KingVoid wrote:Lotus49 wrote:And what on earth makes you think Ferrari could've poled Singapore in 2014? They were 4th fastest, behind Mercedes,Red Bull and Williams, yet anytime Alonso gets within half a second of a pole it should be his, it's like we're back in 2012 again.
Raikkonen was fastest in Q1 and 0.041s slower than Hamilton in Q2. Rosberg was a few tenths faster only because he did a second run in Q2 when the circuit was at its best. Then in the first run in Q3, Raikkonen was only 0.070s off pole. Ferrari were consistently up there throughout the qualifying session. If Alonso had even 2 tenths on Kimi, it would have been enough for pole position. But when the car is better, Alonso’s advantage over his teammates shrinks.
Ferrari was almost certainly not slower than Williams, and at least on par with Red Bull in that qualifying session.
The Mercs didn't have good runs in the first run in Q3, they were 6th and 7th so using Kīmi's time is a bit misleading, both Mercs improved by nearly half a second in the last runs and Lewis's lap included a lock up at T1 he said cost him 2ths so Alonso should've been half a second behind and he himself had a good lap.
No chance Ferrari had half a second left on the table that day, Seb did make a mistake on his last run but was still quicker than Alonso's Ferrari so the Red Bulls had more on offer and Massa was less than a tenth behind Alonso's lap so I'd lean toward the Williams being quicker too but it's not impossible he just nailed one, he did beat Bottas so fair enough.
No chance the Ferrari's were beating Mercedes or Red Bull's though so the pole was never there unless all 4 drivers threw it away even worse than they tried too.
When the cars better all team mate advantages shrink not just Alonso's, big advantages come through mistakes more often than outright pace and the better your car is the easier it is too drive. You have better balance,handling, more d/f and more power so there's less things going wrong to catch a driver out.
His strength is not making those mistakes even when the car is poor, Stoff talked about it recently that he's able to get 99% out of the car whatever the struggles so we do see big gaps when the car is at it's worst, that happened in the first half of 2012 and middle of 2013 when the rear was poor and Massa couldn't cope as well.
When the car's better the driver who was making mistakes isn't anymore and so can extract more from the car again, why that is put down to Alonso suddenly not being able to extract 99% anymore rather than the error prone driver not having as many mistakes in a better car is beyond me. That was the narrative in 2012 when Massa was closer when the coanda was fixed in the second half as well and it still doesn't make sense.
The better the car the less likely a weaker driver will make mistakes so he can now extract more of the potential. Alonso's still getting the 99%, he hasn't gone backwards just because the car is better, that makes no sense.
"Clark came through at the end of the first lap so far ahead that we in the pits were convinced that the rest of the field must have been wiped out in an accident."
-Eddie Dennis, describing the dominance of Jim Clark in the Lotus 49 at Spa 1967
