2019 Australian F1 Grandprix - Albert Park Melbourne

[The Black Knight]

Any sane person would always take (non driver related) DNFs into account when viewing driver performance. And for that reason, it's rather ridiculous to state that Riccardo took a hammering. His car broke a lot, and he couldn't overcome the points delta with such an unreliable car. It's really that simple. Kimi had the same fate in the Ferrari, but if you account for the car problems was about at an equal average points per race to Seb. So based on your own twisting of the stats from your statement, maybe Lewis should have retired in 2017. After all, he received a hammering from Nico in 2016.

Agreed and that’s my point. You have to take them into account but you then can’t pick and choose when you take them into account. So if you take them into account with Ricciardo, it follows you must take them into account for Lewis and Rosberg. Journeyman doesn’t do that, simply plucks some arbitrary number of retirements that don’t matter off the top of his head (whatever suits him) and carries on.

The point is, if you want to evaluate using this approach you must apply it to all evaluations consistently, especially for teammates.

So if it should be taken into account for Ricciardo last year, it also follows that it should be taken into account when evaluating why the 2016 drivers title ended up where it did and that would be a consistent evaluation.


Since Journeyman is desparate for my attention the last year and a half, all I did here was take the logic he took towards Hamilton and Rosberg and applied it to Ricciardo and Verstappen knowing wholly that he would rush to Ricciardo’s defence using reliability as an excuse. I gave the poor fella the tidbit he has been vying for, just for my own temporary entertainment. As he’s super predictable he took the bait. Angry people are the easiest to manipulate, you see.

So he can either apply his approach consistently, in which case, if he takes reliability into the equation, he must concede it also played a part in the 2016 title, otherwise he must concede that it played no part in which case it cannot be used for evaluating Verstappen and Ricciardo last year either.

I’m happy with either approach. I’ve had my bit of fun with him either way.