Verstappen - Three-time Driver World Champion

[Matthew]

So did Hamilton and Schumacher. In F1 the car is king and only if you have an equal car do you really compete head to head.

Yes, it is about the car but it is not just about the car. Checo is driving a Red Bull too but he has only managed to win 2 races this season so far.

[Nitrodaze]

Yes, it is about the car but it is not just about the car. Checo is driving a Red Bull too but he has only managed to win 2 races this season so far.

Sorry, not a fair comment. The 2023 Redbull was built to Verstappen's specifications. After the first quarter of the season, the design of the car became unfavorable for Perez. By mid-season, he simply could not drive the car with the sort of confidence he had at the beginning of the season.

It appears Redbull sacrificed Perez's season to give Verstapenn the ideal car for him to win the championship. Perez got the Webber treatment. He was never going to be allowed to challenge Verstappen for the championship. If he was given half a chance, the scoreboard would be much different. The so-called Verstappen dominance would not be anything like we have seen.

I can say for certain that he may not have won 15 races in the season. The 2023 season is a very ugly season and l think Redbull should be ashamed. They cheated us out of a championship battle between Verstappen and Perez. It is disgusting to watch them smiling. It is equally disgusting to watch the media enthuse over what clearly appears to be a fixed championship.

There is no way for us to know if Verstappen would have won the championship or not if he had to battle Perez in a fair fight for the championship. Could Perez have found a way to tame Verstappen and win the championship without team interference? That we also do not know. What we do know is Redbull did not give Perez an equal chance to win the championship. What we watched was painfully ugly as we watched a driver struggle to find any possibility of attaining his best capability in a car that no longer suited his driving style. Perez is better than what we saw this season. He certainly is better than 250 points in a dominant Redbull.

I really hope 2024 brings about a change. Another year of this ugly Redbull approach to racing would be excruciating to watch.

[Bagwan]

Sorry, not a fair comment. The 2023 Redbull was built to Verstappen's specifications. After the first quarter of the season, the design of the car became unfavorable for Perez. By mid-season, he simply could not drive the car with the sort of confidence he had at the beginning of the season.

It appears Redbull sacrificed Perez's season to give Verstapenn the ideal car for him to win the championship. Perez got the Webber treatment. He was never going to be allowed to challenge Verstappen for the championship. If he was given half a chance, the scoreboard would be much different. The so-called Verstappen dominance would not be anything like we have seen.

I can say for certain that he may not have won 15 races in the season. The 2023 season is a very ugly season and l think Redbull should be ashamed. They cheated us out of a championship battle between Verstappen and Perez. It is disgusting to watch them smiling. It is equally disgusting to watch the media enthuse over what clearly appears to be a fixed championship.

There is no way for us to know if Verstappen would have won the championship or not if he had to battle Perez in a fair fight for the championship. Could Perez have found a way to tame Verstappen and win the championship without team interference? That we also do not know. What we do know is Redbull did not give Perez an equal chance to win the championship. What we watched was painfully ugly as we watched a driver struggle to find any possibility of attaining his best capability in a car that no longer suited his driving style. Perez is better than what we saw this season. He certainly is better than 250 points in a dominant Redbull.

I really hope 2024 brings about a change. Another year of this ugly Redbull approach to racing would be excruciating to watch.

It looks like they chose the guy they thought could win it and went with the design that made it faster .
That's one way to do it , and , although it might look bad for the guy in the other car , if he can't manage the changes as well and quickly adapt , it can work to win you a championship .
To win is the first job .

To have two drivers who can run the car equally well is dangerous for any team if they are right at the front . It's a little easier if both guys can see the advantage of the other in making the machine faster whilst pushing it up the order , but get close to the front end and egos will get in the way .

Ferrari , in the days where Michael was king is an example of the first , and I remember a lot of whining about it but they won and did it convincingly .

And Merc , with Nico and Lewis , is an example of the second where it worked , but caused a whole lot of agro for all concerned .


The thing you need to remember is that they aren't doing these changes to the car to spite Checo .
They would be happy to see him a lot closer to Max and I'm sure they are working hard to get him able to drive the thing .

[Nitrodaze]

It looks like they chose the guy they thought could win it and went with the design that made it faster .
That's one way to do it , and , although it might look bad for the guy in the other car , if he can't manage the changes as well and quickly adapt , it can work to win you a championship .
To win is the first job .

To have two drivers who can run the car equally well is dangerous for any team if they are right at the front . It's a little easier if both guys can see the advantage of the other in making the machine faster whilst pushing it up the order , but get close to the front end and egos will get in the way .

Ferrari , in the days where Michael was king is an example of the first , and I remember a lot of whining about it but they won and did it convincingly .

And Merc , with Nico and Lewis , is an example of the second where it worked , but caused a whole lot of agro for all concerned .


The thing you need to remember is that they aren't doing these changes to the car to spite Checo .
They would be happy to see him a lot closer to Max and I'm sure they are working hard to get him able to drive the thing .

That view would hold up if there were any real competition for the championship. No team was remotely close. There were pretenders like Aston Martin and recently Mclaren. But they did not have championship-winning credentials on track.

They chose not to have Perez challenge Verstappen for the championship. That is the obvious way it has panned out.

If a team cannot handle having both their drivers race each other hard for the championship, they should run one car in the championship l think. We have been deprived of seeing what sort of campaign Perez may have been able to produce given equal machinery. And how well Verstappen would have been able to deal with the challenge in a machinery designed for both drivers to have an equal chance of winning the championship.

Aggravation is part and parcel of competition and confrontation. Redball and Verstappen clearly wanted an easy campaign but also want the same respect as the champions who had to work hard to win it in the face of stiff competition.

That is what we the fans come to F1 to see; a hard-fought championship and a triumph born out of it. If the outcome is the same as not having all the other cars on the track, then why is that respectable?

It unfortunately weakens the respectability of all of Verstappen's championship titles.

[airshifter]

Yes, it is about the car but it is not just about the car. Checo is driving a Red Bull too but he has only managed to win 2 races this season so far.

Checo is a good driver, but obviously not on the level of Max. We rarely get to see the very top level drivers in the same car, and I think most teams try to keep it that way really.

At this point Sergio is tied for his most career wins in a season and is 2nd in the WDC, so overall his year isn't that bad compared to the other couple years in the RB.