The Official F1 2020 silly season *contains speculation*

[TheDeuce]

HustleRussell said:

So has PH unanimously agreed that Russell is better than Ocon? How come?

It's not unanimous. I take the view that both show great promise but not seen enough of either in top machinery to really judge.

If there is a leaning towards GR on PH then I guess it's because a combination of his obvious skill, and RK's obvious troubles have made him fairly newsworthy, at a time when Ocon hasn't even got a seat.

I certainly wouldn't place a bet on which of the two was 'best', I haven't seen enough to judge. Doubt Toto would place a bet either - in fact, he hasn't, because he doesn't have too! He can just leave the status quo as it is... He's got Ocon on the books, he's got contact with GR, at Williams - a team he'd love to transform into a Mercedes b team if ever the opportunity opened up.

[anonymous-user]

kiseca said:

That makes no sense to me. Why would any Formula 1 team want to protect their current driver by keeping a faster driver out of their car?

Advantages of signing the better driver:
1) They will get better results
2) The better driver doesn't join another team and become their competition

Disadvantages of signing the better driver:
???

I think this is very telling.

https://www.planetf1.com/news/wolff-no-to-alonso-b...

Quote

Asked if was ‘unthinkable’ to consider a Mercedes dream team of Hamilton and Alonso, Wolff made it clear that was not on the cards.

“Yes,” he replied, “because we don’t want to repeat certain stories from when the two were together with McLaren.”

Given that having two alphas at one team almost always brings with it a mountain of problems, as it did for McLaren back in 2007


Poor Bottas and Ocon must be Beta males who basically need to get better

Again clear number 1 and 2 policy at Mercedes whatever people say.

Edited by anonymous-user on Tuesday 20th August 23:05

[anonymous-user]

HustleRussell said:

So has PH unanimously agreed that Russell is better than Ocon? How come?

No, because it is clear Kubica is not the driver he once was after being out of an F1 car for so long and the horrendous injury.

It's actually very sad as Kubica IMO could well have been a World Champion but it's hard to judge Russell against him.

IMO Ocon should be put in the Williams and given a year alongside Russell to fight it out for a Mercedes drive in 2021.

[HustleRussell]

ELUSIVEJIM said:

No, because it is clear Kubica is not the driver he once was after being out of an F1 car for so long and the horrendous injury.

It's actually very sad as Kubica IMO could well have been a World Champion but it's hard to judge Russell against him.

IMO Ocon should be put in the Williams and given a year alongside Russell to fight it out for a Mercedes drive in 2021.

It’d be interesting to see the comparison but IMO Ocon has done his time at Manor and in the DTM and should’ve been in a Q3 car this season.

Russell looks very promising but he has only half a season under his belt, time on his side, a 2+ year agreement with Williams and a nailed-on future with Mercedes.

If they can’t get Ocon into another team on a piece of elastic then I guess they’ll have to shuffle Bottas out.

However, typing that I am reminded that Wolff basically said we can expect an announcement this month did he not?

[JonChalk]

HustleRussell said:

So has PH unanimously agreed that Russell is better than Ocon? How come?

Not "better" per se, right now, but (in no particular order);

1. Younger, and more likely to still be driving when Ocon / Verstappen, Ricciardo, etc have given up. Worth investing in long term.

2. PH generally likes Norris, right? I like Norris. Russell out-thought and, at times, out-drove Norris to F2 title, so he must be good, yes?

3. Ocon never did F2, and though he won GP3, he did so with only one win & loads of seconds - so is he really a race winner? (yes, he won in FR3.5 & DTM, true, but we all know DTM winning drivers don't equal F1 winning drivers).

4. Ocon proved himself a bit of a tit on and off the track - not quite as cool, calm and collected as you'd want. Russell is the complete opposite - Button levels of not getting excited inappropriately, but faster IMHO.

In summary; Russell good, Ocon bad

[768]

I thought Russell's Bahrain test in the Merc looked pretty good. It's obviously difficult to know quite how good it was, but just being able to say that shows he's in the right ballpark. And he's only gone up in my estimation since then.

[TheDeuce]

HustleRussell said:

It’d be interesting to see the comparison but IMO Ocon has done his time at Manor and in the DTM and should’ve been in a Q3 car this season.

Russell looks very promising but he has only half a season under his belt, time on his side, a 2+ year agreement with Williams and a nailed-on future with Mercedes.

If they can’t get Ocon into another team on a piece of elastic then I guess they’ll have to shuffle Bottas out.

However, typing that I am reminded that Wolff basically said we can expect an announcement this month did he not?

I don't think they would 'have' to get rid of bottas.. they don't have to find Ocon a seat, regardless of what has been said/promised.

I'm sure they do want to find him a seat. Also I'm not convinced RK will be at Williams next year, so perhaps Ocon can go and keep GR company. That's a move that would help settle the question as to which was best at least.

[anonymous-user]

Unless Bottas convinces Mercedes he can up his game, he'll be out. You can't afford to have one driver who can't perform on Sundays. Look at Red Bull- they've seen an opportunity to grab second in both championships and have changed drivers to try and achieve it.

Bottas comes across as a decent guy and has good Saturdays, but he's not consistent enough on race day, in my opinion.

[TheDeuce]

janesmith1950 said:

Unless Bottas convinces Mercedes he can up his game, he'll be out. You can't afford to have one driver who can't perform on Sundays. Look at Red Bull- they've seen an opportunity to grab second in both championships and have changed drivers to try and achieve it.

Bottas comes across as a decent guy and has good Saturdays, but he's not consistent enough on race day, in my opinion.

He's good enough and hardly compares to Gasly that RB recently dropped.

Just look at bottas's points and stats this season. There is no reason to believe any of the available drivers would do any better so why change what is working very well already?

Also worth noting that bottas's wheel to wheel discipline when racing Lewis is superb. That alone must be worth a lot to those on the pit wall, who I assume are somewhat clenched each time it happens..

[bobbo89]

janesmith1950 said:

Bottas comes across as a decent guy and has good Saturdays, but he's not consistent enough on race day, in my opinion.

He's perfectly consistent on race days IMO. Consistent in his ability to pull in enough points to win MB the constructors, get on the podium enough and not tangle with his teammate who is going to win MB the drivers championship.

A slightly more fiery driver might end up tangling with Hamilton resulting in DNF's for either or both drivers as we saw with Rosberg in 2016. Merc had enough of an advantage on Ferrari and Red Bull to get away with it that year but this year.... not so much!

[LaurasOtherHalf]

bobbo89 said:

A slightly more fiery driver might end up tangling with Hamilton resulting in DNF's for either or both drivers as we saw with Rosberg in 2016. Merc had enough of an advantage on Ferrari and Red Bull to get away with it that year but this year.... not so much!

TheDeuce said:

Also worth noting that bottas's wheel to wheel discipline when racing Lewis is superb. That alone must be worth a lot to those on the pit wall, who I assume are somewhat clenched each time it happens..

This is my main gripe with OCO getting in a front running car-he's consistently proved himself to either lack the skill, or the brains to not tangle with his teammate on numerous occasions.

[kiseca]

ELUSIVEJIM said:

kiseca said:

That makes no sense to me. Why would any Formula 1 team want to protect their current driver by keeping a faster driver out of their car?

Advantages of signing the better driver:
1) They will get better results
2) The better driver doesn't join another team and become their competition

Disadvantages of signing the better driver:
???

I think this is very telling.

https://www.planetf1.com/news/wolff-no-to-alonso-b...

Quote

Asked if was ‘unthinkable’ to consider a Mercedes dream team of Hamilton and Alonso, Wolff made it clear that was not on the cards.

“Yes,” he replied, “because we don’t want to repeat certain stories from when the two were together with McLaren.”

Given that having two alphas at one team almost always brings with it a mountain of problems, as it did for McLaren back in 2007


Poor Bottas and Ocon must be Beta males who basically need to get better

Again clear number 1 and 2 policy at Mercedes whatever people say.

Edited by ELUSIVEJIM on Tuesday 20th August 23:05

I disagree, because he was emphatic about Alonso but non-committal about Verstappen. Could be a lot of reasons why, including being more cagey about plans with current driver compared to retired one, but his comment about things happening at McLaren is clearly aimed at Hamilton and Alonso together, not about having Hamilton challenged by a fast team mate. No mention of Hamilton and Rosberg duking it out, which would have been his first reference if he was thinking about the latter.

The alpha male comment was added by the writer and historically it's true, there are plenty of examples of similarly paced team mates blowing up, but team mates that get along don't tend to generate exciting stories of rivalries.

[sparta6]

ELUSIVEJIM said:

kiseca said:

That makes no sense to me. Why would any Formula 1 team want to protect their current driver by keeping a faster driver out of their car?

Advantages of signing the better driver:
1) They will get better results
2) The better driver doesn't join another team and become their competition

Disadvantages of signing the better driver:
???

I think this is very telling.

https://www.planetf1.com/news/wolff-no-to-alonso-b...

Quote

Asked if was ‘unthinkable’ to consider a Mercedes dream team of Hamilton and Alonso, Wolff made it clear that was not on the cards.

“Yes,” he replied, “because we don’t want to repeat certain stories from when the two were together with McLaren.”

Given that having two alphas at one team almost always brings with it a mountain of problems, as it did for McLaren back in 2007


Poor Bottas and Ocon must be Beta males who basically need to get better

Again clear number 1 and 2 policy at Mercedes whatever people say.

Edited by ELUSIVEJIM on Tuesday 20th August 23:05

An Alpha male and a Princess would give Uncle Toto some serious headaches

[Norfolkit]

TheDeuce said:

He's good enough and hardly compares to Gasly that RB recently dropped.

Just look at bottas's points and stats this season. There is no reason to believe any of the available drivers would do any better so why change what is working very well already?

Also worth noting that bottas's wheel to wheel discipline when racing Lewis is superb. That alone must be worth a lot to those on the pit wall, who I assume are somewhat clenched each time it happens..

The future, Bottas is 30 next week, he's not the team leader for the future.

[kambites]

Norfolkit said:

The future, Bottas is 30 next week, he's not the team leader for the future.

Basically yes. I think Mercedes' decision will come down to how long they think they can hang onto Hamilton for. Bottas is the perfect number-2 for them while they have Hamilton to lead the team but at some point Hamilton wont be there anymore and I don't see Bottas as the right man to lead a WDC charge.

Personally, I think if they believe they can keep Hamilton for 2021, they'll keep Bottas for 2020. If they think Hamilton might go in 2021, they need to use 2020 to develop a replacement (although I'm not convinced that's Ocon either).

[tobinen]

I think we need two or three more teams. It would be a pity if driving talent is lost simply because there aren't enough seats to go round, though I can think of a couple of present drivers who aren't really shining, e.g. Kubica and Grosjean IMO

[kambites]

tobinen said:

I think we need two or three more teams. It would be a pity if driving talent is lost simply because there aren't enough seats to go round, though I can think of a couple of present drivers who aren't really shining, e.g. Kubica and Grosjean IMO

The line between "F1 driver" and "not F1 driver" has to lie somewhere; if we had six more cars on the grid I think we'd just be looking at the 27th and 28th* best single seat drivers and wondering how they were going to make the step up.

• Obviously we don't actually have the best 20 drivers in F1, but you know what I mean.

[kiseca]

sparta6 said:

An Alpha male and a Princess would give Uncle Toto some serious headaches

Perhaps the Alpha males should be in the Alfas.

[SpudLink]

TheDeuce said:

He's good enough and hardly compares to Gasly that RB recently dropped.

Just look at bottas's points and stats this season. There is no reason to believe any of the available drivers would do any better so why change what is working very well already?

Also worth noting that bottas's wheel to wheel discipline when racing Lewis is superb. That alone must be worth a lot to those on the pit wall, who I assume are somewhat clenched each time it happens..

Agreed.

A good driver who’s close to your superstar ‘GOAT’ is a very useful asset.
It’s true that Bottas isn’t the next Senna/Schumacher/Hamilton/Verstappen, but most weekends he puts the car on the front row and finishes on the podium. I’m not sure it’s better to have a ‘future WDC’ who crashes every 4th weekend when fighting to prove he’s the alpha male of his generation. Even worse if that crash sometimes takes out both of your cars.

We don’t know if that’s how Ocon would turn out, but his last season suggests he might. Better to keep Bottas where he is for another season, and let Ocon and Russel go head to head at Williams.

[anonymous-user]

HustleRussell said:

It’d be interesting to see the comparison but IMO Ocon has done his time at Manor and in the DTM and should’ve been in a Q3 car this season.

Russell looks very promising but he has only half a season under his belt, time on his side, a 2+ year agreement with Williams and a nailed-on future with Mercedes.

If they can’t get Ocon into another team on a piece of elastic then I guess they’ll have to shuffle Bottas out.

However, typing that I am reminded that Wolff basically said we can expect an announcement this month did he not?

I am sure he said this month which means the Spa weekend perhaps.

Is Toto waiting to see what Bottas does at Spa before making a final decision?