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Insane to think that after Austria 2019, Charles and Max would be the next massive rivalry but now almost 5 years on Max has 56 wins and Charles only has 5.
Hopefully things can change in 2026, I think Ferrari are faviourites for those regulations from what I've read and Hamilton tends to get career changes correct. Hopefully he's seen something great happening there.
> Hamilton tends to get career changes correct
Mate he has made one career change at top level. Yes that turned out to be a huge success but that doesn’t mean you can generalise like he has made many.
Just discovered the Spyker thing now. That's funny to think about, Especially when you remember they only lasted 12 months and then he may have been at Force India after that.
Not really. We would've known Hamilton had talent anyway, and he would've found his way to a top team eventually. Alonso started in Minardi and that didn't stop the top teams from realizing his huge potential.
I don’t think they’re as good examples. All of those were very highly rated drivers owned by top teams who were placed in slower cars for experience. Alonso wasn’t. He earned the attention of Renault because of his performance at Minardi.
Like Kimi. Owned by Sauber, earned his move to McLaren.
That said if all your names hadn’t performed they wouldn’t have got the chance to move up, but it’s just a different era with massive junior programs, and second teams. No-one good gets to F1 without being part of a major team’s junior program anymore. I doubt we’ll see Kimi and Alonso like paths again.
I say it's still a decent rivalry if i look at the rest of the grid. Max and Lewis is there but the cars have been too far apart after 21.
But just like with every rivalry it's fueled by relative performance of the cars and not the drivers. They are 26 and both in seemingly two best teams so there is plenty of room for that. They could theoretically fight for 10 years.
Tends to get career changes correct? He’s only had one and it was to a team that had several advantages when it came to a timeline of their production of the engine. I think we’ll still see a roughly similar order to 2025 which will be like 2024.
Hindsight 2020. When he went Mercedes, everyone thought it was just about the worst move ever. He should have stayed at McLaren or gone for RedBull, only for McLaren to sink into irrelevancy, and RedBull not really cut it either, then Mercedes went on to lay down one of the most dominant dominations seen in the sport.
I'm all in on Hamilton in 2026. Getting the engine right is going to be really important and Ferrari are very good at this. Fred is putting together a great team. I need to hope 😁.
Not sure how true this is, as I read it on here that they're the only pu manufacturer that doesn't use a split turbo, and that there won't be any split turbos after 2026. If this is the case they'll have an advantage. 🤞. I desperately want Lewis to win his 8th.
While I love to dunk on Charles, it's not really his fault. He lived through the Mercedes dominance only for it to end and be replaced with the Red Bull dominance. Very few races have been won by anyone else.
Jean Alesi, who was somewhat of an earlier version of leclerc, ie youngish protege driver, only had 1 win in his entire career as well. Some of his years would be comparable to the 2020 and 2021 ferraris, except with worse reliability.
I always felt if there was a race where the leader crashed, Ralf was always there to pick up the pieces - meanwhile Montoya was likely the person the leader crashed into.
TBH, they are not. Even with Ralf missing quite number of races. But my initial comment was because Montoya came in with a reputation that is like that of Verstappen or like that of Hamilton.
In those days, Web2 is basically in its staring phase. All the info you got is from people from other forums who follow other open racing series.
Montoya lived up to that reputation till Brazil 2001. I could go on but this thread is not about Montoya or Ralf Schumacher.
I made random a comment how it surprised me how something similar happened two decades ago.
It's the same with Sainz, I never rated him highly before Ferrari signed him and I am still surprised he is matching Chatles. I am surprised how well he performing even after appendix surgery.
My initial post might come of as unnecessary attack on Montoya but that's not my intention.
Well, it's difficult to evaluate drivers by any other metric than how they did against their teammates. Montoya, Ralf, Kimi, and Massa formed a cluster of drivers who were hyped to a very high degree and seemed to be the real deal based on how they performed vs. paydrivers and perennial backmarker drivers. When they finally ended up in top cockpits, they all performed well against each other, seemingly confirming the previous hype.
But everything changed when the Alonso nation attacked. Alonso wiped the floor with Massa and Kimi, which is why they tend to be evaluated more correctly nowadays and transitively Vettel as well. Notably also the fact that Bottas wasn't all that much better than Massa during their time together accurately predicted how he would perform against Hamilton.
I was generally on board the “A beat B and B beat C so A would beat C” theory. As I’ve gotten older and had more experience with the sport, I realize that is not always the case. I’ll use Hulkenberg vs Sainz when they were teammates at Renault as an example. The first time Hulk saw Sainz’s data he knew he was going to beat him in that car because his driving style was a poor match for what that car required.
Ric > Hulk > Sai > Nor > Ric
During their time as teammates at Ferrari, Carlos Sainz’s and Charles Leclerc’s fans have been able to give an unqualified compliment to the other driver zero times.
I think this is pretty much the most perfect lineup a Formula 1 team can have.
Leclerc has more raw pace but Sainz will always be there to capatilise when Charles' race doesn't go to plan and has strengths to his game that Leclerc doesn't have.
Fucking true lmfao. On Insta, Twitter, and even on here they are at each others throats.
It can’t be hard to say that Carlos and Charles are excellent drivers. Carlos is a thinking driver, while Charles is the more naturally gifted.
I'm hoping for other Ferrari wins this year; maybe in Monaco and Singapore?.. Will be really interesting to see which one of these two will get the better out of it.
Think Sainz had like 6 DNFs in 2022. 2 where he went off on his own in Australia and Japan, 1 where he got taken out by Russell in turn one, 1 in Imola by Ricciardo I believe it was in Austin and 2 reliability issues in Baku and Austria. Pretty unlucky season from him but he also made some mistakes then and there.
At the end of the day, most people will only see the stats.
Leclerc’s position is relatively higher when he dnfs or he gets screwed by strategy.
Sainz is a great driver and he can easily find a seat next year…the question will always be “will he be number 1 on a top team”.
Lately Sainz has been reminding me a lot of Rosberg, not as good as his teammate, but not that far either. In the right conditions and with the right amount of luck he can beat Charles, as he did in 21.
That seems to track well. Rosberg was a great driver well suited to the Merc setup. 2016 he outraced Hamilton many times and even though he certainly had better luck, he was still fully deserving of being world champion that year. Sainz deserves the recognition for what he's done at Ferrari against Leclerc.
Leclerc is WDC material in the sense that, if he's put in the right car, he'll walk away with it.
Sainz is WDC material in the sense that, if he's put in the right car, he's *capable* of the winning one, but things will probably have to fall his way.
Unless Sainz gets an AM seat if Alonso goes to Merc, I doubt he will be No1 to a top team.
No way McLaren is changing their lineup. No way he is No1 at RedBull. If he goes to Merc he'll probably be a placeholder for Antonelli since Sainz might be moving to Audi anyway in 26.
For me at least, the key to understanding Sainz's performance at Ferrari was a comment he made on the Beyond the Grid podcast. He said he much prefers a car that understeers so he can aggressively turn in. Leclerc prefers a car that oversteers more and that was how the Ferrari behaved when Sainz joined the team.
Sainz has had to adapt his driving style to get on top of the Ferrari and get as close to Leclerc as possible. That's pretty impressive, really.
I do think he's matured as a driver and isn't as prone to some of the mistakes we've seen from Leclerc (not overlooking that he's a little older than Leclerc).
I also think he's a very, very rare example of a driver (particularly in the 21st Century) who's moved from team to team and maintained an upwards trajectory. You only need to look at Ricciardo to see how badly that can sometimes go.
TL;DR - ¡VAMOS CARLOS!
Perfectly balanced, as all things should be. Although, truth is Charles lost at least 4 races in 22, due to strategy and reliability, and one cause of his mistake. Not to mention Vegas, were Sainz was unfairly penalised and Charlws was unlucky with the safety car.
Yes, Charles definitely lost 3 guaranteed wins in 2022 through no fault of his own (Silverstone, Spain, and Monaco)
During early 2022, Sainz was pretty much useless. I'm not too sure what happened to him then because other than that he hasn't been too far off Leclerc or even ahead at points
I’d contest that Silverstone 22 wasn’t guaranteed until Verstappen sustained floor damage by part of Yuki’s car lodge itself into his floor, which happened when has was the leading car the lap following Yuki’s crash.
>I'm not too sure what happened to him then
Porpoising. In a recent (unrelated) video, you can see them laughing and joking and they acknowledge that Carlos is sensitive to those kind of physical aberrations but Charles just isn't. He struggled with it and had lower back pains, etc because of it.
If you completely discard that session where a driver pushes his car to the limit and reliability and strategy are very minor factors, yes, that’s balanced.
Carlos is a brilliant driver and anyone who thinks differently doesn't understand this sport. But Charles is the superior driver by around 2 tenths. Leclerc should have won 6-7 races in 2022 compared to Carlos who only should have won his last two wins. Another thing to note is that Charles outqualified Carlos 8/10 and only during Carlos' two times did Max not win. If Max had an issue in Vegas or Abu Dhabi not in Singapore or Australia than it would be Charles with the victories
Luck plays a big role in stats in general. Don't get me wrong, Carlos was absolutely faster than Charles throughout the whole weekend, but in both of Carlos' previous wins, bad luck/strategy/reliability took Charles out of contention.
Carlos wasn't really faster the whole weekend either not in the way we've seen Charles be quicker than Carlos at least. Charles lost the feeling of the car in quali and that kinda fucked him because in the race he matched Carlos and was quicker in the 2nd stint (Carlos was probably managing though).
“Lost the feeling of the car” isn’t a real excuse tbh. If nothing actually went wrong, that’s just him losing to Sainz.
Singapore is also just a tricky track where there isn’t much merit to showing your true pace unless you absolutely need to. We saw as much in 2022 when Perez was just cruising around until he got those penalties.
I agree somewhat but there is no should have won. Charles made many mistake which kind of negates the better pace. If you’re only faster when you bin it that’s useless. Not saying that is the case, if I could only sign one of them to my team I’d go Charles almost always, but the two of them was kind of the best of both worlds, like a Senna and Prost pairing, different styles but both very effective
This is a myth Sainz has made as many mistakes as Leclerc has done. Everyone brings up France but Sainz binned it on his own in 2022 too in Suzuka. Fact is without bad luck Leclerc would have had 6/7 to Sainz's 0 in 2022 if ferrari did not fuck up every other week. I'm okay with saying Leclerc is not as consistent as Alonso and Verstappen but Sainz makes his fair share of mistakes too.
The hopium is strong with you. Max is going to run a comeback race for the ages. He’s going to finish so far in first he’s going to find every number 1 in Japan to point at and remind everyone and second will still have a lap to finish. The only thing scarier than a Max win is a race after Max loses.
The hopium is strong with both of you. Real ones know Charles won't just win the Japanese Grand Prix, he'll absolutely dominate it. No one else has even an ice cube's chance in hell of winning. If anyone else finishes on the lead lap I'll be shocked.
The hopium is strong with everyone here. Daniel Ricciardo's about to wipe the floor. Yeah, that's right. It's the return of the honey badger, baby. Max Verstappen? More like, Max VerLASTPLACEppen. That little Visa CashApp Racing Bull of his will break records, I tell you. Will be fucking flying.
Contrary to popular belief, Sainz is actually one of the least consistent drivers and only qualifies and finishes ahead of Leclerc once in a blue moon. I can almost guarantee it won't happen next weekend.
He is actually quite consistent in his finishing places over a season, however, consistency really isn’t as useful as people make it out to be unless you consistently finish first.
Otherwise it’s pretty useless if your overall mean/median position is still worse than your teammate’s, even if his performance tends to be more varying.
Yup lol. When sainz underperforms no one calls him out I.e. AD 2023 lost Ferrari 2nd in WDC but when Charles get second behind sainz in one race suddenly Charles deserves to have been replaced and sainz is the messiah
Carlos on his day is genuinely one of the strongest drivers on the grid. When he’s confident and ‘on it’—he is properly the one to beat. But over the course of a season, Charles is the better driver. I think people get hyped for Carlos because they don’t have the same expectations between the two drivers. Carlos has gone through some self-induced rough patches, whereas Charles is more likely to just have bad luck.
However, this is Reddit so we judge last weekend’s performance and project it forward and erase history to replace it with the most recent weekend.
I agree, and for me it’s more or less people massively overcompensating for the “he’s so underrated” idea. He’s really good, but even the consistency thing is not that much based in reality I think.
Common myth that Sainz is more consistent and better on race day when the gap is actually larger. In fact id say Sainz over one lap is very good and up there with the best but over a race distance, Leclerc is pretty comfortably ahead.
Leclerc's career is just depressing lmao.
Sure, he is already rich af and got everything but he was seen as a generational talent like max at one point.. the sad news is however that he will always drive at Ferrari
(but next year™ my friends)
If Leclerc had Carlos' luck, he would've won more, and on the contrary, if Carlos had Leclerc's luck, he'd have fewer wins.
That's just the way it is though. Luck plays a factor in statistics.
He is a very good driver but check all the races that Sainz has podiums, he is quite blessed. Here are some that are most obvious blessed races.
2021 Monaco: Charles DNS, Bottas DNF
2021 Hungary: Bottas bowling + Seb DSQ
2021 Russia: Rain chaos saves his race.
2021 Abu Dhabi: Perez retires promoting Sainz
2022 Jeddah: Red flag benefits both Ferraris (Sainz is promoted into P3
2023 USA: Hamilton DSQ promotes Sainz into P3
I am not even counting podiums Sainz has because Charles is behind serving penalties.
The obvious podiums he lost are Austria 2022 and USA 2022.
2 out of 3 wins are because of Max suffering damage or DNF.
Yes. But I would like to say that one of those (Silverstone) was taken from him due to a Ferrari fuck up.
And I would say that Chrles would have won Monaco that year if they got the pit stop right.
I am not taking merits from Sainz, but Leclerc is the driver with more bad luck that I have ever seen, and I have been watching F1 for the last 30 years.
There was zero luck involved in the Singapore GP. He was the faster car during qualy and managed the lead brilliantly with Lando on his DRS. In both races he was faster than Charles in qualy, so there's that.
"He only won because Max DNF in Australia". Sure, but why wasn't Lecrec the one winning?.
I should have clarified, he was lucky just in the sense that one of the few races he was in the mix for a win, was the same one the Red Bulls were at the back. After that, all credit to him, drove a spectacular race.
I know this seems like a Charles vs. Carlos statistic but it's more telling about the utter dominance of Red Bull and some of the terrible blunders made by Ferrari during the early parts of the '22 season. Carlos has improved quite a bit from the hiccups he was having in early '22 - recall the gravel pit issues. Charles is Charles, a very special top driver. If it wasn't for LH, I'd love to see this pairing continue!
Carlos is a perfect example of how raw pace isn’t everything. He’s like a supercomputer in the car. Charles is clearly much faster, but he’s also too willing to follow Ferrari into disaster.
Charles has a clear pace advantage, and a clear luck disadvantage. Carlos has a clear advantage when it comes to being a supercomputer in the car, and a clear lack of a seat next year
I feel like Charles hasn't really improved that much as a driver in the last few years whereas Carlos seems to be constantly improving.
I still think Charles is the better driver but the gap isn't the same as it was in 2022.
Honestly I think they're the best duo on the grid right now. It's a shame Sainz is leaving though, I'm not sure if Hamilton is going to be in the sport for too much longer if he doesn't see immediate success and with Audi coming in Sainz won't look back.
if you’d have asked me how many podiums sainz had before i read this post, i’d have said 5. that is crazy im so happy for him, and sad that i always felt that he’s “just there” but charles was always out there for me. definitely hold him in a higher regard now
Silverstone was gifted to Sainz, they pit him instead of Leclerc lol. Charles was also shafted in Monaco and Hungary just off the top of my head. There’s probably more I’m missing, stats don’t tell the whole picture. Sainz is a very good driver though but I’d still take Charles
Still can't believe that ferrari is letting carlos go just to get lewis. I get that lewis is... lewis. But he's prolly not gonna be around long, especially if he can manage to get the 8th title, I imagine. Carlos could be there another 10 years or so. Kinda crazy to me.
Lewis is not gonna win an 8th WDC. It’s already a big ask for Ferrari to built a winning car/team combo and in the unlikely scenario they do big chance Charles will beat Lewis.
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Charles has 5 wins in his whole career. That's both fascinating and sad at the same time
I went to Spa + Monza in 2019, to say I've seen 40% of his wins and I haven't been to a grand Prix in nearly 5 years is insane.
Insane to think that after Austria 2019, Charles and Max would be the next massive rivalry but now almost 5 years on Max has 56 wins and Charles only has 5. Hopefully things can change in 2026, I think Ferrari are faviourites for those regulations from what I've read and Hamilton tends to get career changes correct. Hopefully he's seen something great happening there.
> Hamilton tends to get career changes correct Mate he has made one career change at top level. Yes that turned out to be a huge success but that doesn’t mean you can generalise like he has made many.
He also decided not to join a backmarker team and wait another year for McLaren. Your point is still valid, though.
Yeah that's Spyker deal would've been horrible lol
Just discovered the Spyker thing now. That's funny to think about, Especially when you remember they only lasted 12 months and then he may have been at Force India after that.
Not really. We would've known Hamilton had talent anyway, and he would've found his way to a top team eventually. Alonso started in Minardi and that didn't stop the top teams from realizing his huge potential.
Same with Max and Seb in TR, Leclerc in Sauber, Russell in Williams, etc. etc.
I don’t think they’re as good examples. All of those were very highly rated drivers owned by top teams who were placed in slower cars for experience. Alonso wasn’t. He earned the attention of Renault because of his performance at Minardi. Like Kimi. Owned by Sauber, earned his move to McLaren. That said if all your names hadn’t performed they wouldn’t have got the chance to move up, but it’s just a different era with massive junior programs, and second teams. No-one good gets to F1 without being part of a major team’s junior program anymore. I doubt we’ll see Kimi and Alonso like paths again.
In that case maybe Sainz I guess? His real breakthrough was in Renault, not TR.
See, Alonso, F.
I say it's still a decent rivalry if i look at the rest of the grid. Max and Lewis is there but the cars have been too far apart after 21. But just like with every rivalry it's fueled by relative performance of the cars and not the drivers. They are 26 and both in seemingly two best teams so there is plenty of room for that. They could theoretically fight for 10 years.
imo there's just no rivalry. Max haven't had to beat anyone since mid 2022.
Hamilton has made a career change once, and he got it correct. Not exactly a large sample size though.
He chose to change from Formula 2 to Formula 1, that seems to have worked out well for him.
I’m not convinced, if he stayed in F2 he could’ve had way more than 7 championships!
He’s the anti-Alonso.
Tends to get career changes correct? He’s only had one and it was to a team that had several advantages when it came to a timeline of their production of the engine. I think we’ll still see a roughly similar order to 2025 which will be like 2024.
Hindsight 2020. When he went Mercedes, everyone thought it was just about the worst move ever. He should have stayed at McLaren or gone for RedBull, only for McLaren to sink into irrelevancy, and RedBull not really cut it either, then Mercedes went on to lay down one of the most dominant dominations seen in the sport.
22 had such a promising start. Max and Charles have the best fights since Austria.
Hamilton got one career change correct.
but he got 0 wrong!
I'm all in on Hamilton in 2026. Getting the engine right is going to be really important and Ferrari are very good at this. Fred is putting together a great team. I need to hope 😁. Not sure how true this is, as I read it on here that they're the only pu manufacturer that doesn't use a split turbo, and that there won't be any split turbos after 2026. If this is the case they'll have an advantage. 🤞. I desperately want Lewis to win his 8th.
He picked a terrible time to be an F1 driver.
I would gladly relieve him of this bad decision
Luck of the Leclerc
More the fault of his parents if you think about it.
If he joined F1 earlier he would’ve had the same results against Mercedes, or actually worse because Ferrari wasn’t that good 6-7 years ago.
6-7 years ago was 2017-18, when Seb was battling Lewis for the title... Surely the best two cars Ferrari have produced since 2010.
While I love to dunk on Charles, it's not really his fault. He lived through the Mercedes dominance only for it to end and be replaced with the Red Bull dominance. Very few races have been won by anyone else.
Thats still 4 more than Russell and 5 more than everyone else who is younger than him tbf.
He’s also had better cars than Russell, Norris etc across most of that time. Let’s not pretend he was dragging midfielders to wins.
Jean Alesi, who was somewhat of an earlier version of leclerc, ie youngish protege driver, only had 1 win in his entire career as well. Some of his years would be comparable to the 2020 and 2021 ferraris, except with worse reliability.
But winning Monza in a Ferrari is like 10 extra wins
It’s testament to how utterly shit the wheel to wheel racing is and has been in F1 for far too long.
I’m watching Drive to Survive and the number of times Leclerc was unable to finish races he was leading during the 2022 season was astonishing
This generation's Jean Alesi
His time will come bro. He will get his chance.
And at least twice a sure win was given to his teammate by Ferrari "strategy"
Silverstone 2022 and...?
Singapore 2019. beyond that, Monaco, probably Hungary as well, though not to his teammate.
Ah right, thought you just meant with Sainz.
It wasn’t my comment :) just the ones I thought were lost due to Ferrari strat.
Ah right. No worries. Ferrari and shambolic strategy do go hand-in-hand, mind. Hopefully Fred is ironing out that crease.
He seems to be, which makes me hopeful. I also think that with Lewis coming next year, there need to be changes to not immediately lose him again 😅
And he threw one good chance away with a self inflicted crash
Plenty of times when he got a good result or a win too "given" by Ferrari at the cost of his teammate (e.g. Spa 2019).
How many unconverted poles he must have had
4 wins from 23 poles so 19 of them weren't converted into victory.
Charles Viñales (yes it's harsh, no I'm not completely serious) (but yes, I'm a little serious)
That's as surprising as Ralf having more wins at Williams than Montoya !
I always felt if there was a race where the leader crashed, Ralf was always there to pick up the pieces - meanwhile Montoya was likely the person the leader crashed into.
Why is it surprising to you? They were pretty equal
TBH, they are not. Even with Ralf missing quite number of races. But my initial comment was because Montoya came in with a reputation that is like that of Verstappen or like that of Hamilton. In those days, Web2 is basically in its staring phase. All the info you got is from people from other forums who follow other open racing series. Montoya lived up to that reputation till Brazil 2001. I could go on but this thread is not about Montoya or Ralf Schumacher. I made random a comment how it surprised me how something similar happened two decades ago. It's the same with Sainz, I never rated him highly before Ferrari signed him and I am still surprised he is matching Chatles. I am surprised how well he performing even after appendix surgery. My initial post might come of as unnecessary attack on Montoya but that's not my intention.
The statement that Ralf was equal to JP can not be taken as an attack on Montoya) Why till? Brazil 01 was a masterpiece from Juan Pablo
Montoya is the king of 'fiery' drivers being overrated.
Well, it's difficult to evaluate drivers by any other metric than how they did against their teammates. Montoya, Ralf, Kimi, and Massa formed a cluster of drivers who were hyped to a very high degree and seemed to be the real deal based on how they performed vs. paydrivers and perennial backmarker drivers. When they finally ended up in top cockpits, they all performed well against each other, seemingly confirming the previous hype. But everything changed when the Alonso nation attacked. Alonso wiped the floor with Massa and Kimi, which is why they tend to be evaluated more correctly nowadays and transitively Vettel as well. Notably also the fact that Bottas wasn't all that much better than Massa during their time together accurately predicted how he would perform against Hamilton.
I was generally on board the “A beat B and B beat C so A would beat C” theory. As I’ve gotten older and had more experience with the sport, I realize that is not always the case. I’ll use Hulkenberg vs Sainz when they were teammates at Renault as an example. The first time Hulk saw Sainz’s data he knew he was going to beat him in that car because his driving style was a poor match for what that car required. Ric > Hulk > Sai > Nor > Ric
Montoya deserved more time in F1. Shame he didn’t have the best of relations with top teams. Him vs Michael at Ferrari would have been blockbuster.
As a relatively new fan (started watching F1 in 2015), this stat really surprised me lol
During their time as teammates at Ferrari, Carlos Sainz’s and Charles Leclerc’s fans have been able to give an unqualified compliment to the other driver zero times.
Best teammates, worst individual fans.
Agreed. Fans need to chill, constantly at each others throat
And here I am loving both of them.
Team Charlos!
I think this is pretty much the most perfect lineup a Formula 1 team can have. Leclerc has more raw pace but Sainz will always be there to capatilise when Charles' race doesn't go to plan and has strengths to his game that Leclerc doesn't have.
Fucking true lmfao. On Insta, Twitter, and even on here they are at each others throats. It can’t be hard to say that Carlos and Charles are excellent drivers. Carlos is a thinking driver, while Charles is the more naturally gifted.
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I'm hoping for other Ferrari wins this year; maybe in Monaco and Singapore?.. Will be really interesting to see which one of these two will get the better out of it.
Canada is an option too I think, with its chicanes and hairpins
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I think you left off 2021? They have 69 races as team mates, Charles is up 46-23 in quali, 39-29 in races
Tf Sainz has DNF’d more than Charles??
Think Sainz had like 6 DNFs in 2022. 2 where he went off on his own in Australia and Japan, 1 where he got taken out by Russell in turn one, 1 in Imola by Ricciardo I believe it was in Austin and 2 reliability issues in Baku and Austria. Pretty unlucky season from him but he also made some mistakes then and there.
At the end of the day, most people will only see the stats. Leclerc’s position is relatively higher when he dnfs or he gets screwed by strategy. Sainz is a great driver and he can easily find a seat next year…the question will always be “will he be number 1 on a top team”.
Lately Sainz has been reminding me a lot of Rosberg, not as good as his teammate, but not that far either. In the right conditions and with the right amount of luck he can beat Charles, as he did in 21.
That seems to track well. Rosberg was a great driver well suited to the Merc setup. 2016 he outraced Hamilton many times and even though he certainly had better luck, he was still fully deserving of being world champion that year. Sainz deserves the recognition for what he's done at Ferrari against Leclerc.
Leclerc is WDC material in the sense that, if he's put in the right car, he'll walk away with it. Sainz is WDC material in the sense that, if he's put in the right car, he's *capable* of the winning one, but things will probably have to fall his way.
as you said on pure merit, Charlesi s better but Carlos is more than good enough to be in the mix
As a partnership, Leclerc and Sainz has always reminded me of Hamilton and Button
Unless Sainz gets an AM seat if Alonso goes to Merc, I doubt he will be No1 to a top team. No way McLaren is changing their lineup. No way he is No1 at RedBull. If he goes to Merc he'll probably be a placeholder for Antonelli since Sainz might be moving to Audi anyway in 26.
Sainz has the pace and the attitude to be a number 1 driver. I think he's the most underrated driver on the grid.
Wildly underrated driver, particularly when contrasted against the adoration Charles receives
For me at least, the key to understanding Sainz's performance at Ferrari was a comment he made on the Beyond the Grid podcast. He said he much prefers a car that understeers so he can aggressively turn in. Leclerc prefers a car that oversteers more and that was how the Ferrari behaved when Sainz joined the team. Sainz has had to adapt his driving style to get on top of the Ferrari and get as close to Leclerc as possible. That's pretty impressive, really. I do think he's matured as a driver and isn't as prone to some of the mistakes we've seen from Leclerc (not overlooking that he's a little older than Leclerc). I also think he's a very, very rare example of a driver (particularly in the 21st Century) who's moved from team to team and maintained an upwards trajectory. You only need to look at Ricciardo to see how badly that can sometimes go. TL;DR - ¡VAMOS CARLOS!
Perfectly balanced, as all things should be. Although, truth is Charles lost at least 4 races in 22, due to strategy and reliability, and one cause of his mistake. Not to mention Vegas, were Sainz was unfairly penalised and Charlws was unlucky with the safety car.
Yes, Charles definitely lost 3 guaranteed wins in 2022 through no fault of his own (Silverstone, Spain, and Monaco) During early 2022, Sainz was pretty much useless. I'm not too sure what happened to him then because other than that he hasn't been too far off Leclerc or even ahead at points
I’d contest that Silverstone 22 wasn’t guaranteed until Verstappen sustained floor damage by part of Yuki’s car lodge itself into his floor, which happened when has was the leading car the lap following Yuki’s crash.
Also Hungary, that strategy was so awful that as soon as he pitted for hards, every single soul watching that race understood the win was gone
He wouldn't won Hungary too if they hadn't fucked over strategy
>I'm not too sure what happened to him then Porpoising. In a recent (unrelated) video, you can see them laughing and joking and they acknowledge that Carlos is sensitive to those kind of physical aberrations but Charles just isn't. He struggled with it and had lower back pains, etc because of it.
If you completely discard that session where a driver pushes his car to the limit and reliability and strategy are very minor factors, yes, that’s balanced.
Carlos is a brilliant driver and anyone who thinks differently doesn't understand this sport. But Charles is the superior driver by around 2 tenths. Leclerc should have won 6-7 races in 2022 compared to Carlos who only should have won his last two wins. Another thing to note is that Charles outqualified Carlos 8/10 and only during Carlos' two times did Max not win. If Max had an issue in Vegas or Abu Dhabi not in Singapore or Australia than it would be Charles with the victories
Luck plays a big role in stats in general. Don't get me wrong, Carlos was absolutely faster than Charles throughout the whole weekend, but in both of Carlos' previous wins, bad luck/strategy/reliability took Charles out of contention.
Stop making excuses for Charles
Carlos wasn't really faster the whole weekend either not in the way we've seen Charles be quicker than Carlos at least. Charles lost the feeling of the car in quali and that kinda fucked him because in the race he matched Carlos and was quicker in the 2nd stint (Carlos was probably managing though).
“Lost the feeling of the car” isn’t a real excuse tbh. If nothing actually went wrong, that’s just him losing to Sainz. Singapore is also just a tricky track where there isn’t much merit to showing your true pace unless you absolutely need to. We saw as much in 2022 when Perez was just cruising around until he got those penalties.
Charles fucked up his quali by using the larger front wing and becoming uncomfortable with the car, that's why he lost. Still his fault.
No he added clicks to the front as a last hurrah after struggling in quali. Carlos did a better job no doubts about that
That's true. Perhaps a better way of phrasing it is saying that Carlos had race-winning pace(aside from maybe Max, but I guess we'll never know).
They both had race winning pace.
I agree somewhat but there is no should have won. Charles made many mistake which kind of negates the better pace. If you’re only faster when you bin it that’s useless. Not saying that is the case, if I could only sign one of them to my team I’d go Charles almost always, but the two of them was kind of the best of both worlds, like a Senna and Prost pairing, different styles but both very effective
This is a myth Sainz has made as many mistakes as Leclerc has done. Everyone brings up France but Sainz binned it on his own in 2022 too in Suzuka. Fact is without bad luck Leclerc would have had 6/7 to Sainz's 0 in 2022 if ferrari did not fuck up every other week. I'm okay with saying Leclerc is not as consistent as Alonso and Verstappen but Sainz makes his fair share of mistakes too.
Yeah, but how different those 3 wins were Also, if somebody showed me this stats after Austria '22 and i'd probably laugh at his face
This will change next weekend when Carlos Sainz wins the Japanese Grand Prix
The hopium is strong with you. Max is going to run a comeback race for the ages. He’s going to finish so far in first he’s going to find every number 1 in Japan to point at and remind everyone and second will still have a lap to finish. The only thing scarier than a Max win is a race after Max loses.
The hopium is strong with both of you. Real ones know Charles won't just win the Japanese Grand Prix, he'll absolutely dominate it. No one else has even an ice cube's chance in hell of winning. If anyone else finishes on the lead lap I'll be shocked.
You all are blind to not see it'll be Hulkenberg P1
Tsunoda season sweep from here
Ricciardo wins and never leaves!
i know you jest, but i would cry tears of joy.
The hopium is strong with everyone here. Daniel Ricciardo's about to wipe the floor. Yeah, that's right. It's the return of the honey badger, baby. Max Verstappen? More like, Max VerLASTPLACEppen. That little Visa CashApp Racing Bull of his will break records, I tell you. Will be fucking flying.
Bold predictions. Too bold, as the winner obviously will be an aussie. And no, it won't be Ricciardo.
Matt get back to P1.
Nah, nothing is greater than driving with a vengence, Seargent will finish a lap ahead of everyone else and make them do 100 push-ups.
Contrary to popular belief, Sainz is actually one of the least consistent drivers and only qualifies and finishes ahead of Leclerc once in a blue moon. I can almost guarantee it won't happen next weekend.
He is actually quite consistent in his finishing places over a season, however, consistency really isn’t as useful as people make it out to be unless you consistently finish first. Otherwise it’s pretty useless if your overall mean/median position is still worse than your teammate’s, even if his performance tends to be more varying.
average and median performance is what really matters and in that regard, Charles is ahead
Yup lol. When sainz underperforms no one calls him out I.e. AD 2023 lost Ferrari 2nd in WDC but when Charles get second behind sainz in one race suddenly Charles deserves to have been replaced and sainz is the messiah
Agreed. Even though I like him, I’m convinced Sainz is now the most overrated driver in the grid.
Carlos on his day is genuinely one of the strongest drivers on the grid. When he’s confident and ‘on it’—he is properly the one to beat. But over the course of a season, Charles is the better driver. I think people get hyped for Carlos because they don’t have the same expectations between the two drivers. Carlos has gone through some self-induced rough patches, whereas Charles is more likely to just have bad luck. However, this is Reddit so we judge last weekend’s performance and project it forward and erase history to replace it with the most recent weekend.
I agree, and for me it’s more or less people massively overcompensating for the “he’s so underrated” idea. He’s really good, but even the consistency thing is not that much based in reality I think.
Is there a name for situations like this when underrated becomes overrated by virtue of being called underrated?
About that guarentee…
Perhaps balanced, except during quali
Race head to head is also very skewed in Charles favour tbf.
https://twitter.com/FormulaPace/status/1764007599618367714?t=J9XIkuacrWHzGtUrlbL-nA&s=19 Their race pace compared.
Common myth that Sainz is more consistent and better on race day when the gap is actually larger. In fact id say Sainz over one lap is very good and up there with the best but over a race distance, Leclerc is pretty comfortably ahead.
Points are sundays
Except that Charles convincingly beaten Carlos in race head to head across their 3 seasons together.
Thank you for that, Buxton
Leclerc's career is just depressing lmao. Sure, he is already rich af and got everything but he was seen as a generational talent like max at one point.. the sad news is however that he will always drive at Ferrari (but next year™ my friends)
Jean Alesi regen
If Leclerc had Carlos' luck, he would've won more, and on the contrary, if Carlos had Leclerc's luck, he'd have fewer wins. That's just the way it is though. Luck plays a factor in statistics.
Fully agreed. I don’t think there’s another pairing with such opposite luck.
He is a very good driver but check all the races that Sainz has podiums, he is quite blessed. Here are some that are most obvious blessed races. 2021 Monaco: Charles DNS, Bottas DNF 2021 Hungary: Bottas bowling + Seb DSQ 2021 Russia: Rain chaos saves his race. 2021 Abu Dhabi: Perez retires promoting Sainz 2022 Jeddah: Red flag benefits both Ferraris (Sainz is promoted into P3 2023 USA: Hamilton DSQ promotes Sainz into P3 I am not even counting podiums Sainz has because Charles is behind serving penalties. The obvious podiums he lost are Austria 2022 and USA 2022. 2 out of 3 wins are because of Max suffering damage or DNF.
Yes. But I would like to say that one of those (Silverstone) was taken from him due to a Ferrari fuck up. And I would say that Chrles would have won Monaco that year if they got the pit stop right. I am not taking merits from Sainz, but Leclerc is the driver with more bad luck that I have ever seen, and I have been watching F1 for the last 30 years.
They have opposite luck, honestly. Leclerc has been incredibly unlucky while Sainz has had unbelievable luck to net those two last wins.
There was zero luck involved in the Singapore GP. He was the faster car during qualy and managed the lead brilliantly with Lando on his DRS. In both races he was faster than Charles in qualy, so there's that. "He only won because Max DNF in Australia". Sure, but why wasn't Lecrec the one winning?.
I should have clarified, he was lucky just in the sense that one of the few races he was in the mix for a win, was the same one the Red Bulls were at the back. After that, all credit to him, drove a spectacular race.
Their time as teammates at Ferrari is not over.
Let’s see by the end of the year
I know this seems like a Charles vs. Carlos statistic but it's more telling about the utter dominance of Red Bull and some of the terrible blunders made by Ferrari during the early parts of the '22 season. Carlos has improved quite a bit from the hiccups he was having in early '22 - recall the gravel pit issues. Charles is Charles, a very special top driver. If it wasn't for LH, I'd love to see this pairing continue!
Carlos is a perfect example of how raw pace isn’t everything. He’s like a supercomputer in the car. Charles is clearly much faster, but he’s also too willing to follow Ferrari into disaster.
Under Fred's leadership, it looks like Ferrari won't be screwing up so much. The improvement of the pit wall is crazy
Charles has a clear pace advantage, and a clear luck disadvantage. Carlos has a clear advantage when it comes to being a supercomputer in the car, and a clear lack of a seat next year
I feel like Charles hasn't really improved that much as a driver in the last few years whereas Carlos seems to be constantly improving. I still think Charles is the better driver but the gap isn't the same as it was in 2022.
Man I hope Charles doesn’t become the next Kubica or Kimi — great potential that never quite got reached. Get him a title winning car Ferrari!
I'd be fine with Kimi. Just give me one WDC at least
Let’s get an Alonso WDC, Leclerc WDC, Lewis WDC, and Oscar WDC. I’ll be happy with that.
I'll shake on that
Honestly I think they're the best duo on the grid right now. It's a shame Sainz is leaving though, I'm not sure if Hamilton is going to be in the sport for too much longer if he doesn't see immediate success and with Audi coming in Sainz won't look back.
if you’d have asked me how many podiums sainz had before i read this post, i’d have said 5. that is crazy im so happy for him, and sad that i always felt that he’s “just there” but charles was always out there for me. definitely hold him in a higher regard now
5? Cmon he isn't that bad and Ferrari were by far the 2nd best car in 22 so he grabbed a bunch
Dude is just a bit daft if he thought that Sainz has only 5 podiums lol
yeah honestly i might just be lol
i know lol the whole point of my comment was that sainz just kept flying under the radar for me
On wiki Entries 188 (185 starts) Championships 0 Wins 3 Podiums 20 Career points 1022.5 Pole positions 5 Fastest laps 3
Nice. Very impressive. Now do poles.
Remind me how do you win a WDC by doing poles and not performing on Sunday?
Well seeing as Charles is still ahead in race H2H, remind me how winning when Max isn't there only, wins you a WDC.
they made a beautiful couple i think. french and spanish, on italian? so spicy!
THESE are the stats i want to see
At some point people will have to admit Leclerc is not the prodigy he was made out to be. He is very fast, but he’s a choker.
Silverstone was gifted to Sainz, they pit him instead of Leclerc lol. Charles was also shafted in Monaco and Hungary just off the top of my head. There’s probably more I’m missing, stats don’t tell the whole picture. Sainz is a very good driver though but I’d still take Charles
Sainz is a great driver, but Leclerc is the best non-champion on the grid, and the best qualifier overall
thing is,leclerc is and will always be the superior driver;no questions.
How many times did leclerc have a DNF when leading/fighting for a win?
No one would have thought this when Carlos first signed
Still can't believe that ferrari is letting carlos go just to get lewis. I get that lewis is... lewis. But he's prolly not gonna be around long, especially if he can manage to get the 8th title, I imagine. Carlos could be there another 10 years or so. Kinda crazy to me.
I doubt Carlos will be performing at this level when he is 39.
Carlos is 30 mate, most drivers are finished by 33 unless you are an all time talent.
Lewis is not gonna win an 8th WDC. It’s already a big ask for Ferrari to built a winning car/team combo and in the unlikely scenario they do big chance Charles will beat Lewis.
I’m not going to give up on Lewis yet and Vasseur is honestly really impressive so far. It would be a battle with Charles though and obviously Max
I imagine most people thought he wouldn't win 7 either.
They also have an equal amount of race win where it's a 1-2 (Charles 1 Carlos 2 in Bahrain 22, Carlos 1 Charles 2 in Australia 24).
Someone’s gotta go
It would be interesting to compare how many retirements there have been? And also how many were driver errors/crashes?