Sainz said the McLaren was strange to drive yet ended up pulling some impressive results out of the MCL34 and MCL35, both of which have the same aero concepts as the 2021. I don't think he had any trouble adapting to the car, at least not nearly the trouble Ricciardo has had this year. By that logic, we should assume the Renault had strange handling characteristics that didn't match Sainz's driving style.Mclarensenna wrote: ↑Wed Nov 24, 2021 3:28 amJPower wrote: ↑Tue Nov 23, 2021 9:55 pmMassive assumption first and a big overstatement later.1m0bius1 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 23, 2021 7:52 pm
I don't believe that. There is no way of knowing how ricciardo would have performed in the Ferrari. The Ferrari would have been far more to Dan's liking and he may have well outscored leclerc. Look what he did at Renault. The fact was the McLaren car philosophy is extremely biased to fast corners and straights. It is a very average overall package and has a lot of weaknesses. Hopefully after Dan's input this is remedied next season. 2020 saw Dan in unstoppable form after Renault developed the car to his liking.
In my opinion, Sainz would've outscored Ricciardo last year if not for some reliability issues.
As for beating Leclerc, there's nothing to say he wouldn't have issues adapting to the Ferrari as well.
Ric never had issues adapting and beating Hulk in his 1st year whereas Sainz did who lost to Hulk.
Ric also had no issue adapting from day 1 in 2014 and beat Vettel the 4xWDC in his very 1st race and got 3 wins to Vettels 0.
Rics track record speaks for itself as he has adapted to 4 other cars with no issue bar the Mclaren (with the strange driving traits).
Even Sainz said the Mclaren was strange to drive and made no such similar references to the Ferrari so we can conclude from Sainz after driving both the Ferrari is easier to drive and adapt to than the Mclaren
At Ferrari you also have the luxury of doing unlimited testing laps with older cars at the Fiorano circuit to help you adapt even quicker.
At Mclaren no such luck as supposedly mclaren does not even have the renault engines to start the older Mclarens.
hence at Ferrari you can learn and adapt to the car much quicker.
So yes based on all this IMHO i dont think RIc would have had any issue adapting if he had joined Ferrari instead of Mclaren in 2021.
So again, no proof that he'd be any better in the Ferrari. Knowing the Italian press and his status as a new driver, Sainz isn't going to make any public complaints about the car. However, after crashing in 3 straight weekends, he admitted that it had its own weird handling characteristics. The SF21 still carries faults from the SF1000 ie unstable airflow in certain circumstances.
As far as testing goes, given Seb's performance in the SF1000, I don't think the recent cars are very similar to the SF71. The testing at Fiorano might've helped some with learning Ferrari's various systems and how they setup their cars, but I doubt it did much for him regarding car characteristics.
Bottom line, you're making some very steep assumptions. We can go back and forth about hypotheticals but right now, we only know that Ricciardo is still struggling with an aero and driving concept that Norris and Sainz were able to make perform.