Why Verstappen’s Dominance Feels Different to Anything Else

a Red Bull have had a soul crushing start to the season with one-w finishes in the opening two races and gaps to the next best teams being equally Soul crushing for them with a 25-second gap to Ferrari in Bahrain and an 18-second Gap to Ferrari in jeda with a safety car now we have seen dominance many times before in Formula 1 Schumaker at Ferrari vetal at Red Bull and Hamilton at Mercedes but watching this team especially in 2023 and now in 2024 something feels very different and even more ominous compared to the others and so in this video I wanted to analyze a few things that I think sets Red Bull apart from the other eras of dominance and now in this video I'm not necessarily going to be focusing on the number of wins or poll positions because I think that's more dependent on how long you race and how long your team stays dominant for which to be honest we're only going to have an answer for once Red Bull and Max stop winning I'm also not going to compare it the McLaren period of domination in the80s and the Williams period of domination in the '90s because in both of those circumstances three or more drivers actually won championships for those teams within the span of a decade and so it isn't quite the same as the one driver and one team combo that the others are when looking at Michael's Ferrari era in terms of the inter team Dynamic and the Gap relative to their teammate I think this is the one that closest resembles to what we're seeing right now from Max and red ball however the key difference is that the way Shuma and vapen went about winning races was very different and dictated by their cars in the early 2000s not only did we have refueling but we also had a tire wall with Bridgestone basically designing their tires entirely to suit Ferrari this was one of the reasons schuma became known for his Sprint style races because generally speaking the Michelin was the better qualifying Tire whilst the Bridgestone was the better race Tire this is also partly why there is actually a discrepancy between Michael's total number of wins and also his number of pole positions as qualifying was never his or the car's biggest strength in that era with overtaking in the race being so difficult Ferrari in races where Michael wasn't starting on Pole Position were always able to make very clever strategical calls in particular Michael's biggest strength was being able to do consistent qualifying style laps during stins which either allowed him to build gaps once he got into clean air and jump the cars that had just pitted before him or build enough of a gap that he could do an extra stop on an offset strategy and still catch and overtake them with a Superior Tire advantage that is why even though on paper Max's domination against his teammate and his competition probably resembles schmackers the most due to there being no refueling and no multiple Tire suppliers the way the races unfold now is very different to the way they did back then even if the outcome seems exactly the same like Michael I don't think that qualifying is Max's biggest strength I have said this for multiple years now that to me lir is currently the outright fastest driver over one lap but with the pellis being so sensitive to overdriving and overheating to me Max's biggest strength is his racecraft and tire management even when Max doesn't qualify on the front row which admittedly is not exactly very often he is always able to play the patient game and either wait for his opponent to run out of tires before the first round of pit stops or he forces his opponents to try to pit early at which point Red Bull's Superior Tire strategy and great pit stops usually allows Max to still get track position unlike schumacker the only time Max ever really does more pit stops than anyone else is to try to get the point for fastest lap and even in that scenario Max's Tire management skills usually means that he's always got TI life in hand at the end of the race and once the tracks rubbered in and the fuel Burns off he's usually able to get the fastest lap anyway without needing to pit and next up let's compare Red Bull versus Red Bull and as much as Michael's era probably resembled Max's the most seb's ERA and his domination probably resembles Max's the least now having said that even though this was almost 15 years ago there is still plenty of that same Red Bull DNA which links the two together in terms of the management and the car design there is still a lot of the same people there and more than anything else even back then Red Bull were always the best team on an operational side breaking the pit stop record twice in one season in 2013 other than that however Not only was s Max very different but the way the seasons unfolded was also very different as well 2010 and 2012 were titles that went down all the way to title deciders and although 2013 was statistically seb's most iconic season winning nine races in a row I'd actually argue that 2011 was more representative of the driver that he actually was unlike Max I think the foundation of seb's dominance was his qualifying Pace in 2011 during a 19 Race season Seb was on poll 15 times which despite the fact that now we have well over 20 races in a season is still a record that stands to this day seb's whole philosophy was about taking more risk and dominating qualifying and then using pole position in the race to break the DRS as soon as possible even if it meant going hard on the tires which might compromise him later in that stint keep in mind in 2011 that was the first season with DRS and so every single driver was still learning how to best use it to their advantage and there's no doubt that in that era vettle and Hamilton were by far the most consistent and best qualifiers I think the biggest difference however was the quality and and mentality of the drivers in Formula 1 now it feels like there's a lot more Universal acknowledgement amongst the younger drivers that Max is the best driver in Formula 1 with people like Lando Norris even saying so in recent interviews apart from Max we only have two other world champions who are now the oldest drivers on the grid in Hamilton and Alonzo however during veto's dominance we had multiple already successful and already established world champions all in their Prime like vettle Hamilton Alonzo button and renan back then whether you think this is right or wrong the other drivers didn't have that same Universal recognition that Seb was better than all of them even though he was dominating and there was a lot more stigma that it was actually Adrien Nei who was winning all of those titles instead of Seb the quality of competition that Seb had to face and also the fact that more teams had competitive cars meant that there was a lot more drivers winning races even if challenging for the championship was unlikely and now admittedly the reason why drivers right now are not as accomplished as the drivers that Seb had to face is because most of them have barely had a car capable of a race win let alone a championship I think that's what's led to the drivers being more conservative with how they speak about themselves in comparison to Max and even though I do understand that I just hope that mentally it isn't affecting the driver psychologically because I can tell you for a fact when Lewis and Fernando were watching Seb win all of those championships at no point did they ever think that he was a better driver than them last up we have Lewis at Mercedes and now Lewis dominated for so long that I think you can actually split his dominance into two phases before Nico rosberg retired at the end of 2016 and then after rosberg retired from 2017 onwards during the first 3 years of the hybrid era when Mercedes had a car that was as dominant as the Red Bull is right now the obvious difference is that we had two drivers fighting for wins it meant that wal fans were still complaining about knowing exactly which car and which team was going to win every single race it wasn't like it is now in the sense that the identity of which teammate was going to win still provided a certain level of intrigue with the two genuine title battles in 2014 and 2016 from 2017 onwards I think Mercedes only really had a R bull level dominant car in 2020 and even then with all of the crazy stuff that happened on track That season it might be one of the most entertaining quote unquote dominant seasons in F1 history after the wider cars were introduced in 2017 whilst Lewis and Mercedes were metronomic in winning championships by now mercedes's power unit Advantage was almost completely eroded away by Ferrari in terms of performance and the other teams were now all winning races every single season with drivers like vettle reikenen Ricardo vapen and lir a war also separates Red Bull's current ERA from all of the others is the fact that Stephano Demar Point Blank has come out and said that Formula 1 and the FIA are not going to intervene with any rule changes that could slow down Red Bull this is something that those other teams had to fight basically every couple of years when Ferrari dominated in 2002 the point system was changed so that now a win wasn't as valuable as it was before and the qualifying system was also shaken up when Ferrari dominated again in 2004 the FIA introduced tie rules specifically aimed at stopping Ferrari for 2015 when Red Bull started dominating with vettle in 2010 and especially 2011 where the Adrian ne's blown diffuser cars that specific Innovation was then banned for 2012 when Mercedes then started to dominate in 2014 despite the fact that initially there was an engine development freeze for all of the teams to help them save money the other power units were so bad that the FIA then reversed that freeze to try to help the other teams catch up when Mercedes then still continued to dominate new AO changes were brought in in 2017 just 3 years into a brand new AO cycle again with the intention to unsettle Mercedes when Mercedes is then dominated again in 2020 although the FIA cited Tire concerns for the changes made in 2021 the way they decided to slow the cars down by taking away some of the floor at the rear of the car specifically targeted lower rake and longer wheelbase cars as those cars were able to have extra floor space for downforce and the only two teams who ran that concept was Mercedes and Aston Martin and now these changes and many many others whether they were fair or not which has been a heavily debated topic for decades were all made with the intention to stop one team and specifically One driver from dominating the sport more domination means less entertainment which means fewer casual viewers which means less money from TV companies and sponsors who' want to invest into Formula 1 given Dominic Harley's strong stance that he won't do anything like that to stop Red Bull it means that compared to before there is less pressure on the team and also their drivers because they can be sure that the advantage that they have now is locked in all the way until at least 2026 and now the last factor that makes this era of dominance unique compared to all of the others is one that I've specifically not mentioned yet and that is reliability when Schumaker was dominating although at the time Ferrari was setting new standards for reliability both drivers still had plenty of failures and that was during a Time where every single team had multiple engines for every single race during the early 2000s instead of just four for the whole season during vet's dominance whilst the performance of the Renault engine was good reliability was always known as its biggest weakness with numerous failures that almost cost vetal the title in 2012 even for Mercedes again whilst at the time they were relatively reliable compared to the competition they still had plenty of failures that cost them wins and in the eyes of leis Hamilton the various engine issues and grid penalties that he had throughout 2016 probably cost him a world championship although in 2022 to start this rule cycle Red Bull did have a couple of issues with both of their drivers since the 2022 Canadian Grand Prix where czecho suffered a gearbox issue neither driver has had a single reliability related race dnf in almost 2 years now imagine telling that stat to char Clair when you combine Max V staff and driving as well as anyone has ever done so in Formula 1 history with all of those other external factors that separates his dominance from everyone else's like the lack of variables like refueling in attire War the lack of in team competition the lack of competitive Machinery from the other teams and unprecedented levels of reliability all of those things combine it create an era that right now is something that I don't think Formula 1 has truly seen before the dominance is nothing new in Formula 1 it's happened before and it's going to happen again but the way that maxus dappen Sergio Perez and the entire Red Bull team are dominating right now is truly unprecedented well there you have it if you did enjoy this video and want to support the channel then don't forget to subscribe that would be massively appreciated and I'll see you in the next one [Music] oh

Channel: Aldas

Views: 294,198

Keywords:

Id: fYaC4nlg0s0

Length: 14min 9sec (849 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 22 2024