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Ah, now it starts to get interesting as we move into the top four from 2018's WCC standings!

In the, erm, green corner you have Nico Hulkenberg, he of 156 races without a podium appearance and a junior record many drivers would envy that has only been converted into a single, solitary pole position. And in the (no longer) Red (Bull) corner you have Daniel Ricciardo, a man with 7 race wins, 29 podiums, and who is at the forefront of any 'best overtaker in F1' arguments. On paper, that would make this almost a slam dunk TMW victory for Daniel Ricciardo, yet it feels like 2019 is a potentially significant year for both.

For Nico Hulkenberg, the opportunity in-front of him is very obvious. Being paired with Daniel Ricciardo, a driver who might not be considered one of the best two or three drivers in F1, but would surely make the majority of people's top five, gives Hulk a huge opportunity to elevate his own reputation in F1. If he is even so much as close to the ex-Red Bull driver over the course of 2019 then he stands to gain in people's estimation, whilst matching (or dare I suggest even getting the better of Ricciardo) could force people who have written him off to rethink that decision. With Renault edging forwards since their return to F1 as a full works team, spurred on by having their best line-up since Kim Raikkonen left the Enstone team, it might even provide a chance to give Adrian Sutil back the record of most F1 races without a podium...

Daniel Ricciardo, on the other hand, perhaps has more to lose than he has to gain. Following on from 2018 where he might as well have stopped racing after Monaco, he's now partnered with a driver who is pretty much seen as a good midfield driver, yet nothing more. Short of absolutely annihilating him (something I would argue might still do more damage to Nico's reputation than it would enhance Daniel's) across the season in a manner similar to what Alonso did to Vandoorne last year, it's hard to imagine that even a comfortable victory over Hulkenberg would be greeted with anything more than a 'well that's what should've happened'. Certainly, a season in which the pair are evenly matched - or Hulk actually outperforms Daniel - is only going to hurt Ricciardo's standing. But there's another story here. Fernando Alonso did his reputation no harm by dragging cars to the kind of positions they shouldn't have been able to reach. Whilst it's unlikely the Renault would be that bad, Ricciardo does have the opportunity to look like a star if he can deliver consistently strong results and maybe even bridge the gap between Formula 1 and Formula 1A.

So, PF1 Forum, who will get the better of things at the Enstone team, Daniel Ricciardo or Nico Hulkenberg?

Results So Far:
Haas: Romain Grosjean 83% - 17% Kevin Magnussen
McLaren: Carlos Sainz 73% - 27% Lando Norris
Racing Point Force India: Sergio Perez 87% - 13% Lance Stroll
Sauber: Kimi Raikkonen 88% - 12% Antonio Giovinazzi
Toro Rosso: Daniil Kvyat 60% - 40% Alex Albon
Williams: George Russell 75% - 25% Robert Kubica

Ricciardo, and I don't think it will be as close as people are expecting. I predict a 60%-70% qualifying record in RIC's favor, and more than that in the races.

I'll also go bold and predict that Ricciardo will get a podium in 2019 and Hulk will not.

This along with the Vettel/Leclerc pairing has got to be the most keenly anticipated line up, you have to believe that Ricciardo is a level up from a solid top 10 driver like the Hulk, the actual gap will be interesting because then we can better determine just how good Verstappen is.

I'd be completely shocked if Ricciardo didn't win this relatively easily, tbh

I'm certainly in the Ricciardo boat, but I wonder if the margin of his victory will be deceptive. In my opinion, Renault are going to be comfortably ahead of the rest of the midfield this season, but also not really fighting Red Bull ahead of them. I picture them being a lonely fourth fastest team at a lot of weekends, with Ricciardo generally a few tenths ahead but often only starting/finishing a place ahead of Hulkenberg because of that. Hulk will therefore be perceived as close to Ricciardo, maybe even finishing with marginally more points if Ricciardo has more of the bad luck, and even though Ricciardo will have been the quicker driver, his reputation will take a hit because the more casual observer/lazy journalists will focus on the points.

Jenson's Understeer wrote:I'm certainly in the Ricciardo boat, but I wonder if the margin of his victory will be deceptive. In my opinion, Renault are going to be comfortably ahead of the rest of the midfield this season, but also not really fighting Red Bull ahead of them. I picture them being a lonely fourth fastest team at a lot of weekends, with Ricciardo generally a few tenths ahead but often only starting/finishing a place ahead of Hulkenberg because of that. Hulk will therefore be perceived as close to Ricciardo, maybe even finishing with marginally more points if Ricciardo has more of the bad luck, and even though Ricciardo will have been the quicker driver, his reputation will take a hit because the more casual observer/lazy journalists will focus on the points.

Well that's true that the faster/better driver doesn't always score the most points that's why Kvyat finished higher than Ricciardo in 2015 for instance, I guess it's how you judge one driver being better than the other?

This one should be Ricciardo's, anything else would damage his credibility significantly. After the best part of three seasons alongside Verstappen he should relish the opportunity to have Renault build around him.

It's a huge signing for Renault and proves their ambitions. Hulkenberg is a good team man and consistent, but he hasn't blown away some good but yet exceptional teammates.

I've always rated Hulkenberg. While Ricciardo should come out on top over the season, I think it'll be closer than many seem to be expecting.

Ricciardo was very unimpressive last season. Not talking about the races as we all know he had multiple problems with car and overall when he hadn't his race pace was good, but the qualifying... Doesn't matter how quick and good Max is, Ricciardo was often slower around 0,5 sec per lap, maybe there were some reasons that I'm not aware but this kind of gap is just unacceptable on F1 level. We will see but I'm not writing off Hulk at all here

Mayox wrote:Ricciardo was very unimpressive last season. Not talking about the races as we all know he had multiple problems with car and overall when he hadn't his race pace was good, but the qualifying... Doesn't matter how quick and good Max is, Ricciardo was often slower around 0,5 sec per lap, maybe there were some reasons that I'm not aware but this kind of gap is just unacceptable on F1 level. We will see but I'm not writing off Hulk at all here

I think saying Ricciardo was unimpressive & on average about 0.5 sec slower in quali is a bit of a stretch.

In the races where they both made it to Q3, which was 13, the outcomes were approximately:

Aust - Verstappen by 3/10th
China - Verstappen by 1.5/10th
Baku - Ricciardo by 8/100th
Spain - Verstappen by 2/1000th
Canada - Verstappen by 2/10th
France - Verstappen by 2/10th
Aut - Verstappen by 1.5/10th
Brit - Verstappen by 4.5/10th
Bel - Verstappen by 2/10th
Sing - Verstappen by 6/10th
Mex - Ricciardo by 2.5/10th
Bra - Verstappen by 2/1000th
AD - Ricciardo by 2/10th

So while Verstappen did indeed best Ricciardo by 10-3 in quli, with the exception of the blowouts in Britain & Singapore, the gap was usually around the 2/10th mark and lets not forget it was Ricciardo who secured RB's only pole positions of the season.

I think overall people may be slightly under rating Ricciardo's performance last year.

After Monaco which was about 1/4 way through the season, he'd had 2 wins, was 3rd in the championship only 40 pts behind Hamilton & people were talking about a championship challenge. It was at Monaco where the reliability issues started and they followed him pretty much for the rest of the season.

Ricciardo had 8 retirements to Verstappen's 3 last year and, i'm only guessing here, suffered more with component penalities than Verstappen.

I'm not saying for one moment that Verstappen wasn't the all round better driver last year, I agree he was, at least in the 2nd half of the season, but considering all the reliability issues Ricciardo had, plus his contract saga and then include the undoubted additional support, moral at least, that Verstappen got and how all that affected his motivation, for Ricciardo to finish the season 79 pts behind Verstappen wasn't a bad effort & definitely wasn't unimpressive.

Not sure why we are counting only the races where both made it to Q3, events like Japan or Germany when Ricciardo couldn't make it out of Q1 making this look only worse. Don't want o dive into stats to deep though as it's not the point, I remember the quali gap between the drivers in RBR was I think second bigger after Alonso vs. Vandoorne. Just shouldn't happen for top driver no matter what.

Mayox wrote:Not sure why we are counting only the races where both made it to Q3, events like Japan or Germany when Ricciardo couldn't make it out of Q1 making this look only worse. Don't want o dive into stats to deep though as it's not the point, I remember the quali gap between the drivers in RBR was I think second bigger after Alonso vs. Vandoorne. Just shouldn't happen for top driver no matter what.

You're forgetting Leclerc and Ericsson.

Mayox wrote:Not sure why we are counting only the races where both made it to Q3, events like Japan or Germany when Ricciardo couldn't make it out of Q1 making this look only worse. Don't want o dive into stats to deep though as it's not the point, I remember the quali gap between the drivers in RBR was I think second bigger after Alonso vs. Vandoorne. Just shouldn't happen for top driver no matter what.

The BIB is a weird comment. Ricciardo didn't set a Q2 time in Germany because he had penalties. He dropped out in Japan due to power unit issues. You can't include things like that when comparing performance.

Mayox wrote:Not sure why we are counting only the races where both made it to Q3, events like Japan or Germany when Ricciardo couldn't make it out of Q1 making this look only worse. Don't want o dive into stats to deep though as it's not the point, I remember the quali gap between the drivers in RBR was I think second bigger after Alonso vs. Vandoorne. Just shouldn't happen for top driver no matter what.

You're kidding right?

https://www.formula1.com/en/championshi ... edure.html

Q1: Lasts for 18 minutes, at the end of which time the five slowest drivers are eliminated from qualifying and 15 advance to Q2.....

In both races he ended Q1 in 15th which certainly meant he did made it out of Q1. In both races he didn't set a time in Q2 because, at a guess, I'd say he took grid penalities and anyway, If Ricciardo couldn't get a RB out of Q1, I seriously doubt it was because of lack of operator skill unless he binned it of course, which he didn't.

I only counted Q3 simply because usually, for the top teams anyway, Q1 & Q2 are pretty much just doing enough to get into the next session and the cars aren't going at 100% in either Q1 or Q2. It's not really important where a driver ends Q1 or Q2 as long as they make it into Q3. Q3 is where it's all turned up and is pretty much a true representation of the performance gap between 2 drivers.

So anyway, what was the point of your post referencing a stat that's debatable in it's accuracy and devoid of any source if you didn't want to dive too deep into stats when your statement is brought under scrutiny?

Jezza13 wrote:

Mayox wrote:Not sure why we are counting only the races where both made it to Q3, events like Japan or Germany when Ricciardo couldn't make it out of Q1 making this look only worse. Don't want o dive into stats to deep though as it's not the point, I remember the quali gap between the drivers in RBR was I think second bigger after Alonso vs. Vandoorne. Just shouldn't happen for top driver no matter what.

You're kidding right?

https://www.formula1.com/en/championshi ... edure.html

Q1: Lasts for 18 minutes, at the end of which time the five slowest drivers are eliminated from qualifying and 15 advance to Q2.....

In both races he ended Q1 in 15th which certainly meant he did made it out of Q1. In both races he didn't set a time in Q2 because, at a guess, I'd say he took grid penalities and anyway, If Ricciardo couldn't get a RB out of Q1, I seriously doubt it was because of lack of operator skill unless he binned it of course, which he didn't.

I only counted Q3 simply because usually, for the top teams anyway, Q1 & Q2 are pretty much just doing enough to get into the next session and the cars aren't going at 100% in either Q1 or Q2. It's not really important where a driver ends Q1 or Q2 as long as they make it into Q3. Q3 is where it's all turned up and is pretty much a true representation of the performance gap between 2 drivers.

So anyway, what was the point of your post referencing a stat that's debatable in it's accuracy and devoid of any source if you didn't want to dive too deep into stats when your statement is brought under scrutiny?

My main point here is that he was able to set a time in Q1 and it was slower than Max - with penalties or not, so why not count it in quali stats? Of course we can say Q1 and Q2 are not important, but fact is that if tires are the same it's usually a pattern that if driver is faster in Q1/Q2 then he's faster in Q3 as well as he's simply faster that day.
It's true that stats are not as bad as my impression from track, maybe it's the reason. Trust me I'm totally neutral to Max/Ricciardo or Ricciardo/Hulk, not biased whatsoever, just that is my impression from 2018.

Mayox wrote:

Jezza13 wrote:

Mayox wrote:Not sure why we are counting only the races where both made it to Q3, events like Japan or Germany when Ricciardo couldn't make it out of Q1 making this look only worse. Don't want o dive into stats to deep though as it's not the point, I remember the quali gap between the drivers in RBR was I think second bigger after Alonso vs. Vandoorne. Just shouldn't happen for top driver no matter what.

You're kidding right?

https://www.formula1.com/en/championshi ... edure.html

Q1: Lasts for 18 minutes, at the end of which time the five slowest drivers are eliminated from qualifying and 15 advance to Q2.....

In both races he ended Q1 in 15th which certainly meant he did made it out of Q1. In both races he didn't set a time in Q2 because, at a guess, I'd say he took grid penalities and anyway, If Ricciardo couldn't get a RB out of Q1, I seriously doubt it was because of lack of operator skill unless he binned it of course, which he didn't.

I only counted Q3 simply because usually, for the top teams anyway, Q1 & Q2 are pretty much just doing enough to get into the next session and the cars aren't going at 100% in either Q1 or Q2. It's not really important where a driver ends Q1 or Q2 as long as they make it into Q3. Q3 is where it's all turned up and is pretty much a true representation of the performance gap between 2 drivers.

So anyway, what was the point of your post referencing a stat that's debatable in it's accuracy and devoid of any source if you didn't want to dive too deep into stats when your statement is brought under scrutiny?

My main point here is that he was able to set a time in Q1 and it was slower than Max - with penalties or not, so why not count it in quali stats? Of course we can say Q1 and Q2 are not important, but fact is that if tires are the same it's usually a pattern that if driver is faster in Q1/Q2 then he's faster in Q3 as well as he's simply faster that day.
It's true that stats are not as bad as my impression from track, maybe it's the reason. Trust me I'm totally neutral to Max/Ricciardo or Ricciardo/Hulk, not biased whatsoever, just that is my impression from 2018.

Well you can add Q1 time comparisons if you want as long as you realise it's a bit of an erroneous stat. It really means nothing in terms of outright speed comparisons between team mates in qualifying unless you're looking at the drivers from teams who are regularly in danger of not making it into Q2. The Merc, Ferrari & RB drivers, under normal circumstances, will drive within both the cars & their maximum capabilities in Q1 and Q2. So theoretically we could see Verstappen deliberately driving the car at, lets say, about 96% of his output capacity in Q1 and register a time 0.5 sec ahead of Ricciardo who deliberately drove the car at 93% of his output capacity. So who's the fastest driver in this example? Now you could argue that we can't know at what capacity the driver is driving at in Q1 & Q2 and you'd be correct but the one thing you can't argue is that in both Q1 & Q2 neither the car or the driver of the top 3 teams, under normal circumstances, are driving at 100% output capacity.

At least in Q3 we can be reasonably sure both the car & driver are at or very near 100% output capacity and thus we'll get a more accurate assessment of their respective capabilities.

To use Q1 & even Q2 stats to get a gauge on outright speed comparisons between team mates from the sharp end of the grid will give you a skewed, inaccurate & ultimately unreliable result and won't be a true account of where each driver stands in a head to head assessment of quali speed.

Edit - It's all good Mayox. I didn't think there was any bias against Ricciardo whatsoever & even if there was I should be the last one to complain against that considering my support for Ricciardo & now, by extension Renault, and my outright detestation towards Verstappen & Red Bull which, now that Ricciardo has left RB, will no doubt become annoyingly evident as this season evolves.

Mayox wrote:Not sure why we are counting only the races where both made it to Q3, events like Japan or Germany when Ricciardo couldn't make it out of Q1 making this look only worse. Don't want o dive into stats to deep though as it's not the point, I remember the quali gap between the drivers in RBR was I think second bigger after Alonso vs. Vandoorne. Just shouldn't happen for top driver no matter what.

One reason would be because when there are grid penalties, drivers deliberately do not make it out if Q1, and it is nothing to do with their driving and everything to do with how many penalties they have because of equipment failures.

The strange rule meant the best strategy was to be first on track for Q1, have a set up run but make sure you do not get to q2

So comparing qualifying where one driver deliberately drops out because of an equipment failure distorts any comparison of the drivers themselves.

iano wrote:

Mayox wrote:Not sure why we are counting only the races where both made it to Q3, events like Japan or Germany when Ricciardo couldn't make it out of Q1 making this look only worse. Don't want o dive into stats to deep though as it's not the point, I remember the quali gap between the drivers in RBR was I think second bigger after Alonso vs. Vandoorne. Just shouldn't happen for top driver no matter what.

One reason would be because when there are grid penalties, drivers deliberately do not make it out if Q1, and it is nothing to do with their driving and everything to do with how many penalties they have because of equipment failures.

The strange rule meant the best strategy was to be first on track for Q1, have a set up run but make sure you do not get to q2

So comparing qualifying where one driver deliberately drops out because of an equipment failure distorts any comparison of the drivers themselves.

Plus we also need to factor in track evolution throughout the session as well.

More than once we've seen a driver from the top 3 teams set a time early on in Q1 or Q2 & park it up confident he's done enough to get into the next session while his team mate went out late in the session, when the track was rubbered in, & set a time that makes his teammates effort look very ordinary.