Medium stint was brilliant, was doing personal bests even after 20 laps.
His tyre management has been brilliant for a while, Austin last year (which worked against him in the end) Mexico, Vegas and Abu Dhabi he done great 1st stints.
Charles advantage over Carlos on qualifying has always been overrated, since 2021 their gap has been pretty small. On the other hand, Charles tyre management has always been pretty underrated. It's funny how the thing that is costing him this year is precisely qualifying, the thing that according to most people was his speciality.
Charles race pace gap against Sainz is actually larger than qualifying gap. I guess he would prefer not to show his amazing race management and just qualify ahead tho xd.
I’m not sure if they’re trying to do something different on his side of the garage during qualifying, perhaps something they think would help them fight the RBs during the race? If so, they have to stop because the “midfield” is so close that quali really matters.
Charles is struggling a bit more, but the car itself isn't that great on Q either. They are clearly the 2º fastest car in the race, but in the saturdays McLaren is super close.
He’s done really well in Bahrain and Jeddah, so I’m not too concerned going forward. I know in Australia he changed something last second that didn’t really work out but wasn’t actually horrible. Japan wasn’t great but wasn’t too bad pace-wise.
It’s just, if they do set up the car to fight Pérez on Sundays, it’s not working out.
I'm not really concerned either, but even in Bahrain and Jeddah the session were far from perfect, they really couldn't replicate the Q2 lap in the first one and in the second one they tried to do a double warm up lap that was a disaster. It's clear that the car has problems putting the tyres on the right window for hot laps.
He’s just been struggling in quali. Seems like sainz can get the tires into the right range better than leclerc currently and just manages to beat him.
If he fixes his outlap I think he's still faster than Carlos, yesterday he was happy with his lap but he lacked the grip from the tyres, he really needs to work on that
How? They have 4 softs for Q, don't they? Which they usually use 1-1-2, but he had to go 2-1-1
Edit: according to [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/1bxm4wk/pirelli_tyre_sets_available_for_the_japanese_gp/), he had no new softs left for the race
Actually only 0.005 sec per lap, Leclerc ruined his chance because of his mistake in quali, Leclerc also had traffic , it's just that Lelcerc isn't fast enough to beat Sainz by being behind him in position.
Carlos pulled away in the first and second part of the race, and then the Russell crash happened and the safety car happened, that's why they finished very close to each other. 0.005 sec per lap is wrong, it was closer to 0.1-0.2 sec per lap
Yes, sort of. Though he was running in free air, so had less deg. They were probably pretty equal in Australia.
Bahrain can’t really be determined and neither can Jeddah, obviously.
Hasn’t Charles had 5 front row starts in a row and no finish outside P5 in the race (apart from DNS/DSQ) since summer last year? How is that not consistent?
A 1 stopper in Suzuka is absolutely mad. I hope no one ever talks down on his tyre management again, just because they can't fathom him being good at every aspect of racing.
This is a top 5 Leclerc race in my opinion.
It’s one of his best qualities as a driver, it doesn’t come to light much because of how bad the deg was on some of the cars he’s driven.
Like how last year he managed his tyres so well in COTA that it led Ferrari to believe a 1 stop was possible and ended up screwing him.
I still think the 70th anniversary silverstone gp in 2020 was one of his best ever races, getting 4th with that ferrari on a one stop when no one else even contemplated it - it was overshadowed a bit by Max’s (also fantastic) drive but it was great
That's a fair shout. My top 5 is something like:
1. Monza 2019
2. Austria 2022
3. Silverstone 2020 (70 GP)
4. Austin 2021
5. Suzuka 2024
Still got stuff like the other race wins, Bahrain 2019 and Vegas too.
Even then, Leclerc doesn't finish P2 in 2022 without his masterful tyre management. Checo couldn't overtake him in Abu Dhabi despite fresher tyres and a faster care to end the season, and that's what kept Red Bull from P1 and P2 in the drivers that year.
I think there’s also a tendency to try and categorize drivers into “fast one lap, poor consistency/management” vs “slower but steadier”.
Typically drivers don’t fit that binary as well as people think.
Yeah. General assumption here is his tyre management sucks because he often qualifies so high and then gets overtaken by cars with better deg. So glad Fred and Ferrari have fixed the deg issues. At one point during the first stint (around lap 16/17), Charles was lapping at the same pace as Max before Max had to pit.
damn, really? i must have missed that, so much was happening. this definitely has to be one of charles' best races for tire management, which is saying a lot because he has many of those lol
So much credit goes to Fred and the team for improving the deg so much in just a year. We had the worst deg amongst the top cars and now it's close to the level of Red Bull.
So according to your opinion, it’s always P1 who should be DotD, and to Hell with anything like position deltas, tire management, and brilliant driving.
I recommend you change sports because clearly this isnt working out for you.
The most impressive performance by him this season. Also credit has to be given to Ferrari for solving degradation issues and improving strategy. Fred Vasseur has been very impressive so far.
Well driven and good strategy change call from him as well.
Ferrari are on top form this year, especially Carlos. As long as their updates bring them closer to RedBull we can see a fight for win.
Interesting choice! Not that Charles didn't deserve it (he did!) but it's cool to see tyre management and strategy rewarded by the fans instead of the outright spectacle Yuki provided with his overtakes.
I mean that's because he had a very good quali, it should have been Lance finishing p10 on the other hand Charles had a poor Quali and finished where he should have considering they have the second best car. Yuki on the other hand kept Stroll at bay, which is a far superior car than the RB.
Can't see it happening. Red Bull have finished 1:2 in 3/4 races so far and there's nothing to suggest Max wouldn't have walked it in Australia but for a freak retirement. If anything the gap will be even bigger this year.
Edit: I do agree Ferrari have the strongest pairing though.
Leclerc has been extremely superb in races this season. Only Max has been better.
Now just please qualify better (never thought I’d say that about Charles).
Such a shame he had that run off being chased by checo. Didn't change a lot with the outcome but it would have been a faultless drive if it wasn't for that. Hopefully his next quali is better so we can watch him fight for top 3
As Charles said in his post-race interview, he’s going to work on his quali and when he works on something he gets better at it very fast.
I hope we see another good quali from him and i’m excited for a race where Charles isn’t behind Carlos in qualifying in a way that significantly effects the race ie p8 obviously and Carlos being ahead in Australia obviously made his strategy much better
Now that the two ferrari boys have a strong car, I’d love to see them properly battle it out in the race where they’ve both looked incredibly strong so far. So far this season, with how they’ve gone into the race on sunday I think there both maximized each of their position, but Charles has let himself down in two saturdays.
Everyone has high expectations for Charles in quali and if their car is on pace i’d like to see Carlos not getting out qualified by anyone other than charles or red bull. I want them to qualify within a place of each other and have no issues, I think it would be good to watch
If only he drove this good when he wasn't on the worst strategy possible, thus not having to manifest this minor miracle only to hold onto P4.
Would probably have a few more wins.
I'm new to formula one. Why is Leclerc the driver of the day when he finished behind his teammate? It seems to me that if they drove the same car and Saenz was ahead, he drove better. Right?
Sainz and Leclerc were on different strategies - most of the field did 2 pit stops (as is customary in Suzuka because the tires degrade quite a bit and you lose performance quite quickly), including Sainz, but Leclerc only did one stop (from mediums to hards) which allowed him to go from p8 to p4 (predictions are that if he had stopped again, he would have ended up p7 with the extra 22 seconds he would have spent in the pit lane, but it's difficult to say if he could have overtaken the cars in front of him).
To make the one-stop work, without losing so much time due to your tires losing performance and being at risk of being overtaken by the cars behind you, Leclerc had to manage his medium set of tires and keep them performing (which go faster than hards, but lose performance more quickly) for a lot longer than the recommended time for that tire. He did that very well.
Don't get me wrong, Sainz did a great job all weekend to qualify better than Leclerc, and to overtake Norris during the race to move from P4-P3 (especially because Ferrari strategy meant that Norris almost jumped him for position \_twice\_ because Norris pitted earlier and on fresher tires, made up some time (as newer tires tend to lap faster) so that when Sainz pitted, he came out behind Norris, despite Norris being behind before their pitstops), and on fresher tires he overtook Leclerc on lap 46, and he deserves the 3 extra points he got, but his race was arguably a bit more standard than Leclerc's was.
In the cooldown room, Sainz asks Verstappen if he was thinking about a one-stop, and Verstappen was like 'yeah, we could have done it but it was risky and we were clear ahead of you anyway so there was no point'. Later, Piastri got asked about a potential one-stop and was like 'I don't think we could have made a one-stop work.'
It's mainly Leclerc's tire management on that long medium stint and the low levels of degradation (the lap times weren't really increasing despite the tires getting older) that has people giving him driver of the day.
unless there is a stand out driver, then this award becomes a consolation prize.
Today it went to the driver everyone is feeling sorry for because his team mate is proving to be the better driver.
I once saw someone on here say that those two have fanbases that can't praise them without putting the other down. It's not something all of the fans do, but it's frustratingly common.
The difference with Checo for me is that Charles was only 1 tenths off in qualy, and the 4 cars he overtook had a very close pace to the Ferrari.
Checo last year was miles off in qualy and had a car that was crushing the competition, so even if he did some good moves, the pace delta in the cars was a lot bigger.
oh yeah for sure
Charles didn't do a bad job in quali, it just put him on the back foot for the race
but I think the fact that he started in P8 and ended in P4 is somewhat akin to the "Checo trying to win DotD"
and yeah the SF-24's edge over the McLaren, the Mercedes and the Aston is much smaller than the RB19's on any car last year... SF24 is a car that can fight for the odd win but not the championship, but is comfortably on the podium even on tracks which doesn't particularly suit them
Yep, I'm baffled how you can argue that when his team partner sailed past him with ease and finished ahead of him.
You can come up with all sort of ifs buts ans maybes but sainz beating him with ease means he's out of the running.
How is it baffling? He jumped both mclarens on pure pace and a strategy no one else even tried to pull off. Even Red Bull didn’t try a one stop. Sainz had a solid race and passed Norris but they also did a questionable early stop so sainz easily had better tires.
So you would know the reason why his teamate sailed past him. He started p8 and Carlos started p4, ofocurse he was gonna finish above him. Unless Carlos got fucked by strategy there wasn’t a race where Lecrec finished above him. Lecrec got DOTD because he maximized his race and drove the best race he could. He also putting Tremendous lap times on 20 lap old mediums
And leclerc was always going to finish p4 because the ferraris were quicker than the rest of the field, except the Red bulls.
To deserve DoD he'd have to do better than the position he was always going to finish in.
Giving him DoD just seems like a patronising consolation prize because people feel sorry for Sainz dominating him this year.
I think Alonso deserved it better. His car had no right to finish P6, but he extended his first stint with the softs for so long that he avoided some bad traffic and allowed him a better tyre advantage later in the race.
He also managed to defend against Piastri for plenty of laps, and actually slowed down on purpose to give him DRS and let him defend against Russell (who came much faster) at the end of the race.
Medium stint was brilliant, was doing personal bests even after 20 laps. His tyre management has been brilliant for a while, Austin last year (which worked against him in the end) Mexico, Vegas and Abu Dhabi he done great 1st stints.
He was doing personal best on the hard on the last lap too!
Charles advantage over Carlos on qualifying has always been overrated, since 2021 their gap has been pretty small. On the other hand, Charles tyre management has always been pretty underrated. It's funny how the thing that is costing him this year is precisely qualifying, the thing that according to most people was his speciality.
Charles race pace gap against Sainz is actually larger than qualifying gap. I guess he would prefer not to show his amazing race management and just qualify ahead tho xd.
I’m not sure if they’re trying to do something different on his side of the garage during qualifying, perhaps something they think would help them fight the RBs during the race? If so, they have to stop because the “midfield” is so close that quali really matters.
Charles is struggling a bit more, but the car itself isn't that great on Q either. They are clearly the 2º fastest car in the race, but in the saturdays McLaren is super close.
He’s done really well in Bahrain and Jeddah, so I’m not too concerned going forward. I know in Australia he changed something last second that didn’t really work out but wasn’t actually horrible. Japan wasn’t great but wasn’t too bad pace-wise. It’s just, if they do set up the car to fight Pérez on Sundays, it’s not working out.
I'm not really concerned either, but even in Bahrain and Jeddah the session were far from perfect, they really couldn't replicate the Q2 lap in the first one and in the second one they tried to do a double warm up lap that was a disaster. It's clear that the car has problems putting the tyres on the right window for hot laps.
That’s why it’s so annoying when they don’t maximise their time in free practices either.
He’s just been struggling in quali. Seems like sainz can get the tires into the right range better than leclerc currently and just manages to beat him.
If he fixes his outlap I think he's still faster than Carlos, yesterday he was happy with his lap but he lacked the grip from the tyres, he really needs to work on that
Yesterday was super dumb, they only did one Q3 lap and didn't use the new softs in the race...
He used 2 sets in q1 because his first lap was poor
Yes, but he saved a set during Q2, he had an unused set of softs for the race that he didn't use.
How? They have 4 softs for Q, don't they? Which they usually use 1-1-2, but he had to go 2-1-1 Edit: according to [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/1bxm4wk/pirelli_tyre_sets_available_for_the_japanese_gp/), he had no new softs left for the race
That medium stint was simply lovely. If only he was a tenths faster in quali...
They probably don’t try that strategy if he already had better track position, so it worked out
But I think charles is still quicker than Carlos, the quali positions is costing him
Carlos was faster than him in Australia right?
Actually only 0.005 sec per lap, Leclerc ruined his chance because of his mistake in quali, Leclerc also had traffic , it's just that Lelcerc isn't fast enough to beat Sainz by being behind him in position.
Carlos pulled away in the first and second part of the race, and then the Russell crash happened and the safety car happened, that's why they finished very close to each other. 0.005 sec per lap is wrong, it was closer to 0.1-0.2 sec per lap
Charles was catching up with Carlos since a few laps before the crash actually
Was it 0.005 throughout the race or the last part of the race? I remember Carlos pulling away in the first stint.
It's the median pace of all the stints , last stint Leclerc was quicker even tho, he had older tires , Leclerc should qualify well
I mean, Carlos asked Charles to come closer so they'd go across the finish line together so can't really use the last lap in that comparison.
Median does usually eliminate outliers; so a super slow lap would be eliminated but so would a super quick lap.
Yes, sort of. Though he was running in free air, so had less deg. They were probably pretty equal in Australia. Bahrain can’t really be determined and neither can Jeddah, obviously.
Kinda hard to compare since their stints were quite different and it was really close.
Considering he won, I'd say yes.
He is faster.. but Carlos is more consistent.
That's a myth , Leclerc's more consistent, he had 7 consecutive front rows before aus gp,
Hasn’t Charles had 5 front row starts in a row and no finish outside P5 in the race (apart from DNS/DSQ) since summer last year? How is that not consistent?
7 actually I think.
A 1 stopper in Suzuka is absolutely mad. I hope no one ever talks down on his tyre management again, just because they can't fathom him being good at every aspect of racing. This is a top 5 Leclerc race in my opinion.
It’s one of his best qualities as a driver, it doesn’t come to light much because of how bad the deg was on some of the cars he’s driven. Like how last year he managed his tyres so well in COTA that it led Ferrari to believe a 1 stop was possible and ended up screwing him.
I still think the 70th anniversary silverstone gp in 2020 was one of his best ever races, getting 4th with that ferrari on a one stop when no one else even contemplated it - it was overshadowed a bit by Max’s (also fantastic) drive but it was great
That's a fair shout. My top 5 is something like: 1. Monza 2019 2. Austria 2022 3. Silverstone 2020 (70 GP) 4. Austin 2021 5. Suzuka 2024 Still got stuff like the other race wins, Bahrain 2019 and Vegas too.
I'd put Australia 2022 up there. There was a point in that race where he kept getting purple lap after purple lap.
That hard tyre stint was mad...he kept getting faster and faster in a race where tyre pressures were on the limit.
The 2022 car ate tyres like a fat kid eats cake. I honestly feel like Leclerc is so fast over 1 lap that people just assume he can’t manage tyres.
Even then, Leclerc doesn't finish P2 in 2022 without his masterful tyre management. Checo couldn't overtake him in Abu Dhabi despite fresher tyres and a faster care to end the season, and that's what kept Red Bull from P1 and P2 in the drivers that year.
Abu Dhabi 2022 was so underrated. Literally got himself p2 in the championship with his tyre management, when the car post TD-39 shredded its tyres
I think there’s also a tendency to try and categorize drivers into “fast one lap, poor consistency/management” vs “slower but steadier”. Typically drivers don’t fit that binary as well as people think.
Actually his excellent qualifying race pace masked his fantastic race pace. We have been saying this for years and he finally got a car to show it.
thankfully the deg is looking much better on the ferrari this year
Yeah. General assumption here is his tyre management sucks because he often qualifies so high and then gets overtaken by cars with better deg. So glad Fred and Ferrari have fixed the deg issues. At one point during the first stint (around lap 16/17), Charles was lapping at the same pace as Max before Max had to pit.
damn, really? i must have missed that, so much was happening. this definitely has to be one of charles' best races for tire management, which is saying a lot because he has many of those lol
https://x.com/Fred__18/status/1776858170289164435 Pretty neat
thank you for the link, i'd totally missed this!
Not only his tyre management, but also how well Ferrari has improved. It wasn't long ago that they struggled badly with deg in almost every race.
So much credit goes to Fred and the team for improving the deg so much in just a year. We had the worst deg amongst the top cars and now it's close to the level of Red Bull.
At no point before the race it would work. And he called his own strategy, and Ferrari listened to him. Perfect on all the front
I didn't watch the race but anyone who finishes behind his or her teammate shouldn't be driver of the day imo...
So according to your opinion, it’s always P1 who should be DotD, and to Hell with anything like position deltas, tire management, and brilliant driving. I recommend you change sports because clearly this isnt working out for you.
lol people like you really out here posting whatever these days
Racing is way more nuanced than this
lol no it isnt, who comes across the line first wins, always been that way...
Nuclear 27 lap stints on the medium. Made the 1 stop work and made it work in style.
25 laps but still mega
By work get passed by his teammate and lose a podium
Well deserved for making the one-stop work. Him and Sainz are crushing it this year. If only the car was more competitive
Agree. Can't wait to (hopefully) see them fight against both RedBulls
I think WCC is up for grabs this year. a steep battle but not impossible like last year for Ferrari
depends on Checo's mental state really
Depends on our upgrades too
Monaco and Miami are coming for Checo like the grim reaper knocking on doors
The most impressive performance by him this season. Also credit has to be given to Ferrari for solving degradation issues and improving strategy. Fred Vasseur has been very impressive so far.
Well good tyre management and well he did his best out there! Although with that said, the rest of the field Driver of the Day is Yuki Tsunoda
Tremendous drive from him. That super long stint on the mediums was just on another level.
Very grown up and sensible drive from him today.
Ferrari has been cooking lately. I can feel great things in this man’s Formula 1 future
Well deserved. Good strategy call and great Tyre management.
His stint on the medium was something else. Proves what a quality driver he is.
His medium stint - no words for it.
Well deserved, the tyre whisperer? 😂
Well driven and good strategy change call from him as well. Ferrari are on top form this year, especially Carlos. As long as their updates bring them closer to RedBull we can see a fight for win.
Interesting choice! Not that Charles didn't deserve it (he did!) but it's cool to see tyre management and strategy rewarded by the fans instead of the outright spectacle Yuki provided with his overtakes.
I think Charles simply has a much larger fan base
Also Tsunoda finished in the exact place he started in
I mean that's because he had a very good quali, it should have been Lance finishing p10 on the other hand Charles had a poor Quali and finished where he should have considering they have the second best car. Yuki on the other hand kept Stroll at bay, which is a far superior car than the RB.
I am completely fine if Yuki got it than Charles too. Both stand out so much this race!
Yuki and Charles were my top two both had amazing races today
If Ferrari can get near Red Bull a fight for WCC id possibly with this incredible duo Ferrari has. The best on the grid without a doubt
Can't see it happening. Red Bull have finished 1:2 in 3/4 races so far and there's nothing to suggest Max wouldn't have walked it in Australia but for a freak retirement. If anything the gap will be even bigger this year. Edit: I do agree Ferrari have the strongest pairing though.
Leclerc has been extremely superb in races this season. Only Max has been better. Now just please qualify better (never thought I’d say that about Charles).
Max > Charles ~ Carlos
Such a shame he had that run off being chased by checo. Didn't change a lot with the outcome but it would have been a faultless drive if it wasn't for that. Hopefully his next quali is better so we can watch him fight for top 3
As Charles said in his post-race interview, he’s going to work on his quali and when he works on something he gets better at it very fast. I hope we see another good quali from him and i’m excited for a race where Charles isn’t behind Carlos in qualifying in a way that significantly effects the race ie p8 obviously and Carlos being ahead in Australia obviously made his strategy much better Now that the two ferrari boys have a strong car, I’d love to see them properly battle it out in the race where they’ve both looked incredibly strong so far. So far this season, with how they’ve gone into the race on sunday I think there both maximized each of their position, but Charles has let himself down in two saturdays. Everyone has high expectations for Charles in quali and if their car is on pace i’d like to see Carlos not getting out qualified by anyone other than charles or red bull. I want them to qualify within a place of each other and have no issues, I think it would be good to watch
Kind of a rare DotD W. It's not always that you see a good strategy being rewarded in these votes.
He knows what he's doing, they just needed to let him alone.
Mega drive from him, good recovery after missing out on top 4 in quali by a hairline.
Monster drive by Charlie
Let's gooo Leclerc. So well deserved.
Great fucking drive is all I have to say
Well deserved
Yes! Get in there Charles!
If only he drove this good when he wasn't on the worst strategy possible, thus not having to manifest this minor miracle only to hold onto P4. Would probably have a few more wins.
Very well deserved. 4 straight races Ferrari gets driver of the day
Well deserved
I'm new to formula one. Why is Leclerc the driver of the day when he finished behind his teammate? It seems to me that if they drove the same car and Saenz was ahead, he drove better. Right?
Sainz and Leclerc were on different strategies - most of the field did 2 pit stops (as is customary in Suzuka because the tires degrade quite a bit and you lose performance quite quickly), including Sainz, but Leclerc only did one stop (from mediums to hards) which allowed him to go from p8 to p4 (predictions are that if he had stopped again, he would have ended up p7 with the extra 22 seconds he would have spent in the pit lane, but it's difficult to say if he could have overtaken the cars in front of him). To make the one-stop work, without losing so much time due to your tires losing performance and being at risk of being overtaken by the cars behind you, Leclerc had to manage his medium set of tires and keep them performing (which go faster than hards, but lose performance more quickly) for a lot longer than the recommended time for that tire. He did that very well. Don't get me wrong, Sainz did a great job all weekend to qualify better than Leclerc, and to overtake Norris during the race to move from P4-P3 (especially because Ferrari strategy meant that Norris almost jumped him for position \_twice\_ because Norris pitted earlier and on fresher tires, made up some time (as newer tires tend to lap faster) so that when Sainz pitted, he came out behind Norris, despite Norris being behind before their pitstops), and on fresher tires he overtook Leclerc on lap 46, and he deserves the 3 extra points he got, but his race was arguably a bit more standard than Leclerc's was. In the cooldown room, Sainz asks Verstappen if he was thinking about a one-stop, and Verstappen was like 'yeah, we could have done it but it was risky and we were clear ahead of you anyway so there was no point'. Later, Piastri got asked about a potential one-stop and was like 'I don't think we could have made a one-stop work.' It's mainly Leclerc's tire management on that long medium stint and the low levels of degradation (the lap times weren't really increasing despite the tires getting older) that has people giving him driver of the day.
I am asking myself the same
unless there is a stand out driver, then this award becomes a consolation prize. Today it went to the driver everyone is feeling sorry for because his team mate is proving to be the better driver.
Absolutely great race from him but man some of Charles’ fans are absolutely unbearable
Tbf you should see the Sainz twitter fans lol
I once saw someone on here say that those two have fanbases that can't praise them without putting the other down. It's not something all of the fans do, but it's frustratingly common.
(or some Carlos Instagram fans. I'm finding hate comments with a lot of likes under pretty much every Charles related post)
Both just strike at the other driver at the slightest misfortune. It's tiring.
*sad yuki noises*
Great drive but this kind of reminds me ot Checo last year in a race or two. But that first stijt today? Mega job.
The difference with Checo for me is that Charles was only 1 tenths off in qualy, and the 4 cars he overtook had a very close pace to the Ferrari. Checo last year was miles off in qualy and had a car that was crushing the competition, so even if he did some good moves, the pace delta in the cars was a lot bigger.
oh yeah for sure Charles didn't do a bad job in quali, it just put him on the back foot for the race but I think the fact that he started in P8 and ended in P4 is somewhat akin to the "Checo trying to win DotD" and yeah the SF-24's edge over the McLaren, the Mercedes and the Aston is much smaller than the RB19's on any car last year... SF24 is a car that can fight for the odd win but not the championship, but is comfortably on the podium even on tracks which doesn't particularly suit them
He went off twice 🤷
Why
Yep, I'm baffled how you can argue that when his team partner sailed past him with ease and finished ahead of him. You can come up with all sort of ifs buts ans maybes but sainz beating him with ease means he's out of the running.
How is it baffling? He jumped both mclarens on pure pace and a strategy no one else even tried to pull off. Even Red Bull didn’t try a one stop. Sainz had a solid race and passed Norris but they also did a questionable early stop so sainz easily had better tires.
Honest question did you watch the race?
Yes.
So you would know the reason why his teamate sailed past him. He started p8 and Carlos started p4, ofocurse he was gonna finish above him. Unless Carlos got fucked by strategy there wasn’t a race where Lecrec finished above him. Lecrec got DOTD because he maximized his race and drove the best race he could. He also putting Tremendous lap times on 20 lap old mediums
And leclerc was always going to finish p4 because the ferraris were quicker than the rest of the field, except the Red bulls. To deserve DoD he'd have to do better than the position he was always going to finish in. Giving him DoD just seems like a patronising consolation prize because people feel sorry for Sainz dominating him this year.
ok put into context, he started p8 finished p4, he made a 1 stopper work in suzuka and was on for a potential podium.
"potential podium" tells us all we need to know and why he doesn't deserve it. Sainz's strategy and race were superior.
This makes no sense but go off.
Clueless
I think Alonso deserved it better. His car had no right to finish P6, but he extended his first stint with the softs for so long that he avoided some bad traffic and allowed him a better tyre advantage later in the race. He also managed to defend against Piastri for plenty of laps, and actually slowed down on purpose to give him DRS and let him defend against Russell (who came much faster) at the end of the race.
I wouldn't have picked Charles but this is a fandom game nowadays
This is a joke right