mikeyg123 wrote: ↑Fri May 14, 2021 7:16 am
Exediron wrote: ↑Thu May 13, 2021 11:36 pm
JN23 wrote: ↑Thu May 13, 2021 8:24 pm
TheGiantHogweed wrote: ↑Thu May 13, 2021 8:08 pm
Invade wrote: ↑Thu May 13, 2021 7:32 pm
On season form so far it's probably Mercedes or Ferrari.
Leclerc has probably been very close to Verstappen and hamilton yes. Sainz looked solid in the first weekend but a bit underwhelming in the others. But you still could say his season has been better than Perez and maybe Bottas to. Ferrari probably have had their driver pairing perform 2nd best after Mercedes though.
Sainz qualified seventh, a tenth off Leclerc and finished sixth in Spain. Tough crowd!
Yeah, I think it's a bit of a surprise that Hogweed -- generally known for paying close attention to driver pairings and defending drivers who are being underrated -- has such a low opinion of Sainz in his recent outings.
In Imola he was slower then Leclerc in the wet, but right on his pace when it dried up. In Portugal he actually qualified ahead but lost out on strategy, and in Spain he was very close in qualifying but his race was determined by being unable to overtake around a circuit famous for the lack of overtaking.
If Leclerc is as good as Hamilton, I would personally say Sainz is doing a better job than Bottas at the moment. He is very clearly doing a better job than Perez.
Hogweed has drivers he always talks up and drivers he always talks down. Sainz is in the later category.
Sainz has really impressed me to be honest. I really didn't expect him to be this close to Leclerc. I always considered him to be getting overrated at McLaren. Looks like I was wrong on that.
He' certainly been better than Bottas and Perez thus far.
I'll admit I've been harsh on Sainz previously, but I while I thought initially that he had done a better job than Bottas and Perez, I'm not totally sure if he's actually done better than both.
The first race was very solid for Sainz. His pace wasn't far off Leclerc. 8 seconds in the end.
The only highlight of his 2nd race was that his pace looked matched at towards the end of the race when he was lucky that the safety car brought him back into play. He lost over 30 seconds between lap 7 at the safety car restart and the next safety car on lap 32. Even I didn't realise this until I looked back into the race now.
In Portugal, he did well to keep Leclerc behind him until he pitted. In the 2nd stint, he was on mediums which i don't believe were as good as the hards, but several other drivers managed stints as long as him pretty well on them. Stroll nearly did a stint this long on softs. Despite starting 5th and Leclerc 8th, Leclerc finished 6th and Sainz 11th. Even if we said the strategy cost him 10 or a few more seconds, he will have only managed 9th or 8th and at least a couple of places behind Leclerc.
In Spain, I thought Sainz had a solid result now I look back, so I probably shouldn't have said this one was underwhelming. But was the difficulty in overtaking responsible for the majority of the 20 second gap? He did lose 2 off the line due to his launch.
To me, I would now say his first race was very good, and Spain was also a solid result. The other 2 (especially Imola) were poor.
He's been better in qualifying than the results show. The first race may have been nearly a second, but I think he can be let off for his first race. 4 tenths difference in Italy was unfortunately separated by so many drivers that it wasn't quite enough enough to get through to Q3. This was unlucky.
He had the best qualifying this year in Portugal and got the best possible result by the pace of the cars I'd say in P5.
In Spain, he only qualified a tenth behind Leclerc, so this was also very solid.
With all this said, I think Leclerc this year has been the closest of any other driver to verstappen's and Hamilton's level this year, so I so that does make things tougher for Sainz. But I don't think Sainz has been an improvement over last season if we include Imola. Given his reputation in the wet, I think his first stint should have been significantly better than that.
I don't always praise certain drivers and be against others. Or at least not always the same ones I used to really dislike Ericsson, but then saw that he was actually a little better than many gave him credit for. The past few years, I've been quite heavily against Leclerc, but have said several times this year that he is looking one of the best. I also didn't rate Norris or Sainz very highly in recent years. I think Norris has noticeably improved this year, but as I said, I'm not so convinced about Sainz - yet. I think I even rated Grosjean as the worst on the grid in the early stages of 2018. But then you lot know that I started defending him after he actually looked reasonable and got far too much criticism.
If drivers I am against do start to obviously improve or impress me, I certainly will start mentioning that.
Now I have looked at the Ferrari drivers season more closely, I think due to how Strong Leclerc has been, I still would possibly rate them 2nd and ahead of Red bull.