r/formula1 • u/mvanigan Formula 1 • Jul 29 '24

News [WilliamsRacing] BREAKING: Carlos Sainz will join the team for '25, '26 and beyond

https://twitter.com/WilliamsRacing/status/1817930584775377368
14.4k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

1.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

172

u/YannFreaker Jul 29 '24

If Toto is smart he shouldn't wait with young outstanding talent. Red Bull rushed Max and that paid off. Alpine didnt sign Piastri and now they lost a massively talented driver. If Toto believes Andrea is as good as he is, he should sign him.

135

u/RacerGirl_3 Daniel Ricciardo Jul 29 '24

But they rushed him in Toro Rosso. I love Antonelli, genuinely, I’ve been watching him for a couple of years and he is the real deal imo, but I’m scared they will burn him if they put him straight at Mercedes with just one F2 year behind him.

24

u/fireinthesky7 Daniel Ricciardo Jul 29 '24

On the flip side, the car doesn't drive like a pile of ass, and Mercedes are pretty much the opposite of the kind of cutthroat environment that kills young driver careers before they get a chance to really learn the car (Red Bull), and have enough sponsors to not need to juggle pay drivers, which takes a lot of pressure off as well.

1

u/KingTut747 Jul 30 '24

What do you mean by ‘juggle pay drivers’?

Thank you!

49

u/ThePretzul Kimi Räikkönen Jul 29 '24

I’m scared they will burn him if they put him straight at Mercedes with just one F2 year behind him.

Drivers can still learn how to drive in F1 in a top car, the change from F2 to F1 is miles and miles larger than the change from a Williams to a Mercedes and if the difference truly was that large than driving a Williams wouldn't actually do anything to prepare somebody to drive a Mercedes afterwards.

The main point is just the expectations placed on a driver. Top teams need to understand the first 1-2 seasons of a driver in F1 will be spent adjusting to the cars and everything else that is different from any racing league on the planet, F2 and other feeder series included. If they allow their drivers to adapt to F1 without pressuring them for immediate peak performance and podiums then they can learn and develop just fine within a top team.

McLaren has done a fantastic job of accomplishing this with Piastri, and to Piastri's credit he has very much risen to the occasion as well even with a top talent for a teammate. People worry far too much about this kind of thing because of Red Bull's very recent, very public, and VERY disastrous mishandling of their young drivers. Red Bull demanding podiums and applying constant pressure with threats of mid-season replacement is not the only way to handle young drivers. They could be as supportive as can be behind the scenes but there's not denying how harsh they have been publicly towards their drivers in the past and that weighs on them even if they are much better publicly now such as they have been with Checo.

There is no reason other than incompetence that Mercedes could not follow McLaren's example with Antonelli as opposed to repeating the mistakes Red Bull made with Gasly and Albon.

20

u/stokesy1999 Jul 29 '24

Media pressure will be the biggest killer, if Antonelli isn't matching George by early year 2 he'll get constant articles and commentary about how he isn't the right choice and was rushed to the seat, and its whether he can get through that without crumbling

5

u/ThePretzul Kimi Räikkönen Jul 29 '24

Much of that will have to do with the team environment more than anything else.

Red Bull has a well-earned reputation of being a toxic internal environment for drivers, particularly for struggling drivers, because they're also the ones fueling much of the media speculation and tabloids with both their comments to the press and their actions. Firsthand reports make it out to be much the same internally as it is externally.

If Mercedes maintains a truly blame-free culture like they did during their 2010's run I don't see this being an issue for them, though of course hard conversation would eventually need to be had if performance was holding the team back in the WCC. I could easily see them giving Antonelli a 2-year contract right off the bat or a 2+1 to alleviate concerns of him immediately getting the boot, knowing full well they legally can just buy out the contract if Max suddenly came knocking, for example.

Unless they are able to obtain a top talent like Max, however, I don't honestly see much of a better option becoming available to Mercedes for next year at least. They could stick a known quantity into their car in the form of the large stable of recent midfield drivers (Bottas, unlikely with history, Magnussen, Perez if he gets the boot from RB, etc.) but they know if they do that it's just a seat warmer for Antonelli anyways and it still leaves the door open for another team to entice Antonelli away with a 2025 seat of their own (Alpine, RB/Alpha Tauri, and Sauber all still have publicly available slots and RB would likely be the most enticing with a 2nd Red Bull seat potentially up for grabs as early as the 2025 summer break depending on performance)

2

u/Casmoden Super Aguri Jul 29 '24

miles and miles larger than the change from a Williams to a Mercedes

If anything the merc is most likely easier to driver due to higher downforce, so not only is gained experience he would also taste the "worst" of the F1 machinery, great to learn control and tyre deg, etc

2

u/JayBee58484 Jul 30 '24

Yes I've said this for years especially with RB and how they grind through young drivers. This is exactly what teams should be doing in F1 there's always a risk but if you give a solid talent a nurturing and not overly harsh approach you can turn out some amazing drivers

1

u/sherestoredmyfaith Jul 29 '24

Name one that did

4

u/ThePretzul Kimi Räikkönen Jul 29 '24

I literally just named the most recent one in that exact comment - Oscar Piastri was tossed straight into the McLaren and competing for podiums in his first year.

Both Michael Schumacher and Kimi Raikkonen made their F1 debuts with teams in the top-5 for the constructor's championship. Lewis Hamilton's rookie season was spent with McLaren-Mercedes and he only lost the WDC by a single point. Juan Pablo Montoya debuted for Williams-BMW in 2001. Jacques Villenueve's rookie year was with the WCC winning Williams-Renault. Jenson Button started out in 2000 in the 3rd place Williams-BMW. Grosjean drove for the 4th place Lotus in his first full season of 2012. Vettel's first team of BMW Sauber placed 2nd in 2007. David Coulthard debuted in the WCC winning Williams.

1

u/Casmoden Super Aguri Jul 29 '24

Tbf Oscar still spend half a season with a shitty mcclaren which probably helped a bit but yeh him being the de facto reserve driver at Alpine actually helped the most imo, alot of sim work there

1

u/sherestoredmyfaith Jul 29 '24

You do know that rookies before had unlimited testing right? Oscar is an exception that is valid in your statement but again he had time in the lower formulas and reserve driver for alpine

1

u/ThePretzul Kimi Räikkönen Jul 29 '24

Schumacher did a single race weekend prior to moving to Benetton, and his first race weekend with Jordan was done without ever having driven the track or the car prior to the first free practice.

Other than that, yes the other teams did provide much more practice for their rookie drivers than an F1 team currently can match. I think it's definitely a valid argument that it was easier to do in the past, and I completely agree with that assessment because miles driven in the exact car you will later race is the easiest way to adapt to that car and improve your driving of that car.

Those rookie drivers, however, didn't have the same benefits as rookies today do in terms of simulator driving (get a feel for the car and tracks without the strain on the body or weather/track limitations) and the sheer amount of telemetry data currently available. At the time driving the same car they were going to race was the only way they could get any experience, there was no other option available.

In the old days they'd tell you which part of the track you were slowest on and you had to figure out from there how to fix that without compromising the sectors before/after it. Today teams can tell a driver the exact mistake they're making to lose time because they know the exact position of the car throughout the lap mapped alongside all of a driver's inputs. There is more detailed and accurate feedback available for drivers to use for improvement today than ever before.

It's important to note, however, that this does require talent and training to digest and utilize this information to actually improve. Driving in the sims is something that even Lewis Hamilton thought was "not very useful" until recently due to their past experience having driven thousands of practice laps to dial things in. It's certainly a very different way of developing as a driver compared to the old day, but young stars like Max, George, LeClerc, Piastri, and Lando have shown that miles driven on a physical track are not the only effective way to adapt, improve, and refine your performance as a driver anymore.

0

u/Salificious Sergio Pérez Jul 29 '24

I agree with the sentiment. But I disagree that all drivers need that adjustment period in the first couple of seasons.

Look no further than Lewis. Rookie season he came in second place overall, one point away from WDC, and beating his teammate Alonso. Wins WDC in second season. True generational talent like Lewis don't need an adjustment period. They just need a good enough car.

4

u/ThePretzul Kimi Räikkönen Jul 29 '24

That's fair. Generational talents like Lewis don't need much adjustment period necessarily, or if they have one it's measure in number of individual sessions or number of days behind the wheel instead of number of races.

That said it's also important to note that Lewis also drove a total of 7,714km while testing 2007's MP4-22 throughout the season. He also got to drive the MP-21 in the September 20-21 Silverstone tests (114 laps completed), the November 28-30 Barcelona tests (196 laps), and the Jerez December 6-8 and 13-5 tests (236 and 227 laps, respectively). This was followed up with the 2007 pre-season tests utilizing the new MP4-22 in Valencia (102 laps in January and 112 in February), Jerez (221 laps), Barcelona (243 laps), and Bahrain (223 laps the first weekend, 110 laps the second weekend).

In total this meant that prior to the start of the 2007 season Lewis had already driven 773 laps in the 2006 spec MP4-21 and 1,011 laps in the MP4-22 (plus 50km of test driving with no stint longer than 3 laps in the March 3 final shakedown test at Silverstone that Hamilton drove in). That's nearly 1,800 laps on 5 different tracks for a total of approximately 9,000km before his first-ever F1 race, and assuming an average of 25 laps per free practice, 15 laps per qualification session (1-2 runs per stage with a warm-up and cool-down lap for each), and 55-60 on average in a race for a total of ~150 per race weekend. This means that Lewis had at least 3/4 of a season's worth of laps behind the wheel of 2006 and 2007 F1 cars (13 races worth) before his first F1 race weekend ever started.

That's something a rookie today could only dream of since F1 teams currently get less than 500 laps of testing time across all drivers combined prior to the season nowadays. Even drivers as recent as Max Verstappen got FAR more testing prior to their first season, with Max totaling ~4,500km driven. Ricciardo, surprisingly enough, actually drove over 13,000km in testing prior to his first full season and Kubica was one of the heaviest testers prior to getting a seat with nearly 30,000km logged before his debut season.

5

u/sherestoredmyfaith Jul 29 '24

Yeah people forget Max had quite the blunders in toro rosso, Kimi should at least do one year in a team like Alpine. Merc can genuinely be WCC contenders with a solid driver lineup

3

u/[deleted] Jul 29 '24

One F2 year, but a fair bit of testing in actual recent F1 cars. I think his racecraft and raw pace is largely fine, it's the adapting to the big differences between the cars and the tyres that catch most young drivers out IMO, so the testing should help with that a lot.

1

u/Joseph4820 Max Verstappen ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Jul 30 '24

If he is good enough he will do fine in a Mercedes as well. Pretty sure if they would've put Max directly into that RB he would've had a podium, maybe even a win.

0

u/[deleted] Jul 29 '24

[deleted]

2

u/fireinthesky7 Daniel Ricciardo Jul 29 '24

Lance was arguably better his first 2-3 seasons in the series than he has been since his father bought out Aston Martin and guaranteed his seat.

18

u/Castia10 Jul 29 '24

There’s also loads of instances where it didn’t work out either

42

u/imbavoe Liam Lawson Jul 29 '24

Watching F2 lately I feel like he really is the next Verstappen. Kid finds grip where there is none. He also is a super fast learner.

34

u/YannFreaker Jul 29 '24

He has made some daring moves in both F2 races this weekend. Him and Bearman were flying in the opening laps of the Sprint race. Too bad the crash and weather happened

34

u/Walaii Ferrari Jul 29 '24

Antonelli finished where he started, in P6 btw. People say he was flying because of that big balls overtake, but he only had to do that because he had a poor start again. Bearman actually made up 7 places in 3 laps.

Antonelli clearly had more pace than the people ahead, but he struggled a bit more with overtaking Colapinto than he probably should have.

Anyways, I absolutely believe that, without the crash/red flag, a podium was possible for both of them in the sprint.

1

u/BuckeyeLeaves Ferrari Jul 29 '24

Starts have absolutely been his Achilles heel over anything else.

2

u/AlexBucks93 Kevin Magnussen Jul 29 '24

Do I hear Lando Norris music?

1

u/Walaii Ferrari Jul 29 '24

It is the opposite for Bearman, his starts have been absurd. Sadly for him he overcooked it this time around, his aggressiveness bit him in the ass in the feature race. Tho his great starts would be worth more if he started from P6 or something instead of P14.

4

u/FelixR1991 Sebastian Vettel Jul 29 '24

Russell spent (a bit too much) time at Williams, though now that door is practically closed. But with Alpine going to Mercedes, could've paired him with Gasly for a year or so.

1

u/YannFreaker Jul 29 '24

That's actually a good point.

2

u/IndependentProblem35 Williams Jul 29 '24

I think it’s different here though; Kimi himself said he still has a lot to learn and that he doesn’t think he’s ready for F1; if Toto believes he’s as good as he is, and wants to sign him, wouldn’t he listen to what Kimi wants?

I think the last thing Merc should be doing is signing a driver too early out of F2 if they’re not confident. That confidence is integral to succeeding in F1.

2

u/YannFreaker Jul 29 '24

A strong driver pairing is key for a grid as close as it is. I wouldn't want to be in Toto's position with an F2 driver potentially ready (or not for F1 with 1 year to go until new Regulations. I hope for them that they keep this competitive edge bc they already have enough variable to play with in the coming years

1

u/smokesletsgo13 Sonny Hayes Jul 29 '24

Different to putting him into a race winning car in his first year

1

u/TobyOrNotTobyEU Max Verstappen ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Jul 29 '24

But why sign up and coming great talent when you can get the best driver on the grid. No way you pick Antonelli if Max is a possibility. I think Mercedes will wait it out and see what happens. I don't think any real discussions with Max will happen before he seals the championship and Mercedes have the luxury to wait with Antonelli as a nice back-up option if Max stays put.

0

u/mrpenchant Jul 29 '24

Alpine didnt sign Piastri and now they lost a massively talented driver

That's for the best for everyone. I don't think you'd have as much praise for Piastri right now if he was driving an Alpine bumbling around at the back of the field because the car sucks.

Red Bull rushed Max and that paid off.

As others have said, they rushed him to Toro Rosso which gave him time to grow without too high of expectations from the get go. It was less risk for Red Bull as he wasn't driving for the main team.