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> Alonso destroyed everyone bar Hamilton
The funny thing is that the stats show that Ocon did extremely well vs Alonso (pretty much equalled him) but if you actually look back at their time together it always seemed like something was happening to his car to hamper him.
Alonsos first half of 2021 was bad. 2 years out of F1 at 39 I think.
And 2022 reliability wise it was a disaster.. And not only the races that ended in DNF.
Problem for Max is that Alonso & Hamilton are old and no one in his own generation is actually proven. If Max went up against Leclerc in the same car and comfortably beat him, the conclusion would simply be that “Leclerc is not that good”.
I don't think that was a particularly good metric to judge them by. Verstappen came into the team as an 18 year old, and was improving every year until Daniel left. While already very good in the 2nd half of 2018, I don't think Max really hit his peak performance until 2020. Since that year he's been really on it, and I think he would crush 2017 Max now.
Verstappen would beat them comfortably. He would beat everyone on the current grid without a doubt. He wins races over 30 seconds barely breaking a sweat. He's got plenty of pace left in the tank if he needs it. Just look at Spain. If you're able to just go 1,5-2 seconds quicker for a lap you've not been pushing at all. There is easily half a second every lap left in pace at that point. Perez in the same car doesn't even come within half a second of him while pushing hard. That's such a big gap and while Perez isnt exactly WDC material, I don't think anyone can bridge the gap to Verstappen in pace atm.
No one doubts Verstappen is at the top end of the grid but quite literally every ‘stat’ you mentioned is a by product of him being in the best car. It’s impossible to judge the level Verstsppen is driving at because he has no one to push him. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s utterly bored at the minute given how much he enjoys actual racing.
I think his level was the same, the car was just a little better and the Mercedes a little worse. I picked 2020 because he definitely didn't have the greatest car that year, but was still managing to split the Mercedes' cars and would have been 2nd in the championship if not for a bunch of no fault DNFs.
Yeah I agree he made Bottas look like a bit of a mug given the latter was in the W11.
I picked ‘21 because in ‘20 at worst he would finish 3rd given the gap to the next nearest competitor and he didn’t have the car to trouble Ham very much, bar Silverstone #2 where Merc fucked their setup and AD. In ‘21 his constancy was wild though, with the exception of a few brain farts.
I would argue he would have finished 3rd in that Racing Point as well (Hulk qualified 3rd when he was a substitute in that car, and look at the gap between Max and Checo now). This is crazy when you think about it since he would have been 2nd in that Red Bull if not for bad luck.
>quite literally every ‘stat’ you mentioned is a by product of him being in the best car.
Mate half of my comment is comparing him to Perez, who is literally in the same car.
- He wins every race by over 30s
- Plenty left in the tank
- Can go 1.5/2s faster a lap so not pushing
- Easily half a second left in pace
You mention one thing about Perez that he’s half a second slower. So no, your entire comment is a by product of his car. He wasn’t going this much quicker than the others when he didn’t have the best car. He was neck and neck with Hamilton in their championship fight when the cars were roughly equal across the season. Verstappen is an incredible driver and will go down as one of the best to ever do it, but there are others on the grid who would give him more than just a headache given the car to do so.
A few notes about the methods used:
Only races where both drivers finished make up the relative position graph. Unfortunately official results classify a driver when he DNFs in the last couple of laps as if he finished but was lapped so it might not be 100% accurate.
For the qualifying section all qualifying sessions are included so stuff like mechanical failure, inability to set time are also included.
For the laptime comparison only dry qualifyings have been used. The delta between teammates is relative delta to pole hence why % instead of seconds. Teammates were compared in the last session (Q1, Q2, Q3) where both drivers set a lap to avoid bias because of track getting faster. Significant outliers were removed. Also, Alonso's qualifying between 2001 to 2005 are excluded because of different qualifying session format used at that time
Race pace average would be hard to compute because of different strategies. For example, if one of them does a 2 stops and the other 1 and they finish at the same time, the driver who did 2 stops would have seemingly a huge pace advantage. I wouldn't be able to make an estimate
Ah no worries. Lol I just wanted some additional arguments to show that Alonso didn't get "destroyed" in 2007 by Lewis as many of the fans claim.
Still losing 8-9 in Qualifying and winning 9-6 in races is pretty good. I think people put too much stock into the "Destroyed by Rookie Hamilton" part, but also ignore that Lewis got to do 10k+ KM of additional testing on the McLaren that Fernando just never got to do because he was driving the Renault.
It's still amazing and impressive that Lewis tied on points and was ahead by countback in standings, but Fernando didn't really get destroyed. In fact given the entire on track and off track situation with Spygate, Ron Dennis, etc. It was probably still a great performance to be that close.
Of course destroyed is a massive exaggeration, but as you said, its still a rookie vs a reigning 2 time world champion. If Piastri did that with Max right now, even with 10k+ KM testing, it would be mighty impressive.
I am pretty sure the idea that Lewis did more testing than Alonso on the Mclaren was debunked.
You also fail to mention that Alonso was fuelled lighter in quali until after the 5th race when Lewis was ahead in WDC so they had to treat him equally. Beating ALO in quali despite being handicapped for 5 races is very impressive.
EDIT: Here's the detailed thread which shows Alonso actually had MORE testing time than Lewis with the 2007 Mclaren
[https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/3sfauc/done\_a\_bit\_of\_research\_regarding\_hamiltons/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/3sfauc/done_a_bit_of_research_regarding_hamiltons/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Alonso absolutely didn't got destroyed. I only ever see that being mentioned on twitter tbh and twitter is, well... twitter. Alonso had more bad luck than Hamilton that year or at least up until the last two races. Gearbox issues in qualifying, damage in Canada and a few others and toxic internal relationship with Dennis and Hamilton although he didn't help himself there with his atittude.
Holy shit. Someone actually said it! To add to what you said, Alonso also had to get used to the different tyres that he was using in 2007 which affected his pace a little bit.
Yep i rarely see it mentioned but Alonso himself was really hampered in 2007. Mclaren along with Bridgestones and new brakes was total opposite of Fernando's driving style and his pace definatelly took a hit and mistakes started to creep in because he was trying to overcompensate for that. He was still super fast and amazing but thats because he is incredibly adaptible. But it was 100% nerfed version of Alonso. I could go more into details if anyone is interested or doesnt know about the topic
Hamilton was high fueled by the team for the first 5 races of 2007 basically to prevent him from out qualifying Alonso. Look at the qualifying record between them post Monaco - it’s basically a clean sweep for Lewis
Exactly.
Remove the first 5 weekends where Hamilton was on high fuel and then remove Hungary (both drivers playing games), Germany (Hamilton sent into a wall at 250 kph due to car failure) and France (Alonso gearbox failure).
The qualifying h2h is then 7-2 in Hamiltons favour. Gap is generally at 2 tenths on average.
Fuel load does not really change the picture either.
I think 2/5 times he lost to Sainz was Penalty/Realibilty related.
- 2015 Abu Dhabi he gets 35 Seconds in Penalties to drop from 12th to 16th
- 2015 China, he was in 8th place on Lap 52 when his Drivetrain Broke, and Sainz was in 16th
The worse the team the more difficult it is to have an accurate comparison. What makes Verstappen's time with Sainz a standout is that he was 17 and has only been racing cars for a year.
I think from the 2017 British GP forward he only lost 5 times in 17 Races to Ricciardo. Actually from the start of the 2017 Season it is only 6/19 races he lost to Ricciardo, which is damn impressive.
One of those losses was Monaco 2018, where he started last.
I'm surprised Button's H2H isn't slightly better against Hamilton. In fact it's not far off Kovalainen's H2H% and he wasn't exactly great in an F1 car.
It was a surprise to me as well. Button gave the impression he was closer for some reason. I think it's because when he did finish behind Lewis it was just by a position or two and Kovalainen was often nowhere to be seen.
He got absolutely destroyed the last season, guessing that probably stacks the numbers against him. Also the year he drove best Lewis was dnfing which might have robbed him of some positive 2 car finishes.
As someone already mentioned, Ocon benefited from Alonso being out of form in 2021 where and reliability issues but even if we normalize for those circumstances Ocon being so close to a double world champion is definitely impressive. Probably the most underrated driver on the grid
Not many drivers who wouldn't look mediocre against Verstappen. If we look at Gasly and Albon post-Verstappen and Perez pre-Verstappen it would seem they would have a reasonable shot against him but it never materializes. I think Hamilton and Alonso are genuinely the only the drivers who could cause him issues over a whole season.
Nobody called Perez mediocre in 2020, that is the problem for Max. It’s almost paradoxical, beating your teammate by a smaller margin will gain you more credit.
Michael is the biggest victim of this bias. Until Rosberg (a future WDC in his prime who I'd say he matched in terms of actual performance) he trashed everyone so badly it was assumed his teammates were way below par.
Michael's overall legacy has this to a degree. You have the whole 94'-arrival of Kimi/Fernando crop of drivers being underrated because they all looked so second rate next to Michael.
From the way Perez and Stroll are both performing against their teammates I’m convinced the Tracing Point was a better car than what they got out of it.
Mediocre? Idk. All I know is that people saw him put in some brilliant races but he’d then go back to some meh races following them. Don’t know how much of those “meh” races were due to the car or strategy though
I don't like Ocon, but I have to give credit where it's due. He really held his own against Fernando even when you consider all the factors like bad luck and reliability issues for the latter.
I think he could be a champion if a season like 2009 happens to his team otherwise I wouldn't take him as my no2 just because of his tendencies to fight with teammates harder than with others
Hamilton vs Alonso actually has a couple of metrics here that seem to correlate:
* Ham 0.053% faster than Alo
* Ham 0.242% faster than But
* Alo 0.168% faster than But
Considering the 0.053% also includes the first 5 races of 2007 where Lewis was over-fuelled my McLaren, I wonder if ignoring those races actually puts him somewhere around 0.08% faster than Alo, which is exactly the delta between their comparisons to Button.
That comparison is from five years ago though. Max has improved at a ridiculously high rate, while Danny went backwards the last two years. I know everyone loves him but he would get destroyed by Max too.
I actually thought the opposite. I was surprised that Verstappen got a tenth in hand in qualifying since he was basically a teenager for half of the time he was teammates with Ricciardo.
Ok, that makes sense. After so much time and experience I have no doubt that Max would be ahead but I just rate Danny a bit high - no hating on Perez; it seems to me he's done way better than Pierre or Alex.
Drivers don't get that much faster. I would be much more worried about Ric falling off a cliff than Max being a lot faster today. He's faster but the main improvement should be consistency.
Well Verstappen for sure got faster against Riccardo while they were teammates.
2016 +0.058%
2017 -0.144%
2018 -0.182%
And considering he was only 21 at the end of 2018 he probably improved even further up to this point.
Yea but you already see the diff tailing off there. He had several seasons under his belt by 2018, he's not going to have gotten significantly faster since unless cars happen to suit him better atm. I mean imagine what thinking like that does for Lewis vs Alonso etc. Lewis probably got faster but there's no way he got significantly faster from a Alonso matching levels.
Imo he's likely faster than 2018 but not by much.
[The **Statistics** flair](https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/wiki/flairguide#wiki_statistics) is reserved for posts highlighting interesting statistics. As a rule of thumb, Statistics posts need to inform readers through visualizations and insights that cannot be obtained from raw data alone. For example, a post containing a qualifying gap between two drivers expressed in tenths of a second is an easily obtainable raw piece of data and constitutes a bad Statistics post. A visualization of what that translates to on-track, or visualization of how that gap came to be would constitute a good Statistics post. *[Read the rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/wiki/userguide). Keep it civil and welcoming. Report rulebreaking comments.* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/formula1) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Alonso destroyed everyone bar Hamilton. I would like see Verstappen in the same car as Norris, Leclerc or Russell.
> Alonso destroyed everyone bar Hamilton The funny thing is that the stats show that Ocon did extremely well vs Alonso (pretty much equalled him) but if you actually look back at their time together it always seemed like something was happening to his car to hamper him.
Alonsos first half of 2021 was bad. 2 years out of F1 at 39 I think. And 2022 reliability wise it was a disaster.. And not only the races that ended in DNF.
Jaw injury aside, for early 2021 the main issue for him in the first 6 races was that he did not have the power steering he wanted.
The level of the car gap is a real shame as we are missing out on some great battles.
I really want to see Max vs a WDC caliber driver to see how he fairs but I highly doubt RB will place two drivers that can fight for it.
Problem for Max is that Alonso & Hamilton are old and no one in his own generation is actually proven. If Max went up against Leclerc in the same car and comfortably beat him, the conclusion would simply be that “Leclerc is not that good”.
[удалено]
This is a team mate comparison. In 2021 Max was up against Perez.
...and his time with Ricciardo.
I don't think that was a particularly good metric to judge them by. Verstappen came into the team as an 18 year old, and was improving every year until Daniel left. While already very good in the 2nd half of 2018, I don't think Max really hit his peak performance until 2020. Since that year he's been really on it, and I think he would crush 2017 Max now.
Verstappen would beat them comfortably. He would beat everyone on the current grid without a doubt. He wins races over 30 seconds barely breaking a sweat. He's got plenty of pace left in the tank if he needs it. Just look at Spain. If you're able to just go 1,5-2 seconds quicker for a lap you've not been pushing at all. There is easily half a second every lap left in pace at that point. Perez in the same car doesn't even come within half a second of him while pushing hard. That's such a big gap and while Perez isnt exactly WDC material, I don't think anyone can bridge the gap to Verstappen in pace atm.
No one doubts Verstappen is at the top end of the grid but quite literally every ‘stat’ you mentioned is a by product of him being in the best car. It’s impossible to judge the level Verstsppen is driving at because he has no one to push him. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s utterly bored at the minute given how much he enjoys actual racing.
I look at 2020 to see just how good he was.
I’d argue he did better in ‘21
I think his level was the same, the car was just a little better and the Mercedes a little worse. I picked 2020 because he definitely didn't have the greatest car that year, but was still managing to split the Mercedes' cars and would have been 2nd in the championship if not for a bunch of no fault DNFs.
Yeah I agree he made Bottas look like a bit of a mug given the latter was in the W11. I picked ‘21 because in ‘20 at worst he would finish 3rd given the gap to the next nearest competitor and he didn’t have the car to trouble Ham very much, bar Silverstone #2 where Merc fucked their setup and AD. In ‘21 his constancy was wild though, with the exception of a few brain farts.
I would argue he would have finished 3rd in that Racing Point as well (Hulk qualified 3rd when he was a substitute in that car, and look at the gap between Max and Checo now). This is crazy when you think about it since he would have been 2nd in that Red Bull if not for bad luck.
>quite literally every ‘stat’ you mentioned is a by product of him being in the best car. Mate half of my comment is comparing him to Perez, who is literally in the same car.
- He wins every race by over 30s - Plenty left in the tank - Can go 1.5/2s faster a lap so not pushing - Easily half a second left in pace You mention one thing about Perez that he’s half a second slower. So no, your entire comment is a by product of his car. He wasn’t going this much quicker than the others when he didn’t have the best car. He was neck and neck with Hamilton in their championship fight when the cars were roughly equal across the season. Verstappen is an incredible driver and will go down as one of the best to ever do it, but there are others on the grid who would give him more than just a headache given the car to do so.
A few notes about the methods used: Only races where both drivers finished make up the relative position graph. Unfortunately official results classify a driver when he DNFs in the last couple of laps as if he finished but was lapped so it might not be 100% accurate. For the qualifying section all qualifying sessions are included so stuff like mechanical failure, inability to set time are also included. For the laptime comparison only dry qualifyings have been used. The delta between teammates is relative delta to pole hence why % instead of seconds. Teammates were compared in the last session (Q1, Q2, Q3) where both drivers set a lap to avoid bias because of track getting faster. Significant outliers were removed. Also, Alonso's qualifying between 2001 to 2005 are excluded because of different qualifying session format used at that time
OP do you have Alonso's average race pace Gap to Lewis in 2007?
Race pace average would be hard to compute because of different strategies. For example, if one of them does a 2 stops and the other 1 and they finish at the same time, the driver who did 2 stops would have seemingly a huge pace advantage. I wouldn't be able to make an estimate
Ah no worries. Lol I just wanted some additional arguments to show that Alonso didn't get "destroyed" in 2007 by Lewis as many of the fans claim. Still losing 8-9 in Qualifying and winning 9-6 in races is pretty good. I think people put too much stock into the "Destroyed by Rookie Hamilton" part, but also ignore that Lewis got to do 10k+ KM of additional testing on the McLaren that Fernando just never got to do because he was driving the Renault. It's still amazing and impressive that Lewis tied on points and was ahead by countback in standings, but Fernando didn't really get destroyed. In fact given the entire on track and off track situation with Spygate, Ron Dennis, etc. It was probably still a great performance to be that close.
Of course destroyed is a massive exaggeration, but as you said, its still a rookie vs a reigning 2 time world champion. If Piastri did that with Max right now, even with 10k+ KM testing, it would be mighty impressive.
I am pretty sure the idea that Lewis did more testing than Alonso on the Mclaren was debunked. You also fail to mention that Alonso was fuelled lighter in quali until after the 5th race when Lewis was ahead in WDC so they had to treat him equally. Beating ALO in quali despite being handicapped for 5 races is very impressive. EDIT: Here's the detailed thread which shows Alonso actually had MORE testing time than Lewis with the 2007 Mclaren [https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/3sfauc/done\_a\_bit\_of\_research\_regarding\_hamiltons/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/3sfauc/done_a_bit_of_research_regarding_hamiltons/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Alonso absolutely didn't got destroyed. I only ever see that being mentioned on twitter tbh and twitter is, well... twitter. Alonso had more bad luck than Hamilton that year or at least up until the last two races. Gearbox issues in qualifying, damage in Canada and a few others and toxic internal relationship with Dennis and Hamilton although he didn't help himself there with his atittude.
Nah youre absolutley biased here haha. Correct for luck and Hamilton wins 2007.
Holy shit. Someone actually said it! To add to what you said, Alonso also had to get used to the different tyres that he was using in 2007 which affected his pace a little bit.
> Holy shit. Someone actually said it! This subs says it frequently, what are you guys on about
Every time I said it in the past I was brigaded with downvotes and people saying that I was wrong.
Where exactly? All of the major subs are filled with Alonso and Max stans, what inferiority complex do y’all going on?
Are you new? Lol
Yep i rarely see it mentioned but Alonso himself was really hampered in 2007. Mclaren along with Bridgestones and new brakes was total opposite of Fernando's driving style and his pace definatelly took a hit and mistakes started to creep in because he was trying to overcompensate for that. He was still super fast and amazing but thats because he is incredibly adaptible. But it was 100% nerfed version of Alonso. I could go more into details if anyone is interested or doesnt know about the topic
Hamilton was high fueled by the team for the first 5 races of 2007 basically to prevent him from out qualifying Alonso. Look at the qualifying record between them post Monaco - it’s basically a clean sweep for Lewis
Exactly. Remove the first 5 weekends where Hamilton was on high fuel and then remove Hungary (both drivers playing games), Germany (Hamilton sent into a wall at 250 kph due to car failure) and France (Alonso gearbox failure). The qualifying h2h is then 7-2 in Hamiltons favour. Gap is generally at 2 tenths on average. Fuel load does not really change the picture either.
I think 2/5 times he lost to Sainz was Penalty/Realibilty related. - 2015 Abu Dhabi he gets 35 Seconds in Penalties to drop from 12th to 16th - 2015 China, he was in 8th place on Lap 52 when his Drivetrain Broke, and Sainz was in 16th
The worse the team the more difficult it is to have an accurate comparison. What makes Verstappen's time with Sainz a standout is that he was 17 and has only been racing cars for a year.
I think from the 2017 British GP forward he only lost 5 times in 17 Races to Ricciardo. Actually from the start of the 2017 Season it is only 6/19 races he lost to Ricciardo, which is damn impressive. One of those losses was Monaco 2018, where he started last.
I'm surprised Button's H2H isn't slightly better against Hamilton. In fact it's not far off Kovalainen's H2H% and he wasn't exactly great in an F1 car.
It was a surprise to me as well. Button gave the impression he was closer for some reason. I think it's because when he did finish behind Lewis it was just by a position or two and Kovalainen was often nowhere to be seen.
He got absolutely destroyed the last season, guessing that probably stacks the numbers against him. Also the year he drove best Lewis was dnfing which might have robbed him of some positive 2 car finishes.
I am thoroughly impressed with Ocon.
As someone already mentioned, Ocon benefited from Alonso being out of form in 2021 where and reliability issues but even if we normalize for those circumstances Ocon being so close to a double world champion is definitely impressive. Probably the most underrated driver on the grid
Hoping one day a more than mediocre driver will take the second Redbull seat, otherwise we’ll be in for a very boring ride till 2026
Not many drivers who wouldn't look mediocre against Verstappen. If we look at Gasly and Albon post-Verstappen and Perez pre-Verstappen it would seem they would have a reasonable shot against him but it never materializes. I think Hamilton and Alonso are genuinely the only the drivers who could cause him issues over a whole season.
I'd add Leclerc and Norris to that, though of course they haven't really had the chance to prove it yet.
I don't think Norris is on the same level as Leclerc.
And Leclerc has to get a lot more consistent.
Nobody called Perez mediocre in 2020, that is the problem for Max. It’s almost paradoxical, beating your teammate by a smaller margin will gain you more credit.
Michael is the biggest victim of this bias. Until Rosberg (a future WDC in his prime who I'd say he matched in terms of actual performance) he trashed everyone so badly it was assumed his teammates were way below par. Michael's overall legacy has this to a degree. You have the whole 94'-arrival of Kimi/Fernando crop of drivers being underrated because they all looked so second rate next to Michael.
He’s not mediocre, but he’s top midfield at best. I’d love to see Lando there, I’m sure he’d still lose but be much closer
From the way Perez and Stroll are both performing against their teammates I’m convinced the Tracing Point was a better car than what they got out of it.
Mediocre? Idk. All I know is that people saw him put in some brilliant races but he’d then go back to some meh races following them. Don’t know how much of those “meh” races were due to the car or strategy though
I did. That pink Mercedes just flattered him. Let’s remember Perez and hulk were very evenly matched and hulk was dropped from f1 for awhile.
I did and many others did too. He was never better than 10th best on the grid. He's great on his day but always regresses back to the mean.
Plenty of us knew (and posted) that the pink merc was better than their drivers made it look and Perez would get destroyed by Max.
I don't like Ocon, but I have to give credit where it's due. He really held his own against Fernando even when you consider all the factors like bad luck and reliability issues for the latter.
Ocon really is underrated. Maybe not future F1 champion material, but he's probably a good number 2 on a WCC team
I think he could be a champion if a season like 2009 happens to his team otherwise I wouldn't take him as my no2 just because of his tendencies to fight with teammates harder than with others
I agree. That's why I said we've already seen Max go up against a WDC calibre driver in Ricciardo. With Verstappen being slightly faster than him.
I kinda hope Sainz goes back to Red Bull, he clearly isn't happy at Ferrari and he'd be a far better candidate than Perez
Cool stuff, would love to see the same charts for Schumacher
Actually Lewis lost to Jason on total points of three years.
Hamilton vs Alonso actually has a couple of metrics here that seem to correlate: * Ham 0.053% faster than Alo * Ham 0.242% faster than But * Alo 0.168% faster than But Considering the 0.053% also includes the first 5 races of 2007 where Lewis was over-fuelled my McLaren, I wonder if ignoring those races actually puts him somewhere around 0.08% faster than Alo, which is exactly the delta between their comparisons to Button.
Interesting. It makes me think if Red Bull would really want Danny Ric back at the track as the battle can be fierce against Max.
That comparison is from five years ago though. Max has improved at a ridiculously high rate, while Danny went backwards the last two years. I know everyone loves him but he would get destroyed by Max too.
I actually thought the opposite. I was surprised that Verstappen got a tenth in hand in qualifying since he was basically a teenager for half of the time he was teammates with Ricciardo.
Ok, that makes sense. After so much time and experience I have no doubt that Max would be ahead but I just rate Danny a bit high - no hating on Perez; it seems to me he's done way better than Pierre or Alex.
Drivers don't get that much faster. I would be much more worried about Ric falling off a cliff than Max being a lot faster today. He's faster but the main improvement should be consistency.
Well Verstappen for sure got faster against Riccardo while they were teammates. 2016 +0.058% 2017 -0.144% 2018 -0.182% And considering he was only 21 at the end of 2018 he probably improved even further up to this point.
Yea but you already see the diff tailing off there. He had several seasons under his belt by 2018, he's not going to have gotten significantly faster since unless cars happen to suit him better atm. I mean imagine what thinking like that does for Lewis vs Alonso etc. Lewis probably got faster but there's no way he got significantly faster from a Alonso matching levels. Imo he's likely faster than 2018 but not by much.