Cam wrote:Even Fangio recognised that the car made a difference - but it was no guarantee of success. No one is saying the car is not a factor, it's just not
the factor.
p.s. the fact you used Maldonado's win as an example, in my opinion, proves pure luck also plays a part in success
Maldonado's luck in 2012 manifested itself within an unprecedented period in F1 in which seven different drivers won the first seven races of the season. Look at the names of the winners below.
Does it make sense to say their talents shifted wildly in between rounds of the Championship such that the changes produced seven different winners in the process? Or is it more sensible to conclude that
Pirelli's unpredictable tires created a situation whereby the fastest car at any given time was circuit-dependent? (Remember: even a stagnant car can become the fastest car if others regress. Everything is relative.)
Occam's razor is a beautiful thing.
Incidentally, have you ever noticed how the uber-technical members of this forum rarely involve themselves in driver discussions? That's because the relative merits of one driver over another are always derived from subjective opinions that cannot be backed up with empirical evidence one way or the other (unless they're in the same car, and even that can be tricky). There are just too many variables, especially within a developmental series like F1.
On the other hand, it's incredibly simple to judge the merits of a car or a system, or even individual components, because if it works, it works, and empirical data will tend to support that - unless, of course, you work for McLaren and don't understand what "
This Way Up" means, or you're an aerodynamicist at Ferrari who can't design so much as a paper airplane without running into "
correlation issues."
I kid, I kid.
And as much as folks sometimes say that "Car-X could only perform at a high level with Driver-Y behind the wheel," it's important to remember that mechanical capability is finite and will never exceed itself under any circumstances, and it's also heavily dependent upon the setup of the car. In fact, one could probably make a reasonable argument that two examples of the same car, but with different setups, are actually two different cars, because their capabilities will inevitably differ from one another. For instance, if Hamilton's engineers took 10 psi out of his tires for some reason, Rosberg would eat him alive as if the former World Champion was standing still. Would that then be an accurate reflection of the drivers' capabilities or of the cars' capabilities?
We saw something similar put to the test at the 2010 Italian Grand Prix where Button and Hamilton used different versions of the same car to achieve different qualifying results (Button was nearly 0.6s quicker). What does that mean?
Ready? Sing it with me: it's
always the car.
EDIT: By the way, I think this thing has been bludgeoned to death many times over at this point. So, if I don't have anything else to say on the matter, it's not because I've ignored anyone. I just don't want to repeat myself...anymore. lol
