Forum menu
He'll also bring a PR halo to Williams - his back story will guarantee more attention (for the first few races at least) than they'd get elsewhere, so they can probably use that to drive higher prices for sponsors. If it all goes to pot after that I'm sure they've still got a chance of putting Ocon in the seat.
Gasly will be crushed by Max – I think he’s OK, but not stellar.
I think Max has a lot of support internally too, so Gasly won't get parity unless he can start beating Max regularly and he won't do that without parity.
Similar deal for LeClerc at Ferrari so we've basically got Hamilton, Vettel or Verstappen as WDC and I'd be willing to put money on Honda not delivering enough to give Max the chance.
Similar deal for LeClerc at Ferrari
My money is on him taking Vettel to the cleaners. finger boy will get a mard on for the rest of the year, then back at RB for 2020, assuming Honda have got their act together.
Also good so see 🙂
TBF to Gasly, he's put in some pretty respectable performances, he's beaten his team mate in qualifying and race pace consistently. It's hard to judge the potential of the car - like RB it had a mid season mediocre spell, but the Honda engine hasn't been a disaster and has benchmarked the RB's Renault for reliability and power. The exciting prospect has to be the relationship between he and Verstappen, given there's two years of age between them.
Upon reflection I'm quite sad to see the exit of Alonso, despite being a massive bell at times during his early career he's been kept honest by that pig of a McLaren. That seventh at Baku in an already wonky and latterly broken car was immense. He's been faultless of late, arguably his most enjoyable to watch as he inevitably diced for P8 with a Sauber. It also speaks volumes that someone who clearly has much more to give has not found a seat at one of the top four.
Honda hasn't been a disaster? Have you seen how many new PU elements they banked during the season and how poor the race pace of the engine was?
the Honda engine hasn’t been a disaster and has benchmarked the RB’s Renault for reliability and power.
No, it's still even more unreliable than the Renault. The Renault seemed to suffer from the tight packaging in the Red Bull, so big question of how the Honda will cope with that. Being as good as the Renault still means being a long way behind Ferrari and Merc.
My money is on [Leclerc] taking Vettel to the cleaners.
Mine too. It’s not as if Vettel hasn’t previously been shown up by a newcomer, and Monza showed everyone that he doesn’t have the level of support from Ferrari that Schumacher or Alonso had. I suspect they’ll be gradually moving their eggs into a Leclerc-shaped basket already.
So I think there are three definite contenders for the WDc next year: Hamilton, Vettel and Leclerc. If Honda get their act sorted then Verstappen will be right there, too. Bottas and Gasly won’t get a look in, sadly not will Ricciardo.
Hopefully McLaren and Williams can get their cars sorted. They both claim to have found the root of their problems, so we shall see.
Whatever pans out with the cars, though, there are a lot of driver pairings that will be interesting to watch early in the season and a couple which could provide some sparks.
My predictions:
Vettel/LeClerc/Ferrari will degenerate into bitter infighting and self destruction as LeClerc shows the Red Baron up.
Verstappen and Redbull will be bloody fast until the Honda hand-grenades.
Hamilton WDC for next two years, equalling MS and goes for win record and then moves to the Red Team to try to win the championship after Vettel has skulked off.
Honda hasn’t been a disaster? Have you seen how many new PU elements they banked during the season and how poor the race pace of the engine was?
I was about to reply along the lines of "nooo, but you're wrong!" when I looked up the PU element usage for 2018 and by Jove you're right about the reliability. It's even abysmal next to Monza spec Renault.
when I looked up the PU element usage for 2018 and by Jove you’re right about the reliability
That's not necessarily reliability, that's changing parts. I think Toro Rosso only had three retirements from 42 starts attributed to PU failures. They certainly chewed through plenty of PU elements over the course of the season, but don't forget that one of the main purposes of getting the Honda unit into the Toro Rosso was to prepare it for Red Bull. The Toro is a proving ground, always has been. No doubt this year will have involved plenty of finding the limits of the engine and trying out some innovations.
That’s not necessarily reliability, that’s changing parts.
Yes, fair points, but it still means that Honda reliability is an unknown quantity. Honda were obviously just pushing for as much power as possible without caring too much about reliability (which makes perfect sense to me). Problem is that the other manufacturers were generally making engines last for 7 races, so Honda's claimed performance benefit over Renault is kinda from a "grenade" engine versus an endurance engine. Renault's performance has been abysmal since the new engines were introduced, but they do seem to have a fair point that the packaging in the Red Bull was partly responsible for the reliability problems. That tight packaging is probably going to cause problems for Honda too.
And, even if they are better than Renault, they're still a long way behind Ferrari and Merc. Next year Renault will certainly have improved their power a bit, so my money is on the Renault being the better engine once Honda have to turn it down a bit to make it last more than two races. I can't see any way the Honda is going to have both the performance and reliability to challenge Ferrari and Merc across a whole season, maybe win a race here and there, but not challenge for the titles. I hope I'm wrong, but Honda have a track record of promising that they have something on the dyno that is world-beating and then turning up with an utter turd.
Am I correct in my understanding that Honda's issue is with the heat energy recovery system?
Am I correct in my understanding that Honda’s issue is with the heat energy recovery system?
Their original engine had a turbo that was too small so they lost out on heat recovery. The revised one fixed that, but Renault and Honda seem to be a bit behind in all areas. They are slightly behind in race power output, but don't have the qualifying modes that Merc and Ferrari use. Plus, they aren't as reliable so they can't run them flat out in races the way Merc can for short bursts.