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Originally Posted by RBNetEngr
I looked it up, and after Lewis won his first F1 Championship in 2008, the following years with McLaren (through 2012) he finished fourth or fifth, finishing ahead of Jensen Button (his teammate) twice. Then in 2013, the last year before the turbo hybrid era, Lewis finished fourth for Mercedes, vs sixth for his teammate Nico Rosberg. So that’s really a wash, since the difference between Lewis and his teammates wasn’t so dramatic that it couldn’t be accounted for by he or his teammate losing some points in key races during a season. Could have been caused by a crash, a safety car, a pit screwup, etc.
But I still think Lewis proves that when the car is doing well, he outperforms his teammates more often. There are lots of Lewis haters out there, but his results speak more to his ability as a driver. The results so far this season look more favorably on George Russell, but I think it’s still too early to say whether George is that much better in the same car. George was fortunate to get a pass opportunity early in this last race, and maintained his position.
Conditions during the last race were varying, with rain, colder temperatures, no DRS for a long time. It was pretty funny that Lewis couldn’t get past Gasly, and Gasly was having a pretty crappy race.
Speaking of Gasly…he has been hoping to get back to the Red Bull grownup team, but Perez will be keeping him away, and he’s also getting embarrassed by his teammate Yuki Tsunoda, who’s only in F1 for his second year. If Tsunoda can start AND finish all of his races I think he will end up getting more points than Gasly. And I think Gasly will be the next casualty at contract time, in 2023.
Netflix did a good job showing the RB/AT contention between Gasly and Albon.
-rb
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No one really doubts Lewis is a not very talented driver. He almost never just drives off the tacks and hit the barriers as Botas often did in the same car. Verstappen often just crashes on his own. The thing that gets most fans to work up some hate is he had a car that was simply THE class of the field. When he was out sick with Covid George would have easily won the race if Mercedes did not put the wrong tires on his car and force him to come back in for another set of tires. It was almost like Mercedes could not let him cruise to win and show how good that car really was.
Hamilton has all the major records, and it was not just that he had the 911 GT3RS and everyone else had a stock 1964 911, he has some real skills. But he was gifted a far superior car for the last 8 years. The British announcers all think he walks on water, and pride for a fellow Brit driver is obvious.