Another good day for Bottas.

[MustangGT]

spikyone said:

Beaten 16-5 in quali last year.

Against the best qualifier in F1 history, so, yes that is pretty good.

His race results this year also show that he is indeed a pretty quick driver, just made to look a bit ordinary by Lewis.

[oyster]

spikyone said:

andyA700 said:

Yeah, 10 F1 race wins and 67 podiums - what a slacker!

Whilst his team-mate racked up 50 wins...

And then he does the most Bottas thing possible and lost positions to both Mercs in the race yesterday with an error.

Tazar said:

Some would see VB being beaten by the two Mercs in Miami as a negative but he’s still getting the points for Alfa which many saw as an impossible task before the start of the season. Alfa management must be so pleased with him and that will be good for him personally.

Again, you can't read anything into that. He's putting the car in the points, but what would - for argument's sake - Hamilton be doing in the Alfa?

I'm not getting your point here, like I didn't on your previous intervention in this thread?

Are you saying Bottas should have got more wins because his Mercedes team mate wasn't that good?

[spikyone]

MustangGT said:

spikyone said:

Beaten 16-5 in quali last year.

Against the best qualifier in F1 history, so, yes that is pretty good.

His race results this year also show that he is indeed a pretty quick driver, just made to look a bit ordinary by Lewis.

I was replying to a post that said Bottas is "supreme in qualifying". You can't be "supreme" if your team-mate is beating you 75% of the time - it doesn't matter who that team-mate is. I've already said that you can't read anything into this year - repeated below in my reply to oyster.

oyster said:

I'm not getting your point here, like I didn't on your previous intervention in this thread?

Are you saying Bottas should have got more wins because his Mercedes team mate wasn't that good?

No. I'm saying he should have got more wins because the car was very good (and I'm taking nothing away from Lewis here). He was a very long way off Lewis in the championship over his time at Merc and let plenty of points and some wins go begging - as one example, he should've won Silverstone last year, when he had the fastest car and was the only one of the top four that didn't have an issue of some sort. Yet he finished 3rd, and behind a Ferrari that was nowhere near a match for Mercedes last year.
He was also made to look a bit average by George Russell in Sakhir in a car that didn't fit him properly and that he hadn't driven until FP1. Had Merc allowed more space between the drivers in quali, Russell wouldn't have backed off into the last corner before his quali lap and would've had pole too.

My "previous intervention" was that it's hard to know how well Bottas is doing this year. The rules are so significantly different to last year that we can't assume the Alfa is a bad car as it was then - it actually looks quite forgiving to drive in contrast to some others. Who knows whether Zhou is fast or not? What does it mean that Bottas is beating Zhou? How do we know if the car that he's putting in P5 is a midfield car or should be fighting for podiums?

I'll draw parallels with Mick Schumacher. Everyone thought he was doing well last year, but against a proper benchmark in K-Mag he now looks ordinary, so it's possible the 2021 Haas wasn't quite as bad as we believed. Bottas has gone in the opposite direction, from having a proper benchmark that made him look ordinary to not having a meaningful benchmark. There's every likelihood that the Alfa is actually a decent car - it certainly uses a lot of components from the one that's leading the championship. At the moment we can't read anything into him getting it up to P5, but the error that gave Mercedes positions in Miami rather suggests it's the same old Bottas.

[Eric Mc]

Would it be a good idea to not create threads where the performance of cars and drivers in a GP weekend are given away. I thought we had an "official" thread for all discussion on a weekend's events.

[Tazar]

I started this post because I always felt VB was in the shadow of LH so often but occasionally showed his ability. When Russell had his first Mercedes drive so many people were critical of VB.
Before this season even with Kimi driving Alfa struggled so coming into 2022 who fancied Alfa’s chances of Q3. No World Champion was being considered so VB took his chances.
So again today Q3, just behind LH. Alfa management must be pleased and I hope VB is getting good bonuses.

[Tazar]

And a race performance with more points. He may be criticised but he’s probably doing what Alfa want.