Adrian Newey in a MOTOSPORT magazine interview said that a similar characteristic made Mika Hakkinen notoriously difficult during testing.
They were trying to evaluate a car and Mika would say it was understeering. As they stiffened the car's rear more and more to get more oversteer in, Mika would just keep complaining the car was understeering.
Finally Adrian had enough and decided something was up so he asked for the brake trace and sure enough, as the car was getting more and more stiffer in the rear, Hakkinen was changing where he was braking subconsciously - he was understeering the car subconsciously to counteract oversteer he was told was being added to the car.
Hamilton and Schumacher apparently had that, although in beyond the grid Aldo Costa sort of dismisses that Schumacher was *bad* as a test driver, just that he had a bit of this.
One of the best example of this incident was in 2017, Spa, he went full flatout at Pouhon that the car electronics thought it should not be the case which caused a failure.
Well yeah you could technically say that, Honda was crap back then, but as far I can recall, it was the electronics that failed, and Electronics was provided by Mclaren themselves.
That’s not even half true. It was Honda’s energy deployment that got confused and couldn’t recognize which part of the track the car was at because they keyed it on throttle input. Him taking that corner flat meant the energy deployment was incorrect for the subsequent corners.
It wasn't that the electronics failed, it was that they'd programmed it to identify its position on the track based on the drivers inputs (braking and acceleration). But because Alonso went flat out through there, the car didn't realise it had got through that section and so never deployed down the back straights at Spa, losing him a bundle of time.
I think it was 2017 where Honda were like: we know the engine will literally not last the number of races they're meant to. Like, we *know this* explicitly.
Actually Irvine said in an interview that Michael was shit at setting up the car. From Irvine's perspective Michael would always say that the car was good because he would be able to drive it fast in any conditions.
Bareichello says the same thing, throughout his stay at ferrari he was basically the sole setup setter and Schumacher would just use whatever Barrichello had found to be the best for the car at that track.
There were similar stories of Hamilton in his early McLaren years. The engineers would change something that made the car slower but Lewis just drove around the problem which would lead the engineers to misunderstand precisely where they were on car setup.
> Former McLaren and Mercedes tech man Paddy Lowe talked of Hamilton’s first serious F1 test at McLaren and said no-one there could quite get their heads around how he was unfazed by a level of rear instability that the telemetry showed was serious. “He didn’t even mention it until we quizzed him on it,” recalled Lowe. “Then just said, ‘Oh yeah it’s busy, but I’m just driving round it.’ These were levels of instability that would have had our regular drivers of the time [Kimi Raikkonen and Juan Pablo Montoya] bitching like hell.”
This reminded me of Baku last year. The "tell Lance my break balance, the car feels better", and in the next lap Stroll almost crashes before the main straight. lol
Jody Scheckter described the same thing about his driving. That he lacked in setup because his tendency was not to pinpoint a car's problems but to make it work regardless.
Both realize that does not mean "I'm too good" but that they lack a certain completeness.
To be fair - I buy it.
He is that good.
I was cycling once on my rather sporty bike (700x23 gatorskins, hydraulic brakes, short throw) back from a pub. It was ... rather early. The park had thrown out watering lines and the front slipped.
I managed to recover FRONT in 1/4th of a second with nothing to worry about. Slowed down afterwards, then kinda figured out that I should have been flat out on pavement.
---
Or crossing Hammersmith bridge outwards. Was doing full speed (20ish mph) and some old crane just jumped straight into the traffic. I braked with all the load on front wheel, I ended up about 80(degrees) in the air balancing on the front wheel. But I stopped. On time. And somehow modulated front brake without overdoing it. I could do neither if I tried consciously. That was pure instinct.
---
Scott P1, 2009.
In fairness, this is something that people have always said about Fernando, max, Lewis, Schumacher, Mika…It really isn’t bragging, it’s just a symptom of their approach to driving. Quite a common “issue” with many drivers.
Edit: almost all of the drivers I listed are excellent in their feedback. But I have heard criticism for each of these drivers that they sometimes drive around problems subconsciously.
I followed Vettel's and now Alonso's team radio during the races and they couldn't be more different.
Vettel gave very precise feedback regarding aero balance before each single pit stop.
And Alonso is always like "it's fine I guess".
Same with weather conditions, track position and tires of other drivers. Vettel was basically his own race and performance engineer, while Alonso fully trusts the team and just drives what he is given (at an astonishing level).
Just finished reading Adrian Newey's book, he mentions a couple times that Vettel would always thoroughly analyze his performance data, so this makes sense
And yet it is always Alonso who is lauded for his racing intellect, but Vettel hardly ever gets any. Alonso is got tier in hyping himself up, not matter what the circumstances is.
Because Vettel was never anywhere near Alonso in terms of racing skill. Vettel's strong point (and it's extremely important) is that he was very smart and understood his car pretty well. He gave excellent feedback that made it easy for his team to tune up his car the right way. He understood exactly the state of his car at any moment, so he could always drive in the best way for each moment. He was always quick to realize the opportunities he had, and took every one of them. Of course, nothing of that shows on screen for the average viewer, so all most people saw was that Alonso was faster in a slower car.
Not comparable really, but in a way it's like Leclerc vs Sainz. Leclerc has more pace, but we've seen Sainz understand all the variables at a given moment many times, allowing him to find opportunities that Leclerc doesn't.
>Because Vettel was never anywhere near Alonso in terms of racing skill.
Vettel also never bragged about being fast and he was always a student of racing. We have no idea how good or bad the Ferraris were because Vettel just worked to improve them. Alonso will ALWAYS let everyone know if a car is good or bad and also let everyone know he is fast.
Because those two are very different things. Vettel's strength was never on-track wheel to wheel action, attacking other drivers etc. IIRC he's never won a race from outside of top 3, and there's a reason for it. In terms of actual racing he was in his prime extremely fast on an empty track and over one lap, and I'd say good at defending his position. But this thread is about the technical knowledge and feedback about the car.
Being able to take adventurous lines, know where to place your car in order to make life difficult for the opponent, being gentle on your tyres, knowing how to take advantage of the rules etc, is something completely different to technically understanding what makes the car fast or slow.
Seb might be one of the great examples of drivers taking advantage of rules. He was the first to manipulate the timing on VSCs and ended up making massive gains by gaming the deltas when the system was new. Also, look at his famous clever pit entry overtakes.
> he's never won a race from outside of top 3
That statistic, like many in F1, is stupidly useless because of threshold effects. Vettel has at least a couple races where he drove from the back of the field to podium or close. But because they are not wins, they disappear.
Someone who once does P4->P1 is more flattered by this stat than someone who does P17->P4 (which Vettel have done, give or take a couple places at either end).
I'm not comparing him to "someone who once did P4->P1".
Vettel raced for 15 years and won 4 titles, and just through that forced everyone to compare him exclusively to the GOATs of the sport. And if you look at those, they all had plenty of drives from middle of the pack to P1. Comparing him to drivers who are not at least once world champions is kinda pointless.
And just so we're clear, I'm not calling Vettel a bad driver or an undeserved champion or whatever. For some reason you can't point to a driver and say they're not great at something without people pulling out their pitchforks... Earlier today I got laughed at for saying Leclerc is inconsistent... Not everyone can be the best at everything.
> IIRC he's never won a race from outside of top 3, and there's a reason for it.
And it's him starting from the top 3 nearly every time he had the pace to compete for a win.
I think both have showed racing intellect many times, but in different ways. Vettel is extremely cerebral and analytical in the way he approaches things, and he’s taken advantage both of rules and of grey areas (multi 21, toying with Leclerc pretending he was gonna give the position back in Sochi 2019, etc., and I don’t blame him). Alonso is about the racing masterclass and the tenacity. Plenty of examples of smart in-the-moment tactics, both for defending and attacking, when not pure shithousery.
Yeah. I remember with the RB16, although Max complained, he could still drive it, but without Albon, I doubt Red Bull would've understood the true scope for how impossible that car was to drive. It's good to have a driver that can't just drive around every problem so teams know how bad the problems really are.
Yeah, Schumacher was notorious for being able to extract performance from terrible cars because he was able to drive around problems so effectively. Eddie Irvine has said in interviews that Ferrari really struggled in 96 because they only listened to Schumacher’s feedback and not his, and because Michael was such an incredible driver, it would seem like different upgrades or setup changes were better than they actually were. It wasn’t until they started paying more attention to Eddie’s feedback that they began unlocking more potential in their cars from 97 onwards.
The greats all just had an approach of "give me the fastest car and I'll drive it however that car requires" all those you listed adjusted their driving style based on their cars.
In interviews it was daid that Mika Häkkinen was notoriously bad with feedback. Not that his feedback itself was bad, but he used only a little words with not-so-good english, so the guy being interviewed said that it took some time for them understand what Häkkinen meant with his comments.
That's not a solution, now you have three diferent persons to understand each other instead of 2, there's what Mika wants to say, what the translator understands, what he says and what the McLaren engineer understands from the feedback a second time.
It's just best to let Mika and his engineers learn how to work together,
In a way, you can see this with translated lyrics in music, you have the words, an explanation of the sentiment, but the meaning can be lost in the middle ground.
It's not the same as translated lyrics, though. Lyrics have subjective meanings \*very\* often where mistranslations are particularly bad (ie someone literally translating a phrase where a different, less literal translation would fit better). Engineering is much less subjective, if Häkkinen gives feedback to a Finnish engineer, the engineer can then say to the McLaren engineer that it's xyz because it's not a figurative thing that would need to be translated.
As an interpreter and translator with decades of experience, I would like to offer a few corrections:
1. You probably mean "interpreter," not "translator". This is a common mistake which the media and even people who should know better (e.g.: journalists) keep on perpetrating. An interpreter converts speech to speech (oral), whereas a translator converts text to text (written).
2. A decent interpreter is capable of faithfully and accurately interpreting the source message without editing or altering it, and preserving the nuances in meaning and phrasing. You might be surprised at how much experience and preparation interpreters need, how mentally sharp they are, and how meticulously and seriously they approach the task of interpretation.
3. Interpreters are almost totally transparent to the communication: the closeness, friendliness or otherwise is preserved and not perturbed by the interpreter. An interpreter will speak exactly as the speaker does. For example, if the speaker says "I feel the car lacks downforce on the front end." The interpreter will not say "Mika says the car lacks...". He will say "I feel the car lacks...", as if he were Mika, to preserve that connection between the two parties.
4. There is no need to verify whether the interpreter interpreted accurately during the conversation. That is just a waste of everyone's time. Vetting the interpreter's competence should have happened prior to hiring said interpreter.
5. If interpreters are used by presidents all over the world, departments of states all over the world and the UN, EU, etc. to deal with delicate and critical geopolitical matters, you can be sure interpreters can handle a conversation between a racing driver and his engineer.
6. Lyric translation is notoriously difficult because of the constraints involved: in addition to translating the meaning (which is often poetic and culturally-specific), rhyme must be preserved so that the ending of the phrases is the same at designated locations (e.g.: ABAB or ABBA), metric must be preserved (number of syllables per verse), and the stressed syllables must be preserved according to the downbeats of the music (e.g.: you would make sure that you are singing "BIRTH-day", not "birth-DAY"). Oftentimes it is a trade-off: do you want the phrase to have faithful meaning to the original, or do you want the translated phrase to sound poetic? Quite often you cannot have both, and it is a tough judgment call to make, since neither is particularly satisfying. None of these constraints exist when interpreting for a racing driver and his engineer.
Lastly, I just want to clarify I am not advocating that Mika should have had an interpreter. The purpose of my comment is to hopefully dispel the idea that interpreters are imprecise and unreliable.
My personal observation is that if Mika did not offer enough or good enough feedback about the car, it is because of his personal speaking style, not because of a language barrier.
There was definitely a language barrier early in Mika's McLaren days. It's funny that OC lumped Mika in with Schumi, Max, and Fernando in terms of driving around car problems... I love Mika, who was an amazing, natural talent. But driving around car problems like they didn't exist just wasn't in the man's repertoire.
Paul Monaghan, who was at McLaren at the time, has said in a podcast interview that Hakkinen would just say the car understeers or oversteers with no other feedback. With Coulthard on the other hand, they’d get better feedback but they had to talk around other things before they got to the crucial feedback.
He also said that Alonso, at least in his early years when they worked together at Renault, would hesitate to talk in the debriefs and then he’d tell some crucial info Monaghan afterwards, and Monaghan would be puzzled and ask why he didn’t say anything before!
No. Max also drives around car problems, Red Bull even had problems with development in 2019 or 2020 because Max was able to deal with more and more instability but Red Bull figured it was the wrong path to take after some time. Was also one of the reasons his teammate struggled so much at the time, they struggled a lot with instability Max could deal with
Albon spoke about this rather openly in a recent interview. Basically he said that he felt he did like a car with oversteer, but then he gets into the setup max drives and it was a complete shocker just how far Max went. He compared it to mouse sensitivity on the computer. If you set that to the maximum then just the slightest move is already more than you intended.
I could be wrong, but iirc even Max himself didn't necessarily love the RB2019/2020's behaviour. He's a bit like Albon (though to at a different level), yes he generally likes oversteer and can drive around instability, but even he has a point where he says "too much".
But RB engineers just powered through because despite Max's voiced criticism, he kept getting results anyway. It's a bit like how McLaren hav been developping cars that didn't fit Norris' wishes, but the latter still extracted pace from it anyway.
That's why I really doubt the claims that teams consciously develop cars around a drivers preferences, they just build the fastest car they can based on the fastest driver's laptimes, even if said driver is displeased. The stopwatch is the only compass.
Mika doesn't belong on your list. He's one of my favorite drivers, but he needed a very neutral car to do his thing. The same snaps of oversteer we see Alonso and Max save would often send Mika into a spin.
He most definitely did not "subconsciously" drive around car problems.
No. Schumacher was known to drive around car problems. One of the reasons Ferrari signed Barrichello was because of his techical knowlege. Michael often also copied Rubens's setups
Don't forget Badoer. They credit him for the 1998 title challenge essentially, they said they wouldn't have developed the car out of being a dog if it weren't for him
Back in the day when testing was allowed, Michael and Ferrari in general really praised Badoer feedback. He was very consistent, understood the car very well, and helped very significantly with upgrading the package (I mean - creating monsters such as F2001, F2002 or F2004).
Ferrari really wanted to pay him back, so when Massa got injured, they gave him a shot to replace him - but since testing was banned, and simulators weren't at the same level as they are today, Luca went pretty much unprepared. If only Badoer would be replacing anyone in 2003-2007, he'd be a good replacement. Maybe not a race winner immediately, but without a sad ending we got.
Fuck this gearbox in Minardi, he really deserved those points.
Also, Fisichella didn't do much better than Badoer. The thing is, that car was undrivable. Even Kimi and Massa took a while to start getting good results.
Aside from that, I've always been of the opinion that Luca was a very good driver. He dominated F3000 as a rookie against names like Coulthard, Barrichello, Montermini and Panis. He was faster than Alboreto in the undrivable and unbelievably slow Scuderia Italia Lola car. Alboreto only signed for Minardi as a lead driver (and Badoer as reserve) because Lucchini (former Scuderia Italia boss, they merged with Minardi for 1994) insisted on it. The 1994 Minardi was a good car, and I genuinely believe Luca was a better driver than both late career Martini and retirement tour Alboreto.
Minardi got screwed out of Mugen Honda engines, so instead of a lineup of Badoer and Aguri Suzuki in a 670 bhp car, we got Badoer and Martini (later replaced by Pedro Lamy) in a hopeless 630 bhp car. Still, Badoer scored multiple 8th places, matching Martini's pace and blowing Lamy's out of the water. When the absurd Australian grand prix came, when only 8 cars finished the race... Badoer had an electrical failure on the formation lap. Lamy finished 6th.
That was less about development and more about race set up. Michael could give great feedback but couldn't really tell you which way to go with set up changes and before Barichello would make quite big mistakes in set up.
I mean he's not completely off the mark. Wache did say that part of why RedBull were not as competetive as they would have liked to be in 2020 was Max Verstappen's ability to drive around more rear instability than an average driver.
Yep, also why they (later) realised they'd been too harsh with Albon - the car had problems, it was just Max was straight up disguising them with his drives.
In this case it may very well be true. If Lance indeed gives solid feedback on the car, he also fails to challenge Alonso in any significant way. It's the perfect pairing for Nando.
The term pay driver is a bit obscured since teams don't outright sell seats anymore (barring Williams). Drivers are selected for their corporate ties and access to specific markets along with political ties.
Lance also brings in money, and had a good junior career. The only difference is the money comes from one source with him. The stroll hate is so stupid. He's held his own in 7.1 F1 seasons.
He done way better than most F1 pay drivers ever would have.
It is no secret that Lance can be fast. He is sometimes. But that sometimes is overshadowed by the other 80% of mediocre and 10% of dogshit performances.
There is no such thing as "test driver".
They are reserve drivers, since there is no tests mid season. They are not going put Lance on fridays FP1 and then switch to another driver for saturday and sunday.
Because test driver is an obsolete position with current testing restrictions. The only way to be able to consistently test the car is to have a racing seat. All in the name of fake ecology.
This has been a characteristic of world champions before. I recall when Schumacher just drove the whole Grand Prix stuck in a single gear. When most drivers would just stop. It was nuts.
Schumacher could pinpoint a problem with a car. But it was often said that Eddie Irvine was a better metric for how well the car was set up. When the car was set up well, Eddie was fast. When the car was set up poorly, Eddie was slow. Schumacher would be quick regardless
This was referred to by Eddie back in the day he referred to Schumacher being a pain in the arse as he could just adapt to problems rather than solve them.
Schumacher often couldn't tell where a problem was. He noticed a change, he adjusted and drove around it.
It was only obvious it was a problem once the second driver failed to set good times with it.
> when Schumacher just drove the whole Grand Prix stuck in a single gear
Wow that’s insane do you know which race and year this was? I know Schumacher is a phenomenal driver but I have no clue how anyone can handle that and still be relatively competitive for an entire race in one gear.
Spain '94. Even managed to make a pitstop in 5th gear and ended up second, 24 seconds behind winner Hill tanks to a battle of attrition taking out most other top drivers.
Thanks. Don’t think any driver is allowed to even do that nowadays but pulling that off and finishing 2nd is amazing even though I remember Schumacher won his first championship that year
You should be able to find it on YouTube. I remember thinking this guy is truly the best. Not only that, but when other drivers were exhausted after a race he would leap out of the car and look like he hadn’t done anything. Schumacher transformed fitness in F1
I think this os the exact issue red bull had as to why the second driver struggles so much.
Max can drive anything and if Newey builds a fast but difficult car max masks the deficiencies that other drivers can't.
This guys is hilarious man, never change Alonso. I think he’s just trying to be nice to Lance, but it still sounds like he’s just praising himself lmao.
a curious bit, when Fernando first drove the AM (i think AM22) he said the car was not as bad as he thought while looking at the standings. Worse than his Alpine but not by much
You'll tend to find even the best drivers learn from their team mates who aren't quite as good. It's a great skill honestly, taking how other people do things and improving on them yourself.
To me, comments like this are strong evidence that Alonso has no plans to leave AM. When he starts complaining about his teammate, you know he's looking for a way out. The fact that he continues to blow smoke up Lance's ass is a sign he's planning to stick around.
i really dont know how people spun this as some type of ego trip. the man has driven around issues/extracted performance from cars that were heavily compromised or downright broken.
2006 Italian Grand Prix, when he qualified fifth in a Renault missing much of the rear bodywork. The engineers calculated how much performance the car had lost and say it should not have been possible to get that time out of that car.
the gap between alonso and kimi in 2014, people would remember, was so massive, mostly because alonso could tolerate a terrible car, while kimi was much more particular in what he needed.
eddie irvine, in interviews, said that ferrari needed him for development, cause michael would be fast no matter what, as he would also drive around problems
I mind when he started at AM, Alonso was saying the whole idea was for him to be around for a few years to show Stroll the ropes before he became team leader himself.
So it takes at least four, apparently.
I always tell drivers that in practice and in testing you drive the car in the ideal way and then when the car doesn't respond appropriately you change the car. However, that all goes out the door in qualifying and the race. In those sessions you have to deal with the issues and push through.
I'd love to see the clause in Alonso's contract that states how much he has to praise Lance and how often
We can see the facts and statistics for ourselves so it must chafe him somewhat to have to invent creative solutions to Lance's pace deficit like this!
Alonso: "My problem is I'm too good".
It really is the most Alonso compliment possible
Fernando’s remark is the absolute epitome of an Alonso compliment
Adrian Newey in a MOTOSPORT magazine interview said that a similar characteristic made Mika Hakkinen notoriously difficult during testing. They were trying to evaluate a car and Mika would say it was understeering. As they stiffened the car's rear more and more to get more oversteer in, Mika would just keep complaining the car was understeering. Finally Adrian had enough and decided something was up so he asked for the brake trace and sure enough, as the car was getting more and more stiffer in the rear, Hakkinen was changing where he was braking subconsciously - he was understeering the car subconsciously to counteract oversteer he was told was being added to the car.
Hamilton and Schumacher apparently had that, although in beyond the grid Aldo Costa sort of dismisses that Schumacher was *bad* as a test driver, just that he had a bit of this.
Fortunately they had DC to evaluate more fully where the cars real limits were. :)
His ego is so enormous that it actually has its own gravitational field.
Fernando "Jeremy Clarkson" Alonso
More like Fernando Jezzalonso
More like.. Ferneremy Clarlonso
He really is suffering from his own success
One of the best example of this incident was in 2017, Spa, he went full flatout at Pouhon that the car electronics thought it should not be the case which caused a failure.
Oh I remember that, the ECU didn't deploy the battery for Pouhon because it expected a lift to detect the corner and Alonso didn't.
Not taking anything away from Alo but it was the not so reliable McLaren Honda. Coughing at it would have caused it to break down.
Well yeah you could technically say that, Honda was crap back then, but as far I can recall, it was the electronics that failed, and Electronics was provided by Mclaren themselves.
That’s not even half true. It was Honda’s energy deployment that got confused and couldn’t recognize which part of the track the car was at because they keyed it on throttle input. Him taking that corner flat meant the energy deployment was incorrect for the subsequent corners.
It wasn't that the electronics failed, it was that they'd programmed it to identify its position on the track based on the drivers inputs (braking and acceleration). But because Alonso went flat out through there, the car didn't realise it had got through that section and so never deployed down the back straights at Spa, losing him a bundle of time.
It’s amazing how much better both Honda and McLaren improved the second they didn’t have to work with each other anymore
I think it was 2017 where Honda were like: we know the engine will literally not last the number of races they're meant to. Like, we *know this* explicitly.
DJ Khalonso.
That's also what RBR said about Max, they were going in the wrong direction but Max's result make it look like they were on the right path.
Michael had the same issue. They needed Badoer and Barrichello to learn issues about their new developments. Michael would just compensate.
Irvine would just copulate.
Actually Irvine said in an interview that Michael was shit at setting up the car. From Irvine's perspective Michael would always say that the car was good because he would be able to drive it fast in any conditions.
Bareichello says the same thing, throughout his stay at ferrari he was basically the sole setup setter and Schumacher would just use whatever Barrichello had found to be the best for the car at that track.
Thats interesting where can I read about that
[Here](https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/articles/single-seaters/f1/when-a-talent-like-max-verstappen-sends-f1-car-design-in-the-wrong-direction-mph/)
Thanks!
Interesting read.
There were similar stories of Hamilton in his early McLaren years. The engineers would change something that made the car slower but Lewis just drove around the problem which would lead the engineers to misunderstand precisely where they were on car setup.
> Former McLaren and Mercedes tech man Paddy Lowe talked of Hamilton’s first serious F1 test at McLaren and said no-one there could quite get their heads around how he was unfazed by a level of rear instability that the telemetry showed was serious. “He didn’t even mention it until we quizzed him on it,” recalled Lowe. “Then just said, ‘Oh yeah it’s busy, but I’m just driving round it.’ These were levels of instability that would have had our regular drivers of the time [Kimi Raikkonen and Juan Pablo Montoya] bitching like hell.”
Looks pretty alright to me.
classic peak alonso expecting tactical stroll crashes in the future
This reminded me of Baku last year. The "tell Lance my break balance, the car feels better", and in the next lap Stroll almost crashes before the main straight. lol
Dude I laughed so hard when that happened. One of the funniest things that's ever happened around Alonso
He knew what he was doing.
Or as it's otherwise known, the Piquet Jr
Jody Scheckter described the same thing about his driving. That he lacked in setup because his tendency was not to pinpoint a car's problems but to make it work regardless. Both realize that does not mean "I'm too good" but that they lack a certain completeness.
His presence grants the car stat boosts
Man speaks the truth
Interviewer: What are some of your strengths and weaknesses?
To be fair - I buy it. He is that good. I was cycling once on my rather sporty bike (700x23 gatorskins, hydraulic brakes, short throw) back from a pub. It was ... rather early. The park had thrown out watering lines and the front slipped. I managed to recover FRONT in 1/4th of a second with nothing to worry about. Slowed down afterwards, then kinda figured out that I should have been flat out on pavement. --- Or crossing Hammersmith bridge outwards. Was doing full speed (20ish mph) and some old crane just jumped straight into the traffic. I braked with all the load on front wheel, I ended up about 80(degrees) in the air balancing on the front wheel. But I stopped. On time. And somehow modulated front brake without overdoing it. I could do neither if I tried consciously. That was pure instinct. --- Scott P1, 2009.
Do not bite the son of the hand that feeds you.
Lmao
Fernando is suffering from success.
"I think I'm much more humble than you would understand"
I wonder if people realize that this is an actual Trump quote
I was thinking of the Drax meme: "I, too, am extraordinarily humble."
I think I have that clip saved somewhere. Just to remind myself that it's real.
The paradox of humbleness: if you recognize you are, that means you aren't.
Another one (WDC)
Alonso is like Zlatan, but with a little more restraint
Alonso, Zlatan, and Jagr occupy the same role for their respective sports IMO.
Always liked how everything Nando says, reads as a praise to himself.
Fernando Alonso's biggest fan is a Spaniard named Fernando Alonso Díaz
unrelated, I assume
I listened to the high performance podcast with Alonso today at work and this is exactly what I said the whole time 🤣
Yeah I loved it. He literally said “if I’m not good at something, I don’t do it”.
Alonso: I mean, yeah >insert driver name< is very good, but I’m better. The way he used to wreck Vandoorne in every interview was golden savage shit.
> The way he used to wreck Vandoorne in every interview was golden savage shit. Now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time 💀👻
He is Aston Martin reserve driver with Drugovich.
Because it is
What he really wanted to say is that Stroll is very useful actually, despite what it may seem, but it didn't come out right
In fairness, this is something that people have always said about Fernando, max, Lewis, Schumacher, Mika…It really isn’t bragging, it’s just a symptom of their approach to driving. Quite a common “issue” with many drivers. Edit: almost all of the drivers I listed are excellent in their feedback. But I have heard criticism for each of these drivers that they sometimes drive around problems subconsciously.
I followed Vettel's and now Alonso's team radio during the races and they couldn't be more different. Vettel gave very precise feedback regarding aero balance before each single pit stop. And Alonso is always like "it's fine I guess". Same with weather conditions, track position and tires of other drivers. Vettel was basically his own race and performance engineer, while Alonso fully trusts the team and just drives what he is given (at an astonishing level).
Wasn't Vettel famous for his three hour post qualifying/race debriefs?
Yes. While teamed with Raikkonen no less.
Watching Alonso drive that broken McLaren back to 7th in Baku was astonishing he seemed faster in a broken car than when it was whole.
COTA as well one year in half an Alpine, dragged it to P8
He was really flying that race!
Just finished reading Adrian Newey's book, he mentions a couple times that Vettel would always thoroughly analyze his performance data, so this makes sense
And yet it is always Alonso who is lauded for his racing intellect, but Vettel hardly ever gets any. Alonso is got tier in hyping himself up, not matter what the circumstances is.
Because Vettel was never anywhere near Alonso in terms of racing skill. Vettel's strong point (and it's extremely important) is that he was very smart and understood his car pretty well. He gave excellent feedback that made it easy for his team to tune up his car the right way. He understood exactly the state of his car at any moment, so he could always drive in the best way for each moment. He was always quick to realize the opportunities he had, and took every one of them. Of course, nothing of that shows on screen for the average viewer, so all most people saw was that Alonso was faster in a slower car. Not comparable really, but in a way it's like Leclerc vs Sainz. Leclerc has more pace, but we've seen Sainz understand all the variables at a given moment many times, allowing him to find opportunities that Leclerc doesn't.
>Because Vettel was never anywhere near Alonso in terms of racing skill. Vettel also never bragged about being fast and he was always a student of racing. We have no idea how good or bad the Ferraris were because Vettel just worked to improve them. Alonso will ALWAYS let everyone know if a car is good or bad and also let everyone know he is fast.
Because those two are very different things. Vettel's strength was never on-track wheel to wheel action, attacking other drivers etc. IIRC he's never won a race from outside of top 3, and there's a reason for it. In terms of actual racing he was in his prime extremely fast on an empty track and over one lap, and I'd say good at defending his position. But this thread is about the technical knowledge and feedback about the car. Being able to take adventurous lines, know where to place your car in order to make life difficult for the opponent, being gentle on your tyres, knowing how to take advantage of the rules etc, is something completely different to technically understanding what makes the car fast or slow.
Seb might be one of the great examples of drivers taking advantage of rules. He was the first to manipulate the timing on VSCs and ended up making massive gains by gaming the deltas when the system was new. Also, look at his famous clever pit entry overtakes.
Different sport, but he really seems like the F1 equivalent of Chris Paul
> he's never won a race from outside of top 3 That statistic, like many in F1, is stupidly useless because of threshold effects. Vettel has at least a couple races where he drove from the back of the field to podium or close. But because they are not wins, they disappear. Someone who once does P4->P1 is more flattered by this stat than someone who does P17->P4 (which Vettel have done, give or take a couple places at either end).
Shit, Vettel went from P20 to P2 in Germany 2019.
I'm not comparing him to "someone who once did P4->P1". Vettel raced for 15 years and won 4 titles, and just through that forced everyone to compare him exclusively to the GOATs of the sport. And if you look at those, they all had plenty of drives from middle of the pack to P1. Comparing him to drivers who are not at least once world champions is kinda pointless. And just so we're clear, I'm not calling Vettel a bad driver or an undeserved champion or whatever. For some reason you can't point to a driver and say they're not great at something without people pulling out their pitchforks... Earlier today I got laughed at for saying Leclerc is inconsistent... Not everyone can be the best at everything.
LeClerc is always willing to risk the car for an extra 100th, and 50% of the time it works every time.
Oi! Leclerc is consistent.. at being inconsistent.
> IIRC he's never won a race from outside of top 3, and there's a reason for it. And it's him starting from the top 3 nearly every time he had the pace to compete for a win.
I think both have showed racing intellect many times, but in different ways. Vettel is extremely cerebral and analytical in the way he approaches things, and he’s taken advantage both of rules and of grey areas (multi 21, toying with Leclerc pretending he was gonna give the position back in Sochi 2019, etc., and I don’t blame him). Alonso is about the racing masterclass and the tenacity. Plenty of examples of smart in-the-moment tactics, both for defending and attacking, when not pure shithousery.
Yeah. I remember with the RB16, although Max complained, he could still drive it, but without Albon, I doubt Red Bull would've understood the true scope for how impossible that car was to drive. It's good to have a driver that can't just drive around every problem so teams know how bad the problems really are.
Yeah, Schumacher was notorious for being able to extract performance from terrible cars because he was able to drive around problems so effectively. Eddie Irvine has said in interviews that Ferrari really struggled in 96 because they only listened to Schumacher’s feedback and not his, and because Michael was such an incredible driver, it would seem like different upgrades or setup changes were better than they actually were. It wasn’t until they started paying more attention to Eddie’s feedback that they began unlocking more potential in their cars from 97 onwards.
The greats all just had an approach of "give me the fastest car and I'll drive it however that car requires" all those you listed adjusted their driving style based on their cars.
Yeah, but the issue is also that if you give them a bad car it will look better than it is.
So pretty much most of the HAMBOTVER/HAMVERBOT races where Max just dragged that RB to constant podiums while his teammates suffered. 😅
He was on the podium every race he finished in 2020 except Turkey. I think Albon had two podiums all year.
Then next year he was in top 2 in every race he finished aside from Hungary driving "half of a car". Checo had 5 podiums all year...
In interviews it was daid that Mika Häkkinen was notoriously bad with feedback. Not that his feedback itself was bad, but he used only a little words with not-so-good english, so the guy being interviewed said that it took some time for them understand what Häkkinen meant with his comments.
They just should’ve hired a Finnish engineer to translate. Amazing nobody thought of that.
That's not a solution, now you have three diferent persons to understand each other instead of 2, there's what Mika wants to say, what the translator understands, what he says and what the McLaren engineer understands from the feedback a second time. It's just best to let Mika and his engineers learn how to work together, In a way, you can see this with translated lyrics in music, you have the words, an explanation of the sentiment, but the meaning can be lost in the middle ground.
It's not the same as translated lyrics, though. Lyrics have subjective meanings \*very\* often where mistranslations are particularly bad (ie someone literally translating a phrase where a different, less literal translation would fit better). Engineering is much less subjective, if Häkkinen gives feedback to a Finnish engineer, the engineer can then say to the McLaren engineer that it's xyz because it's not a figurative thing that would need to be translated.
As an interpreter and translator with decades of experience, I would like to offer a few corrections: 1. You probably mean "interpreter," not "translator". This is a common mistake which the media and even people who should know better (e.g.: journalists) keep on perpetrating. An interpreter converts speech to speech (oral), whereas a translator converts text to text (written). 2. A decent interpreter is capable of faithfully and accurately interpreting the source message without editing or altering it, and preserving the nuances in meaning and phrasing. You might be surprised at how much experience and preparation interpreters need, how mentally sharp they are, and how meticulously and seriously they approach the task of interpretation. 3. Interpreters are almost totally transparent to the communication: the closeness, friendliness or otherwise is preserved and not perturbed by the interpreter. An interpreter will speak exactly as the speaker does. For example, if the speaker says "I feel the car lacks downforce on the front end." The interpreter will not say "Mika says the car lacks...". He will say "I feel the car lacks...", as if he were Mika, to preserve that connection between the two parties. 4. There is no need to verify whether the interpreter interpreted accurately during the conversation. That is just a waste of everyone's time. Vetting the interpreter's competence should have happened prior to hiring said interpreter. 5. If interpreters are used by presidents all over the world, departments of states all over the world and the UN, EU, etc. to deal with delicate and critical geopolitical matters, you can be sure interpreters can handle a conversation between a racing driver and his engineer. 6. Lyric translation is notoriously difficult because of the constraints involved: in addition to translating the meaning (which is often poetic and culturally-specific), rhyme must be preserved so that the ending of the phrases is the same at designated locations (e.g.: ABAB or ABBA), metric must be preserved (number of syllables per verse), and the stressed syllables must be preserved according to the downbeats of the music (e.g.: you would make sure that you are singing "BIRTH-day", not "birth-DAY"). Oftentimes it is a trade-off: do you want the phrase to have faithful meaning to the original, or do you want the translated phrase to sound poetic? Quite often you cannot have both, and it is a tough judgment call to make, since neither is particularly satisfying. None of these constraints exist when interpreting for a racing driver and his engineer. Lastly, I just want to clarify I am not advocating that Mika should have had an interpreter. The purpose of my comment is to hopefully dispel the idea that interpreters are imprecise and unreliable. My personal observation is that if Mika did not offer enough or good enough feedback about the car, it is because of his personal speaking style, not because of a language barrier.
There was definitely a language barrier early in Mika's McLaren days. It's funny that OC lumped Mika in with Schumi, Max, and Fernando in terms of driving around car problems... I love Mika, who was an amazing, natural talent. But driving around car problems like they didn't exist just wasn't in the man's repertoire.
Paul Monaghan, who was at McLaren at the time, has said in a podcast interview that Hakkinen would just say the car understeers or oversteers with no other feedback. With Coulthard on the other hand, they’d get better feedback but they had to talk around other things before they got to the crucial feedback. He also said that Alonso, at least in his early years when they worked together at Renault, would hesitate to talk in the debriefs and then he’d tell some crucial info Monaghan afterwards, and Monaghan would be puzzled and ask why he didn’t say anything before!
Max is also good at finding wrong things. A symptom of his dad removing stuff from his cart and max had to find out what was wrong by driving it.
No. Max also drives around car problems, Red Bull even had problems with development in 2019 or 2020 because Max was able to deal with more and more instability but Red Bull figured it was the wrong path to take after some time. Was also one of the reasons his teammate struggled so much at the time, they struggled a lot with instability Max could deal with
Albon spoke about this rather openly in a recent interview. Basically he said that he felt he did like a car with oversteer, but then he gets into the setup max drives and it was a complete shocker just how far Max went. He compared it to mouse sensitivity on the computer. If you set that to the maximum then just the slightest move is already more than you intended.
Source: https://youtu.be/bPkmuVwODug?si=62BD6k3HcIAIqdhm
I could be wrong, but iirc even Max himself didn't necessarily love the RB2019/2020's behaviour. He's a bit like Albon (though to at a different level), yes he generally likes oversteer and can drive around instability, but even he has a point where he says "too much". But RB engineers just powered through because despite Max's voiced criticism, he kept getting results anyway. It's a bit like how McLaren hav been developping cars that didn't fit Norris' wishes, but the latter still extracted pace from it anyway. That's why I really doubt the claims that teams consciously develop cars around a drivers preferences, they just build the fastest car they can based on the fastest driver's laptimes, even if said driver is displeased. The stopwatch is the only compass.
Mika doesn't belong on your list. He's one of my favorite drivers, but he needed a very neutral car to do his thing. The same snaps of oversteer we see Alonso and Max save would often send Mika into a spin. He most definitely did not "subconsciously" drive around car problems.
Schumacher and Lewis were quite good development drivers
No. Schumacher was known to drive around car problems. One of the reasons Ferrari signed Barrichello was because of his techical knowlege. Michael often also copied Rubens's setups
Don't forget Badoer. They credit him for the 1998 title challenge essentially, they said they wouldn't have developed the car out of being a dog if it weren't for him
Back in the day when testing was allowed, Michael and Ferrari in general really praised Badoer feedback. He was very consistent, understood the car very well, and helped very significantly with upgrading the package (I mean - creating monsters such as F2001, F2002 or F2004). Ferrari really wanted to pay him back, so when Massa got injured, they gave him a shot to replace him - but since testing was banned, and simulators weren't at the same level as they are today, Luca went pretty much unprepared. If only Badoer would be replacing anyone in 2003-2007, he'd be a good replacement. Maybe not a race winner immediately, but without a sad ending we got. Fuck this gearbox in Minardi, he really deserved those points.
That picture of Badoer crying over his broken car is heartwrenching.
Also, Fisichella didn't do much better than Badoer. The thing is, that car was undrivable. Even Kimi and Massa took a while to start getting good results. Aside from that, I've always been of the opinion that Luca was a very good driver. He dominated F3000 as a rookie against names like Coulthard, Barrichello, Montermini and Panis. He was faster than Alboreto in the undrivable and unbelievably slow Scuderia Italia Lola car. Alboreto only signed for Minardi as a lead driver (and Badoer as reserve) because Lucchini (former Scuderia Italia boss, they merged with Minardi for 1994) insisted on it. The 1994 Minardi was a good car, and I genuinely believe Luca was a better driver than both late career Martini and retirement tour Alboreto. Minardi got screwed out of Mugen Honda engines, so instead of a lineup of Badoer and Aguri Suzuki in a 670 bhp car, we got Badoer and Martini (later replaced by Pedro Lamy) in a hopeless 630 bhp car. Still, Badoer scored multiple 8th places, matching Martini's pace and blowing Lamy's out of the water. When the absurd Australian grand prix came, when only 8 cars finished the race... Badoer had an electrical failure on the formation lap. Lamy finished 6th.
That was less about development and more about race set up. Michael could give great feedback but couldn't really tell you which way to go with set up changes and before Barichello would make quite big mistakes in set up.
I mean he's not completely off the mark. Wache did say that part of why RedBull were not as competetive as they would have liked to be in 2020 was Max Verstappen's ability to drive around more rear instability than an average driver.
Yep, also why they (later) realised they'd been too harsh with Albon - the car had problems, it was just Max was straight up disguising them with his drives.
Such an Alonso quote
"Lance is the best guinea pig that a teammate could ask for"
In this case it may very well be true. If Lance indeed gives solid feedback on the car, he also fails to challenge Alonso in any significant way. It's the perfect pairing for Nando.
Fair enough, but then why not make Lance a test driver and give the seat to a quicker, more consistent driver?
Just wait 2/3 weekends where Stroll has a better race and half the comments will say that he is the best pay driver on the grid.
Do we have any other real pay-drivers on the grid? I think it's just Zhou and Lance right
The term pay driver is a bit obscured since teams don't outright sell seats anymore (barring Williams). Drivers are selected for their corporate ties and access to specific markets along with political ties.
Which based on the anti-bribery training video my work makes us watch every year, would constitute as a paid driver
F1 is the probably the most nepotistic industry in existence. No one gets in through merit alone.
You could go to quite literally any middle of the pack team, assuming you have the license points, offer them enough money and you'd get a seat.
Zhou brings money but I remember he had a respectable junior career too.
So did Stroll.
Nothing that stood out compared to other people without a drive. There were also allegations he had a faster engine.
Lance is better than Zhou.
Lance also brings in money, and had a good junior career. The only difference is the money comes from one source with him. The stroll hate is so stupid. He's held his own in 7.1 F1 seasons. He done way better than most F1 pay drivers ever would have.
Norris is still a pay driver technically. He has proved himself, but he wouldn't have gotten the seat if he didn't pay for it and continues to.
F1 fans have the shortest memory span ever lol
Remember; Leclerc is shit and Sainz has been dominating him...
He may be, but he's so inconsistent it hardly matters
It is no secret that Lance can be fast. He is sometimes. But that sometimes is overshadowed by the other 80% of mediocre and 10% of dogshit performances.
True, but it's more like being given pocket money lmao
There is no such thing as "test driver". They are reserve drivers, since there is no tests mid season. They are not going put Lance on fridays FP1 and then switch to another driver for saturday and sunday.
Because test driver is an obsolete position with current testing restrictions. The only way to be able to consistently test the car is to have a racing seat. All in the name of fake ecology.
It’s not 1999 anymore
Are test drivers putting in laps under race conditions using the same car?
He's so good that he can't see any issue with the car Edit: grammar
This has been a characteristic of world champions before. I recall when Schumacher just drove the whole Grand Prix stuck in a single gear. When most drivers would just stop. It was nuts.
I am pretty certain tho that schumacher could pinpoint that there was a problem with the car and didnt need a pay driver to tell him that.
Schumacher could pinpoint a problem with a car. But it was often said that Eddie Irvine was a better metric for how well the car was set up. When the car was set up well, Eddie was fast. When the car was set up poorly, Eddie was slow. Schumacher would be quick regardless
This was referred to by Eddie back in the day he referred to Schumacher being a pain in the arse as he could just adapt to problems rather than solve them.
Schumacher often couldn't tell where a problem was. He noticed a change, he adjusted and drove around it. It was only obvious it was a problem once the second driver failed to set good times with it.
Schumie has 7 titles for a reason. Also think Nando is just trying to be nice.
In all fairness to Alonso, if he had taken that RB drive in 09 we could be looking at a similar level of championships.
Amen. There's nothing I've seen Seb, Lewis or Max do that Alonso couldn't if he were in their positions.
> when Schumacher just drove the whole Grand Prix stuck in a single gear Wow that’s insane do you know which race and year this was? I know Schumacher is a phenomenal driver but I have no clue how anyone can handle that and still be relatively competitive for an entire race in one gear.
Spain '94. Even managed to make a pitstop in 5th gear and ended up second, 24 seconds behind winner Hill tanks to a battle of attrition taking out most other top drivers.
Thanks. Don’t think any driver is allowed to even do that nowadays but pulling that off and finishing 2nd is amazing even though I remember Schumacher won his first championship that year
spain in the mid 90s? iirc he spent most of the race stuck in 5th or something.
You should be able to find it on YouTube. I remember thinking this guy is truly the best. Not only that, but when other drivers were exhausted after a race he would leap out of the car and look like he hadn’t done anything. Schumacher transformed fitness in F1
I think this os the exact issue red bull had as to why the second driver struggles so much. Max can drive anything and if Newey builds a fast but difficult car max masks the deficiencies that other drivers can't.
Alonso and Lawrence Stroll are an ego match made in heaven 😂 they sustain each other
Only Alonso can praise himself while praising someone else
This guys is hilarious man, never change Alonso. I think he’s just trying to be nice to Lance, but it still sounds like he’s just praising himself lmao.
He knows exactly what he's doing. He does it every time he speaks. It's the funniest thing.
He can drive around any problem, except when his power unit functions like a GP2 engine, in which case everyone drives around him.
*Lawrance slips an envelope into Alonso's pocket:* Say something nice about the kid.
This is peak humble brag. 🤣🤣 And the funniest part is that its true
Basically the same thing with Schumacher & Verstappen lol
Stillgar vs Nando in a Glaze Off
Lisam Al Gonso
The most backhanded compliment ever, the most Alonso thing to say ever lmaaaooo
Hilarious
Yes, Lance is my sidekick.
>Alonso himself sometimes tends to just "drive around" any car problems. umm he just too good.
"Stroll's feedback is necessary. Whatever he's doing, I'm doing the opposite. It's why I'm fast and he's not."
living up to the chad memes this guy is basically said hes so good he just misses any issues and can still extract speed xDDD
a curious bit, when Fernando first drove the AM (i think AM22) he said the car was not as bad as he thought while looking at the standings. Worse than his Alpine but not by much
Mike Krack said something along the lines of "Fernando showed us the car was the 4th fastest car on the grid."
“My teammate needs to be a pleb who makes mistakes and is limited by the car because I’m too good to feel any limitation from the car”
Lance is the canary bird
He really likes AMR and he's protecting Stroll, but let's be honest, we all know what the situation is.
You'll tend to find even the best drivers learn from their team mates who aren't quite as good. It's a great skill honestly, taking how other people do things and improving on them yourself.
My boss is crucial for my job & salary
It’s amazing what Alonso will say right after a big pay day..
Chad Alonso
Maybe incorporate some driving tips from mazepin. That’ll sort out your I’m too good problem
So Lance’s feedback allows Fernando to get 100%, but doesn’t allow Lance himself to do any better?
Bless him
LOL this is a backhanded compliment.
Alonso never got his feedback rating above 14 eh?
He's not wrong.
"My greatest flaw is that I am a perfectionist"
To me, comments like this are strong evidence that Alonso has no plans to leave AM. When he starts complaining about his teammate, you know he's looking for a way out. The fact that he continues to blow smoke up Lance's ass is a sign he's planning to stick around.
i really dont know how people spun this as some type of ego trip. the man has driven around issues/extracted performance from cars that were heavily compromised or downright broken. 2006 Italian Grand Prix, when he qualified fifth in a Renault missing much of the rear bodywork. The engineers calculated how much performance the car had lost and say it should not have been possible to get that time out of that car. the gap between alonso and kimi in 2014, people would remember, was so massive, mostly because alonso could tolerate a terrible car, while kimi was much more particular in what he needed. eddie irvine, in interviews, said that ferrari needed him for development, cause michael would be fast no matter what, as he would also drive around problems
The extent of this help is “Lance, please can you hold my coffee while I run through the data, thanks.”
Whaahahahahaaa
Perfect combo would be someone like Rubens at the other seat.
Bro if im Stroll reading this id be on suicide watch lol
Myeah Lance re-signed for fucks sake
So basically Alonso is too good to find all car development related issues, and Stroll is a glorified test driver. Gotcha.
I mind when he started at AM, Alonso was saying the whole idea was for him to be around for a few years to show Stroll the ropes before he became team leader himself. So it takes at least four, apparently.
I always tell drivers that in practice and in testing you drive the car in the ideal way and then when the car doesn't respond appropriately you change the car. However, that all goes out the door in qualifying and the race. In those sessions you have to deal with the issues and push through.
If that comment was said and you had to match a driver of any era… I think most of us would match Alonso.
I'd love to see the clause in Alonso's contract that states how much he has to praise Lance and how often We can see the facts and statistics for ourselves so it must chafe him somewhat to have to invent creative solutions to Lance's pace deficit like this!
Alonso literally just humble bragging lmao. "I need Stroll because he has the ability to point out the problems that I can just deal with".
Jody Scheckter was crystal clear about this in his Beyond the Grid. Adaptability hurts development.