KingVoid wrote:Ricciardo relies on Verstappen's mistakes to beat him. The problem for him is that Verstappen's mistakes won't last.
It reminds of the early Vettel-Webber days. Once Vettel ironed out his mistakes, Webber just couldn't live with him anymore.
Ricciardo made the right move by leaving Red Bull for 2019. His stock is still high.
Verstappen took these risks throughout most of last season, but just got away with more of them. He was optimistic in Spain, didn't get away with that. Took a huge risk in Canada and incredibly got away without a puncture. Same in Mexico. Both times clipping his rear wheel against somebody's front wing. Then the quantity of mistakes this year is just shocking given his reputation.
Just how much can you list?
Australia. Runs too aggressively and wide over a kerb. The team tell him to be less agressive as I think he had potentually damaged his car. He kept pushing and spun and lost places.
Bahrain. Has already completed a run in Q2 good enough to get through. His team may have told him to do another, but they told him to do another lap to calibrate his setup. This word means to carefully donkeys, set or adjust something. He did not need to flaw it. He did and ruined his result by crashing. In the race, he could have got by Hamilton in a more sensible place, but he was overly aggressive and hit Hamilton and retired.
China. He just runs out of patients and attempts to overtake Hamilton in a silly place. He was far faster, why not wait until an easy place to do so? He goes off track and looses positions. Then in his rush to get back up, crashes into Vettel.
Azerbaijan. I blame both for this. They both could have done one small thing differently and it will have been totally avoidable. Ricciardo gog a bit too close to verstappen in the braking zone IMO. Being that close with Verstappen would result in a lack of downforce which was what caused him to lock up and crash into him. Verstappen shouldn't have swerved in the braking zone like he did, but I blame both for this. But again, it involves a mistake by Verstappen.
Spain. Now this was a lucky escape that I feel some are forgetting. Hit ran into the back of stroll during yellow flags. What a clumsy mistake. You should be prepared to STOP in these conditions. Crashing into a moving object when it is clearly visible is incredibly clumsy. He damaged his front wing. And when it broke off, he was incredibly lucky for it not to give him a puncture. The broken part infact flew off onto the track and Perez ran over it, incredibly escaping a puncture. As silly as it would sound, but if Perez got a puncture, I would blame Verstappen.
Monaco. This may have been practice, but he seemed to be in the sort of mood to prove that he was the best and quickest at an unnecesery time. He tried to hard in the last few second of P3 and had a heavy crash. What a stupid mistake. Can't feel sorry that the rest of his weekend was ruined.
The following few races, he did have some outstanding ones. But he did crash in one or two practice sessions. And then the latest race (italy) He may have been fast (as always) but that mistake with Bottas was really silly. And his reaction to the penalty was just pathetic. He clearly had at that stage lost interest in trying to do the best for the team as I beleive that from his comments he was trying to help Vettel close in on Hamilton.
Despite Verstappen looking outstanding in terms of his speed, he makes way to many mistakes. I think he was just lucky that he has a lucky escape with these moves he did last season. I at the time thought that if he continued these, he would pay for it. And he has.
He's been like this for several seasons now. I'm not sure if these mistakes won't last. He may start making less, but unless he works heavily on his over aggressive manner, I can't see him ever having a clean season. But at the same time, I always expect him to have several truely outstanding results, which admittedly this driving style can sometimes bring.