2022 Formula One Australian Grand Prix

MoerasGrizzly said:

Over the last couple of years I've seen races where Hamilton's reputation may have been well deserved: The race in Turkey in 2020, where the Mercedes was clearly a bad car, springs to mind as a clear-cut example, as does the race in Brazil last year.

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That turkey race was won because the track had started to dry up, until that point his pace was nowhere because he was unable to heat to his tires into the working window temperatures. It wasn't his talent alone what made that jump in pace, it was the track drying that enabled the tires to finally enter in to the right performance window, and the difficulty that the car had in putting heat on those tires made them worn out slower on the dry than the rest of the grid. Had it rained further that day he would had a very discrete race, had the race been under a sunny day and mild temperatures we would had won the race by the usual gaps.

The race in Brazil was an overwhelming engine annihilating the entire grid, While Verstappen was topping only 317.3km/h Hamilton was doing 339km/h on the same speed trap, 21 km/h advantage. At the end even Max ended up being overwhelmed by such an op car. That wasn't Hamilton making the difference as a driver, that would be in Barcelona or Portimao, there he made the difference as a driver. You have picked the wrong examples of him making the difference, there are a lot of them in his career, but those are none of them.

MoerasGrizzly said:

The Vettel-Hamilton championship battle, where Mercedes clearly had the worse car, also showed Hamilton consistently being a better driver then his direct competitors.

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It was such a inferior car that Mercedes won both championships on both years with races to spare and won the most races. In 2017 Mercedes won 12 races and Ferrari 5, in 2018 Mercedes won 11 and Ferrari 6.

Vettel was his only competitor, Raikkonen was there only to keep Vettel happy, like Bottas. Vettel was a competitor so mighty that he crushed under the pressure so often that it started the sbinalla meme and gave material enough to fill youtube video compilations with his spins.

Vettel has been outclassed twice in teams in where he was the undisputed number 1 driver by 2 drivers way more unexperienced than him in their first year in the team. He was beaten so comprehensively that he has had to leave both those teams from the back door in both occasions. Now Vettel is paired by Stroll, a driver that got outqualified by a former midfielder that had been out of F1 for 2 years and had never driven the car before.

MoerasGrizzly said:

But I genuinely think that if Hamilton never had a seat at Mercedes, whoever had that seat would not do as well.

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They had a car about 2 seconds faster than anybody else for years, Paddy Lowe said so. Proof that what he said is true is that race at Bahrein in where both Lewis and Rosberg refused to obey the team orders and both used the higher engine modes, they where on a pace more than 2 seconds faster than anybody else on the grid whilst battling attacking and defending among themselves.

Paddy said that in they were racing with very low engine modes in order to fly under FOM radar avoiding to trigger a change in the engine regulations. They had the best engine by a country mile and the rest of the manufacturers were unable to catch up because of the absurdly stupid token rules that by then made impossible to fix a bad engine concept and catch up.

They had the luxury of being able to stop the development of a car incredibly early in the season and still win the championships with ease, that gave them an incredible advantage in development because they always started development really early and allocating their whole workforce on the same project. The massive engine advantage allowed them to take big risks in development because if the car concept turned out to be a dud they still were able to cover the losses with inneficient aero whilst they figured out how to fix it, sacrificing aero efficiency to get downforce at the expense of using engine power to hide the aero efficiency losses.

There is this joke that says that when a group of people is attacked by a lion you don't need to be faster than a lion, you only need to be faster than the slowest person on the group. Meaning that the only rival that any Mercedes driver would had need to beat to become world champion was his team mate.

Toto said that Mercedes was close to sign Hulkenberg to pair Rosberg, had this happened Rosberg now would be 8 times world champion. Had they signed Alonso now we would be discussing about in what place Alonso would land in the GOAT discussion, and Hamilton would had stayed as a 1 time world champion in what would be considered a very unlucky career.

Hamilton placed himself in the best place possible and had the luck to have manageable team mates, had Mercedes signed Max at he end of 2016 Hamilton would still be in the GOAT discussion, but he would never had reached 7 world titles. Hamilton is a very special driver, there is no discussion about that, only a fool would think otherwise. He has been among the top 3 drivers on the grid for his entire career, that's a great feat by itself, something worthy to be very proud of.

There is not dishonor in acknowledge that he has had the most dominant car in motorsport history in the longest dominance era ever and weaker team mates, for almost a decade he was mostly doing a parade race after race in order to come to the podium to gather the winner trophy. There is no dishonor in admit that other top drivers could had been as successful as him in case of being put on his seat, the car was that op that they only would had needed to beat Rosberg. It isn't Hamilton's fault that the car was so op that nobody could challenge Mercedes, but it is also naive to believe that no other top driver could had been able to win multiple championships on that car.

Hamilton performance was irrelevant in those years because the car was so overpowered that he only needed to beat his team mate, in the same way as Schumacher winning years in the early 2000's weren't that much impressive at all. Schumacher GOAT status should be achieved for being able for almost half a decade to consistently drag cars to a title challenge that those cars had no business there at all, because he was until he first retired in his A game all season long without off weekends, because in trash cars he was lapping sometimes more than 6 seconds faster than anybody else in appalling rainy conditions.

Schumacher shouldn't be considered a GOAT because he was parading himself in an op Ferrari for 5 years, he only had to beat Barrichello in 3 of those years, he should be considered a GOAT because of the miracles that he materialized between 1994 and 1999. And this comes from a very big Schumacher fan, but I don't lie to myself trying to big him up to be more than he really was.

Paul Glover said:

You need to remember when he joined Merc the car wasn't so great, people questioned the move and it would appear he made the right call.

If you look at F1 over the years, the best car tends to win. Just so happens in many cases those with the best car also have the best driver.... when Michael joined Ferrari they hadn't won a championship for many years and look what happened. The best drivers attract the best talent in other areas.

You need to look at the bigger picture.

Now Max is a great driver but can you honestly put him in the same category as Lewis and Michael? Right now, no I don't think you can. Same with Charles, but maybe in a few years we can. Time will tell.

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To be fair Merc only dominated because of the hybrid era rule change, Lewis lucked in big time. He was also lucky Schumacher didn't take up his option to continue with Mercedes. Most people know F1 is a car and tech dominated sport, but too many Lewis fans think he was the "magic factor" in Merc dominance. Honestly I've never known such adulation for a driver, it's almost "cult" like on facebook. I'm certain it's why Lewis gets a lot of unnecceasry grief, to counteract that "cult". Even Schumacher wasn't quite the "magic factor" in Ferrari either, it was a mix of him, Todt, Brawn and Byrne...a LOT of talent and time to make that Ferrari great again.

Drving skill I put Max up there with Lewis and Michael, but where Max fails for me is temprement (too fiery), but he's only just hitting mental maturity so may improve.

In reality though there's very little difference between the top drivers, the car is the star.

MoerasGrizzly said:

I genuinely don't think that that was ignored, at least on this website or in the Verstappen fandom over here in the nether regions. Over the last couple of years I've seen races where Hamilton's reputation may have been well deserved: The race in Turkey in 2020, where the Mercedes was clearly a bad car, springs to mind as a clear-cut example, as does the race in Brazil last year. The Vettel-Hamilton championship battle, where Mercedes clearly had the worse car, also showed Hamilton consistently being a better driver then his direct competitors.

It's impossible to make a fair assessment since so much is down to team performance and Hamilton, like Schumacher with Ferrari back in the day, has had the opportunity to build a race team around him. But I genuinely think that if Hamilton never had a seat at Mercedes, whoever had that seat would not do as well.

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Brazil last year was purely down to the engine, not Lewis.

Slapped said:

"Don't laugh".

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Sorry, I have to.

menacegtr said:

Wow, who would have thought Lewis would have been just about last out of all the front runners to win the race according to this survey. Just shows how its turned around. We need the two Mercedes back in the fight else its another two car boring fight for the championship

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A two car/two manufacturer fight is pretty exciting. It sure beats what we had from 2013-2020 when all but one year the WDC was a runaway, and the one year it wasn't an inter-team battle.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see a three team battle, but a two team battle is far from boring.

I don't question Hamilton's talent, he's talented and he took the biggest phase of dominance by a team in the history of the category, but if you look back, you'll see that other drivers on the grid in those 0.7-liter Mercedes that were faster than the rest, which ran with an engine without to be at 100% performance, they would also be multi-champions. You can ask yes if Hamilton is as superior to the rest as his fans say.

We've seen Schumacher in bad cars and in front of better cars, Hamilton has always sat in cars to at least fight for wins, from 2014 to 2021, it's easy to break all records that way.

Just think, Bottas would be at least three-time champion in Mercedes

Didn't take long to derail another race thread

Changes to Albert Park are great taking chicane away has made that sector one of the best around

Durge Driven said:

Didn't take long to derail another race thread

Changes to Albert Park are great taking chicane away has made that sector one of the best around

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Yes..
Waiting for Lap times..
A tiny bit faster, it's going to be.

TRASGU said:

That turkey race was won because the track had started to dry up, until that point his pace was nowhere because he was unable to heat to his tires into the working window temperatures. It wasn't his talent alone what made that jump in pace, it was the track drying that enabled the tires to finally enter in to the right performance window, and the difficulty that the car had in putting heat on those tires made them worn out slower on the dry than the rest of the grid. Had it rained further that day he would had a very discrete race, had the race been under a sunny day and mild temperatures we would had won the race by the usual gaps.

The race in Brazil was an overwhelming engine annihilating the entire grid, While Verstappen was topping only 317.3km/h Hamilton was doing 339km/h on the same speed trap, 21 km/h advantage. At the end even Max ended up being overwhelmed by such an op car. That wasn't Hamilton making the difference as a driver, that would be in Barcelona or Portimao, there he made the difference as a driver. You have picked the wrong examples of him making the difference, there are a lot of them in his career, but those are none of them.


It was such a inferior car that Mercedes won both championships on both years with races to spare and won the most races. In 2017 Mercedes won 12 races and Ferrari 5, in 2018 Mercedes won 11 and Ferrari 6.

Vettel was his only competitor, Raikkonen was there only to keep Vettel happy, like Bottas. Vettel was a competitor so mighty that he crushed under the pressure so often that it started the sbinalla meme and gave material enough to fill youtube video compilations with his spins.

Vettel has been outclassed twice in teams in where he was the undisputed number 1 driver by 2 drivers way more unexperienced than him in their first year in the team. He was beaten so comprehensively that he has had to leave both those teams from the back door in both occasions. Now Vettel is paired by Stroll, a driver that got outqualified by a former midfielder that had been out of F1 for 2 years and had never driven the car before.


They had a car about 2 seconds faster than anybody else for years, Paddy Lowe said so. Proof that what he said is true is that race at Bahrein in where both Lewis and Rosberg refused to obey the team orders and both used the higher engine modes, they where on a pace more than 2 seconds faster than anybody else on the grid whilst battling attacking and defending among themselves.

Paddy said that in they were racing with very low engine modes in order to fly under FOM radar avoiding to trigger a change in the engine regulations. They had the best engine by a country mile and the rest of the manufacturers were unable to catch up because of the absurdly stupid token rules that by then made impossible to fix a bad engine concept and catch up.

They had the luxury of being able to stop the development of a car incredibly early in the season and still win the championships with ease, that gave them an incredible advantage in development because they always started development really early and allocating their whole workforce on the same project. The massive engine advantage allowed them to take big risks in development because if the car concept turned out to be a dud they still were able to cover the losses with inneficient aero whilst they figured out how to fix it, sacrificing aero efficiency to get downforce at the expense of using engine power to hide the aero efficiency losses.

There is this joke that says that when a group of people is attacked by a lion you don't need to be faster than a lion, you only need to be faster than the slowest person on the group. Meaning that the only rival that any Mercedes driver would had need to beat to become world champion was his team mate.

Toto said that Mercedes was close to sign Hulkenberg to pair Rosberg, had this happened Rosberg now would be 8 times world champion. Had they signed Alonso now we would be discussing about in what place Alonso would land in the GOAT discussion, and Hamilton would had stayed as a 1 time world champion in what would be considered a very unlucky career.

Hamilton placed himself in the best place possible and had the luck to have manageable team mates, had Mercedes signed Max at he end of 2016 Hamilton would still be in the GOAT discussion, but he would never had reached 7 world titles. Hamilton is a very special driver, there is no discussion about that, only a fool would think otherwise. He has been among the top 3 drivers on the grid for his entire career, that's a great feat by itself, something worthy to be very proud of.

There is not dishonor in acknowledge that he has had the most dominant car in motorsport history in the longest dominance era ever and weaker team mates, for almost a decade he was mostly doing a parade race after race in order to come to the podium to gather the winner trophy. There is no dishonor in admit that other top drivers could had been as successful as him in case of being put on his seat, the car was that op that they only would had needed to beat Rosberg. It isn't Hamilton's fault that the car was so op that nobody could challenge Mercedes, but it is also naive to believe that no other top driver could had been able to win multiple championships on that car.

Hamilton performance was irrelevant in those years because the car was so overpowered that he only needed to beat his team mate, in the same way as Schumacher winning years in the early 2000's weren't that much impressive at all. Schumacher GOAT status should be achieved for being able for almost half a decade to consistently drag cars to a title challenge that those cars had no business there at all, because he was until he first retired in his A game all season long without off weekends, because in trash cars he was lapping sometimes more than 6 seconds faster than anybody else in appalling rainy conditions.

Schumacher shouldn't be considered a GOAT because he was parading himself in an op Ferrari for 5 years, he only had to beat Barrichello in 3 of those years, he should be considered a GOAT because of the miracles that he materialized between 1994 and 1999. And this comes from a very big Schumacher fan, but I don't lie to myself trying to big him up to be more than he really was.

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Those are all some really well made points. Hat's off to you!

EZWriter said:

Save your breath, haters gonna hate... and the color of his skin has NOTHING to do with it, right???

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I don't doubt Hamilton when he says that he's seen a lot of racism in his career, and I don't doubt that it has affected where he got seats and the like. I do think that a lot of racefans that critique Hamilton in an unfair manner do so because he's the the most popular driver and the one that gets the most wins. High trees catch a lot of wind, as they say. I don't doubt that, if social media was as prevalent in Schumacher's time as it is now, things would be the same for him.

99% car. Although, it is a wonder how Botass managed to come 5th in the DC in the Mercedes

Now is the time for Leclerk to show why fans have been bigging him up for years, with what is probably the best car in 2022. Sainz was better last year.

What was Stroll thinking!?

Two paydrivers who crash with each other, what a coincidence.

Paul Glover said:

You need to remember when he joined Merc the car wasn't so great, people questioned the move and it would appear he made the right call.

If you look at F1 over the years, the best car tends to win. Just so happens in many cases those with the best car also have the best driver.... when Michael joined Ferrari they hadn't won a championship for many years and look what happened. The best drivers attract the best talent in other areas.

You need to look at the bigger picture.

Now Max is a great driver but can you honestly put him in the same category as Lewis and Michael? Right now, no I don't think you can. Same with Charles, but maybe in a few years we can. Time will tell.

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Max is the same level like Ham and Schumacher maybe better

Damned good showing for Mclaren there, especially from Norris getting on the second row.

EZWriter said:

Save your breath, haters gonna hate... and the color of his skin has NOTHING to do with it, right???

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edit oh what's the point.........how do I delete a post?

Richard Wilks said:

The "bigger" picture, is that Mercedes got a head start with the new engine regs. I am sure that Lauda used this information to lure Lewis, that and the fact that he promised him a truckload of money, and it surely didnt help that he was being shown by Button in the same team, the team that he thought it was "his" team, and suddenly it wasn't anymore.

As for the "best talent", thats the job for team principals, not drives. Its no coincidence that a pivotal person in both those teams was a man called Ross Brawn.

Also, both Ferrari and Mercedes were by far the teams with more money and resources in both those eras of domination.

Now, i am not disputing Hamilton's skill, but i also dont think he was that big of an influence in Mercedes success. Something that seems will actually be put to the test this year again.

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Why don't you just say Lewis is crap and have done with it.
Winning 8* WDC must have been luck or favour or up against sh*t drivers or he had the best car or he was gifted the titles by the race director ( no scrub that last one) or whatever else you can dream up.
Just be honest and say you are not prepared to give him credit for anything ever.

I have been wondering all morning watching the qualification how physically beaten up these drivers much be with the cars bouncing on the track like that.

Bram Hengeveld said:

I have been wondering all morning watching the qualification how physically beaten up these drivers much be with the cars bouncing on the track like that.

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Yeah, at this point I'm really thinking that the FIA should legalise active suspension as this does seem to be the only way the teams could get the porpoising under control, at least in the short term, and if only for the drivers sake.

It's not a new technology and all teams have the engineering chops to implement it cost effectively, so it's not like active suspension would give one team an overall advantage.

winston malcolm said:

Why don't you just say Lewis is crap and have done with it.
Winning 8* WDC must have been luck or favour or up against sh*t drivers or he had the best car or he was gifted the titles by the race director ( no scrub that last one) or whatever else you can dream up.
Just be honest and say you are not prepared to give him credit for anything ever.

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Because i dont believe Lewis is crap as a driver. Simple as.


Maybe you should understand that some people dont need to "hate" the guy to not put him in this pedestral that his fans have.

Slapped said:

Yeah, at this point I'm really thinking that the FIA should legalise active suspension as this does seem to be the only way the teams could get the porpoising under control, at least in the short term, and if only for the drivers sake.

It's not a new technology and all teams have the engineering chops to implement it cost effectively, so it's not like active suspension would give one team an overall advantage.

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I hope they don't do it. They went to all the trouble to forbid everything else in the suspension, so that this is a challenge for the teams. If they do it, they would be replacing rather simple mechanical solutions with something more complicated.