Singapore Gp

[Emmcee 0]

Pastor certainly has speed, and he has been much calmer this year (though hard to say to what extent this is due to the car).

This guy makes me laugh, has no idea, after his fluke of a victory last year in catalunya he said he could fight for the championship. Yeah ok pasta brain, lmao.

[Massa 0]

It was hardly a fluke. Maldonado had a poor season, as did Senna. The Williams had a lot more potential, and Bottas could get that speed out of it in free practice. In the races, Maldonado often made errors out of the points, and Senna just never seemed to be very fast. The win, however, was not some strange thing. He flat-out beat Fernando Alonso in a pretty exciting race. The only unusual circumstance involved, of course, was qualifying, but if Hamilton had enough fuel in his car, would he have beaten Maldonado for pole? Hamilton could not beat Maldonado within the FIA rules during qualifying, so even that can be discarded. Maldonado won a race, and it was not an easy one to take. You know Alonso wanted to win that one very, very badly.

I don't know why Maldonado cannot be, at this point in his career, an inconsistent driver with tremendous upside. As with Pérez, people only want to see the "bad races," or hold some grudge over that one time at that one race he had a collision with your favorite driver. I think it's a lot fairer to say that, hey, if these drivers could figure out how to be their best every single weekend, they'd be stunning. The high-end potential of both Maldonado and Pérez is tremendous; their best races are far better than the best races of Ricciardo, Vergne, or Hülkenberg. Ricciardo and Hülkenberg are just better at being consistently there (Vergne has not driven well since being ruled out of a Red Bull drive; no idea if that's related or not), always in a place slightly worse than what Maldonado or Pérez could do but do not frequently do.

So, what does that mean? In better cars, Ricciardo and Hülkenberg will advance position and consistently be in a nice, cozy place for that vehicle. If you promoted Maldonado or Pérez to better cars, their results would not actually change a ton, because they always had podium potential and a very hard time replicating their own performances...

...but only for now.

Maldonado, Pérez, Grosjean, etc. may never, ever get there, but it's more fun to wonder if they could. F1 would be enhanced if they could find a way to more regularly be the Maldonado who won the Spanish Grand Prix, to be the Pérez who passed Alonso and scored podium finishes, to be the Grosjean who has been so close to winning. Why box those drivers into a narrative of failure when they could be so, so, so interesting if they learn? It's far more enjoyable, for me at least, to imagine what these drivers could be like in the future.