Not really a case of dirty driving on his part though, he just misjudged it and seemed to have locked his rears, well deserved penalty nonetheless.

I’ve not seen his comments regarding their collision but if he thinks that it wasn’t a deserved penalty and is complaining about it then that’s just ridiculous.

Yeah I am mistaken, I recalled the value from this article that I looked at in the past, and it seems the writer confused the market cap of HP Tuners with Hewlett Packard somehow.

I don’t have exact figures but I think Piastri’s dad is the co-founder of a multi-billion dollar company, Zhou’s father was rich enough to build a karting track for him, and Sargeant has a billionaire uncle. An exact number 2 might be hard to determine but Norris is definitely up there.

The problem is that this would all be speculation, and the stewards don’t seem to want to delve into that kind of mess. Can you really guarantee that there would be a collision if X driver didn’t decide to move slightly to take avoiding action? There’s just no way to assess that perfectly.

Whichever way they deal with situations like this, they are still going to get heavily criticised. Though one way to reduce the criticism would be to admit that the outcome does affect their decision, which they refuse to do.

Hamilton got a penalty for moving over on Piastri last year in Monza because there was contact, and Verstappen got a penalty for moving over on Bottas in 2018 in Monza because there was contact.

Meanwhile Leclerc did the exact same move on Hamilton in 2019, but Hamilton took avoiding action by going off track, and no penalty was given, only a black and white flag for Leclerc. So it is entirely dependent on how the driver behind reacts. How they can still claim that the outcome does not affect the decision is and has always been nonsense.

Carlos Sainz in particular has a habit of making moves under braking, but no one seems to go after him for it. I can’t think of many instances right now, but I always take mental notes of them, such as turn 1 at Spa last year (though he wasn’t found at fault for the collision), and against Perez in Austria last year (someone even posted a video of a similar move against Verstappen in the same race). The F1 channel even made a highlight video for Sainz vs Leclerc in Monza last year, with Sainz moving under braking a few times. He was also moving under braking against Verstappen and got no further action for pushing Leclerc off completely. Yet he was praised for giving the fans a battle when really he should have been told off for it.

There aren’t millions of people competing professionally in sim racing though, there aren’t even that many professional football players in the world, 130,000 according to FIFA in 2021 (150 million since the early 2000s if you count amateurs according to FIFA too).

Verstappen is most active on iracing which seems to average mostly around 10k-15k players per day (250,000 total unique players according to the iracing website, and remember it is 150 million for football, 600x as many people). Only a very small percentage of these 10k-15k people are professional simracers, and many don’t even compete in the same categories. He is an elite among a very small number of people who have to pay a monthly subscription to use their equipment worth several hundreds or even thousands of dollars, which just brings me back to my initial point where he probably wouldn’t be as highly regarded if more people were able to participate.

If it took 250,000 players to discover one Verstappen, multiply that by 600 to match the numbers that football has, and in theory you would get 599 more Verstappen's.

Of course I can't say it with absolute certainty, but the probability that Verstappen is the absolute best example of talent and potential, despite coming from a very small pool of competitive drivers, is just astronomically small.

Pointing out the data we have irl of him being at the top just completely ignores the purpose of my hypothetical scenario.

Would he still be the phenom that he was had there been thousands of other competitors rather than the few hundred? Many regional F4 champions end up getting a reality check when they move up the ladder, there’s always a bigger fish out there that you won’t discover unless you branch out and compete with others. Majority of these people have financial backing as well, so the initial pool of F4 competitors you have consists of those who are fast enough among the rich.

I can give you a recent real life example of better accessibility or popularity completely changing the scene of a competitive sport that I have long been a part of. (Competitive Rubik's cube solving is considered a sport now as far as I am aware). A sport where you can practice at any place and any time that you like.

The organization that hosts these competitions was founded relatively recently in 2004. By 2013 there was a guy named Feliks Zemdegs (an absolute phenom from his early career and considered the GOAT) who destroyed all the records and brought the record of the standard 3x3 puzzle down so much that it would take him 3 years to beat it. Back then the pool of competitors was only in the few thousands since it wasn't a very popular sport.

Fast forward a bit more than 10 years and he is now ranked 16th in the world, with the pool of competitors having increased to over 220,000 (this is just the total number of competitors ever, many of whom only do it for fun and not competitively, and many thousands who are inactive). High quality cubes are also so much cheaper and easier to come by now compared to back then, so many kids can get into it very easily. As for the current number 1, he was born in 2013 (the same year that Feliks Zemdegs set his legendary record) and is from China, and only started competing in 2019. The sport has become very popular in China, the second most populous country in the world, and at this point 21 out of the top 100 people are from China. Out of the 5 other people from China who have surpassed Feliks Zemdegs, 4 of them are under the age of 10.

TLDR; In competitive Rubik's cube solving, Feliks Zemdegs was a phenom early on and considered the GOAT, and is now ranked 16th in the world 10 years later. At least 5 of the 15 people surpassing him are aged 11 and much lower, and begun this sport directly as a result of its increasing popularity and accessibility (high quality cubes are very cheap now) in China alone. Many more kids are still getting closer each year.

Now imagine a world where the popularity of this sport didn't boom (especially in China), and the high quality cubes remained expensive, we would likely have never come across these 6 kids and many of the other guys at the top. The pool of drivers at this points seems even smaller than the pool of Rubik's cube competitors was back in 2013. So it just seems astronomically unlikely that Verstappen, who came from such a tiny pool of people, is the best example of talent and potential that there is, and why I'd argue that there would be at least 20 others who could be better. Just like how there are currently 15 people who have already surpassed Feliks Zemdegs, with many more inching closer all the time.

I replied to someone else who said a similar thing, you can read it for my full reply  if you want and let me know your thoughts on the question at the end.

Sim racing is still not as accessible as other esports since even the cheaper force feedback wheels can already cost $250, and it is also nowhere near as popular as other esports. Though him ranking highly there is a good point.

Still, there's plenty of other esports with hundreds of thousands or even millions of people playing everyday, and the professional scene in many of these games are constantly changing, with new players coming in and going toe to toe with the best every once in a while. That's because these guys don't have to worry about financial backing, and are able to practice whenever they want at home, which allows them to overcome that gap. Due to this larger pool of people, you're also going to get a few of those guys that further go on to surpass them. You don't necessarily get that with motorsports.

I don't doubt his abilities at all, but surely there are plenty of people out there who never had the opportunity, that could have had the potential to be better.

I mentioned this is another reply but I'll give you this hypothetical too, it is just a genuine question and I'd like to hear what others have to say about it.

If something like football (since its inception) was as inaccessible as motorsports is, requiring significant financial backing and having significantly limited practice time, can you say with 100% certainty that the best 20 players would be the same as they are now?

I'm not doubting his abilities. But put it this way, what if just 1% of the population every year had the access and necessary funding to start a karting career and then move on to open wheel racing. What are the chances that Verstappen, who came from a significantly smaller pool of people, is one of the best 20 among these 80 million people? It just does not seem likely.

If something like football was as inaccessible as motorsports is, having limited practice time and requiring significant financial backing, can you say with 100% certainty that the best 20 players would be the same as they are now?

Edit: Looking through wikipedia, the pool of people in all F4 championships amounts to just around 500. Hard to find any figures for karting, but this is the junior category of open wheel racing, and there are barely any people compared to other sports in the junior categories.

If racing was as accessible as a typical esport, then I’d bet that Verstappen wouldn’t be on the grid. I don’t believe for a second that there aren’t at least 20 people out there who have more potential and a higher ceiling, and they just never managed to realise this due to never having a chance at karting, since that is already expensive. On top of that it is inherently dangerous so most parents would not allow their kids to do it.

Unfortunately this will probably never change, and we will only get to the see best among the upper-class moving forward.

Probably really dumb stat if you can even call it that, and correct me if I’m wrong but I think Sainz, driver number 55, has finished P5 5 times in a row (if you count sprints) since the 5th event in China, and he is currently 5th in the driver’s standings. He started this streak with a P5 in the sprint shootout in China, and the race weekend where he had his 5th P5 finish in a row (Imola), he qualified P5 too.

Now that’s consistency.

Sainz wasn’t close to Leclerc in 2021 for pace though. Most of the time he was very noticeably slower, losing around 2-4 tenths a lap on average in several races. I’d be surprised if anyone can name a single race in 2021 where he genuinely outpaced Leclerc when both had free air.

2023 on the other hand they were decently close in quali, and the closest out of all teams in race pace.

The same Prost who was 0.64s slower than Senna on average for all their qualifying sessions together as team mates?

You can see the floor of the Redbull landing on the base of the bollard and bits of carbon fibre breaking off in the highlights.

That was Hungary where almost his entire bargeboard on the right broke off, not Turkey.

Another 1-2 in the DHL pitstop rankings. They also got a 1-2 in the previous pitstop rankings in Japan, which is why they said another 1-2 here.

Imola and Spain, not exactly almost every race start

That never happened, Leclerc went off on his own at turn 17 and was penalised for leaving the track and gaining an advantage

Think you meant Malaysia, not Mexico.

The data he is referring to is the race pace analysis by isfahaninejad from 2022 specifically. So he is actually correct but for that season only.

Bahrain and Miami had late safety cars so of course the gaps won’t be as big. Regardless, in both races Charles was around 4 tenths faster per lap on average compared to Sainz. For reference, the average gap between Perez and Verstappen in race pace in 2023 was a bit more than 4 tenths.

In Saudi the gap would have been closer to 10s if Leclerc didn’t battle Verstappen for so long, where they both intentionally slowed down to get DRS. That also had a safety car which ended on lap 20, at almost half race distance. So Leclerc pulled almost half a pitstop distance in around half the racing laps.

Those examples you gave do point towards Leclerc doing to Sainz what Verstappen did to Perez, at least in terms of pure pace.

I think it really depends on whether they can fully utilise the strong front end of the redbull. Remove the team mate from the equation and I’d believe all the current full-time drivers could win at least a few races. With a team mate to compete with, then its anyone’s guess.

Based on the cars they’ve driven before, I personally believe Hamilton and Leclerc would be the closest to replicating what Max is doing, though it’s been quite a while since Hamilton has driven a car with these characteristics.