Flash2k11 wrote:
kleefton wrote:
Alienturnedhuman wrote:
Ricciardo has comfortably beaten Max in the standings. Which only makes you wonder just how badly Kyvat would have beaten him, given that Kyvat is the only team mate to have beaten Ricciardo over a full season...
Is this a serious post?
Given the content, and the chap that has posted it, the insinuation should be all to clear (he is highlighting that yet again the A > B > C thus A > C logic is no good).
I agree, sort of.
The A > B > C logic can be sound, but only if the data supporting it is statistically significant, which, of course, with the drivers mentioned, it isn’t.
This whole thread is fundamentally flawed because there’s just not enough data available (in the public domain) to be able to absolutely make the call on whether Dan or Max is the all round better driver.
Even the statement that Max is faster over one lap in qualifying is not entirely sound. We know that for at least one race (I forget which) Dan set his car up for a higher top speed at the expense of ultimate lap time. Dan is the last of the late breakers and so I’m guessing he did this to help with overtaking during the race.
These differing setups are (more or less) a result of RBR being the 3rd fastest car. If RBR had the fastest car both would be setting the car up for the highest grid position with the aim of leading the race from tip to tail.
In terms of like for like race pace, Max is usually faster than Dan, but again that’s not the whole story. Dan has been known to preserve his tyres mid stint so that he can pump in hot laps to make an over or under cut work. Like he did to Max at Monaco.
Bottom line, there’s just not enough races where both have finished to know for sure who is the fastester overall driver. We can guess or estimate, but we can’t know in a statistically significant way.
So, what do we actually know? We know that RBR has resigned Max until 2020 and they claim that they want to also want to resign Dan. The next interesting data point is what happens next.
If during 2018, Ferrari and Merc fall over themselves to sign Dan, and he signs with one of them for around the same amount as RBR paid Max, then we’ll know that Dan is regarded by the teams about as highly as Max.
On the other hand, if Ferrari and Merc, with all of the telemetry that they have on all of the drivers, are not that interested and Dan the resigns for RBR for half as much as Max, then that tells us all we need to know about his ranking.
All that said, if I had to say right now who I thought was the better driver, who would it be?
Well, I’ve been following F1 since the early 80’s. In that time, my view is that the greatest drivers have been, Ayrton, Michael and Lewis. In Max I see elements of those 3, especially his race starts which at times are epic. While in Dan I see elements of Alain, Nigel and Seb with respect to his strategic thinking and of course his overtakes.
I think Dan is a great driver, but I think that Max will go down as one of the greatest.
2018 is going to be delicious to watch.
Cheers,
Noel