Klon's Hot Take Thread

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Klon
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Klon's Hot Take Thread

Post by Klon »

In my daydreams, I wish I could become F1's equivalent of Skip Bayless. Those who know him know what he is best at: seemingly irrational hot takes that you can find at least 10% of the respective sports' fandom would agree with, even if they don't admit it.

Now, since that is a pipe dream, I can instead annoy you with hot takes that I'd normally post in the Mibbit chat which just happens to be kinda dead. You can drop your opinions on it, dump hot takes yourself; now I know what you're thinking: "But Oversimplified, Skip Bayless didn't discover hot takes, the Vikings did" ... oh, sorry, what I meant was: "Isn't this just the unpopular opinion thread?" Well, no, because hot takes need not necessarily be unpopular - also, this thread has my name, so it's inherently cooler.

Let's begin with the one inspiring this entire thread:

If you only look at the performance deficit to the best car on the grid, the SF70H was a worse car than the F2012.

Of course one's first instinct is to deny that fact because the misconception that the F2012 was a piece of junk that only was elevated above the HRT by Fernando Alonso's greatness is commonly entrenched in F1 fandom. Not to mention is the fact that the F2012 simply produced worse results on account that there were more than 1.5 teams it had to content for higher positions with.

However, can we really with confidence say that the RB8 was a more dominant car than the W08? I do not think so. With the exception of Malaysia and Mexico, whenever Vettel wasn't around to bugger Mercedes, Mercedes won and did so handily (excluding the mess of a race at Baku). That level of domination was not enjoyed by the 2012 Red Bull car at any point in the year. The only time it even looked dominant was in that period where Vettel rattled off four wins in a row, and if we are being honest, that's more a product of one of the greatest F1 drivers of all time being on a roll. So all in all, a weaker top driver resulting in more dominant wins only allows the logical conclusion of a greater car and weaker competition.
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mario
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Re: Klon's Hot Take Thread

Post by mario »

Klon wrote:In my daydreams, I wish I could become F1's equivalent of Skip Bayless. Those who know him know what he is best at: seemingly irrational hot takes that you can find at least 10% of the respective sports' fandom would agree with, even if they don't admit it.

Now, since that is a pipe dream, I can instead annoy you with hot takes that I'd normally post in the Mibbit chat which just happens to be kinda dead. You can drop your opinions on it, dump hot takes yourself; now I know what you're thinking: "But Oversimplified, Skip Bayless didn't discover hot takes, the Vikings did" ... oh, sorry, what I meant was: "Isn't this just the unpopular opinion thread?" Well, no, because hot takes need not necessarily be unpopular - also, this thread has my name, so it's inherently cooler.

Let's begin with the one inspiring this entire thread:

If you only look at the performance deficit to the best car on the grid, the SF70H was a worse car than the F2012.

Of course one's first instinct is to deny that fact because the misconception that the F2012 was a piece of junk that only was elevated above the HRT by Fernando Alonso's greatness is commonly entrenched in F1 fandom. Not to mention is the fact that the F2012 simply produced worse results on account that there were more than 1.5 teams it had to content for higher positions with.

However, can we really with confidence say that the RB8 was a more dominant car than the W08? I do not think so. With the exception of Malaysia and Mexico, whenever Vettel wasn't around to bugger Mercedes, Mercedes won and did so handily (excluding the mess of a race at Baku). That level of domination was not enjoyed by the 2012 Red Bull car at any point in the year. The only time it even looked dominant was in that period where Vettel rattled off four wins in a row, and if we are being honest, that's more a product of one of the greatest F1 drivers of all time being on a roll. So all in all, a weaker top driver resulting in more dominant wins only allows the logical conclusion of a greater car and weaker competition.

That does then beg the question - what did you calculate the performance deficit between the F2012 and the leading cars in 2012, as opposed to the performance deficit for the SF70H and the leading car?

For what it is worth, I believe that, over on F1Fanatic, they reckoned that the F2012 had a performance deficit of about 0.75% to the leading car - they put the McLaren MP4/27 as the fastest over a single lap, with a 0.2% advantage over the Red Bull but having worse reliability and far greater variability in that performance, with the F2012 coming in as 4th (Lotus was in 3rd with a 0.68% deficit over a single lap).

For the SF70H, although Hamilton took more pole positions in 2017 than he did in 2012, F1Fanatic suggested that the W08 only had a performance advantage of 0.18% over a single lap in 2017 - on that basis, the F2012 looks like a rather less competitive package than the SF70H proved to be.

As an aside, whilst you state that you consider Vettel to be "one of the greatest F1 drivers of all time being on a roll", it is interesting that the statistical approach adopted by those at F1 Metrics actually suggested that, whilst Vettel's 2012 season was strong, it ranked Vettel as only 4th best in 2012 - statistically, it ranked Alonso, Hamilton and Button ahead of Vettel (in that order) in 2012, suggesting that Vettel won even though his performance that season was arguably slightly inferior to three of his major competitors that season.
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Salamander
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Re: Klon's Hot Take Thread

Post by Salamander »

With regards to the F2012, it's always worth remembering that that car's true performance will always be difficult to determine. Not just because Alonso was in the form of his life, but because Massa was also singularly useless for most of the year. My defining memory of post-09 Massa will forever be the shot of Alonso crossing the line to win Malaysia... with Massa in the foreground only just beginning his final lap.

I'm also a little skeptical of a methodology that argues that Jenson "Scored 7 points in a 6 race stretch and was a lapped 16th while my teammate won Canada" Button was a top 3 driver in 2012. Even as a fan of his at the time, that seems a fairly ridiculous thing to suggest.
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Klon
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Re: Klon's Hot Take Thread

Post by Klon »

mario wrote:That does then beg the question - what did you calculate the performance deficit between the F2012 and the leading cars in 2012, as opposed to the performance deficit for the SF70H and the leading car?

For what it is worth, I believe that, over on F1Fanatic, they reckoned that the F2012 had a performance deficit of about 0.75% to the leading car - they put the McLaren MP4/27 as the fastest over a single lap, with a 0.2% advantage over the Red Bull but having worse reliability and far greater variability in that performance, with the F2012 coming in as 4th (Lotus was in 3rd with a 0.68% deficit over a single lap).

For the SF70H, although Hamilton took more pole positions in 2017 than he did in 2012, F1Fanatic suggested that the W08 only had a performance advantage of 0.18% over a single lap in 2017 - on that basis, the F2012 looks like a rather less competitive package than the SF70H proved to be.


Well, there are a number of problems with calculating performance over a single lap: one of them being that in F1, you rarely get more than one point for being the quickest over one lap. Race results just matter more. Furthermore, a pure mathematical approach of one-lap performance ignores driver factors or other subjects. I mean, looking at 2017, if we look at the poles Mercedes had and look at the time difference to the first non-Mercedes, non-Vettel car, the average advantage on a pole lap stands at 0.684%; obviously, that's also disingenuous calculation and therefore I personally tend to rely more on subjective evaluation and a look at the results. Of course that also has a problem, the presence of inherent bias, but - ironically enough for a high-tech sport - the eye test to me seems like the most reliable method of evaluating performance.

Though outside of Salamander's objection, I would not necessarily mind Alonso and Hamilton both being rated higher for their 2012 seasons than Vettel. Hamilton did a great job with a rather erratic McLaren car and Alonso had a great season in a flawed car. All I would disagree with is the, for lack of a better word, deification that this season has experienced which includes the inherent implication that Vettel would have had no chance against Alonso if only Fernando wasn't punished with such a car.
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Rob Dylan
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Re: Klon's Hot Take Thread

Post by Rob Dylan »

I just want to say I'm also super skeptical that Button would be judged a top-3 driver in 2012, seeing as yeah, he was absolutely dire outside of like the opening round and Belgium that year :D
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