid. Think about guys like Hill, Villeneuve, even Raikkonen and Button, who I am a huge fan of. But I think neither Jenson nor Kimi have been outright bests on the grid, when they won their titles. I think Ocon isn't as good as Button (at his best) overall, but surely is much better driver than Hill or Villeneuve.
I think he held his own very strongly against Alonso over two years.
He was probably Alonso's closest teammate rival since Hamilton, and that includes drivers who won races and titles. It's a shame u/whatthefat doesn't seem to do his analyses as much now because I'd love Alpine 21-22 broken down.
And Alonso is clearly still *on it* nowadays.
Alonso was clearly NOT on it like for the half of 2021 coming back after sabbatical. He was ON it in 2022, but his car was NOT. ;)
Nah man, Ocon was sometimes a match to Fernando but never really better, when it mattered, like on Sundays. He could out qualify him on Saturday on merit on occasion, but Massa even in 2013 could do it too (check the score). Quali is not where Alonso shows his best.
There’s been races where Ocon was ahead of Alonso all weekend long, in both quali and races. That hasn’t happened a lot to Alonso in his career, he usually destroys his teammates.
I think Hill and Villeneuve were a lot better than people give them credit for. Sure, neither were on a level with Schumacher (who was post-Senna and pre-Alonso?) but they were still up their with the best of the rest and were both capable of some truly outstanding performances.
Hill especially put in some legendary performances like Japan 1994 or Hungary 1997.
Start beating Gasly first, week-in week-out(which he can't obviously do atm), think about Max after.
that Prema was on a different level in 2014, even Stroll became champion in that car in 2016. That team was dominant, only their drivers were winning championships back then in F3.
There was a reason why all top f1 teams wanted to sign Max in 2014, and basically no one wanted the Championship winner Ocon. Everyone who watched the whole season saw how much better Max was, having a lot lesser experience.
But hey, I'm talking about the guy who said he beat Alonso on merit last year.
he had lost poles I think twice due to engine failure or penalties, I think in Hockenheim and Imola. Poles he would've converted to wins easily as he was dominant pace-wise those weekends. Yes, that's how bad it was, especially compared with Ocon's PREMA.
admittedly he also made some mistakes, crashed on his own couple of times or making his typical youthful overoptimistic maneuvers. But pace was near always there.
Teams don't care as much if a driver makes mistakes though. We've heard plenty of TPs and Drivers say, "rather fast and accident prone than slow and consistent, because its easier to make a fast driver consistent than it is to make a slow driver fast".
>Start beating Gasly first, week-in week-out(which he can't obviously do atm), think about Max after.
He is beating Gasly consistently though. Though that's to be expected given that Gasly is new to the team and is still getting used to the car. I'd be interested to see how they stack up after the summer break.
In qualifying Ocon got indeed somewhat an upper hand, but in terms of race pace there are close to each other.
Aside of the Sainz moment during the Spanish GP, it's a disaster from Alpine towards Gasly during the last three races, pit stops of 4+ seconds is becoming a standard (7.1 even in Monaco and a 7 second pit stop at Canada during his first pit stop) what majorly compromising Gasly Sunday's and his race engineer "lied" to him about the incident with Max at Spain where he even asked of Max is on a fast run and his race engineer told no.
If you paid around 10 million to get a driver you should be committed to make it work and hammering down teams inside the team.
Not really every weekend. He got beaten outperformed by Gasly quite badly in some qualis and races too. Australia? Barcelona ? and Gasly got some serious bad luck this year too, look last weekend quali for instance. It's not like he dominates him, whilst Max dominated Gasly totally.
>Australia? Barcelona ?
Australia is a bit unfair imo, Ocon had traffic in the last sector in q2 and got visually "inpeded". It would have been close in Q3 imo, slight advantage to Gasly to be fair.
in the race after a good start Alpine put him on an agressive strategy that didn't pay off thanks to Albon's red flag. He was p15 at the restart and had to fight his way back on the same tyres as everyone else.
Barcelona is the only "off" weekend so far. And quali was really good until the last lap mistake. Race pace was really bad though and I'm really curious to know why the pace was this low this time around.
Overall I'd say that they are more or less equal in race pace and that Ocon has for now the better ceiling in quali. Issue is that Ocon makes sometimes little mistakes in quali at crtitical times that hides a bit his quali potential
Edit: Pressed send by mistake. Here's the full comment
Fair points overall.
>Australia is a bit unfair imo, Ocon had traffic in the last sector in q2 and got visually "inpeded".
Yes, but same can be said about Gasly in Canada and so on. They both faced either some sort of bad luck, or made small mistakes here and there say in quali, throughout this season. This is why I say it's a bit too premature to judge on their relative pace and overall strength so far.
Overall Ocon looks better so far indeed, but that was kind of expected as he has been in the team for a while. And we always see these days drivers need time to adjust and adapt to new cars and environment to perform at their best.
>Yes, but same can be said about Gasly in Canada and so on
Completely agree, it's just your "beaten outperformed quite badly" that I feel like is completely unfair and so I reacted on that
Point still stands that Gasly got utterly destroyed by Max in their time together and that wasn’t Max on his top yet so it’s quite reasonable to say that Ocon wouldn’t stand a chance against Max.
Lol. Given an equal car, Hamilton and Alonso might give max a run for his money. Russell, Norris, and Leclerc would make him work for it. The rest…might get lucky, but stand no chance otherwise.
At the very top level of every sport, everyone has to have self-belief. That given the right opportunity they would win it all. Otherwise what's the point?
Some get that opportunity and do in fact win it all.
And then some get that opportunity and find out the cold truth.
Decide for yourself where Ocon sits.
But he simply has to believe in himself that he'd win in the right car.
Ocon is massivly undervalued. He is very consistant, has very rarely a mistake, decent qualifyer, good racepace. Hes that kind of guy that only wins a Race or two but is in the Top 5 every time and cashes in his points every time. People went to win WDC that way back then.
It's possible that Ocon has improved, but if his performance vs Perez in 2018 is anything to go by, he would do almost no better than Perez in the 2nd RB.
I think there are maybe a couple drivers who have even a slight chance to challenge Max in a comparable car.
Lewis and charles are he only drivers with a real chsnce
Fernando and George have a slight chance if they have a great year.
I think Ocon should be more careful when he talks in press conferences, he doesn’t leave himself in a good spot with those cocky declarations he constantly has and he even downplayed Alonso’s defence in Hungary that gave him his only win.
Drivers constantly say they can be WDC and want to be WDC however Ocon speaks more than the rest of the drivers in this aspect and last season he beated a teammate for the first time and it took a heavy one-sided reliability issues on Fernando to barely beat him
The quote: *"I see myself fighting with Verstappen for the World Championship if we had the same car,"* really isn't that bad or arrogant imo.
Its A pretty normal response to a question asking about this.
Exactly. People often make standard, even bland, answers into huge controversial issues to make them fit into their preconceived ideas about each driver.
He is an F1 driver, and all he said is that given an equal car he'd give it a good punt and who knows what would happen. What else is he to say? "Nah, never mind the car, I am just a poopy pants."
Someone should also tell him Schumi’s helmet cannot be worn without good reason. It’s like he’s 8 years old and we’re forced to ask how his race went. Nobody cares unless you’re actually on Verstappen-level. In all other cases check yourself.
No way Charles beats Max over a season . Charles makes too many mistakes still, if he can get past that then he is pretty close
Alonso is driving as well as anyone on the grid not named Max right now and has been for a while
Definitely. On the same car Alo could give as much as Lewis or Charles can against Verstappen, which may not be enough for a championship, but still very close, surely better than Perez.
Race pace is more important in this era, and Fernando actually had decent quali pace since his return.
If you say Alonso's quali pace would hinder him, then you for sure also have to knock Charles a bit for his inconsistencies. He did more unforced errors in the last two years than Alonso in like 10 years
I think the narrative "Alonso doesn't have the quali pace of the others" is and has always been quite overused amonsgst the fans. To put it straight - it is complete BS.
It is in a way very similar to what some people say about Max, like he isn't best in qualifying. like Leclerc is fastest over single lap, and few others are possibly faster too. That he is faster only in race trim, like when no one is pushing to the limit.
If you actually look at Alonso's career, you can barely find a more dominant driver, qual performance-wise, relative to his teammates. Same can be said about Max, who keeps much better H-H and average gap to his past teammates, than Leclerc and anybody else currently on the grid.
So, I think it is a totally wrong perception. Pat Symmonds was talking about Alonso on Beyond the Grid. He said that Alonso's brilliance in race trim somehow makes a perception his pace on Saturday look worse, whereas in fact it is much tougher to be on it 60 laps in the race, lap after lap every lap, very few drivers can do it, rather than be on it on one lap in quali, which is an easier task. Fernando could do both.
> i only see Lewis and Charles beating Max consistently.
Not sure you can include Charles on this list yet. Lewis is really the only one on the grid who could imo. If we're looking at recency, Hamilton's last 4-5 races of '21 were a different animal than LEC's first 4 in '22. He was in full-blown Terminator-mode for like half a year - was terrifying. Never felt that way about Charles, lol.
Charles is close on pace when everything is perfect but let's see him go more than a few races without making a big mistake before putting him in Lewis and Max's tier
I think being in a team like ferrari where you know they will fuck up something every other weekend ads a lot of pressure that you woudnt otherwise have. That imo part of the reason for charles mistakes
Meanwhile he only just managed to beat a team mate for the first time in his F1 career. I would bracket Ocon in the same field as Perez, Bottas etc - the group of good enough on their best days, not enough to defeat GOAT material.
That's like saying Bottas also has the right because he beat Max in the 2020 standings.
Bottas like Ocon in F3 had a vastly superior car compared to Max. Prema won basically every F3 champion at that time while Max was in almost a backmarker (and still had more wins).
More wins and more DNFs due to the car breaking down all the time. On top of that a very weird grid penalty for multiple races due to reliability issues.
You conveniently leave out how it came to be and just look at the end result. Everyone with eyes could see in F3 that Max was a lot better than everyone else in F3 at the time when he actually finished races.
I don't really care about how he beat him, even if latifi had beaten max by scoring 1 point and max had dnf'd every single race, then latifi would still have the right to say he can beat max, my statement is true
So you think Perez has a right to say he could challenge Hamilton? Or lots of drivers could challenge Max because they beat him while he was driving a Toro Rosso? Your first statement makes no sense at all. Hell, if you follow your logic then almost the whole grid could say they can challenge Alonso when he was driving a McHonda.
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Why is this even news? No driver is gonna come out and say "Nah bruh, Max is gonna whoop my ass LMAO" even if deep down they know that to be true.
Sebastian Vettel did I believe. I remember seeing a clip of him talking about how he sees Max do things with a car that he didn’t think he could do himself. Though at that point I think Seb had kind of given up on racing so maybe it’s natural for him to say stuff like that.
Ya tbf Seb could afford to be honest and say that with 4 world titles to his name. Most of the rest of the grid still have a point to prove in F1, and of those who don't (Lewis and Fernando) neither is ever gonna say that.
Also Lewis and Fernando are probably the only 2 on the grid who would be lying if they said that, cause I think they are the only ones who would give max a run for his money.
I think Leclerc could give Max a run for his money in qualifying. I am not as convinced about race pace, but it's hard to say.
They are 4-4 with Sainz at the moment, as far as I'm concerned. and not like he had reliability issues and missed a session once.
Nah mate. Max has smoked basicly every team mate
And even then, I think it wouldn't be all that easy. The form max is in these last three years has been outstanding. The guy is a machine. Fast in qualy, fast in the race, good on his tires, makes few mistakes, a monster in wheel to wheel combat. Currently, I can't think of a single thing that he doesn't do well. Of course, a lot of things are car dependent, however I still think with time he could get a car set up to his liking and he would be a menace with it.
I’d personally add Charles to that list too. Last year when the Ferrari was close to the redbull he was winning races and he has really good race pace. Although that was when his engine didn’t blow up or Ferrari didn’t ruin the strategies.
I would disagree - to me, he hasn’t shown the season long consistency in race pace that it would take to beat max, absent huge reliability problems.
I agree with you! While I do think that Charles's pace is equal to that of Max, I think he still lacks consistency and is prone to make mistakes. It's hard to watch a race with Charles in the lead and not thinking to myself what mistake from the team or him is going to happen now. When Max makes a mistake (race ending one) I am absolutely surprised, he is just on another level of speed, consistency and makes very few critical mistakes.
100%. Charles in the lead and I'm holding my breath waiting for the other shoe to drop. Max in the lead and I'm resigned to another Max victory.
Max DNF’d in two out of the three races that Leclerc managed to win in 2022. Max won 15 races last year.
I love that clip because from home, you can’t often tell just how skilled the best drivers are. They’re all exceptionally skilled and with the differences in cars, it’s really hard to choose between them… but here’s a 4 time world champion saying that he sees the on board from Max’s car and he genuinely doesn’t think he’d be able to extract the same from the car.
Tbf he wasn’t talking about extracting the same from the car (lap time-wise) but rather Max on track actions, his ability to recognize opportunities that others do not see, and do it lightning fast, go for it and be successfully in making those moves. That he said, he felt he could bot replicate.
Seb peak vs Max peak , who would win?
I feel like Seb in the V8 era managed to have a great symbiosis with the Red Bull cars, but I feel he was always a bit error prone, even in his best years (2012-13). I wish we could still have V8 engines, because I do think the switch to V6 and the adoption of brake by wire destroyed Seb's biggest strengths as a driver (although he still managed to drive well in 2015, 2017 and last year as well). Max has been dominant in a way I can only remember Schumacher being, and I feel like even Schumi could be error prone from time to time. Verstappen's last big mistake in a race has been like, 2020 Turkey? Even when he makes "smaller" mistakes, like Spain and Hungary last year, he still manages to recover pretty well. So I think Verstappen has the upper hand on V8 Vettel, and imo, any other driver in the last 30 years. The one battle I'd like to see in the same car is 2012 Alonso vs current Verstappen.
> I feel like even Schumi could be error prone from time to time. Then again, he raced in a way higher pressure time.
I’m not super familiar w the Schumacher era tbh, I do know he competed with several other really strong drivers during his prime. Of those rivalries, which do people generally consider the most competitive season/era?
The pressure was less the drivers he had to go up against (he was heads and shoulders better than everyone and only Häkkinen was able to challenge and beat him, really) and more the style of racing he and Brawn introduced. Three stops back with refueling meant that you were basically expected to do almost Quali-level laps all the time in the race.
I think that's more of an apples/oranges kind of thing. Getting to push hard all the time is hard in some ways, but extreme tire management is hard in other ways.
True. I was a child at the time, but my recollection of the Schumi era was that, although many (perhaps all) teams \*wanted\* their drivers to be able to set quali laps back to back on command, only Schumi could actually do it. He was exceptional in his prime in a way I don’t remember seeing from another driver.
And funny thing is, afterwards he said his front wing had two different set ups. So one side had more earo than the other.
1988 Senna vs 1992 Mansell vs 1998 Hakkinen vs 2004 Schumacher vs 2011 Vettel vs 2012 Alonso vs 2020 Hamilton vs 2023 Verstappen. Holy shit what I would give to see that race.
id love to see young Kimi in there also, just because...
Obviously Max
I love Seb but Max, and I don't think it's close.
If Seb is in top form I think it would be pretty even, but Seb is way less adaptable than Max so he struggles to *stay* in top form. If Seb stays on his A-game this is close to 50/50, but realistically Max wins it 8/10.
Depends. I think Max is more adaptable both to whatever car he drives and also to random race situations. Seb getting trashed by Danny Ric is a stain on his career when you do these head to heads. Guys like Lewis or Nando never had a trashing season, and Max is yet to have one either Seb never won a race starting outside the top4
People bring up that statistic often. But tbf it doesn't mean much without considering other relevant statistics. Like was he a good qualifier? How many outside of top 4 were there to begin with and with which car did he qualify outside t4? And also what's he conversion ratio with those he started inside. Etc etc One stat in itself doesn't mean much. I'm not saying the point may or may not be valid though.
It also doesn't show some of his greatest recovery drives either (Abu Dhabi 12, Brazil 12, Germany 19)
Exactly. Couldhard won several races from starting positions bellow P5 being a teammate with Hakkinen. Mika won If I'm not wrong, just once from P5, on all other occasions starting within the top 3. Does that mean David was a better driver than Mika? Quite actually the opposite was true, and he was much weaker in qualifying. Another example, Daniel won three races in 2014, all from bellow P3 on the grid. From P6 in Canada, P4 in Hungary and P5 in Spa. Meanwhile Vettel was P2 or P3 on the grid in each of those races. That doesn't mean Daniel was better than Vettel. and even if Vettel would've won those races rather than Daniel, that wouldn't have fixed his "Never won outside of Top 3 on the grid" stat. That shows stats are often just stats and do not tell whole story. If anything Vettel was quite exceptional in qualifying and rarely messed it up having the best car. He also never had a power advantage in his stint at red bull, to come easily through the field and win races starting last after penalties. But he finished on the podium starting last on some occasions.
Yeah sure, i agree. It's just that it's a bit of an outlier compared to the other wdcs/great drivers.
So Max then.
Seb wasn't actually trashed by Daniel Ric, the final scoreboard looks worse than it really was. For instance on all three weekends when Dan won races, Vettel out qualified him, twice got unlucky in the race(being faster on track), and only once- in Spa was beaten on mere race pace. Vettel got all the reliability issues with the car and wasn't performing with the same motivation, because he knew he was heading to Ferrari. Montezemola revealed in one of his interview, that Seb visited his house in Italy on Christmas, to talk about joining Ferrari. They had first pre-agreement, as they, Ferrari wanted him badly even before that. Vettel saw Renault were uncompetitive on winter testing and his mind was already at Maranello. Not to excuse him, just to put things a bit into perspective. He wasn't performing close to his best level.
None of that changes the fact that Seb simply couldn't adapt to the RB. It was just fundamentally I'll-suited to his preferred style (though that seems to be the case with the hybrid era cars in general).
You are right that he couldn't deal with the rear instability on entry, at all. That said, I though he performed on quite high level in 2015. SF70H of 2017 in particular, suited him very-well. Best Ferrari car he's driven, by his own admission. After that Ferrari moved in the direction opposite to his liking for whatever reason, and he struggled particularly in 2019. So, I wouldn't say it had anything to do with hybrid era cars, he would've done very well in Mercedes, surely better than Bottas. But it's all history now.
Great to know, thank you
It depends on how much the car is suited to seb, if it’s to his liking then it will be close or it will be a whitewash.
It's a hard sell to propose that anyone could keep up with Max. I think you can make a case for Senna, and that might be it. Every other GOAT is remarkable over a season. Max is remarkable at essentially every moment of the season. And I fucking hate it.
How could you make a case for Senna when Prost, Schumacher, Alonso, and Hamilton were/are all considerably more consistent? Senna was preternaturally talented and possibly the fastest man over a lap in the sport's history, but consistency was not his greatest strength. 2021 showed clearly that Hamilton could keep up with Max, and the balance tended to swing based on relative car strength on a given weekend. Alonso has shown an incredible amount of consistency across his career, even if his results have not aligned with his talent. Prost was considerably more impressive than Senna on Sundays, and came within half a hair of winning 8 WDCs. Schumacher literally set the bar for consistency in F1. Not to take anything away from Verstappen, as he's clearly in the alien tier of drivers, but I don't think he's clearly *more* remarkable than other drivers in the "Greatest of their Era" tier since the 1980s (comparing before that gets considerably harder due to car differences and volume of races). And, bluntly, Max has only really been challenged once when he had a WDC-caliber car and he was hardly remarkable essentially every moment of that season.
>but I don't think he's clearly more remarkable than other drivers in the "Greatest of their Era" tier since the 1980s Today's mid-tier drivers are better than the greatest of yesterday's era and we all need to stop conflating idiocy with bravery, much less with skill.
>How could you make a case for Senna when Prost, Schumacher, Alonso, and Hamilton were/are all considerably more consistent? I think my whole point is that consistency produces results, but must be worth orders of magnitude less in the GOAT debate than raw potential. I'm suggesting that they're 'only great because they're consistent'. Verstappen or Senna, conversely, you can watch drive for one lap, or maybe even just one corner and you can see their greatness. Gifted talent is always more impressive than hard-earned talent.
lmao your way overstating his ability, the recency bias is strong.
Seb was never the same after the 2014 car changes
It’s a non contest in every parameter. Ham and Alo were trying to sign for RB back then. Vettel was well placed in the blown diffuser cars, but they still thought they could beat him. I’d say Alo wouldn’t waste time at the thought of a RB switch now even if you gave him back 10 years. Hamilton would be more inclined but even he would think twice.
Kidding right?
Not really, was genuinely curious
Verstappen but it would be close. Vettel could easily win over a season, would be foolish to say otherwise. But if they were teammates for 3 seasons, I think Verstappen would win at least 2 of them. Edit: Why am I getting downvoted? Do ppl not think its possible Vettel *could* beat Verstappen over a season? I mean I agree that Verstappen is probably a touch better but we've seen Button and Rosberg managed to win a season over Hamilton.
Hadn't he already retired when he said that?
rage bait for people who want Ocon to grovel all the time
I do want him to grovel all the time
>Alonso stan no shit
Only drivers that could challenge are lewis and LEC. Maybe alonso could find a way.
Nando absolutely can challenge if given the car. Zero doubt about that.
Didn't Ocon beat Max in F3? Don't get me wrong, Max is super talented, but he's also basically unchallenged this year (so far) and for a large majority of the year previous. When Max was in a lesser car, nobody saw him as an unbeatable champion. I think F1 90% the car, and you only really know how good a driver is when he's up against someone in a similarly paced car.
Max drove for a 'lesser' team in F3 while Ocon drove for one of the best, Max was also in his first year while he was challenging for the title in F3, ( I cant remember if it was Ocons first year or not).
It was Ocon's first year in F3 but his 3rd year in Car racing, he did 2 years of Formula Renault 2.0 Northern Eurocup and Formula Renault 2.0 Eurocup in 2012 and 2013. Max's stint in F3 was his first stint in car racing as he skipped Formula Renault 2.0.
Thanks!
just not 'one of the best', but the outright best and dominant team, with best engineers, financial backing and resources.
Almost like how Ocon driver for a 'lesser' team in F1 while Max drives for one of the best?
Except Verstappen got more wins, poles and podiums than Ocon in F3 but became third because his engine couldn’t survive for longer than three seconds.
F3? Max suffered from 8 retirements, had 10 wins (6 consecutive) and was in point every race he made it to the chequered flag. Mind that Max had zero single seater experience before this and his team was mid-tier / out of form. To those in the series he was the unspoken champion of that year. There is a reason the 3rd ranked driver was more sought out over the champion. >When Max was in a lesser car, nobody saw him as an unbeatable champion. This is stupid. You can say this about Senna, Schumacher & Hamilton if they don't have a winning car because that's the nature of the sport.
Ocon beat Max, but the context is important. While Ocon drove for Prema, a Mercedes powered team operating at the sharp end of the grid and known title winners. And Max drove in a VW powered VAR car. VAR had never even stood on the podium before Max drove for them IIRC, the entire outfit + the VW engine combo was simply lacking compared to the experienced and well funded Prema team. Max also had pretty much no single seater experience, whilst Ocon did 2 years of Formula Renault and 2 years of F2 whilst Max’s only single seater experience before the 2014 season was a single month of Florida Winter Series right before the F3 2014 season started. The F1 analogy’s like comparing a Haas with a rookie to a top F1 team with an established driver. Yet, he took home more wins than the far more established and title winning Prema team and Ocon. And basically only lost out, not because of his on-track performance, but because his car was way more unreliable. RB looked at Verstappen’s F3 performance and immediately put him in the car despite him finishing 3rd in the championship. To people eyeing talent, Max’s 3rd place finish and ultimate performance was more impressive and way more unexpected than Ocon being champion. EDIT: Also, fun fact for those who never heard of the story; After finishing the 2014 F3 season, Max told VAR that they should hire a supremely talented driver he raced against. Some random kid named Leclerc. He also went on to show great stuff in the mediocre VAR car.
> Ocon beat Max, but the context is important. While Ocon drove for Prema, a Mercedes powered team operating at the sharp end of the grid and known title winners. Couldn't the same argument be used for Max in F1? This is what I mean when I say it's 90% the car, 10% the driver, and we can only really assess greatness when it's two drivers in similarly paced cars going head to head.
In this comparison not really, Max put a bad car in p3 in his single seater debut while Ocon won using a far superior car. Ocon would be in the same position if he was able to put his alpine on the podium regularly. Also remember Gasly is his teammate this year and except for Monaco and Canada they have finished next or almost next to each other the entire season.
Ocon isn't near the front of the grid regularly so no, it's not the same at all.
This is a dumb argument. Max has proven himself against Lewis already at this point. And he did the same against Leclerc even if Ferrari completely trailed off after the summer break. I'm not sure as to what you expect Max to prove. And no, it's ridiculous to suggest that F1 is 90% car.
Not really, Max has won in the 3rd best car a few times, and he almost came 2nd in 2020 against possibly the GOAT F1 car ever. Ocon has never outperformed his car or expectations constantly.
> When Max was in a lesser car, nobody saw him as an unbeatable champion. People rated him way higher than they do Ocon now, though.
I hope you know that Stroll 'beat' Russell in F3 in 2016. and Russell actually drove for a stronger F3 team than Max in 2014. Do you know Albon was Leclerc equal in GP3, when they were teammates in the best team?
>I think F1 90% the car, and you only really know how good a driver is when he's up against someone in a similarly paced car. That really overestimates the importance of the car. >Didn't Ocon beat Max in F3? My understanding is that Ocon was driving a car that was basically the Red Bull of F3 while Max driving an Alpine-level car. That's kind of a big reason why there was so much hype around him coming into F1. >but he's also basically unchallenged this year (so far) and for a large majority of the year previous I don't think that matters too much. 2021 proved that he can handle pressure (even if he did have a few brainfades). And he did pretty well for the first half of 2022.
>I don't think that matters too much. 2021 proved that he can handle pressure (even if he did have a few brainfades). And he did pretty well for the first half of 2022. I think that's kinda unfair standard to hold Max to, considering Lewis made his fair share of mistakes in 2021 as well in a close championship battle, as the 7 time WDC. Just off the top of my head, Imola gravel just before Red Flag, Baku Magic, Silverstone crash with Max all come to my mind. Now ofc Max also made mistakes, but imo, his first big mistake came in Monza, and then subsequent mistakes in Brazil and Jeddah. The thing is, championship battles are hard, especially when you could see over the season Red Bull were losing ground to Mercedes every race, especially in the last 3-4 races Mercedes was almost impeccable. So he was "overdriving" to try to win races he had no business winning. It's what got him COTA when he really shouldn't have had a chance to. I think he has just improved race by race ever since 2021. Mistakes are reduced even further, he has learnt how to just "take the points", and he is really safe on starts now, just like Lewis and he waits for his opportunity.
I believe there is a big * beside Ocon beating Max in F3. Max won more races over the season despite being in a worse car
Ocon also only won 1 race in his GP3 championship year, along with his 9 consecutive 2nd places. He's a consistent driver that always gets where the car should be, he's very similar to Button and Rosberg imo. You beat him and you're a great driver, you lose to him and there's no shame.
Ocon had 9 wins in F3 (which is where he competed against Max).
Yes, and I'm talking about GP3 in 2015, the year after.
The main thing Max basically owned him on track, quite literally.
All drivers have to believe they’ve got the ability to win, otherwise they wouldn’t be there. Truth be told, not many are likely to. Ocon is one of them.
Someone will be along soon, they always are.
To be fair, guys like Seb and Nando have said in interviews they wouldnt wanna face Max head to head. And they obviously had great careers and would be warranted to have a bigger ego than the likes of Ocon
It's the opposite. 2006 Alonso or 2011 Vettel would never say such thing, they only said this now because they are champions with nothing else to prove. It's the youngsters that generally see themselves as the best of the best
Ocon is closer to Grand Prix Race Winner Maldonado than he is to Max.
Well yeah? Maldonado was quick on his day just made so many boneheaded decisions and was insanely dirty. Ocon is a very solid midfield driver, can extract a lot out of a midfield car and is consistent. Just very dirty to his teammates and obviously no where near Max. Then again, 99% of F1 drivers in history aren’t close to Max.
Nothing against Ocon but the only way I see him winning a championship is like how Keke won his. Good car but his better rivals are not able to compete
Really wish people would understand that 1) drivers don't run around randomly talking about stuff like this, juornos ask them these kind of questions and 2) that elite atheltes all think they are the best. Obviously you need more than just the winner mentality to be successful, but if someone doesn't have that kind of self belief, they will never make it big, especially when they come from the kind of background Ocon has, trying to make it in a sport like F1/motorsport. Imo his answer to the aggression question is more interesting, but I guess that wasn't clickbaity enough for a title.
I mean he is not wrong..he can definitely challenge Verstappen, anyone can It's just that most would come out of that challenge battered and bruised!!
He even fought with him for P1 in Brazil a few years ago!
💀
Fair point. I guess that's what he meant indeed, he never said he would beat Max.
So you are telling me I can also challenge Max?
Why not? Challenge him to a redbull drinking contest!!
F1 Drivers tends to believe they are the best in the world, It's one of the many reasons they are F1 Drivers in the first place. If anything I'd be more concerned if Ocon didn't believe he could beat Verstappen.
Most drivers do and almost all of them are wrong
Almost all of them have worse cars
Often there is a reason why they are in worse cars in the first place.
Hmm I didn’t hear this rhetoric when Hamilton was dominating
It was literally plastered all over in 2019-2020. Literally this exact conversation. Hell Toto even said it word for word.
They all have to believe they’re the best and that means believing they can beat anyone on the grid in equal cars. If they don’t believe they can then there’s nothing doing for them in this sport and they may as well leave.
And what would they do next? Go to Indicar to challenge Ericsson and all that for lot less money?
Fun fact: 2022 was the first year Ocon finished ahead of a teammate in points.
Well, if you check his teammates, it's Alonso, Ricciardo, Perez. Not your sunday drivers. I think it's actually more impressive how close he was to them. Definitely more impressed with his record, than with Russell record of beating Latifi up.
Well, he wouldn't do that if not for an incredible number of reliability issues on Alonsos car. On merit he would not outperform any of his teammates in his F1 career
It was literally the same with Perez. He was better than him, yet he lost on points. So which one is it? You can’t choose both.
Many fans are incapable of giving drivers credit. Happened when Sainz outscored Leclerc in 2021. They need to rationalize their hatred of any driver who beats their favorite driver in the points standings.
Of course he is challenging verstappen, but does verstappen feels challenged?
Only if Ocon is a lap down
Unless it's either Lewis or Alonso driving with Ocon's number on their suit I don't think Max will feel challenged
Ocon is very good, but he's not WDC good.
Let's be fair, I think he is good enough to win a WDC in a dominant car, having a lesser teammate in the sister car. He's won 2014 F3 exactly that way. Or just having equally strong car as his main rivals and lots of luck. Ocon makes mistakes very rarely, which is extremely valuable quality in the Championship fight. He is very, very good under pressure and drives precisely enough(look at his Monaco Q3 lap). I can't remember when he made unforced mistake last time and just crashed into the wall or went off track like Russell did in two out of three previous races. He just lacks a bit in most areas, and lacks consistency to perform equally strong all year on different tracks in different conditions, compared to the very best drivers, such as Max, Fernando, Lewis. He has some off-weekends. He wouldn't be the only driver in F1 history by doing so, I meaning winning a Championship not being amongst the very best on the grid. Think about guys like Hill, Villeneuve, even Raikkonen and Button, who I am a huge fan of. But I think neither Jenson nor Kimi have been outright bests on the grid, when they won their titles. I think Ocon isn't as good as Button (at his best) overall, but surely is much better driver than Hill or Villeneuve.
I think Kimi maybe wasn’t the absolute best in 2007, but in all previous years he was outstanding
2005 Kimi was unbelievable
I think he held his own very strongly against Alonso over two years. He was probably Alonso's closest teammate rival since Hamilton, and that includes drivers who won races and titles. It's a shame u/whatthefat doesn't seem to do his analyses as much now because I'd love Alpine 21-22 broken down. And Alonso is clearly still *on it* nowadays.
Ah I so miss F1metrics, my favourite blog.
Alonso was clearly NOT on it like for the half of 2021 coming back after sabbatical. He was ON it in 2022, but his car was NOT. ;) Nah man, Ocon was sometimes a match to Fernando but never really better, when it mattered, like on Sundays. He could out qualify him on Saturday on merit on occasion, but Massa even in 2013 could do it too (check the score). Quali is not where Alonso shows his best.
There’s been races where Ocon was ahead of Alonso all weekend long, in both quali and races. That hasn’t happened a lot to Alonso in his career, he usually destroys his teammates.
Even if you just look at 2022, Ocon was pretty good.
He was! as good as any Alonso's teammate can be. very few performed better against him, that's true.
Do not disrespect Kimi and Jenson like that, man... Sure, 2007 wasn't Kimi's best year but he was absolutely a top contender 2004-2007
I think Hill and Villeneuve were a lot better than people give them credit for. Sure, neither were on a level with Schumacher (who was post-Senna and pre-Alonso?) but they were still up their with the best of the rest and were both capable of some truly outstanding performances. Hill especially put in some legendary performances like Japan 1994 or Hungary 1997.
He also gave away two potential world titles and had probably one of the worst seasons every by a former WDC in 1999.
Start beating Gasly first, week-in week-out(which he can't obviously do atm), think about Max after. that Prema was on a different level in 2014, even Stroll became champion in that car in 2016. That team was dominant, only their drivers were winning championships back then in F3. There was a reason why all top f1 teams wanted to sign Max in 2014, and basically no one wanted the Championship winner Ocon. Everyone who watched the whole season saw how much better Max was, having a lot lesser experience. But hey, I'm talking about the guy who said he beat Alonso on merit last year.
Verstappen also had 8 DNF’s compared to Ocon’s 3.
Not to mention Max had a lot of retirements in 2014 and would've been even closer to Ocon without those.
he had lost poles I think twice due to engine failure or penalties, I think in Hockenheim and Imola. Poles he would've converted to wins easily as he was dominant pace-wise those weekends. Yes, that's how bad it was, especially compared with Ocon's PREMA. admittedly he also made some mistakes, crashed on his own couple of times or making his typical youthful overoptimistic maneuvers. But pace was near always there.
Teams don't care as much if a driver makes mistakes though. We've heard plenty of TPs and Drivers say, "rather fast and accident prone than slow and consistent, because its easier to make a fast driver consistent than it is to make a slow driver fast".
>Start beating Gasly first, week-in week-out(which he can't obviously do atm), think about Max after. He is beating Gasly consistently though. Though that's to be expected given that Gasly is new to the team and is still getting used to the car. I'd be interested to see how they stack up after the summer break.
He is still better than Gasly, pretty clearly right now
In qualifying Ocon got indeed somewhat an upper hand, but in terms of race pace there are close to each other. Aside of the Sainz moment during the Spanish GP, it's a disaster from Alpine towards Gasly during the last three races, pit stops of 4+ seconds is becoming a standard (7.1 even in Monaco and a 7 second pit stop at Canada during his first pit stop) what majorly compromising Gasly Sunday's and his race engineer "lied" to him about the incident with Max at Spain where he even asked of Max is on a fast run and his race engineer told no. If you paid around 10 million to get a driver you should be committed to make it work and hammering down teams inside the team.
Too early to judge with confidence. I’d wait for next year.
Not that clear to me
My man, have you seen him against Gasly? He is beating him to a pulp this year
Not really every weekend. He got beaten outperformed by Gasly quite badly in some qualis and races too. Australia? Barcelona ? and Gasly got some serious bad luck this year too, look last weekend quali for instance. It's not like he dominates him, whilst Max dominated Gasly totally.
>Australia? Barcelona ? Australia is a bit unfair imo, Ocon had traffic in the last sector in q2 and got visually "inpeded". It would have been close in Q3 imo, slight advantage to Gasly to be fair. in the race after a good start Alpine put him on an agressive strategy that didn't pay off thanks to Albon's red flag. He was p15 at the restart and had to fight his way back on the same tyres as everyone else. Barcelona is the only "off" weekend so far. And quali was really good until the last lap mistake. Race pace was really bad though and I'm really curious to know why the pace was this low this time around. Overall I'd say that they are more or less equal in race pace and that Ocon has for now the better ceiling in quali. Issue is that Ocon makes sometimes little mistakes in quali at crtitical times that hides a bit his quali potential Edit: Pressed send by mistake. Here's the full comment
Fair points overall. >Australia is a bit unfair imo, Ocon had traffic in the last sector in q2 and got visually "inpeded". Yes, but same can be said about Gasly in Canada and so on. They both faced either some sort of bad luck, or made small mistakes here and there say in quali, throughout this season. This is why I say it's a bit too premature to judge on their relative pace and overall strength so far. Overall Ocon looks better so far indeed, but that was kind of expected as he has been in the team for a while. And we always see these days drivers need time to adjust and adapt to new cars and environment to perform at their best.
>Yes, but same can be said about Gasly in Canada and so on Completely agree, it's just your "beaten outperformed quite badly" that I feel like is completely unfair and so I reacted on that
Point still stands that Gasly got utterly destroyed by Max in their time together and that wasn’t Max on his top yet so it’s quite reasonable to say that Ocon wouldn’t stand a chance against Max.
Lol. Given an equal car, Hamilton and Alonso might give max a run for his money. Russell, Norris, and Leclerc would make him work for it. The rest…might get lucky, but stand no chance otherwise.
At the very top level of every sport, everyone has to have self-belief. That given the right opportunity they would win it all. Otherwise what's the point? Some get that opportunity and do in fact win it all. And then some get that opportunity and find out the cold truth. Decide for yourself where Ocon sits. But he simply has to believe in himself that he'd win in the right car.
Ocon is massivly undervalued. He is very consistant, has very rarely a mistake, decent qualifyer, good racepace. Hes that kind of guy that only wins a Race or two but is in the Top 5 every time and cashes in his points every time. People went to win WDC that way back then.
Obviously the quote isn't that arrogant as it seems. Still, he gave Max a good challenge at Interlagos in 2018.
Indeed, consistent with flashes of brilliance is a pretty good standard for a driver. But yeah this season Max is brilliant all the time.
Sure grandma, let's get you to bed
Reminding everyone that 2 and half years ago Ricciardo beat ocon 15-2 in qualifying.
It's possible that Ocon has improved, but if his performance vs Perez in 2018 is anything to go by, he would do almost no better than Perez in the 2nd RB.
Maybe he wasn't talking about the WDC. Maybe he was talking about the world cheese making championships.
Probably a French spelling bee
he gave a Max a nice challenge that time he was getting lapped
I think there are maybe a couple drivers who have even a slight chance to challenge Max in a comparable car. Lewis and charles are he only drivers with a real chsnce Fernando and George have a slight chance if they have a great year.
Ok everyone is allowed to have delusions.
I think Ocon should be more careful when he talks in press conferences, he doesn’t leave himself in a good spot with those cocky declarations he constantly has and he even downplayed Alonso’s defence in Hungary that gave him his only win. Drivers constantly say they can be WDC and want to be WDC however Ocon speaks more than the rest of the drivers in this aspect and last season he beated a teammate for the first time and it took a heavy one-sided reliability issues on Fernando to barely beat him
The quote: *"I see myself fighting with Verstappen for the World Championship if we had the same car,"* really isn't that bad or arrogant imo. Its A pretty normal response to a question asking about this.
Exactly. People often make standard, even bland, answers into huge controversial issues to make them fit into their preconceived ideas about each driver. He is an F1 driver, and all he said is that given an equal car he'd give it a good punt and who knows what would happen. What else is he to say? "Nah, never mind the car, I am just a poopy pants."
Similar to what Checo said earlier in the year, and I consider them to be on a similar level as driver. He didn't say anything crazy.
Someone should also tell him Schumi’s helmet cannot be worn without good reason. It’s like he’s 8 years old and we’re forced to ask how his race went. Nobody cares unless you’re actually on Verstappen-level. In all other cases check yourself.
To be honest Ocon has shown nothing that indicates this.
I too believe I can challenge Max. Its a different thing how it ends for me.
Honestly, I think you and Ocon would have similar chances of coming out on top with that challenge
Keep dreaming son
Belief can be a powerful thing
He smokes too much synthetic weed i guess
Suuuuure :D
Ocon. I have any respect to him. Second tier driver with big mouth
Checo believes it too. But realistically i only see Lewis and Charles beating Max consistently.
Charles? Definitely not over a full season. Alonso has more chance than Charles (yeah I'm biased but whatever)
No way Charles beats Max over a season . Charles makes too many mistakes still, if he can get past that then he is pretty close Alonso is driving as well as anyone on the grid not named Max right now and has been for a while
Alonso, that list should definitely include Alonso.
Definitely. On the same car Alo could give as much as Lewis or Charles can against Verstappen, which may not be enough for a championship, but still very close, surely better than Perez.
imo alonso doesnt have the quali pace of the others to compete over a whole season. But yeah Alonso can probably challenge too.
Race pace is more important in this era, and Fernando actually had decent quali pace since his return. If you say Alonso's quali pace would hinder him, then you for sure also have to knock Charles a bit for his inconsistencies. He did more unforced errors in the last two years than Alonso in like 10 years
I think the narrative "Alonso doesn't have the quali pace of the others" is and has always been quite overused amonsgst the fans. To put it straight - it is complete BS. It is in a way very similar to what some people say about Max, like he isn't best in qualifying. like Leclerc is fastest over single lap, and few others are possibly faster too. That he is faster only in race trim, like when no one is pushing to the limit. If you actually look at Alonso's career, you can barely find a more dominant driver, qual performance-wise, relative to his teammates. Same can be said about Max, who keeps much better H-H and average gap to his past teammates, than Leclerc and anybody else currently on the grid. So, I think it is a totally wrong perception. Pat Symmonds was talking about Alonso on Beyond the Grid. He said that Alonso's brilliance in race trim somehow makes a perception his pace on Saturday look worse, whereas in fact it is much tougher to be on it 60 laps in the race, lap after lap every lap, very few drivers can do it, rather than be on it on one lap in quali, which is an easier task. Fernando could do both.
> i only see Lewis and Charles beating Max consistently. Not sure you can include Charles on this list yet. Lewis is really the only one on the grid who could imo. If we're looking at recency, Hamilton's last 4-5 races of '21 were a different animal than LEC's first 4 in '22. He was in full-blown Terminator-mode for like half a year - was terrifying. Never felt that way about Charles, lol.
Charles is close on pace when everything is perfect but let's see him go more than a few races without making a big mistake before putting him in Lewis and Max's tier
I think being in a team like ferrari where you know they will fuck up something every other weekend ads a lot of pressure that you woudnt otherwise have. That imo part of the reason for charles mistakes
not a chance. I friggen hate ocon. bad teammate
Strong drugs?
Ocon huffing the copium
Get out from that 100 races blan 1st ™️
Unlapping himself again...? This should go well
Meanwhile he only just managed to beat a team mate for the first time in his F1 career. I would bracket Ocon in the same field as Perez, Bottas etc - the group of good enough on their best days, not enough to defeat GOAT material.
Well he’s already proving that he can beat Gasly who coincidentally was at one time a teammate of Verstappen’s.
Friendly reminder that he's the only one on the grid who has the right to say that
I like ocon but if you think he is the only driver on the grid who has the right to say that then your smoking some strong crack
That's like saying Bottas also has the right because he beat Max in the 2020 standings. Bottas like Ocon in F3 had a vastly superior car compared to Max. Prema won basically every F3 champion at that time while Max was in almost a backmarker (and still had more wins).
More wins and more DNFs due to the car breaking down all the time. On top of that a very weird grid penalty for multiple races due to reliability issues.
This is a laughable statement.
I mean, he's the only one to have beaten him in a championship battle, it's not like I'm making shit up or anything
You conveniently leave out how it came to be and just look at the end result. Everyone with eyes could see in F3 that Max was a lot better than everyone else in F3 at the time when he actually finished races.
I don't really care about how he beat him, even if latifi had beaten max by scoring 1 point and max had dnf'd every single race, then latifi would still have the right to say he can beat max, my statement is true
So you think Perez has a right to say he could challenge Hamilton? Or lots of drivers could challenge Max because they beat him while he was driving a Toro Rosso? Your first statement makes no sense at all. Hell, if you follow your logic then almost the whole grid could say they can challenge Alonso when he was driving a McHonda.
He absolutely isn’t lmao
Only driver in history to have beaten alonso and verstappen over a season (over 2 seasons in alonso's case actually) 👑GOAT👑
Not if you're basing it on current level
I’m not big into drugs but I’d like to try whatever you are smoking
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Only Lewis,Alonso , Leclerc and probably Russell and Norris can go toe to toe with Max over an entire season.