Spot on. We'll never know just how good Hamilton is until Hamilton is in a slow car. Rosberg was frequently faster than Hamilton in the same car. Schumacher absolutely dominated his team mates, all of whom were fast pilots.
Yet, at the end of your long litany, you manage to finish by another put down, just based on supposition. Because you don't know more than me or Toto Wolff if Ricciardo would adapt to the Mercedes, go faster and win more than Hamilton. He may, or he may not, but you cannot even refrain to question Hamilton's ability to step up to the plate and fight successfully again a new team mate. I think the last few years would have given you an indication how combative Hamilton can be, but in spite of 3 WDC, 45+ wins and 69 poles, you still question his skill. !!!
On this forum certainly. Someone has just said Stroll and Palmer would do the same in his Mercedes !!!
Nico was a good qualifier, but scored less poles than Hamilton. He also obtained les fastest laps and less wins. He beat Hamilton to the title once. Schumacher was Number One at Ferrari, that enforced team orders. That's the difference.
Regarding Lewis' comments about 'Merc vs Ferrari power', I don't believe he was playing mind games with the team. He was buzzing the tifosi a little for booing him. I guess he figured if they were going to boo, give them a good reason to do so. He certainly didn't risk losing any fans...
We got a winner. MB learned from the fiasco last year and chose Bottas as a #2. From all the statements from Lauda and Toto they were major league ticket off with Nicole for upsetting the apple cart.
Just read an interview with Toto who claims that after the 10th lap they reduced the MB power by 20%. Ouch. Hamilton said it correctly: MB power beats Ferrari power
Ouch. Season over boys. Took a little longer than I thought but as usual merc has won the in season development race
Next race being Singapore could swing into Ferrari's hands. After that only rain could save them (good chance in Japan and Brazil). Abu Dhabi and Austin will likely be more in MB's favor. And the next turbo replacement will put Seb down the grid.
Only counts on high-speed circuits. I think Ferrari will tell us more about the season over the next two races. There needs to be at least one win and the cars must stay close. (Note: I think Malaysia is more of a Ferrari-advantaged circuit than Singapore...it's the series of directional changes vs slow corners that the SF-70 thrives on). Season's not over...I always saw Monza as a circuit that could offer a win for Vettel only due to Merc failure or safety car timing. In a straight race, it was going to be Merc.
Monza was always going to be a Merc dominated track. It rewards power and the teams all have a bespoke ultra low downforce aero set up just for this race. Remember, spa was much closer than we thought it would be- and that was meant to be an easy Merc win. The season is far from over... There are 2 wild cards as we head into the last races of the season. The first is reliability. A DNF from either Vet or ham could be game over, and the stupid grid penalty rules will almost add some interference. The second is Red Bull. They have the capacity to mix it up at the front on circuits like Singapore and Brazil. Oh - and then there is the weather and who knows what that will throw into the mic. It's all to play for!
As concerns the grid position at the finish line, it's a distinction without difference, Ross. Has anyone in this increasingly-politicized thread credited Schumacher's superior car with his legendary stats? LH may have such an inflated sense of self that he can't imagine his victories are the result of anything but skill. However, that's immaterial. Maybe LH in a lesser car would be a lesser finisher, and maybe Vettel in a Merc would be WDC. But Ferrari has relatively infinite resources - compared to other teams - to hire the best talent, develop the best engine and chassis, and craft the best racing team strategy. Whether or not LH is a better driver, and whether or not Merc is a better car, Ferrari as a unit (constructor, driver, management) needs to play the cards they're dealt. Today, they finished 34sec. behind the next best car. This is an unacceptable performance for a team and driver in contention for the championship (whatever peoples' lowered expectations were). That stat stands on its own, regardless of where anyone thinks LH falls in the pantheon of historic drivers. Who knows if Toto was telling the truth about running at 80%, or LH was telling the truth about having lifted at Spa when Vet though he was within DRS range at the end? We got snookered by Mercedes "promising" not to run a legally-permitted superior engine and fumbled qualifying on our home track. Any discussion of the percentage allocation of credit to car vs. driver abilities is meaningless; all that matters is Ferrari needs to figure out how to get their game together.
I wonder if Ferrari really is the second team....Look how fast Danny cut through the field, and especially how easily he closed in on Seb in the last ten laps. Anyway, the synthesis of all the posts in this complete thread is simple: Ferrari is in trouble.
https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/131632/marchionne-ferrari-screwed-up-at-monza Ferrari president Sergio Marchionne says his Formula 1 team "screwed up" at the Italian Grand Prix after seeing Mercedes cruise to a dominant 1-2 finish. Just one week after Sebastian Vettel pushed Lewis Hamilton hard for victory in Belgium, Ferrari had no answer to the pace of its main championship rival. Vettel finished 36 seconds behind Hamilton to leave Ferrari chasing answers about what had gone wrong. But rather than accept that the result was damage limitation - with Vettel only losing 10 points to Hamilton on a weekend when the gap could have been much bigger - Marchionne said the team had to take full responsibility for not having built on its Spa performance. "I think we just screwed up," Marchionne told German broadcaster RTL. "The setup for the car was wrong. I think we underestimated the circuit. "We screwed up from Belgium, from Spa, into here. Now, we need to go back to the factory and find out which way the car went sideways. But we will be back in Singapore." Ferrari will return to its Maranello factory this week to try to understand why both Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen struggled to get comfortable with the car over the Monza weekend - especially under braking. Matters were also not helped by it being unable to try improvements on Saturday morning when, after a difficult opening day, the final free practice session was hit by rain. Speaking about the weekend, Raikkonen said: "We lacked speed unfortunately and then the balance maybe wasn't correct. "We changed [the setup] after Friday and obviously in the race was the first time we tried. "But with the setup, it was not going to be awfully different. "So it's something we have to fix in this kind of circuit with the low downforce." Vettel's pace later in the race was also affected by him driving more cautiously in light of a power steering issue that had resulted in him running down the escape road on lap 40.
Hamilton didn't say: "Mercedes power beats Ferrari power" though: Hamilton started his interview trying to appease the booing situation, by saying that he had the utmost respect for the partisan Italian Ferrari fans, but then went on to antagonise them by saying: "Mercedes power is definitely better than Ferrari power!" Whilst he may have simply been saying that Mercedes have an advantage over Ferrari right now, it could also be read by the Italian Ferrari fans as Hamilton saying: "Ferrari are s:censored:t compared to Mercedes!" Basically, Hamilton was stood in front of the Italian Ferrari fans, and decided that the thing to do was to brag that Mercedes were superior to their beloved Ferrari! - That's the equivalent of going to someone's party and saying to them: "Your wife's a dog compared to Mine!" Whilst it may be what you genuine believe, you should really know that it's not the cleverest of things to say to your host!
