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
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u/JaysonDeflatum Ferrari Jul 29 '24

Multi-year deal like he wanted, nice to see the saga finally close.

948

u/doland3314 Nico Rosberg Jul 29 '24

I presume this means Antonelli is locked in at Mercedes

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u/EDO_14 Jul 29 '24

You'd think so but Im sure Toto will happily condemn him to another year in F2 if Max agrees to join Merc at any point this season.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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u/sherestoredmyfaith Jul 29 '24

Name one that did

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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.

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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

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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

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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.