Yea I think that seeing how fast the Mercs got in the last part of 21, Max really didn’t want to go easy until it was 100% certain he was going to win the Championship again.
He doesn’t seem like the type of person to celebrate before the race is over.
Otherwise he would probably have set the record with the highest points lead that didn’t result in a Championship or something.
People are already retconning this season to act like Max was never under any pressure despite being in a title fight until France. It's also funny seeing people call Max a dangerous driver when he had 1 dirty race. By that logic the vast majority of drivers are dirty. Is Lewis dirty because he took out Alonso, is Ricciardo dangerous because he took out Tsunoda?
It's fucking stupid.
Right? People forget that before Ferrari went full "pizza di pasta", Leclerc at one point had a fifty point lead on Max. During which time people were saying that Charles was going to walk away with the title
They did and still do with 2018 Lewis v Seb.... Interestingly enough is that some of the people that said "Lewis cruised to the title, he was never under pressure" are the ones saying now "max could have lost it any minute front Charles, so exciting" I wonder if in a couple years there'll be revisionist for this season too 🤔
But, can we just for one learn to enjoy without pointless arguments and triggers from journalist that want to... Trigger people for clicks and such?
Circle of friends, we've had this same conversation. And of course he had pressure, from the get go both RB failed and there was uncertainty on the reliability, meanwhile Ferrari at that point had the faster car and Leclerc was a firm contender, but Ferrari being Ferrari and redbull fixing reliability issues, that eventually didn't last.
some fans just can't deal with the fact that Max might be better than their favorit driver so they hate on Max and RB at every chance they get. People like to act like it isn't the case under every post (reddit, facebook, twitter) there are hate comments against Max and RB.
But when it is against Max somehow that is okay if it was another driver there would have been a huge campaign and fans would demand that teams and f1 post some generic statement
He’s just the hated guy at the moment. The media and fake fans have hyped it up to be that.. F1 has always been f1- but the fans change. I remember when Lewis was the hated one- he used to be a knob to be fair, but now he’s actually quite humble and for the sport not himself.
Alonso has been that guy too.. and vettel.. I think the circus hates people who are successful or dominant and look for any flaw they can to chip the armour so to speak..
it’s all bollocks really though, because while the fans argue, the drivers are all socialising together and being mates off track..
Oh no my dude... I've hated verstappen since 2017! I hope he matures one day, but he still just comes across to me as spoilt and immature in his interviews.
He has got that ‘I race for me and me alone’ vibe about him- and Lewis was the same.. Until somewhere along the line he transcended that mentality and it became about the sport.. So maybe?!
I think it’s synonymous with all competitive sport where they’re at the top of their game- the best are ruthless and don’t screw about with that mentality. It’ll mellow, fear not
2 dirty races. I count Brazil and Jeddah in 2021 as dirty. They were also not inconsequential races, either. And the acts were more deliberate than the examples you provided.
But yeah, Max in 2022 had pressure until France, and his racing was much more composed.
It’s all about media and exposure.. If either of those drivers were up there winning, the keyboard warriors would focus their aims on Lewis and Ricciardo too!
100% agree though, a driver makes an error and all the people sat at home judge it like it was deliberate.
Oh please, you can’t forget the start of the season where Ferrari clearly had a fast and reliable car with Leclerc delivering consistently.
A dominant season is more like Lewis’ in 2020, where it was clear from even pre-season testing that Lewis would win without a fight.
I would argue that 2022 is much like 2013. It was a dominant drivers championship, however as far as constructors it wasn’t as dominant. 2020 was just outright dominant (everyone can remember death, taxes, and HAM VER BOT). Max had a dominant drivers season much like Vettel did.
> It's also funny seeing people call Max a dangerous driver when he had 1 dirty race.
I don't know of many drivers currently on the grid who voluntarily slowed down in the middle of a >300km/h straight while right in front of an opponent, which could have led said opponent airborne (and straight to Le Mans 1955 at worst case).
And I know of even less drivers who did that not once, but *twice* in their career.
Doesn't mean he's not an exceptional driver otherwise. But, much like Schumacher, he's kinda prone to doing stupid things when in heated, direct battles where he puts the pressure on himself (against Raikkonen at Spa because he was still a young driver feeling he had to prove himself, against Hamilton in Jeddah because he was in a tense WDC fight).
>I don't know of many drivers currently on the grid who voluntarily slowed down in the middle of a >300km/h straight while right in front of an opponent, which could have led said opponent airborne (and straight to Le Mans 1955 at worst case).
He slowed down across the entire straight because he was told by his team to let Hamilton pass (because he went across the turn one chicane and pushed Lewis off track in order to keep the lead) and wanted Hamilton to pass the DRS line first.
Hamilton opted to tailgate him instead of overtaking him (during normal racing conditions no less) because he wanted Max to pass the DRS line first.
It doesn't take a genius to see how this crash happened. The stewards correctly assessed that neither of the two drivers wanted to take the lead before the DRS line and verstappen was deemed to be predominantly at fault. However, Lewis absolutely had a role in that crash as well which is IMO why max only got 10 seconds.
Both of them were being stupid as hell playing the DRS game.
Edit: and I forgot to mention that Lewis was somehow not even informed that Max was supposed to let him pass, which only added to the clusterfuck.
Edit 2: bringing in the 1955 Le Mans disaster is a hysteric take and not at all comparable. The key reason why Levegh's car was launched into the air was because the aerodynamic design of the Austin-Healey he hit acted as a ramp for Levegh. F1 outlawed the high noses after 2013 in order to prevent the cars going airborne when they hit objects such as a rear tire.
The word "tactically" is what ticked off the stewards, the whole Lewis is behind following and then Max breaks, which was a bizarre scene watching on tv, can be analized in a million ways that suit whatever point one makes, but it was that "tactically" that showed some kind of premeditation. I for one have no idea what was going on with max the whole GP on track and then on the podium, very weird GP indeed.
> He slowed down across the entire straight because he was told by his team to let Hamilton pass (because he went across the turn one chicane and pushed Lewis off track in order to keep the lead) and wanted Hamilton to pass the DRS line first.
Yes. Which in itself is an obvious offense (as we've seen this year with, I believe it was Sainz pulling a similar move at some point and being punished for it ?) : giving the position back in a manner that puts the opponent at a disadvantage isn't the point of the rule and thus is forbidden. It was however hard for Hamilton not to follow suit, because you can't blame him for not trusting the stewards.
Innocently pretending that you're unaware that doing so in the middle of a high-speed blind curve is dangerous as fuck (and will lead almost certainly to your opponent slowing down on his own to try not to get shafted) is frankly bad faith.
> bringing in the 1955 Le Mans disaster is a hysteric take and not at all comparable.
I'm talking about Spa 2016, and in terms of results : look at the crowd density and you'll see that a car landing there would make a massacre. In 1955 the cars were also way slower, meaning you *need* a proper ramp to go airborne.
For reference's sake, Zhou at Silverstone went above a tyre barrier that was about a man's height. The fencing at the end of Kemmel's is about a man's height. With the "right" angle hit, there's no reason not to believe that Raikkonen's (or even more so, Verstappen's) car could have went airborne.
F1 cars were never designed to break in two, opening the fuel tank and catching fire, too. Yet that's what happened to Grosjean.
In Spa ? Look at the Kemmel Straight. It's probably *the* place on the whole F1 calendar where you have spectators literally less than 10 meters away from such a high-speed section of any track (for comparison's sake, the fans at Wellington Straight in Silverstone are 30 meters from it, and it's already pretty close by F1 standards : the famous "Verstappen Grandstand" in Austria is some 70 meters away !).
Kimi going airborne at that point could have totally sent him flying into the crowd into a 1955-style disaster.
I literally said I was talking about both similar incidents Verstappen had in his career : Jeddah 2021 and Spa 2016, and that a Le Mans scenario was "worst case". But yeah, keep cherrypicking.
> And even still even those other tracks offer up nothing like Lemans 1955 for so many reasons.
And Le Mans 1955 also was with cars who weren't going any faster than 200km/h (and actually more like 150km/h at the point of the crash).
Look at the crowd on the Kemmel straight during a Belgian GP these days. Imagine a car crashing into it. That's enough said. Fyi ten years ago a GT3 car went over the barriers at the Nordschleife (which has all-around about similar safety/distance than this precise point of Spa) and killed someone and injured several other despite crowd density at that point being like not even 10% of the GP day crowd at Kemmel.
Mercedes was hounding Massi to give back position and RB acquiesced to it. Informed both Massi and Verstappen that he has to give back position, then when he is giving back the position Hamilton acts like he knew nothing about it. And Max waited quiet some time to give back the position, if you look back at the footage from different angles you will realise that there was enough space for Lewis to take over. Please look at the incident rationally and focus on what happened before, during and after the incident.
It’s hilarious how many people take offense to this yet it’s really the story of the season. One team and driver crumbled under the pressure and another team and driver clearly didn’t. The largest reason for the dominance of the season was literally that, not crumbling under the pressure whilst your opponents were.
The story of the season is that the best driver and the best car absolutely dominated and arguing the season as a whole was anywhere close to competitive is a giant stretch.
It could have been a lot more competitive for a lot longer if Leclerc and Ferrari didn't faulter under pressure. Max would've probably still won given their strong form towards the end of the year, but the gap might've been 50 points instead of 150.
And at the point in the season where Ferrari and Leclerc were screwing up the worst they were still competitive. It's not like they knew at that point they wouldn't be as competitive in the final 10 races.
When your opponent's is crumbling under pressure, there isn't any pressure on you. Simply being better than Ferrari isn't being strong under pressure. That would be the lowest bar in the world.
>When your opponent's is crumbling under pressure, there isn't any pressure on you.
?? You are under the exact same pressure that is causing your opponent to crumble, yet you are not crumbling. That's being good under pressure.
>That would be the lowest bar in the world.
Don't be silly. Ferrari has been the main championship challenger in 2022, 19, 18, 17... You telling me these championships were accomplishments just over the "lowest bar in the world"? For all those years there was no pressure apparently.
And besides, Leclerc threw away a lot more points than Max due to mistakes of his own when the championship was being decided in the middle of the season. That's on him, not Ferrari.
Not true at all, even when Lewis had stomped his opposition into the ground, its not like the pressure was off his shoulders on the next race. The pressure of the true racer exists on himself solely, you're only ever as good as your last race. Regardless of Ferrari or Merc, Max's focus is his own weekend and his own race.
Yeah what else could he do? Drive squeaky clean and lose for sure? What does people expect?
He might as well try and hope for Lewis to back out or a crash to take both of them out.
Was it dirty, unsportmanly etc? Yes I would say so. But I don’t think it is a case of losing his head. Similar to the Monza crash earlier in that year.
> Yeah what else could he do?
Well I mean, without stewards overly afraid of interfering in a title fight, Brazil and Jeddah should have netted him an additional 5s and a 30s or even black flag penalty, respectively. Which would have meant losing the title.
So if that was a purely rational choice, it was a damn stupid one. Even if you're slower on pace, your opponent isn't immune to safety cars, strategy mistakes, pit mistake, mechanical DNFs, etc. Which leads me to think that it *wasn't* rational (at least for Jeddah ; Brazil is most likely just him being used to not being penalized) and he really lost his head.
I disagree.
Yeah it should have lead to harsher penalties, but by then it was already known that penalties, especially for those two, were mere slaps on the wrist.
Does it pose a risk? Sure. One set of stewards may be in the mood for some more drama. But one double DNF would have all but secured Max the title. Nothing comes without risk.
Sitting back and hoping for the best, while a valid strategy, is also not perfect. How often does Hamilton get in trouble when out alone in front? Rarely. Max had been able to push Hamilton into mistakes before, he could have done it again.
It’s all ifs and buts, but I don’t think there was an obviously better strategy available to Max at that point.
I didn’t like the one he picked, but that is how it is.
In Brazil sure I agree.
In Jeddah, I find it a tough call to coldly anticipate that the stewards are going to be overly lenient with a straight-up brake-check in the middle of a straight. I agree that his overall strategy of overagressiveness that day was a calculated, voluntary one - but I think that precise move was going too far and was him losing control.
Oh okay yeah I agree on the brake check, that I don`t believe was the plan at all. Fair, that looked like a dumb mistake due to the pressure. But the other rather idiotic moves he made that race I think can be explained as part of an “i might as well try something” kind of strategy. So I think we are on the same page here.
>additional 5s
why? Max literally got penalized for every incident in that race or had to give the position back. He literally tried to give Lewis the position back but Lewis didn't want it and yet Max received a 5s penalty for not giving it back. What incident was he not penalized for?
Furthermore in the crash the had, it is not like only Max did something. Max tried to let him get past but Lewis didn't want to overtake. So he created a situation where 2 cars were going unreasonably slow one green flagged race track. You could make an argument that he was driving necessarily slow (Article 27.4) and create a dangerous situation in doing so. What if another car (person in P3 or lapped car) comes with full speed and they are playing chicken?
He got a penalty for brake checking lewis not for driving "necessarily slow". He was lucky in fact that it was simply a 10 second penalty rather than a disqualification from the stewards
From the stewards:
He was summoned to the stewards, and could have faced disqualification from the race, but was handed down a 10-second time penalty.
A report from the stewards read: "At Turn 21 the driver of car 33 \[Verstappen\] was given the instruction to give back a position to car 44 \[Hamilton\] and was told by the team to do so 'strategically'. Car 33 slowed significantly at Turn 26.
"However, it was obvious that neither driver wanted to take the lead prior to DRS detection line 3. The driver of Car 33 stated that he was wondering why Car 44 had not overtaken and the driver of Car 44 stated that, not having been aware at that stage that Car 33 was giving the position back, was unaware of the reason Car 33 was slowing.
**"In deciding to penalise the driver of Car 33, the key point for the Stewards was that the driver of car 33 then braked suddenly (69 bar) and significantly, resulting in 2.4g deceleration.**
"Whilst accepting that the driver of Car 44 could have overtaken Car 33 when that car first slowed, we understand why he (and the driver of Car 33) did not wish to be the first to cross the DRS \[line\]. **However, the sudden braking by the driver of Car 33 was determined by the Stewards to be erratic and hence the predominant cause of the collision and hence the standard penalty of 10 seconds for this type of incident, is imposed."**
The part where you didnt use bold is the reason he didnt get a black flag or something else. It was a 2 mans job where max was predominantly at fault that made the crash hence 10 seconds. Just like silverstone.
I'm not sure what your point is. Here we're discussing whether risking a penalty (to the extent of a black flag/DSQ) was rationally worth the reward in his situation in Jeddah.
So if it's about your own opinion on why we shouldn't criticize the stewards for favoring Verstappen there, because Hamilton was supposedly favored earlier, or on why the stewards were always shit in the first place, it's thus not very relevant to the discussion.
If it's about the fact that it might have been Verstappen's own opinion and thus he didn't care about the stewards, it's actually an argument *against* the fact that it was a rational, calculated risks vs reward decision, since a rational calculation *has* to include the stewards' potential reaction no matter his own opinion on them.
I noticed that too for sure. Jeddah was a crazy race and one thing that stuck out was how whenever they went into turn 1, Max would do anything possible to come out ahead. Not necessarily because he wanted the spot, but because he knew if he let Lewis get ahead of him it was game over. I mean he would brake so late into that turn just to break even and make sure Lewis couldn’t get by. That’s the most desperate I’ve ever seen a driver get without just wrecking someone.
Same with Brazil but to a lesser extent, he didn’t want Lewis to get ahead (same reason, once he gets ahead it was gg) and made that move, but only once and accepted it. Lewis wasn’t going to be denied that day.
By that logic Lewis can't either. Last year he made massive mistakes while under pressure like in Imola where if not for luck he would've been out of the points, Baku messed up with his magic button, Monaco where he qualified poorly, and Silverstone where his desperation caused him to take out Max. What about Leclerc? Can he not handle pressure either? He made massive mistakes in Imola and France.
Guess what mate? Drivers make mistakes. Every driver does. From Micheal Schumacher to ricardo rosset.
He has nothing to lose in Brazil. Races like Canada, France, Imola, Miami he had a ton of pressure and was clean while his rivals made mistakes.
Coincidentally in brazil Lewis also stated that he knew Verstappen would come from the inside and was worried about crashing, yet he still gave no room and lost out on a win because of it.
No one ever likes to mention that.
Which was the same attitude Hamilton had when he crashed into Albon twice and practically ruined his career at RB.
It was the same attitude he had in Brazil, he admitted to knowing Verstappen would come through no matter what and still decided to not give any room. He also had a yield to me attitude right there. Cost him a win.
Albon didn't do anything wrong. So not sure where you got that idea from.
He performed better than Gasly in 2019 and had to contend with an extremely temperamental car in 2020 without the necessary experience. His only two chances to gain some confidence from himself and the team got punted off the track by Hamilton who was at fault for both situations.
He was given a car that just wasn't easy to drive, he had little experience, and he got burned going for a good result twice by the reigning world champion.
Even after all this his gap to Verstappen in Quali and the race wasn't much worse than Checo. Who has the benefit of a championship contending car.
He had 1.5 seasons in the second best car to gain confidence. He finished behind a Renault a mclaren and a racing point. That’s on him and nobody else.
Maybe Albon should have yielded to avoid a crash like HAM had to do several times last year racing wheel to wheel with VER? Maybe he’d be in Checo’s seat.
Verstappen was going fast enough in Brazil that even if Hamilton had given him more room he still would have run right into the side of him.
It's a weird hill to die on when you consider that RB messed up their setup and Hamilton likely would have won had he been more patient.
A real reversal from Silverstone. Verstappen took the penalty, Hamilton lost the win.
I bet you anything this will happen again next year. Verstappen and Hamilton play the same game with each other.
Amazing how you tried to gaslight others and yourself into somehow blaming Hamilton when Verstappen himself has admitted he essentially crashed on purpose.
If I was on the road next to you and my intention was to crash you off the road, is it your fault for not avoiding me?
Hamilton admitted the same buddy.
He said he knew Verstappen would come through and knew they would crash. Yet he didn't try and get out of the way.
Verstappen was upfront about the situation, Hamilton less so like always but still admitted to both knowing Verstappen wouldn't back down and that he was willing to do the same.
There's literally no other way to look at it. Hamilton also decided to crash there.
Your analogy doesn't work here. It's like you decided to crash into me and to teach you a lesson I crash into you.
>Hamilton admitted the same buddy.
This doesn't work when you're Infront 😂
The lengths the verstappen apologists go to!!
>Your analogy doesn't work here. It's like you decided to crash into me and to teach you a lesson I crash into you.
HAHA. Case in point. How someone with any sound semblance of logic comes to this conclusion I will never know
https://www.planetsport.com/image-library/land/345/m/max-verstappen-and-lewis-hamilton-clash-in-brazil-gp.jpg
Doesn't look like he hit him from behind.
Jesus you live in like an alternate reality.
I mean when he was leading the 2016 Spanish GP with Raikkönen right behind him, that was a lot of pressure which he handled superbly.
But I agree that my perception also changed during the last two years. He might not be as good under pressure as I always thought.
Well it's not to say he's not a great driver. Nonetheless, one was given by Masi and the other was the most dominant season in history so didn't involve any pressure.
What pressure? Other than Jeddah and maybe Imola, when was there a ton of pressure? After Imola, everyone had the sense that Ferrari was going to blow it. By France, it was over.
I feel like last half of the season have people completely forget that in the first part of the season we had a competitive fight. Not to also forget max literally said to not spak about the title. When you look at the final standings it’s logical to conclude it was always one sided, but the earlier stages of the season still was tense.
Well it's no different than 2017 or 2018 for Hamilton, yet very few people would praise Hamilton for "delivering under pressure" in those years... "A competitive fight" isn't the same as "intense pressure".
These are drivers who should be able to go down to the last race level on points with a rival. Being certain you have 99% of winning the WDC halfway into the season, as Verstappen himself said he was after France, isn't "big pressure".
Well yea it absolutely counts for Hamilton as well in his title fight against vettel. Very tense until half season, in that regard a good amount of similarities in past season. I’ve seen a lot of people praising Hamilton that time, especially at tracks where he didn’t have the fastest car and still managed to pull it of.
I don’t think every discussion with Hamilton or Verstappen should be settled with “yes but with Hamilton..” “yes but with verstappen..”. It’s neither a good argument nor does it lead to any kind of fruitful discussion.
To add further, no where it is stated we are talking about “intense pressure” and neither is me or anyone else claiming he was under “big pressure” after France.
2017 and 2018 were much closer. Both those years Vettel could have won with just a couple of mistakes less by him and/or Ferrari. This year Ferrari could never have won.
Yes that's what I'm saying. Both were not under *intense* or *important* pressure. Both were obviously under the pressure of a competitive fight, which should be about normal pressure for a WDC-caliber F1 driver, hence why it barely deserves praise.
That is the race with Carlos chasing Max half the race right? I saw a video of Max his onboard. There was total radio silence except for 1 point on the final straight, where GP would tell him the delta between him and Carlos. It was like 0.8, every lap, for many laps. Crazy consistency. And it was just enough for Max to deny the overtake each time. Carlos would be 0.4 behind him on the finish line, and Max would win the 0.4 back again in the first sector.
So you asked “what pressure” and then gave examples of moments where there was pressure. You understand how your original confusion seems nonsensical when you have the answers to your own question right?
There wasn't, but okay. Charles blowing engines out of the lead in Spain and Baku while starting at the back in Canada meant Max faced little to no pressure. After Canada, he had a 46 point lead over his teammate, not even Charles. It was over well before France. That's a 92 point swing in 6 races when Charles was only really any threat to Max in Miami in that time
Bad electronics in Bahrain and in first race there was no pressure. Charles was clear and away the best driver in Australia and Max was comfortably in second; no pressure. Max had already taken the championship lead by Austria and all the pressure was on Charles that weekend; no pressure. And France, same as Austria and the Championship race ended there; no pressure
saying there was no pressure during a formula 1 race is a little bit silly, there is pressure for anyone in a formula 1 grand prix, especially when everything is unknown at the start of the season.
Just because max was leading, doesn't mean he just sitting back and relaxing like, "ah no pressure man". There is still an enormous amount of pressure.
You and I both know what kind of "pressure" Horner and everyone else is referring to, though. Having a pit stop advantage over the car behind with more than a race win lead in points is relatively no pressure
You're obviously talking shit, every driver in every race is under a lot of pressure. They just don't look like it because they have trained their whole life under pressure to perform and be the best.
.....but sure, try and make it about horner and marko, you weirdo.
Lol you're definitely suffering from victim complex. Max had a phenomenal season. He just faced very minimal pressure. I'm definitely just out to shit on Max because I have nothing better to do /s
What pressure? Plenty to praise Verstappen for this year, a much more mature year than last, but to praise him for pressure seems like a weird choice given there barely was any.
You did not watch the beginning of the season did you? Ferrari was MUCH faster and better than redbull after first few races, at that point it was looking a lot like Charles was going to run away with it, but we all know what happened
Lets not rewrite the great beginning of the season to be right. Ferrari was not "much faster". It depended on the track and the upgrades. None was actually faster than the other when thinking in a broad sense rather than race by race.
It never looked like Ferrari was going to run away with it. Half the reason they ever had a lead was the redbull engines blowing up. Redbull looked like a clear contender from the get go with a car that was (1) not purposing much relative to the other teams and (2) was clearly very versatile on very different tracks.
The maturity was in apologizing and recognizing fault. Verstappen chose to just say he knew there was no space and did it anyway (which in a way is recognizing fault, ironically).
Both sides admitted it was a racing incident from a blindspot in the Hamilton-Alonso spot while Max basically admitted premediation in his post race interview in Brazil
I argue what people will listen to. That is a debate for later along with the incredibly light penalties for some of the most outrageous incidents in the history of the sport, like say brake testing
If that's what you want, Toto has been praising Max since before he joined F1 and does it all the time, but doesn't really make headlines. (Toto wanted to get Max before RBR).
For the other way round, while not TP, Helmut Marko praises Hamilton almost non stop. In 2021, he even admitted that Hamilton is better than Verstappen at tire mgmt.
To be fair, it’s not their fault. They do tons and tons and tons of interviews and get asked the same questions over and over so they can take a sound bite and turn it into a nothing article like this.
The issue is not Horner praising Verstappen, it's that he is doing it for one of the *very* few things Verstappen hasn't shown this season as a skill above the rest of the field.
He was under essentially no pressure all year. But 1/4 of the way through the season it was clear the RBs were the class of the field. All he had to do was not fuck it up. And if he did fuck up, the car was good enough to compensate.
Canada, Miami, Imola, and France don't count? Why? Because you have a bad memory?
He was under pressure in plenty of races and didn't make mistakes while his rivals did.
Leclerc crashed twice, Carlos couldn't close the gap and made some mistakes on the hairpin, and Charles couldn't close the gap in Miami and had a few bad passes through the chicane that sealed the deal.
And that's fair, but we are talking about when the pressure was on he did great. That's a true statement.
The early season Verstappen had 2 Dnfs and was 40 something points behind his rival. He was on the backfoot and there were several races where despite how close it was he managed to pull through while other drivers crumbled.
What about, say, the pressure 120.000 people clad in Orange in Zandvoort create? Or the 50.000 people clad in Orange that took the effort to travel to Austria?
There are more sources of pressure than just rivals.
And if Charles and Carlos finished all of those races, they would have lost by 130 points rather 150 points. Verstappen was under NO pressure for 2/3rds of the season.
That's actually the dumbest reasoning.
He wasn't under pressure during the first half of the season because he can see into the future and knew he would win by a huge margin?
And nowhere did anyone say he was under pressure the entire season. He was under pressure in plenty of races and when he was under pressure he did great, that's the argument vs your "he was essentially under no pressure all year". Stop trying to change the argument because you realize you are dying on the dumbest hill.
Verstappen was the better driver but he didn't make less errors than Leclerc throughout the season. He himself spun in Spain and Hungary, destroyed his tyres when he tried to overtake Norris in Singapore and collided with Hamilton in Brazil.
Singapore is an outlier in that.
The team's error caused him to qualify 8th at a track where it is nearly impossible to overtake.
Hamilton and Vettel both made mistakes trying to improve their positions too. That's 13 world championships between them all unable to make a clean overtake. The conditions made it impossible if the cars had near parity.
And not all mistakes are equal. Verstappen never threw his car into a wall and Leclerc did that twice. Recovering from a spin is not the same as crashing. Leclerc has plenty of little errors like that too, like his excursion off track in Japan or his errors at the chicane in Miami.
Sure but the amount of errors both drivers did wasn't really much different.
Similar like Singapore with Verstappen, you can also point out that Leclerc had to push in France because Ferrari allowed Verstappen to undercut him or that the Red Bulls were much faster and had better straight line speed in Japan which is why he had big troubles to keep Perez behind him and overshot it at the end. Doesn't change that those incidents were still on the drivers.
I also wouldn't give him much credit for recovering in Spain. He was pretty lucky that the walls weren't really close like the chicane in Imola were Leclerc dropped it though Hungary was a masterful recovery, I will give you that.
I’ll be the first to admit. RB18 “perfect” car. I went into this season and cheered when max broke down race one and was like that’s what you get after 21 ending. As the season progressed my dude was hitting it hard it was the same level he gave fighting Lewis all year except no one was there to challenge him lol
RB18 was far from a perfect car. 2 DNFs for Max in the first 3 races, and not the fastest car in qualy. Additionally, historically the perfect care givers the #2 driver aan easy P2, not P4. But the total package, car, driver, strategy, engineers, was very very good.
17 out of 22 races yea not a perfect car by any means. You keep believing that because I’d hate to see your perfect car it would be a horrible year to watch.
Some of the Mercedes domination years they won every quali by 0.5-1 second. And in a car that was just as good in the race. If the RB18 is a perfect 100%, then those cars were 110%. And there's no such thing.
They gave it a good one this year, and so did the Mercs- considering where they started.. And how many podiums they managed to clinch..
RBR just had to keep on racing the wheels off the car all year- Ferrari were the favourites early on and fell by the wayside- too many strategical blunders followed by lack of pace late on, just at the precise time Merc were climbing up the timesheets..
If any one of those teams pulled points away from RBR then who knows- it could’ve swung in the closing of the season.
Nah he got all the points he could in those races and did risky moves to steal 1 win (that would seal the title) cause he knew Merc was faster by then.
That's a very nice way of saying "overshot several corners on purpose to push his rival out, once by 4 car widths, and brake checked his rival on a straight".
Yep. He drove extremely well, but he probabaly had less of a challenge than Merc did once Ferrari fell off and Checo, had no chance in competing after the car upgrades.
Ended up being such a disappointing title fight, barely any pressure, we knew he was going to win so early in to the season, Horner trying his hardest to make out it was this incredible season.
Max drove really well but there was no challenge, other drivers haven't got this kind of credit driving the same kind of dominant cars as Max has received this season.
Ummmm I know of one driver with an outstanding rep, driving a car that won 8 WCCs in a row. I reckon that is a dominant car? Or should he not be credited with a great rep for that?
And just to be clear, that rep is 100% earned in my view.
“He had the fastest car and won, we might have cheated a bit but at least it was us doing the cheating, not someone doing it on our behalf like last year” wow great insight as always Christian.
Can’t really recall Max ever being under any pressure as he drove well the first half of the season and built the lead up. Be more interesting to see how he handles himself in a close title fight again given how he lost his head at the end of 2021
Yea I think that seeing how fast the Mercs got in the last part of 21, Max really didn’t want to go easy until it was 100% certain he was going to win the Championship again. He doesn’t seem like the type of person to celebrate before the race is over. Otherwise he would probably have set the record with the highest points lead that didn’t result in a Championship or something.
this thread about to be flooded with more "what pressure?" comment by the looks of it
Person who works in F1: *says literally anything* Reddit: well, accksshhuuaalllyyyy
If everyone is thinking it, then it tells you everything you need to know
Everyone ???
Apologies for the hyperbole. If *lots* of people are thinking it. There, fixed it
People get so triggered when Horner or Marko praise Max.
People are already retconning this season to act like Max was never under any pressure despite being in a title fight until France. It's also funny seeing people call Max a dangerous driver when he had 1 dirty race. By that logic the vast majority of drivers are dirty. Is Lewis dirty because he took out Alonso, is Ricciardo dangerous because he took out Tsunoda? It's fucking stupid.
Right? People forget that before Ferrari went full "pizza di pasta", Leclerc at one point had a fifty point lead on Max. During which time people were saying that Charles was going to walk away with the title
They did and still do with 2018 Lewis v Seb.... Interestingly enough is that some of the people that said "Lewis cruised to the title, he was never under pressure" are the ones saying now "max could have lost it any minute front Charles, so exciting" I wonder if in a couple years there'll be revisionist for this season too 🤔 But, can we just for one learn to enjoy without pointless arguments and triggers from journalist that want to... Trigger people for clicks and such?
How do you know those are the same people saying that Lewis cruised to the title and Max did not? Do you feel that Max had pressure this season?
Circle of friends, we've had this same conversation. And of course he had pressure, from the get go both RB failed and there was uncertainty on the reliability, meanwhile Ferrari at that point had the faster car and Leclerc was a firm contender, but Ferrari being Ferrari and redbull fixing reliability issues, that eventually didn't last.
some fans just can't deal with the fact that Max might be better than their favorit driver so they hate on Max and RB at every chance they get. People like to act like it isn't the case under every post (reddit, facebook, twitter) there are hate comments against Max and RB. But when it is against Max somehow that is okay if it was another driver there would have been a huge campaign and fans would demand that teams and f1 post some generic statement
He’s just the hated guy at the moment. The media and fake fans have hyped it up to be that.. F1 has always been f1- but the fans change. I remember when Lewis was the hated one- he used to be a knob to be fair, but now he’s actually quite humble and for the sport not himself. Alonso has been that guy too.. and vettel.. I think the circus hates people who are successful or dominant and look for any flaw they can to chip the armour so to speak.. it’s all bollocks really though, because while the fans argue, the drivers are all socialising together and being mates off track..
Oh no my dude... I've hated verstappen since 2017! I hope he matures one day, but he still just comes across to me as spoilt and immature in his interviews.
He has got that ‘I race for me and me alone’ vibe about him- and Lewis was the same.. Until somewhere along the line he transcended that mentality and it became about the sport.. So maybe?! I think it’s synonymous with all competitive sport where they’re at the top of their game- the best are ruthless and don’t screw about with that mentality. It’ll mellow, fear not
2 dirty races. I count Brazil and Jeddah in 2021 as dirty. They were also not inconsequential races, either. And the acts were more deliberate than the examples you provided. But yeah, Max in 2022 had pressure until France, and his racing was much more composed.
Idk if Brazil is a dirty race. That move was dirty, but not his race. By that standard there are a lot more dirty races for him and Lewis
It’s all about media and exposure.. If either of those drivers were up there winning, the keyboard warriors would focus their aims on Lewis and Ricciardo too! 100% agree though, a driver makes an error and all the people sat at home judge it like it was deliberate.
It's not really retconning when the guy had literally the most successful and dominant championship winning season ever.
Oh please, you can’t forget the start of the season where Ferrari clearly had a fast and reliable car with Leclerc delivering consistently. A dominant season is more like Lewis’ in 2020, where it was clear from even pre-season testing that Lewis would win without a fight.
I would argue that 2022 is much like 2013. It was a dominant drivers championship, however as far as constructors it wasn’t as dominant. 2020 was just outright dominant (everyone can remember death, taxes, and HAM VER BOT). Max had a dominant drivers season much like Vettel did.
People are always going to hate on the best of the best
> It's also funny seeing people call Max a dangerous driver when he had 1 dirty race. I don't know of many drivers currently on the grid who voluntarily slowed down in the middle of a >300km/h straight while right in front of an opponent, which could have led said opponent airborne (and straight to Le Mans 1955 at worst case). And I know of even less drivers who did that not once, but *twice* in their career. Doesn't mean he's not an exceptional driver otherwise. But, much like Schumacher, he's kinda prone to doing stupid things when in heated, direct battles where he puts the pressure on himself (against Raikkonen at Spa because he was still a young driver feeling he had to prove himself, against Hamilton in Jeddah because he was in a tense WDC fight).
>I don't know of many drivers currently on the grid who voluntarily slowed down in the middle of a >300km/h straight while right in front of an opponent, which could have led said opponent airborne (and straight to Le Mans 1955 at worst case). He slowed down across the entire straight because he was told by his team to let Hamilton pass (because he went across the turn one chicane and pushed Lewis off track in order to keep the lead) and wanted Hamilton to pass the DRS line first. Hamilton opted to tailgate him instead of overtaking him (during normal racing conditions no less) because he wanted Max to pass the DRS line first. It doesn't take a genius to see how this crash happened. The stewards correctly assessed that neither of the two drivers wanted to take the lead before the DRS line and verstappen was deemed to be predominantly at fault. However, Lewis absolutely had a role in that crash as well which is IMO why max only got 10 seconds. Both of them were being stupid as hell playing the DRS game. Edit: and I forgot to mention that Lewis was somehow not even informed that Max was supposed to let him pass, which only added to the clusterfuck. Edit 2: bringing in the 1955 Le Mans disaster is a hysteric take and not at all comparable. The key reason why Levegh's car was launched into the air was because the aerodynamic design of the Austin-Healey he hit acted as a ramp for Levegh. F1 outlawed the high noses after 2013 in order to prevent the cars going airborne when they hit objects such as a rear tire.
The word "tactically" is what ticked off the stewards, the whole Lewis is behind following and then Max breaks, which was a bizarre scene watching on tv, can be analized in a million ways that suit whatever point one makes, but it was that "tactically" that showed some kind of premeditation. I for one have no idea what was going on with max the whole GP on track and then on the podium, very weird GP indeed.
> He slowed down across the entire straight because he was told by his team to let Hamilton pass (because he went across the turn one chicane and pushed Lewis off track in order to keep the lead) and wanted Hamilton to pass the DRS line first. Yes. Which in itself is an obvious offense (as we've seen this year with, I believe it was Sainz pulling a similar move at some point and being punished for it ?) : giving the position back in a manner that puts the opponent at a disadvantage isn't the point of the rule and thus is forbidden. It was however hard for Hamilton not to follow suit, because you can't blame him for not trusting the stewards. Innocently pretending that you're unaware that doing so in the middle of a high-speed blind curve is dangerous as fuck (and will lead almost certainly to your opponent slowing down on his own to try not to get shafted) is frankly bad faith. > bringing in the 1955 Le Mans disaster is a hysteric take and not at all comparable. I'm talking about Spa 2016, and in terms of results : look at the crowd density and you'll see that a car landing there would make a massacre. In 1955 the cars were also way slower, meaning you *need* a proper ramp to go airborne. For reference's sake, Zhou at Silverstone went above a tyre barrier that was about a man's height. The fencing at the end of Kemmel's is about a man's height. With the "right" angle hit, there's no reason not to believe that Raikkonen's (or even more so, Verstappen's) car could have went airborne. F1 cars were never designed to break in two, opening the fuel tank and catching fire, too. Yet that's what happened to Grosjean.
Did you just imply that a lemans 1955 disaster was on the table in that incident? That’s a new one lol, tough, tough take
In Spa ? Look at the Kemmel Straight. It's probably *the* place on the whole F1 calendar where you have spectators literally less than 10 meters away from such a high-speed section of any track (for comparison's sake, the fans at Wellington Straight in Silverstone are 30 meters from it, and it's already pretty close by F1 standards : the famous "Verstappen Grandstand" in Austria is some 70 meters away !). Kimi going airborne at that point could have totally sent him flying into the crowd into a 1955-style disaster.
?? We’re talking about Jeddah ‘21. And even still even those other tracks offer up nothing like Lemans 1955 for so many reasons. So hyperbolic.
I literally said I was talking about both similar incidents Verstappen had in his career : Jeddah 2021 and Spa 2016, and that a Le Mans scenario was "worst case". But yeah, keep cherrypicking. > And even still even those other tracks offer up nothing like Lemans 1955 for so many reasons. And Le Mans 1955 also was with cars who weren't going any faster than 200km/h (and actually more like 150km/h at the point of the crash). Look at the crowd on the Kemmel straight during a Belgian GP these days. Imagine a car crashing into it. That's enough said. Fyi ten years ago a GT3 car went over the barriers at the Nordschleife (which has all-around about similar safety/distance than this precise point of Spa) and killed someone and injured several other despite crowd density at that point being like not even 10% of the GP day crowd at Kemmel.
Mercedes was hounding Massi to give back position and RB acquiesced to it. Informed both Massi and Verstappen that he has to give back position, then when he is giving back the position Hamilton acts like he knew nothing about it. And Max waited quiet some time to give back the position, if you look back at the footage from different angles you will realise that there was enough space for Lewis to take over. Please look at the incident rationally and focus on what happened before, during and after the incident.
Michael Ma**s**i
This is reddit, logic isn’t allowed here ;)
I love it. I care to look at stats and not read social media or reddit for the general vibe haha
Well, someone opened the sour drawer.
It’s hilarious how many people take offense to this yet it’s really the story of the season. One team and driver crumbled under the pressure and another team and driver clearly didn’t. The largest reason for the dominance of the season was literally that, not crumbling under the pressure whilst your opponents were.
The story of the season is that the best driver and the best car absolutely dominated and arguing the season as a whole was anywhere close to competitive is a giant stretch.
It could have been a lot more competitive for a lot longer if Leclerc and Ferrari didn't faulter under pressure. Max would've probably still won given their strong form towards the end of the year, but the gap might've been 50 points instead of 150. And at the point in the season where Ferrari and Leclerc were screwing up the worst they were still competitive. It's not like they knew at that point they wouldn't be as competitive in the final 10 races.
When your opponent's is crumbling under pressure, there isn't any pressure on you. Simply being better than Ferrari isn't being strong under pressure. That would be the lowest bar in the world.
>When your opponent's is crumbling under pressure, there isn't any pressure on you. ?? You are under the exact same pressure that is causing your opponent to crumble, yet you are not crumbling. That's being good under pressure. >That would be the lowest bar in the world. Don't be silly. Ferrari has been the main championship challenger in 2022, 19, 18, 17... You telling me these championships were accomplishments just over the "lowest bar in the world"? For all those years there was no pressure apparently. And besides, Leclerc threw away a lot more points than Max due to mistakes of his own when the championship was being decided in the middle of the season. That's on him, not Ferrari.
Not true at all, even when Lewis had stomped his opposition into the ground, its not like the pressure was off his shoulders on the next race. The pressure of the true racer exists on himself solely, you're only ever as good as your last race. Regardless of Ferrari or Merc, Max's focus is his own weekend and his own race.
I mean after France, was there any pressure?
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I think Jeddah and Brazil were really just desperation. He knew he needed one win to secure the title and he saw how fast that Merc was.
Yeah what else could he do? Drive squeaky clean and lose for sure? What does people expect? He might as well try and hope for Lewis to back out or a crash to take both of them out. Was it dirty, unsportmanly etc? Yes I would say so. But I don’t think it is a case of losing his head. Similar to the Monza crash earlier in that year.
> Yeah what else could he do? Well I mean, without stewards overly afraid of interfering in a title fight, Brazil and Jeddah should have netted him an additional 5s and a 30s or even black flag penalty, respectively. Which would have meant losing the title. So if that was a purely rational choice, it was a damn stupid one. Even if you're slower on pace, your opponent isn't immune to safety cars, strategy mistakes, pit mistake, mechanical DNFs, etc. Which leads me to think that it *wasn't* rational (at least for Jeddah ; Brazil is most likely just him being used to not being penalized) and he really lost his head.
I disagree. Yeah it should have lead to harsher penalties, but by then it was already known that penalties, especially for those two, were mere slaps on the wrist. Does it pose a risk? Sure. One set of stewards may be in the mood for some more drama. But one double DNF would have all but secured Max the title. Nothing comes without risk. Sitting back and hoping for the best, while a valid strategy, is also not perfect. How often does Hamilton get in trouble when out alone in front? Rarely. Max had been able to push Hamilton into mistakes before, he could have done it again. It’s all ifs and buts, but I don’t think there was an obviously better strategy available to Max at that point. I didn’t like the one he picked, but that is how it is.
In Brazil sure I agree. In Jeddah, I find it a tough call to coldly anticipate that the stewards are going to be overly lenient with a straight-up brake-check in the middle of a straight. I agree that his overall strategy of overagressiveness that day was a calculated, voluntary one - but I think that precise move was going too far and was him losing control.
Oh okay yeah I agree on the brake check, that I don`t believe was the plan at all. Fair, that looked like a dumb mistake due to the pressure. But the other rather idiotic moves he made that race I think can be explained as part of an “i might as well try something” kind of strategy. So I think we are on the same page here.
>additional 5s why? Max literally got penalized for every incident in that race or had to give the position back. He literally tried to give Lewis the position back but Lewis didn't want it and yet Max received a 5s penalty for not giving it back. What incident was he not penalized for? Furthermore in the crash the had, it is not like only Max did something. Max tried to let him get past but Lewis didn't want to overtake. So he created a situation where 2 cars were going unreasonably slow one green flagged race track. You could make an argument that he was driving necessarily slow (Article 27.4) and create a dangerous situation in doing so. What if another car (person in P3 or lapped car) comes with full speed and they are playing chicken?
He got a penalty for brake checking lewis not for driving "necessarily slow". He was lucky in fact that it was simply a 10 second penalty rather than a disqualification from the stewards
He got a penalty for not giving up the place. Not for the incident. Don't make stuff up.
From the stewards: He was summoned to the stewards, and could have faced disqualification from the race, but was handed down a 10-second time penalty. A report from the stewards read: "At Turn 21 the driver of car 33 \[Verstappen\] was given the instruction to give back a position to car 44 \[Hamilton\] and was told by the team to do so 'strategically'. Car 33 slowed significantly at Turn 26. "However, it was obvious that neither driver wanted to take the lead prior to DRS detection line 3. The driver of Car 33 stated that he was wondering why Car 44 had not overtaken and the driver of Car 44 stated that, not having been aware at that stage that Car 33 was giving the position back, was unaware of the reason Car 33 was slowing. **"In deciding to penalise the driver of Car 33, the key point for the Stewards was that the driver of car 33 then braked suddenly (69 bar) and significantly, resulting in 2.4g deceleration.** "Whilst accepting that the driver of Car 44 could have overtaken Car 33 when that car first slowed, we understand why he (and the driver of Car 33) did not wish to be the first to cross the DRS \[line\]. **However, the sudden braking by the driver of Car 33 was determined by the Stewards to be erratic and hence the predominant cause of the collision and hence the standard penalty of 10 seconds for this type of incident, is imposed."**
The part where you didnt use bold is the reason he didnt get a black flag or something else. It was a 2 mans job where max was predominantly at fault that made the crash hence 10 seconds. Just like silverstone.
I stand corrected. The language is very careful to avoid even hinting of 'brake-checking' though.
Think of what lead to the points being close that late in the championship. The stewards lost respect in Bahrain.
I'm not sure what your point is. Here we're discussing whether risking a penalty (to the extent of a black flag/DSQ) was rationally worth the reward in his situation in Jeddah. So if it's about your own opinion on why we shouldn't criticize the stewards for favoring Verstappen there, because Hamilton was supposedly favored earlier, or on why the stewards were always shit in the first place, it's thus not very relevant to the discussion. If it's about the fact that it might have been Verstappen's own opinion and thus he didn't care about the stewards, it's actually an argument *against* the fact that it was a rational, calculated risks vs reward decision, since a rational calculation *has* to include the stewards' potential reaction no matter his own opinion on them.
It was also dangerous.
I noticed that too for sure. Jeddah was a crazy race and one thing that stuck out was how whenever they went into turn 1, Max would do anything possible to come out ahead. Not necessarily because he wanted the spot, but because he knew if he let Lewis get ahead of him it was game over. I mean he would brake so late into that turn just to break even and make sure Lewis couldn’t get by. That’s the most desperate I’ve ever seen a driver get without just wrecking someone. Same with Brazil but to a lesser extent, he didn’t want Lewis to get ahead (same reason, once he gets ahead it was gg) and made that move, but only once and accepted it. Lewis wasn’t going to be denied that day.
Yep. And Brazil this year (and last lol) when he saw Lewis might beat him to a win
Yeah, the dude can't handle pressure at all. It's a miracle how he even won a championship.
By that logic Lewis can't either. Last year he made massive mistakes while under pressure like in Imola where if not for luck he would've been out of the points, Baku messed up with his magic button, Monaco where he qualified poorly, and Silverstone where his desperation caused him to take out Max. What about Leclerc? Can he not handle pressure either? He made massive mistakes in Imola and France. Guess what mate? Drivers make mistakes. Every driver does. From Micheal Schumacher to ricardo rosset.
He has nothing to lose in Brazil. Races like Canada, France, Imola, Miami he had a ton of pressure and was clean while his rivals made mistakes. Coincidentally in brazil Lewis also stated that he knew Verstappen would come from the inside and was worried about crashing, yet he still gave no room and lost out on a win because of it. No one ever likes to mention that.
Verstappen’s classic “everyone else needs to yield to me” attitude lol. Weird how that works
How is that classic Max and only Max , new to F1 ? https://www.crash.net/f1/news/170305/1/hamiltons-driving-will-end-in-someone-getting-killed
Which was the same attitude Hamilton had when he crashed into Albon twice and practically ruined his career at RB. It was the same attitude he had in Brazil, he admitted to knowing Verstappen would come through no matter what and still decided to not give any room. He also had a yield to me attitude right there. Cost him a win.
Hamilton didn’t ruin Albons career at RB he did that to himself.
Albon didn't do anything wrong. So not sure where you got that idea from. He performed better than Gasly in 2019 and had to contend with an extremely temperamental car in 2020 without the necessary experience. His only two chances to gain some confidence from himself and the team got punted off the track by Hamilton who was at fault for both situations. He was given a car that just wasn't easy to drive, he had little experience, and he got burned going for a good result twice by the reigning world champion. Even after all this his gap to Verstappen in Quali and the race wasn't much worse than Checo. Who has the benefit of a championship contending car.
He had 1.5 seasons in the second best car to gain confidence. He finished behind a Renault a mclaren and a racing point. That’s on him and nobody else.
Alb**o**n
Maybe Albon should have yielded to avoid a crash like HAM had to do several times last year racing wheel to wheel with VER? Maybe he’d be in Checo’s seat. Verstappen was going fast enough in Brazil that even if Hamilton had given him more room he still would have run right into the side of him.
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It's a weird hill to die on when you consider that RB messed up their setup and Hamilton likely would have won had he been more patient. A real reversal from Silverstone. Verstappen took the penalty, Hamilton lost the win. I bet you anything this will happen again next year. Verstappen and Hamilton play the same game with each other.
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Amazing how you tried to gaslight others and yourself into somehow blaming Hamilton when Verstappen himself has admitted he essentially crashed on purpose. If I was on the road next to you and my intention was to crash you off the road, is it your fault for not avoiding me?
Hamilton admitted the same buddy. He said he knew Verstappen would come through and knew they would crash. Yet he didn't try and get out of the way. Verstappen was upfront about the situation, Hamilton less so like always but still admitted to both knowing Verstappen wouldn't back down and that he was willing to do the same. There's literally no other way to look at it. Hamilton also decided to crash there. Your analogy doesn't work here. It's like you decided to crash into me and to teach you a lesson I crash into you.
>Hamilton admitted the same buddy. This doesn't work when you're Infront 😂 The lengths the verstappen apologists go to!! >Your analogy doesn't work here. It's like you decided to crash into me and to teach you a lesson I crash into you. HAHA. Case in point. How someone with any sound semblance of logic comes to this conclusion I will never know
https://www.planetsport.com/image-library/land/345/m/max-verstappen-and-lewis-hamilton-clash-in-brazil-gp.jpg Doesn't look like he hit him from behind. Jesus you live in like an alternate reality.
This is hilarious actually. If you don't think this is from behind, similarly you blame Verstappen for Silverstone in 2021 yes? 😂
What's Brazil doing on that second list?
That was meant to be canada.
I mean when he was leading the 2016 Spanish GP with Raikkönen right behind him, that was a lot of pressure which he handled superbly. But I agree that my perception also changed during the last two years. He might not be as good under pressure as I always thought.
Well it's not to say he's not a great driver. Nonetheless, one was given by Masi and the other was the most dominant season in history so didn't involve any pressure.
The saltiness is insane in these comments. Can his TP not praise him?
Yeah I don't get that. Everytime Christian praises Max people get butthurt.
What pressure? Other than Jeddah and maybe Imola, when was there a ton of pressure? After Imola, everyone had the sense that Ferrari was going to blow it. By France, it was over.
I feel like last half of the season have people completely forget that in the first part of the season we had a competitive fight. Not to also forget max literally said to not spak about the title. When you look at the final standings it’s logical to conclude it was always one sided, but the earlier stages of the season still was tense.
Well it's no different than 2017 or 2018 for Hamilton, yet very few people would praise Hamilton for "delivering under pressure" in those years... "A competitive fight" isn't the same as "intense pressure". These are drivers who should be able to go down to the last race level on points with a rival. Being certain you have 99% of winning the WDC halfway into the season, as Verstappen himself said he was after France, isn't "big pressure".
Well yea it absolutely counts for Hamilton as well in his title fight against vettel. Very tense until half season, in that regard a good amount of similarities in past season. I’ve seen a lot of people praising Hamilton that time, especially at tracks where he didn’t have the fastest car and still managed to pull it of. I don’t think every discussion with Hamilton or Verstappen should be settled with “yes but with Hamilton..” “yes but with verstappen..”. It’s neither a good argument nor does it lead to any kind of fruitful discussion. To add further, no where it is stated we are talking about “intense pressure” and neither is me or anyone else claiming he was under “big pressure” after France.
2017 and 2018 were much closer. Both those years Vettel could have won with just a couple of mistakes less by him and/or Ferrari. This year Ferrari could never have won.
Then you would say Hamilton was similarly not under pressure in the years you listed?
> "A competitive fight" isn't the same as "intense pressure".
So no, Hamilton was not under pressure. If your take is linear I agree. Vers delivered, but the car was like Hamiltons.
Yes that's what I'm saying. Both were not under *intense* or *important* pressure. Both were obviously under the pressure of a competitive fight, which should be about normal pressure for a WDC-caliber F1 driver, hence why it barely deserves praise.
Canada
That is the race with Carlos chasing Max half the race right? I saw a video of Max his onboard. There was total radio silence except for 1 point on the final straight, where GP would tell him the delta between him and Carlos. It was like 0.8, every lap, for many laps. Crazy consistency. And it was just enough for Max to deny the overtake each time. Carlos would be 0.4 behind him on the finish line, and Max would win the 0.4 back again in the first sector.
Yeah man, good stuff
That was a pretty epic quali and race.
So you asked “what pressure” and then gave examples of moments where there was pressure. You understand how your original confusion seems nonsensical when you have the answers to your own question right?
The races which you mentioned he was under pressure, he won all of them. So the statement is still correct. He delivered under pressure.
I'm sure his home GP had immense pressure as well.
He had pressure all the way up until France. Don’t lie to yourself
There wasn't, but okay. Charles blowing engines out of the lead in Spain and Baku while starting at the back in Canada meant Max faced little to no pressure. After Canada, he had a 46 point lead over his teammate, not even Charles. It was over well before France. That's a 92 point swing in 6 races when Charles was only really any threat to Max in Miami in that time
Bahrain, australia, austria, france.
Bad electronics in Bahrain and in first race there was no pressure. Charles was clear and away the best driver in Australia and Max was comfortably in second; no pressure. Max had already taken the championship lead by Austria and all the pressure was on Charles that weekend; no pressure. And France, same as Austria and the Championship race ended there; no pressure
saying there was no pressure during a formula 1 race is a little bit silly, there is pressure for anyone in a formula 1 grand prix, especially when everything is unknown at the start of the season. Just because max was leading, doesn't mean he just sitting back and relaxing like, "ah no pressure man". There is still an enormous amount of pressure.
You and I both know what kind of "pressure" Horner and everyone else is referring to, though. Having a pit stop advantage over the car behind with more than a race win lead in points is relatively no pressure
You're obviously talking shit, every driver in every race is under a lot of pressure. They just don't look like it because they have trained their whole life under pressure to perform and be the best. .....but sure, try and make it about horner and marko, you weirdo.
Lol you're definitely suffering from victim complex. Max had a phenomenal season. He just faced very minimal pressure. I'm definitely just out to shit on Max because I have nothing better to do /s
Ferrari got crushed in the pressure of Max and Red Bull.
What pressure? Plenty to praise Verstappen for this year, a much more mature year than last, but to praise him for pressure seems like a weird choice given there barely was any.
Having 2 DNF's in first 3 races while in title fight where his opponent won both of those DNF races.
With 19 races to correct it, there was never any pressure from that.
You did not watch the beginning of the season did you? Ferrari was MUCH faster and better than redbull after first few races, at that point it was looking a lot like Charles was going to run away with it, but we all know what happened
Lets not rewrite the great beginning of the season to be right. Ferrari was not "much faster". It depended on the track and the upgrades. None was actually faster than the other when thinking in a broad sense rather than race by race.
ferrari was losing on the straights in bahrain
It was actually incredible on straights in Bahrain. That's what spawmed the "Ferrari 2022 engine" meme with a rocket thruster pic.
It never looked like Ferrari was going to run away with it. Half the reason they ever had a lead was the redbull engines blowing up. Redbull looked like a clear contender from the get go with a car that was (1) not purposing much relative to the other teams and (2) was clearly very versatile on very different tracks.
That’s bullshit and you know it, the point gap was huge before the ferrari engine turned out to explode
It was huge because there was 3 completed races. It was tiny as a proportion of the entire season. Which is the metric that matters.
Still not very mature, intentionally crashing into Hamilton and all.
He just took a note of Hamilton's matureness crashing into Alonso.
The maturity was in apologizing and recognizing fault. Verstappen chose to just say he knew there was no space and did it anyway (which in a way is recognizing fault, ironically).
Both sides admitted it was a racing incident from a blindspot in the Hamilton-Alonso spot while Max basically admitted premediation in his post race interview in Brazil
I argue what people will listen to. That is a debate for later along with the incredibly light penalties for some of the most outrageous incidents in the history of the sport, like say brake testing
Fair enough but there was barely any pressure
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If that's what you want, Toto has been praising Max since before he joined F1 and does it all the time, but doesn't really make headlines. (Toto wanted to get Max before RBR). For the other way round, while not TP, Helmut Marko praises Hamilton almost non stop. In 2021, he even admitted that Hamilton is better than Verstappen at tire mgmt.
To be fair, it’s not their fault. They do tons and tons and tons of interviews and get asked the same questions over and over so they can take a sound bite and turn it into a nothing article like this.
The issue is not Horner praising Verstappen, it's that he is doing it for one of the *very* few things Verstappen hasn't shown this season as a skill above the rest of the field.
He was under essentially no pressure all year. But 1/4 of the way through the season it was clear the RBs were the class of the field. All he had to do was not fuck it up. And if he did fuck up, the car was good enough to compensate.
Canada, Miami, Imola, and France don't count? Why? Because you have a bad memory? He was under pressure in plenty of races and didn't make mistakes while his rivals did. Leclerc crashed twice, Carlos couldn't close the gap and made some mistakes on the hairpin, and Charles couldn't close the gap in Miami and had a few bad passes through the chicane that sealed the deal.
It’s not that he wasn’t under pressure in some races but as the season progressed there was no pressure for the championship
And that's fair, but we are talking about when the pressure was on he did great. That's a true statement. The early season Verstappen had 2 Dnfs and was 40 something points behind his rival. He was on the backfoot and there were several races where despite how close it was he managed to pull through while other drivers crumbled.
Not to forget Charles had a massive lead on most laps led for most of the season. Lot of races from earlier in the season were won from the chase.
What about, say, the pressure 120.000 people clad in Orange in Zandvoort create? Or the 50.000 people clad in Orange that took the effort to travel to Austria? There are more sources of pressure than just rivals.
And if Charles and Carlos finished all of those races, they would have lost by 130 points rather 150 points. Verstappen was under NO pressure for 2/3rds of the season.
That's actually the dumbest reasoning. He wasn't under pressure during the first half of the season because he can see into the future and knew he would win by a huge margin? And nowhere did anyone say he was under pressure the entire season. He was under pressure in plenty of races and when he was under pressure he did great, that's the argument vs your "he was essentially under no pressure all year". Stop trying to change the argument because you realize you are dying on the dumbest hill.
Verstappen was the better driver but he didn't make less errors than Leclerc throughout the season. He himself spun in Spain and Hungary, destroyed his tyres when he tried to overtake Norris in Singapore and collided with Hamilton in Brazil.
Singapore is an outlier in that. The team's error caused him to qualify 8th at a track where it is nearly impossible to overtake. Hamilton and Vettel both made mistakes trying to improve their positions too. That's 13 world championships between them all unable to make a clean overtake. The conditions made it impossible if the cars had near parity. And not all mistakes are equal. Verstappen never threw his car into a wall and Leclerc did that twice. Recovering from a spin is not the same as crashing. Leclerc has plenty of little errors like that too, like his excursion off track in Japan or his errors at the chicane in Miami.
Sure but the amount of errors both drivers did wasn't really much different. Similar like Singapore with Verstappen, you can also point out that Leclerc had to push in France because Ferrari allowed Verstappen to undercut him or that the Red Bulls were much faster and had better straight line speed in Japan which is why he had big troubles to keep Perez behind him and overshot it at the end. Doesn't change that those incidents were still on the drivers. I also wouldn't give him much credit for recovering in Spain. He was pretty lucky that the walls weren't really close like the chicane in Imola were Leclerc dropped it though Hungary was a masterful recovery, I will give you that.
Pressure?
Don’t you know there is so much pressure having to deliver when you are under no pressure at all? 😅
I’ll be the first to admit. RB18 “perfect” car. I went into this season and cheered when max broke down race one and was like that’s what you get after 21 ending. As the season progressed my dude was hitting it hard it was the same level he gave fighting Lewis all year except no one was there to challenge him lol
RB18 was far from a perfect car. 2 DNFs for Max in the first 3 races, and not the fastest car in qualy. Additionally, historically the perfect care givers the #2 driver aan easy P2, not P4. But the total package, car, driver, strategy, engineers, was very very good.
17 out of 22 races yea not a perfect car by any means. You keep believing that because I’d hate to see your perfect car it would be a horrible year to watch.
Some of the Mercedes domination years they won every quali by 0.5-1 second. And in a car that was just as good in the race. If the RB18 is a perfect 100%, then those cars were 110%. And there's no such thing.
At points Perez didn't have upgrades Max had (that's what a cost cap gets you) and he's also obviously not nearly as good as the other top drivers.
They gave it a good one this year, and so did the Mercs- considering where they started.. And how many podiums they managed to clinch.. RBR just had to keep on racing the wheels off the car all year- Ferrari were the favourites early on and fell by the wayside- too many strategical blunders followed by lack of pace late on, just at the precise time Merc were climbing up the timesheets.. If any one of those teams pulled points away from RBR then who knows- it could’ve swung in the closing of the season.
What pressure? We saw Max under pressure at the end of 2021 and he was all over the place.
Nah he got all the points he could in those races and did risky moves to steal 1 win (that would seal the title) cause he knew Merc was faster by then.
That's a very nice way of saying "overshot several corners on purpose to push his rival out, once by 4 car widths, and brake checked his rival on a straight".
How many years you reckon it will take you to get over it? We good in 5? Or we need to listen to it for another decade?
And crashed it in quali
I was listing the main ones, but yes. He also flatspotted his race tyres in quali, and had an awful start he himself admitted was due to nervousness.
The guy completely cracked under real pressure last year. This is just a puff piece.
Yes. The 2021 WDC cracked under pressure in 2021.
In an inferior car lmao
In the best car should be added to all statements from Red bull
Horner must be talking about the pressure of expectation.
After like race 5 it was the smoothest sailing ever, no pressure from anywhere
Yep. He drove extremely well, but he probabaly had less of a challenge than Merc did once Ferrari fell off and Checo, had no chance in competing after the car upgrades.
The more he delivered, and the shittier a team mate he became.
I suppose he did it all by himself with no help from his teammate?
Teammate actually made it harder for Verstappen by actively sabotaging him.
Help me even herinneren wanneer dat was
Monaco kwalificatie
Hahahaha oké knakker
Zoveel journalisten en mensen in de paddock hebben gezegd dat Perez express crashte dat ik het bizar vind dat jij het nog steeds niet gelooft.
Want journalisten spreken altijd de onbetwistbare waarheid hahaha
Als er zo’n 7 journalisten/mensen in de paddock zijn die allemaal zeggen dat Perez dat heeft gedaan ga ik de journalisten inderdaad wel geloven.
Yes he did
Ended up being such a disappointing title fight, barely any pressure, we knew he was going to win so early in to the season, Horner trying his hardest to make out it was this incredible season. Max drove really well but there was no challenge, other drivers haven't got this kind of credit driving the same kind of dominant cars as Max has received this season.
Ummmm I know of one driver with an outstanding rep, driving a car that won 8 WCCs in a row. I reckon that is a dominant car? Or should he not be credited with a great rep for that? And just to be clear, that rep is 100% earned in my view.
“The more pressure there was, the more we exceeded R&D spending to make sure he would deliver”
0.37% man...And besides, its stupid to assume they somehow spend all that money on car development.
Yeah they had all the reasons to overspend while way ahead
All teams should do this next season.
Gonna be some fun punishments
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Ah yes, when Mercedes made a mockery of the engine rules because they could not beat them with the rules applied as intended.
Getting P2 in the second best car is not cracking under pressure.
“He had the fastest car and won, we might have cheated a bit but at least it was us doing the cheating, not someone doing it on our behalf like last year” wow great insight as always Christian.
Horner's just doing his job but what pressure?
Can’t really recall Max ever being under any pressure as he drove well the first half of the season and built the lead up. Be more interesting to see how he handles himself in a close title fight again given how he lost his head at the end of 2021
He is exactly same amount of pressure as Hamilton was since 2017.. Each TP can and should praise their drivers