Qualifying my “Achilles’ heel” during return – Ricciardo

30 comments on “Qualifying my “Achilles’ heel” during return – Ricciardo”

1. 

   Gusm.ai
   10th December 2023, 1:47

   Maybe expecting a female GP winner/WDC champion will do more harm than good.
   We entering F1 8th decade. For all Japanese manufacturers participation, all they got is 2 second places from japanese drivers. India only got Chandook – and I dont recall he getting any points. China now has it first driver. Only two Spanish drivers ever won a GP. One has to go back to the 1960s to find a US born GP winner.
   My point is: F1 might be sexist, but the real obstacle to a certain category of people to win in F1 is the massive competition it naturally involves not only to get a seat but a winning car.
   Discounting NZ-AUS winners and Kubica, nobody born east of Berlin ever held a 1st place trophy – more than half world population barely had any representation in F1. Expecting a female GP winner in a decade seems improbable as much as a Chinese, an Indian or an American and that doesnt mean that F1 is particularly prejudiced against half words population or the richest country in the globe.
   1. 

      Miane
      10th December 2023, 3:51

      Facts are details nowadays, people will keep pushing their agenda because everything is political now.
   2. 

      SteveR (@stever)
      10th December 2023, 4:43

      Yeah, when my daughter was 10 or so I asked if she was interested in learning to race, as I had run a race shop for FF1600, FF2000, and sports racers. She had no interest and I never pushed her even though she watched F1 with me and knew the drivers. I’m not sure what I’m trying to convey here, but women and men are different in their aspirations and goals; I’ll get flamed, but we each have our own aspirations and goals. To force an equal desire for some goal on both sexes seems to be, well, sexist.

      I’ve raced in FF1600 against women who were pretty good drivers; women should go through the same barriers all drivers encounter. For the beginning driver seat time and lack of money are the key points and the only way to get these is dedication. I spent 50% of my income for a few years in FF1600, did some okay stuff, then realized I was too old and too slow and so started a race shop business. No one gave me any sort of hand up and I knew when to quit. Women drivers, drive well, win some races and the support will come, but you have to really want it and make that a life goal and not expect to have things handed to you.
      1. 

         notagrumpyfan
         10th December 2023, 7:54

         She had no interest and I never pushed her even though she watched F1 with me and knew the drivers. I’m not sure what I’m trying to convey here

         If you see a sport and there are no women participating, then it’s difficult for a girl to aspire to become one in the future.

         Of course parents saying ‘you can become anything’ and also the gentle ‘push’ will help, but the biggest motivator for young kids’ aspiration is seeing others like you doing a certain sport or profession.
         1. 

            asz
            10th December 2023, 14:06

            then it’s difficult for a girl to aspire to become one

            In other words, the moral responsibility escalates from “making it easier to become” to “making it easier to aspire to become”.

            If they need help not only in getting there, but even in wanting to get there, then perhaps it is an unnecessary effort to begin with.
         2. 

            Ludewig
            12th December 2023, 13:40

            If you see a sport and there are no women participating, then it’s difficult for a girl to aspire to become one in the future.

            And yet we’ve seen jobs that were exclusively male switch to overwhelmingly female, without special interventions. And in sports we’ve also seen women go into sports that were exclusively male without special interventions. Like fighting sports. Your theory suggests that this can’t happen and that it is impossible for women to enter jobs and sports unless we somehow force women into them, which is actually quite anti-liberal.
   3. 

      MichaelN
      10th December 2023, 22:16

      This is exactly right. It’s hilarious to label all of F1 as ‘sexist’ because there are no female winners, as the English paper The Times does (and whose musings are amplified here). As you rightly note, not a single Asian driver has ever won a race. Not one. That’s easily over half the human population. And had it not been for Jody Scheckter, there wouldn’t be a single African either.

      Of the 50 most populated countries in the world, only 12 have produced an F1 winner: those being the United States, Brazil, Mexico, Germany, France, United Kingdom, South Africa, Italy, Spain, Argentina, Canada and Poland. In many cases, that’s just from a handful of different drivers. Sometimes not even; Poland and South Africa have just one. Mexico and Spain two – as does Canada, and they’re even father and son.

      Formula 1 is an English sport, and had it not been for guys like Schumacher, Vettel, Senna, Piquet and Prost the ‘wins by country’ statistics would look even more lopsided than it already does. Now… is that bad? Not necessarily. If it’s fun to watch, that’s fine. But this whole ‘world championship’ pretense is strictly about where they race. It has nothing to do with the competitors (i.e. the teams) or the drivers.

      There are a ton of barriers to competing in F1. Being a woman probably is one of them, but mostly at the junior level. Once a woman has shown herself to be somewhat competitive, it can become an advantage as hiring a woman is a great value proposition for the team and sponsors because interests is guaranteed to be high. We’ve already seen this in other series.
2. 

   kcrossle (@kcrossle)
   10th December 2023, 2:22

   Reacting to COD; F1 is pretty much a ‘closed shop’ now, isn’t it?

   No new teams / cars. No new drivers. No attendance for fans that don’t have $ thousands to spend

   I hate the “it was better in my day” attitude. But it’s not looking good now, is it?
   1. 

      Esploratore (@esploratore1)
      10th December 2023, 5:24

      Yes, it was definitely better back in the day: running with heavy rain possible (without people dying left and right ofc, the 80s were already pretty safe), dominant cars existed but not to the extent we had since 2010, the driver performance mattered more than car performance relatively back then, there was no drs or the overuse of safety cars\red flags, this is just what comes to mind, there could be more.
      1. 

         notagrumpyfan
         10th December 2023, 8:07

         the driver performance mattered more than car performance relatively back then

         Did it really?
         If we look at Verstappen versus Perez, Albon versus Sargeant, and Alonso versus Stroll then it seems the driver has still a significant impact on the total performance.

         And even the overall competitiveness between the cars seems closer now. How often in the past did we see 10 (or even more) cars qualify within one second?
         Thus driver performance is even more important I’d say.
         1. 

            Esploratore (@esploratore1)
            11th December 2023, 0:47

            I’m not saying driver performance no longer matters, but if you take the 90s, you see there were drivers who occasionally had a gap on their team mate of 1,5 sec in dry conditions, schumacher vs verstappen comes to mind, or even senna on prost in quali once, even though the 2 were generally competitive with each other, nowadays you don’t get this much difference, it was something that appeared even in articles of mathematical models that in recent times the impact of the driver decreased, nowadays a top driver can maybe get 5 tenths on an average driver in quali.
         2. 

            Esploratore (@esploratore1)
            11th December 2023, 0:48

            Good point about the closeness of the car performance though, apart from red bull we’re in a situation where those few tenths can make a big difference, especially in qualifying.
      2. 

         grat
         10th December 2023, 10:00

         The problem since 2009 has been the constant re-working of the aero rules. Only the big teams keep up, and as has been shown with the current regs, that’s not even possible for teams like Ferrari and Mercedes under the budget cap.

         2024 and 2025 should be interesting, because at the moment, there are no major aero changes planned (that I’m aware of).

         But, having watched recordings of races in the 1980’s and 1990’s, there was still a very clear distinction between the “winning” cars and the rest of the grid. Even when the front was competitive, it was rare for more than 3-4 cars to be serious contenders for the win in any given race, barring retirements.
      3. 

         anon
         10th December 2023, 19:08

         @esploratore1 I think there may be some element of romanticising the 1980s – if you look at the records of that decade, half of that decade didn’t see a single wet race occur, and, proportionally speaking, you’re actually much more likely to see wet weather races occurring now than in the 1980s.

         Added to that, the 1980s did actually see several races being red flagged because of wet weather – the 1981 Belgian and French GP’s and the 1984 Monaco GP are a couple of examples of races being red flagged then due to heavy rain.
         1. 

            Esploratore (@esploratore1)
            11th December 2023, 0:53

            Yes, I’m familiar with monaco 1984, a questionable decision to red flag at that point as there had been no crashes for the last few laps, and there were races like australia 1989 where drivers felt conditions were terrible but raced for the constructor’s championship and the likes, prost even decided to retire after 1 lap as he had already won the championship in that occasion, however there were plenty of other wet races that actually happened, it’s very sad to watch f1 in the 2020s and have to go back to 30-40 years before to find proper wet races.

            The wet races that happen now, even though there’s been quite some wet sessions this year, are in intermediate or almost dry conditions, that’s what I miss from the old ones.
   2. 

      Esploratore (@esploratore1)
      10th December 2023, 5:25

      Oh, yes, and ofc you said it yourself, there were at least 13 teams, sometimes more, including some that regularly failed to qualify.
   3. 

      Zann (@zann)
      10th December 2023, 10:06

      you only have to watch some of the old races to see how much WORSE it was when you were young! And that’s the cherry picked Classic races. Of course back then you were smooth skinned, bold and frisky, but F1 had Murray Walker screaming all the time, cars miles apart on track, one team inventing blown diffusers or double diffusers or a turbo or doing a McLaren 1988 winning everything, bad pictures with like 4 cameras, Bernie the used car guy scheming with Max Mosley the sado orgying guy, drivers being killed in flaming fireballs…

      There’s a good reason you “hate the “it was better in my day” attitude” and that’s because it wasn’t :)
      Not saying things are prefect now, and if Liberty do sell to Saudi freaking male guardian Arabia I will stop, but things use to be even worse!
      1. 

         F1 frog (@f1frog)
         10th December 2023, 10:39

         I would argue that the races back in the day are just as good as races now. It is just that the way you are shown them wasn’t as good. If there is nothing interesting happening at the front in modern day F1, you can be kept interested by the timing tower which helps you see what is happening throughout the grid, and the race will focus on some midfield battle at the front. In the 1980s, the TV directors focussed exclusively on the lead battles, and if there was a great battle further back for 8th, you would never even know about it, as you would just be watching Ayrton Senna or Alain Prost going round and round in the lead. It wasn’t the racing that was worse, it was the TV directing that was worse, and the level of graphics on the screen. Going back further, there is only tiny snippets of muddy footage of most races in the 1950s and the 1960s, there is no way you could watch one of those and say that it was one of the greatest races of all time based on that. But we know from reading race reports from the time that those races were just as brilliant as races nowadays, if not more brilliant, it is just that you couldn’t watch it as well. But that is not a problem if you are living in the 1950s and have nothing since then to compare it to.
         1. 

            Zann (@zann)
            10th December 2023, 16:44

            ah, okay, honestly I have no idea except when I search a lot of races in the 50’s and 60’s races seem to have been won by a lap! Anyway we like to complain don’t we but things aren’t all bad
         2. 

            Esploratore (@esploratore1)
            11th December 2023, 1:27

            This is a good point, I recently watched the 3rd most recent full wet race in spa (before what should’ve been 2021 and ofc 1998), which was in 1989 and there weren’t a lot of overtakes, but although we complain a lot of bad f1 direction nowadays and missing important stuff due to unimportant replays or not switching to where overtakes are actually happening in time, back then they missed stuff like cars retiring and not showing what issue they had and there were rarely replays when they missed retirements.

            In australia 1991 I know schumacher had a crash, but I wasn’t able to find it at all, they seem to have missed it and no replay.
      2. 

         Lewisham Milton
         10th December 2023, 10:41

         Not saying things are prefect now

         Can’t put it any better than that!
      3. 

         Esploratore (@esploratore1)
         11th December 2023, 1:01

         Drivers being killed in fireballs is way earlier than than we’re talking about, lauda survived already in 1976 and the track that happened in was gone quickly after that.
         1. 

            Zann (@zann)
            11th December 2023, 11:24

            which ‘we’ is this? your other accounts aren’t actual people, don’t forget :) The original post just said “in my day” so i’m just guessing when that was. But I watch the ‘Classic Races’ and even tho these are supposed to be the best they still aren’t as good to watch as the good current ones.

            Some of that is the production, fair enough, but that still doesn’t make the complaining and fond reminiscing any better
3. 

   Jere (@jerejj)
   10th December 2023, 6:17

   Nice trophy & possibly the first time an F1 team has received Guinness World Records certificate.
   1. 

      Coventry Climax
      10th December 2023, 10:35

      The three big letters on it means I wouldn’t want it in my home – period.
      If it were given to me, I’d auction it off immediately and give a very substantial part -if not all of it- of what was paid, to charity or Ukraine.
   2. 

      Bullfrog (@bullfrog)
      10th December 2023, 11:01

      Doubt it was a World Guinness Record but reminded me of this, from 1987:
      
      Always good to see the Österreichring, but those old stops seem to take for ever!
      1. 

         Bullfrog (@bullfrog)
         10th December 2023, 11:05

         or even this, sorry!Formula One world record pitstop Record Breakers TV show (YouTube)
4. 

   Unicron (@unicron2002)
   10th December 2023, 8:27

   Well this year is serving up some treats – first Penny Mordaunt brandishing a massive sword in an ancient ceremony, and now Penny Mordaunt mentioning Red Bull and quoting Murray Walker in Parliament. As Alan Partridge would say: ‘oh Penny….’
5. 

   Ferdinand
   11th December 2023, 8:22

   Did Ricciardo participate this year? Must have missed it.
6. 

   Ludewig
   12th December 2023, 14:06

   and that funding has invariably gone to boys

   Where is the evidence for this? Men don’t get a male-only series, unlike the women. Judging by their success in other series, the W Series drivers were quite overpaid. For example, Jamie Chadwick got $0 for her 9th place in the 2020 Formula Regional European Championship. Even if she had won, it would have been just $40k in prize money. Then in 2021, she earned $500k for her first place in the W Series. The actual disparity is even bigger, as W Series drivers did not have to pay for their seat, unlike pretty much any other low-level series. So if you account for the subsidies that the drivers were getting with their free seats, the actual disparity in pay was enormous between W Series and other low level series.

   Of course, most money will always go to the best performing drivers, which are mostly men. That is only unfair if female drivers with the same talent and commitment don’t get the same funding & support. But is that the case? Just look at how Max’ sister didn’t want to put in the effort. It seems that Jos would have put as much effort into her career if she had put in as much effort and put up with Jos as Max, but she didn’t (arguably, this was the healthier choice, although Max seems to have ended up pretty decent despite the abuse). So we had a driver that quite possibly had sufficient talent for F1. It’s hard to imagine getting closer to have equal opportunity to a F1 champion than being their sibling. And yet she bailed. Not due to a lack of funding & support, but due to a lack of commitment.

   Of course that is just one anecdote, but is there any solid evidence that women of the same ability and commitment are underfunded?

Comments are closed.