But the midfield cars have closed the gap so obviously if the third best car is not having a good weekend it might fall into their clutches. Whereas last year if that happened the gap was big enough that they still would stay ahead of the best midfield car. That is likely what we saw last weekend. So no, I don't agree that they have produced a much worse car just yet. To me I still don't see major differences between Redbull Honda and Redbull Renault. They are still third.Exediron wrote:What you're missing is that it doesn't matter if the McLaren is better than the Red Bull. Red Bull has gone from a great chassis (acknowledged by just about everyone as the best on the grid) to a chassis that - whether you think it's midfield or not - is obviously much worse, and this happened right after switching their engine. And yet, nobody is saying that their car was poor last year because of this year's chassis.kleefton wrote:One bad race for Redbull and we have to read of these complaints of double standards. Wow! Didn't a Redbull split the Ferraris in Melbourne? How close the midfield was to Max in Melbourne during the race? I would wait a few more races before making any kind of judgement that the Redbull is a midfield car this year. In Australia their trap speeds were super high, in Bahrain they were among the slowest in the traps. My guess is they are trying to add downforce to the car, but in Bahrain it didn't work for whatever reason. But Mclaren this year has done a great job and they are recovering. Now this year's Mclaren is pretty slippery and hence fast in the straights. This was a big problem for them last year, and likely during the Honda years too. But Mclaren is definitely still a midfield car. Let's not get carried away just yet.
They are clearly given different treatment and the benefit of a doubt. People are willing to believe that they've created a weaker chassis this year than last. So why not with Macca?
But this year's Mclaren is a start over project anyway, with new philosophy, so to me it is a departure from what Mclaren had been doing before and no parallels should be drawn between the two. JMO.