venkyhere wrote:I didn't realize how effective narrative-building can be, to even the members of a group such as F1-technical. People are pulling data from different twitter sources, posting screenshots from 'F1-analytics' pages to 'prove' that the Max P1 was purely due to the 'tow'. I dont want to turn this into a facebook like driver favouritism slugfest, and I dont particularly like the man. But I respect his talent and his 'big game pressure handling ability'. He did 23.4 in S1 in his first Q3 run, then with the tow, he gained 0.066 in his second Q3 run, for S1. The display on F1tv showed it crystal clear. What more needs to be said about S1 and the tow-advantage ? The number was shown for all to see. He carried too much speed into the chicane-ish T2-T3 and lost some of the advantage he got from the tow, by making a mistake (w.r.t previous run) with his braking point choice in the second run. The nett balance gain was 0.066 in S1 w.r.t first run. He drove a much better S2 and a poorer S3 in the second run, w.r.t first. And how much was Piastri behind him by ? 0.074. I rest my case.
Why is it so hard for some of us to acknowledge someone doing a stellar qualifying lap ? A genuine F1 fan would enjoy such 'once-in-a-year' sectors which reveals real talent, rather than fall for a narrative.
2022 barcelona Q3 - LeClerc set a near-perfect lap in Q3 final run and grabbed pole after spinning out at a chicane in his first run - another example.
I’m not sure about others but track wasn’t necessarily getting faster in s1 given it lost 5C during qualifying.
Obviously he’s put together a great lap, but just because he did a 23.4 in the previous attempt doesn’t mean he would have done the same in the 2nd attempt. We saw how big of a difference even 5 minutes make in Miami when nobody improved on their 2nd attempt.
It’s hard to know exactly what would have happened. I’m not that interested in finding out but just wanted to point out what I think is a fallacy in your argument.
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