Sometimes in sport you’ve just got to accept that someone is in the zone and untouchable. Sure it would be great if there was more competition for P1, but it is what it is. The racing behind P1 has been pretty good this year though with AM starting strong, Merc being up and down, and the resurgence of McLaren.
Yeah, this doesn’t look good for the health of F1 as a sport… But, if you ignore the F0.5 standings (aka remove RB from the top)…
From last year to this one, the “best of the rest” pack is bunched up and fighting for every single position. That’s a huge improvement from last year and I can’t wait for the second half of the season to start so I can wave my McLaren flags once again!!!
I don’t necessarily agree with the perspective that Redbull dominating is bad for the health of the sport.
Sure, lack of competition for 1st may drive away some fans. But if the conditions that allowed Redbull to become dominant (i.e., engineering/design freedom) didn’t exist then F1 would no longer be F1. That design freedom attracts many fans, and is what enables all the recent excitement down-grid.
I think few people would care if everyone had equal cars, yet one team was able to consistently dominate due to driver talent. The opposite should also be true if one team is able to dominate due to engineering talent (granted there is more to RBs success than only engineering).
The regular rule changes in F1 are intended to shake the pack up, and allow for closer seasons. This most recent formula hasn’t succeeded, which is to the detriment of the sport.
This year we have 4 to 5 competent teams at the top each race. The other teams are just fighting for scraps this season. Just look at the points distribution it’s more skewed towards the top 5 teams compared to last year. Even when cars are much closer to each other during qualifying the bottom teams just can’t cross that gap during race day since two midfielders have leapfrogged the rest of F1.5
They often seem to qualify unexpectedly well which makes you think they’ve got the pace, but on Sunday it invariably turns out that no, they do not have the pace.
They are: their car is just a dog in the actual race. From a pure qualifying pace POV they are a lot better, with hulkenberg being able to get the car into q3 quite consistently.
That's also what makes them seem better than they really are: hulk qualifying in p8 (great) and then tumbles down to p16 by the end of the race (usually because they have to stop more often or at least to worse tires since their tire deg is abismal)
![[@Autosport] How the standings looked going into the F1 summer break... Last year vs This year](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/140ae5d8-59e0-4fc9-ad70-b05f57285492.png){kind=link}
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