Are F1 drivers getting better?
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- čas přidán 24. 11. 2022
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A few weeks ago I asked my subscribers if they thought the standards of F1 drivers are higher than they used to be, and 71% of them said they were. The question is - are F1 drivers better now than they used to be? And if they are, why?
Twitter: @formulajohn_
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The problem is older generations always had heavy bulky wallets weighing them down, Nowadays F1 drivers carry lightweight Ridge™wallets, saving a estimated -0.2s every lap.
Damm, where can I get such a great wallet?
Edit: Maybe that's how Max is always 2 tenths faster at everything.
i actually should have used this in the promotion😂
Fanthony 1antano
best comment ever lol
Good one. 😂
Speaking of two of the greatest here's an interesting stat: 2022 was the first season since 1991 without a race win from either Michael Schumacher or Lewis Hamilton.
that's actually an insane statistic wow
I mean having Ham-Rus, Nor-Pia, Lec-Sai, Ver-Per, and Alonso on the grid at once? Seems pretty stacked to me. The rookies from this year and next year seem to be solid asf too it looks promising
The thing I love about the 2023 grid is that the *entire* field is stacked with talent.
Some would argue about yuki, zhou and stroll. Yuki and Gasly have to show again what they can deliver with new teammates and if it was really the car that was total garbage. Zhou had a strong end and just needs to keep on matching valtteri.
And Stroll just needs to GTFO. The only teammate he has ever beaten is Sergey Sirotkin in the Williams in 2018. He has his moments but so did Latifi, thats still not good enough.
Personally I think Stroll will be the new meme. The shit he pulled with Alonso and Vettel is unforgivable
@@invalid8774 but He isnt Miles away from Vettel, especially in Qualifying
@@oscarhurtado-link9166 he's fast if he has the space but he's terrible at racing
@@supernerd4623 Lack of awareness definitely and inconsistency. One weekend he’s beating Vettel and the next he’s a second off his pace.
Did you just say standard’s will be higher because we’re dropping Daniel Ricciardo?
“They’ll show up to every race in peak physical condition” meanwhile Lando with the sniffles every 3rd race lmao
I like that you acknowledged that Prost hit Senna in 89 while Senna hit Prost in 90. Fanboys from both legends deny their dirty side, but BOTH drivers won those two championship by hitting in the most important race.
I think at this point it can be argued that they both deserved one a piece in that situation. Which they got
Prost hitting Senna came after years of Senna being an absolute d-head against Prost on track every time Prost tried to overtake him. There was also Senna being an absolute snake at Imola and getting superior engines to Prost the entire season. Prost had had enough of Senna's bs
a way that i like to think is: just analyse even the gp2/f2 champs of 2008-2016 and compare that to the f2 champs 2017-2022
One thing that has worsened in the last few years is the quality of racing itself. Many of the young drivers today will drive each other off the road to preserve their position. Leaving room is a thing of the past, with the only drivers actually doing so in the last few years being Alonso, Vettel and Raikkonen. For example look at the 2022 Austrian GP
Since F1 has become safe, drivers no longer fear ramming one another off the track. There's no moral impetus not to do so unlike the decades gone by (it's worth noting that there have always been dirty drivers, regardless of decade). Today's drivers rely on the sporting code, which gives drivers on the inside far too much leeway to simply punt drivers on the outside off of the track (see: Austria turn 4, Copse at Silverstone, etc.). That is what needs to be addressed.
I see your point but thats because the rules allow that to happen. The rules when you have to leave space for a competitor and when not are really bad. They were bad before and got changed to different but still bad in 2022.
If the rules were something like the following, this wouldnt be an issue:
"If the following cars front axis is ahead of the rear axis of the leading car, the leading car has to leave a cars width of space to the white line."
Its so simple to understand, to rule and to drive.
With the introduction of the budget cap and the super license, I do hope and believe that the driver standards are getting better and with F1's popularity at an all time high, I do expect better drivers to enter the sport in the upcoming decades.
The super license has a way to big bias towards the F1 feeder serieses and does not credit other racing serieses appropriately. Especially with Indycar thats a big issue. We cant get the best drivers on the grid if we dont allow the best north american drivers to enter. Time to reevaluate Indycar and Indylights appropriately.
You are forgetting Senna died in his peak, he would have won the 1994 championship 100% and had potential to win more. Not only that but Senna nearly won a race (actually won without the technicality) in a Toleman at MONACO in the RAIN with oil on the track as well. Senna also pulled out wins with a car that had over 100 less horsepower than the opposition (McLaren 1993) and even put up a fight against cars with active suspension when he didn’t have it and TC. Senna is way better than Hamilton in terms of raw pace and car control, consistency wise not so much but in terms of speed Senna would win.
6:28 you can’t seriously put ricciardo, a top driver during 2014-2020 with 8 gp wins in the same bracket as the other two just cause he’s had a shit 1.5 years and say the grid will be significantly better without him
Saying lewis could have 10 championships can also hold true for Schumacher too right..no legbreak in 99 and engine blowout in 2006 michael could have had 9.
Add no crash with Villeneuve in '97 and that's 10. But I think the difference with Schumacher in that regard is that some of these championships, whether the ones he got or the ones he didn't get, are shrouded in drama. While he would have won '06 were it not for an unlucky engine failure, he only won '94 because he intentionally crashed into someone, and lost another championship trying the same thing. Lewis has not had any championships lost due to those low standards of driving (that I can remember).
@@wassapdude94 Closest to that is Hamilton holding off Romberg the whole race of Abu Dhabi 2016 and going too slow on purpose to let Vettel overtake Romberg and win the championship
I think another point is nowadays you have so many new avenues to improve, you got engineers there just to focus on a certain type of corner or focus on any way you can improve with cameras everywhere that are so high quality you can see everything whereas back in the day, the telemetry wasn’t nearly as accurate as today with these driving computer databases of today. If you’re losing time through sector one, they can see where exactly and how exactly you did compared to another
The first racing drivers were just regular people going to the racetrack on the weekend and racing car. The races where snoozefest compared to today's standards, but the spectators weren't expecting more
I feel like the standard definitely gone up or at least is the same especially when now winning the F2 championship seems more like a bare minimum rather than an option regardless of super license points if you want to get into F1. Anything less than that and the expectations on you shoot up almost immediately where if you won't do well in your first year it's going to go downhill from there. And even that is not assuming that some F2 drivers completely fall apart upon getting to F1.
Case in point: Mick Schumacher
There's so many rookies next year that it will be interesting to see whether or not they can hold up to those standards without getting dropped in the process.
How dare you slander Daniel like that
Horrible call to say that getting rid of an 8x race winner will increase the grid’s average skill level
@@tomleigh7216 Not him in particular but the grid on the whole who will also lose Mick (debatable) and especially Latifi.
Honestly, this was on of your best videos. Loved it!
What makes this one standout to you?
But we’re also dropping Danny Ric had me dead 💀
As much as we think of the cost cap as a set of dirty words, I think what it is doing or will do is start pushing teams to really look more at drivers who can drive really well vs. who can pay for a seat but has at best, a marginal drive. Teams want to focus on development, and you can only do that if your drivers aren't smashing it into the wall or under performing in the car. I am looking forward to 2023 in a big way because it's quite the mix of rookies and vets.
The remark about the talent pool of younger kids being interested in motorsport also applies to women in motorsport: if we generally got motorsport to be more popular among young girls, then the pool of talent would also grow and increase the likelyhood of seeing women of the caliber of the current F1 grid rise
Well, that made sense and I enjoyed the video. Thanks for that!
A key factor for me is not only are they driving so well now but the complexity of driving the car has gone up as well. Managing all those buttons, strap modes and then strategically employing electric energy on top of everything else means todays drivers are beyond comparison in my mind.
a minute long ad in a 7 minute video is ridiculous
At the front of the grid no not in any way At all. But maybe in the midfield and rear of the grid ' I believe the cars and teams themselves are so much closer than ever and that is what we are really seeing when the whole grid is covered by 2 seconds not 5 or 7 seconds like in the mid 90s' I do remember seeing a grid in Melbourne one year around 1.3 seconds from front to rear though in the late 2000s wich will often happen when the technical regs stay the same for many years in a row.
Also something to think about is the simulators the teams use for training and setup as the drivers now have such an advantage to practice any circuit and the cars are so closely set up for any particular track before they even get to start the first lap In practice for a race weekend .
Pretty sure that If Lewis could’ve won a championship by crashing he would’ve, it’s safer now but u don’t have the option to decide a championship by a crash because of a rule now
I think we’re gonna get some very very good racing in the future, like nowadays anyone can pick up a racing wheel and download assetto corsa, suddenly they’re driving a realistic feeling car. I hope the barrier to entry goes down (in terms of financial backing) because there’s some really fucking good esports drivers out there, and they’re only gonna get better.
Driving is weird, my dad races and he’s won at the highest category in our native country and has won 2 drag racing championship too, but we set up a race car to jump back in after he had been out for 8 years and despite never racing I was pretty close and quicker at points. I’ve only done sim racing prior to that. I think racing is very innate, but I also think that the driver standard now is much much better than before. George Russell beat Lewis Hamilton in his first year at Merc, yes there were more reasons than pace for that, but I think that shows how the extra time the younger generation spend in their simulators and the Karts are making a big difference.
My dad & Lewis aren’t slouches at all, and are both great racers but at a young age they didn’t have as much time practicing as I did (solely compared to my dad), and as George did compared to Lewis.
So I agree, the standard is higher than ever before, but I will always regard Fangio as the goat, Let’s see someone else win every other race they’re in and win a title in 5 out of 8 years in F1, don’t think that’ll happen again.
Advancements in Sports science plays a massive role in the human performance aspect. Athletes in every field will only get better until the exploitation of the human body and mind through science reaches its peak.
The absolute peak of F1's driver quality is in the past so in that sense the drivers have gotten worse on average, however in the grand scheme of F1 history, the current grid is, like, A tier as opposed to S tier.
Driver can’t retain domination of a team-car-driver combination. However, a driver can maintain his upper hand to all his teammates past, now, and future. It is a thing Vettel and Schumacher couldn't do. They failed to keep up with what Hamilton and Alonso successfully doing still even these two drivers heading to 40ish. People often say ageing slowing drivers significantly and Mojo lost are the cause of significance pace drops is a myth. In fact, each teammates' talent, skill, technique, and adaptability level of a driver variate through years and generations. Sometimes a driver showed domination in an era later on his career get paired with a better driver than himself or vice versa. This kind of event would seal the fate how great is the driver dominated the Sport in the past. Why can some drivers keep with any teammates throw to him and some others not later in their racing careers? Simply, drivers would get to their peak (max-out) in 3-5 years. If drivers peaked close to all-times great benchmark, their max-out level would enough to compete trough years and a cross generations. OTOH, if their peaked level is below far from all-times great benchmark, their performance would easily get leveled and pass by new incoming talent to in the future.
This right here is a good video.
You’re not covering things we already know (F1 runs on money) and it’s something to make you think a bit.
Keep going like this an your content will explode
P.S. You should try using still photos like The Race to allude copyright while still having actual cars in the video(I know you already do, but if you could use it more than the sim-racing clips it would improve the quality of your videos
The algorithm is not being very kind to you. I didn't get a notification for your last two videos.
Your reasoning behind rating Hamilton over Schumi makes 0 sense and most people including myself would heavily disagree. Arguing that drivers like Michael and Senna were the more ruthless drivers who sometimes went over the limit doesn‘t mean that they were worse drivers than Hamilton who always “raced cleanly“ (which isn’t even true). Schumi in his prime was easily the fastest and most consistent driver we‘ve ever seen in F1. Also the argument about Hamilton potentially being a 10 times WDC if some things went right can be said about Michael aswell. He dragged absolute shitboxes to title contention in 97/98 against way faster Williams/McLaren’s and moved from Benetton to Ferrari even though he would‘ve easily won 96/97 with Williams if he moved there. His injury in 99 meant that he had no shot at the championship that he would’ve otherwise easily won. Even in 06 he was extremely unlucky in Suzuka and Brazil, which meant that he couldn’t get his 8th WDC. Transforming Ferrari into a dominant team instead of the easy route to Williams will always be the single biggest reason why Schumi will always be head and shoulders above Hamilton in most people‘s minds. How can Hamilton be seen as the best ever if someone like Max clearly outperformed him in the first season with a competitive car in which Hamilton needed to completely shunt Max off into the shadow realm (“clean driver btw“) and his teammate playing bowling in order to stay in contention even though he had the faster car on average over the season. Hamilton is an all time great but someone like Max at age 25 is already better than he ever was at any stage of his career. He never had a dominant season like Max this season or Michael in 2002 or 2004 despite having god knows how many dominant cars.. Completely bonkers to argue that someone who isn’t even the best and most talented driver on the current grid is greater than Schumi🙃
Sorry for the rant but that comment about them was ridiculous.
It's always much harder to judge someone we didn't see racing... John might be too young to remember Schumi's glory days, just his swansong at Mercedes. I saw both Michael and Lewis' careers unfold and cannot put one over the other.
"He dragged absolute shitboxes to title contention in 97/98 against way faster Williams/McLaren’s and moved from Benetton to Ferrari even though he would‘ve easily won 96/97 with Williams if he moved there".
Ha... ha... It is a myth. Why Schumacher couldn't drag the Mercedes 2010-2013 and beat Rosberg in the process? Have his skills, techniques, and abilities evaporated already back there in 2010?
Couldn't agree more
@@Adam-fj9px Who you replied at?
@@madjayax731 did Hamilton sit 3 years out in f1 i dont think so … Hamilton is not in Michaels age yet… lets compare both when Hamiltons career is over.
For me there isn't one stand out slow driver on the grid in 2023 and I can't wait
Stuff like computers are better now than back in the day aswell now so drivers have the ability to figure out where they're going wrong better
Remember when you said you missed the days when Ricciardo was on top, did you change your mind?
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They are getting better because F2 Is closer to F1 than it ever has been and the young drivers coming up are getting time in the cars.
And how dare you lump Ricciardo in with those guys! The guys a beast just not in a Mclaren. Still record holder from old Top Gear reasonably priced car lap time.
Yeah tbf it’s a bit unfair to him to put him in, but realistically he wasn’t performing at mclaren and so giving piastri a shot will more likely improve the overall level of the grid. Put Ricciardo in a Red Bull again and we have a different story on our hands 🤷♂️
I like Danny but calling him a "beast" is quite an exaggeration. His best years are surely behind him now.
6:00 that's a short and long run economic growth graph
it is indeed
The original F1 drivers just survived WW2, the idea of dying in a car crash didn't seem all that dangerous.
No you’re looking for hate when you say that Danny Ric is one of the worst drivers on the grid😂
Scooby doo bee doo Latifi is poo
hey john, just FYI: i go to med school so i‘m becoming a doctor. just want ya to know in case you get killed in the comments after your comment abt lewis being better than schumi lol
😂😂 noted
Leclerc and Russell are not even in their prime yet Lewis has one more shot and Max just had one of the greatest seasons any driver had in history it's going to be tasty with red bull having 10% aero reduction Mercedes have a car next year that maybe is competitive and Ferrari had a good strategy last race so 2023 is going to exiting
Lewis might not have the same level of influence as Senna or Schumacher did, but whoever says he isn't one of the goats probably drank too much red bull and inhaled too much orange fume.
met de mercedes die hamilton had die jaare kon bijna alle rijders wk winnen ook mensen met minder talent
when they started to dump money on sim rigs and spend countless on hours on it helps.
They are getting better but there are 2 young guns that are WAAAAY ahead of the pack charles and max verstappen
I don't consider Charles better than George... to me they are equals. And I would like to see Lando put in a more competitive team to see where he stands.
How clean Lewis has been is a negative to me, he lacks the ruthless streak of the best of the best such as a Schumacher or a Senna or even a Verstappen. All his championships with the exception of one have been in a car so dominant all he had to do is beat his teammate who invariably is a ham sandwich of a driver such as Bottas
Hamilton is never beaten on aggregate vs his teammates. If you draw an array of Hamilton vs his teammates vs his teammates' teammates with Hamilton is the center of the array, you would find out most Hamilton's teammates also dominated their teammates.
His teammates mostly get beaten and dominated by Hamilton. No others driver could do that to Hamilton's, except one of his nemesis Alonso. One of Hamilton's weakest teammates Bottas isn't get beaten yet by others let alone dominated.
@@madjayax731 Jenson Button beat him over 3 seasons they had as teammates and currently so is George Russell
@@davemurf593 The formula 1 book recorded Hamilton vs Button wins counted each seasons: 2010: Hamilton, 2011: Button, and 2012: Hamilton. Try again
@@madjayax731 check the points my friend
@@davemurf593 You need to make up the stat to belittle Hamilton.
Another Brit suggesting Lewis is better then Michael oh jeez what a coincidence ffa
Stopped watching after lewis being better and then even giving arguments as why michael is better smh😊
I wanna add on to Lewis possibly having 10 WDC if the three he lost went his way. I was watching the video Aldas put up about Lewis moving to Merc.
In '12 Lewis had incidents at Catalunya qualifying, and then the main races at Singapore and (I think it was Abu Dhabi) which cost him 75 points. Idk the gap at the end of the season so someone please tell me if this would change anything for Lewis not. But I just think thar he could've had 11 titles
British bias 😏
L
2 views wow
wtf dropping ricciardo is improving the level of the grid?
Drive to survive fan
This is an objective fact. He was once good and has not been good at all the past two years
@@TheUSDebt i know daniel hasn’t been putting the results and i think oscar deserves his seat (FR, F3,F2 champion in a row) and i like oscar a lot
but i think daniel deserves the seat more than hulkenberg
@@chico-lr3ji I think neither of them deserve the seat but if you had to pick one I’d understand arguments for either
@@chico-lr3ji also I think he turned down HAAS
Lol ‘are they better?’ brother in Christ they just point the car where they want to go. Back then they dealt with squirrely ass rocket powered go-karts. Which one you think is better?
Doubt it, older drivers were better, newer drivers are filled with cash but less talent (not the case with Leclerc, Verstappen, Norris and Russell, hopefully Antonelli and Ugochukwu can fill the gap)