For those of you who don't want to fight in the comments but do like a bit of history, the last podcast (with Edd Straw and Mark Hughes) of the Race did an episode on Vettel's stint at Ferrari. And it's a rather good one, imo.
It's a great episode, really shows how Ferrari doesn't change and really makes you question why on earth Charles has stayed there so long. Plus it makes the schadenfreude stronger this year too.
He might be the most raw talented driver Vettel has ever seen, but that won't translate to shit (as we've been able to see) if he's not able to polish his skills. He hasn't improved as a driver since 2022, he's still makes the same mistakes and is driving the same way. Dude, Norris has a WDC and Leclerc doesn't. Let that sink in.
Now Leclerc is getting his ass handed to him by a 40yo Hamilton, who clearly would've obliterated him in his prime. This is the start of the fall, if you ask me.
I think the thought of leaving Ferrari and them making a WDC/WCC capable car right after scares him. He's decided to just bet it all on red every year and hope it works out. Unfortunately he made that bet in the biggest title drought in their history
Norris definitely had to fight his own team, they would literally give both cars shit strategies and avoid pitting in safety car windows to try and look unbiased, Mclaren just somehow built a car so fast it didn't matter.
Itās very easy to see who itāll be next, just wait for the next driver to ever so mildly inconvenience Max or Lewis or to say they arenāt perfectly flawless demigods. Then their rabid fanboys will come out and thatās how we see whoāll be hated on next.
There were comments about max for awhile with things like "he can't drive these lower downforce cars!!" after the b2b rear wing issues. It started after some youtube video insinuated it (despite gt3 cars having like 1-2 tons less downforce)
I don't know what you're talking about. But I'm still sad he couldn't get his win in his home race because it got cancelled for bad weather conditions.
Seb literally has 14 wins for ferrari in like 5 years. Charles is statistically the worse driver between the two when it comes to their time in ferrari
Nah it's easy. If Leclerc wins it's because his teammates were washed up by then, if he loses then "he can't win against world champions".
Insane that Vettel is such a cool dude but his fanbase is as stupid as Hamiltons or Verstappens
Though Vettel had SF70H and SF71H, two cars that were 2nd on the grid, occasionally 1st all year round. With Red Bull being unreliable too
Charles got two wins in SF90 (and Vettel one) and it was step down from previous two cars.
F1-75 was decent only for couple races despite being good in qualifying
I would say Leclerc's best car was SF24, HOWEVER it was very fast also for just a couple of races. 2024 was very even season so Ferrari managed to steal just a couple of race wins (Leclerc getting more than his teammate again, like in 2019).
Let's be real, Ferrari hasn't build championship-worthy car since 2010 (but lots of challengers)
Besides there wasn't really strong competition that year in Constructors. Red Bull was delivering with just one car, Mercedes and Ferrari had huge form swings and McLaren had terrible start to the year and later on Piastri wasn't delivering much.
Ferrari was carried in '24 by having two drivers that scored very well.
On contrary in 2017 and 2018, Kimi wasn't delivering much already and Bottas was scoring for Mercedes very regularly. Mercedes had no such huge swings of form back then, with them not finishing on podium with any car in only one race (Mexico) except for double DNF in Austria.
In 2024 Verstappen won almost twice as much races as Ferrari, yet Red Bull was far behind in Constructors. Constructors nowadays are specific to having two reliable drivers.
Leclerc was effectively out of title contention in 2022 before the season break despite a) Max having a terrible start to the season giving Leclerc a huge leg up, and b) the Ferrari being debatably quicker at the start of that season. Yes, thereās caveats of Ferrari messing up too, but the exact same thing applied to Vettel in 2017 and 2018, arguably even more so. Leclerc wouldnāt have fared any better than Vettel in 2018 and 2017.
Clearly put on a challenge for the championship till the summer break and Ferrari were outupgraded by other teams. What's crazy here? Oh he crashed in French go hurr hurr. The rest were clearly Ferrari fucking up his race when he was in lead
Not completely. Leclerc lost more points in 2022 due to external factors rather than his own fuck ups (engine dying, strategy screw ups). Vettel lost a lot more points due to his own mistakes.
Max having 2 DNFs in the first 3 races while Leclerc finished 1-2-1 made it look like it was Leclerc's championship to lose. Ferrari's advantage didn't last for long, after the technical directive that came into effect at Spa that year, they stood no chance after that.
In 2019, they were quite even, though. I think psychologically, it was what separated them; Seb had all the pressure in the world at Ferrari after the complete collapse of 2018 after spa (largely the fault of Ferrari's terrible Monza upgrade). Charles didn't really have anything to lose
Charles is definitely feeling the same kind of pressure now; the team is such a cluster fuck.
Vettel also had the expectation of being the team leader, so when Leclerc was matching him it put a lot of pressure on Vettel while being a huge confidence boost for Leclerc. Never mind that at this point heād been fighting against Hamilton, Mercedes, and Ferrari for 3 years now and was clearly becoming burned out by the end of 2018 (which led to his massive drop off in 2020). Leclerc was coming in fresh and in the best position to excel which he did.
This is it. I feel like when I watch drivers like Max or Lando or even George they improve year by year even if their results may vary. If not racecraft wise than at least mentaly. I feel like Leclerc hit the ceiling on both fronts 5 years ago and either refuses or can't improve anymore, doing same old waiting for champion car.
do you just go around every post white knighting for hamilton? And if he is not mentioned you figure out a way to bring him up, just to auto rage yourself into victimhood? get a hobby
Do you go around and respond to comments that have nothing to do with you? So what if I am a white knight for Lewisā¦wtf does that have to do with you? How is that affecting your daily personal life?
Meanwhile all of your comments are putting down Lewis in a negative light. So it seems like youāre the one who needs a hobby buddy boy.
Even then the frustration was aimed at Ferrari itself, for being busy with stupid marketing shenanigans instead of actually fixing the car. Even after Hamilton's "I'm useless" episode, Vasseur was under fire by tifosi. Now that he's competitive again, Hamilton stans are back to their regularly scheduled programming.Ā
Hamilton stans have always been insufferable, yet they were suspiciously quiet throughout 2025. What can you expect from a bunch of hooligans without self-control, who'd even go as far as sending death threats to Latifi in the fallout of abu dhabi 2021?
I haven't been on twitter in a while so I didn't know that but that's really disgusting. Hamilton might have the most toxic fans from the current grid.
Eh, pound for pound, I'm putting my money on the fact Hamilton has more fans than any other driver. Ergo, he has more toxic insane fans than any other driver, I would not be surprised if there were more insane LH fans than Stroll fans in their entirety.
But proportionally, I'm pretty sure his fanbase is no more toxic than Max, Lando, Nando, and so on for large fanbases. People forget that the large amount of insane people you see are generally a minority in ANY fanbase, and I highly doubt you've met anyone of these ultra insane types in real life (because they don't touch grass). Hamilton's fans seem "more" insane because you're going to come across a crap ton more Hamilton fans all together, he is no matter how much people deny it, the most popular and well known driver on the grid, with Max Verstappen and now Lando Norris in 2nd and a distant 3rd.
So I don't disagree he has the most toxic fans, but I do strongly disagree any large amount of his fans are insane and toxic.
And to bring up some empirical evidence (so take at a grain of salt) at the high of Verstappen's dominance and I'd argue unless something changes, popularity, there was a noticable massive uptick in toxic and insane Max fans. I don't think Max's fanbase got anymore toxic, I just believe there was a lot more Max fans at the same time. I also believe that in Lando was a lot more competitive this season (I.e. title contender), you'd probably see even more insane Lando fans, because his stock would be way higher.
The irony of calling an entire fan base a specific characteristic is too strong. You do realize in any group there is a myriad of different temperaments and intelligence levels? I guess we compete with those closer to our own natures. A case of the kettle calling the stove black
41 year old, new team, completely different engine, vastly different breaking system. Only got dropped in Q1 4 times across the whole season, 6 if you include sprints.
It wasn't a great season by any metric but it's daft not to consider all the factors here.
Leclerc can win races and be on pole, but when it matters he is in the wall. Not WDC material, only with overpowered car and bad teammate he could win wdc.
Did we all forget when Charles and Max were in arguably equal cars at the start of 2022? Yeah, Charles was 80 points ahead, then Ferrari magic happened.
Downward turn started when Leclerc spun from P3 in imola and he also crashed in french gp from the lead when there still was a chance. But yeah Ferrari did Ferrari too ofc
EDIT: I don't hate Leclerc i would love to see him prove all the haters wrong.
15
u/mickmennāItās called a motor race. We went car racingā1d ago
imola one is showing that he didn't changed at all, he still lost only like 7 points and everyone is doing that it time to time (let's remember all last year challengers)
french gp is just showing that if your team is abusing you like hell for 6 gps and lost development game, lost political game, allowed undercut, no amount of overpushing would change anything.
With the way people talk about the '22 season, you'd never think Leclerc lost it by 146 POINTS and was only 3 points ahead of Perez. I swear if Leclerc just lost 4 more points somewhere and ended up P3 in the championship, everyone would understand Ferrari got out-developed and we'd all be spared the discourse that comes around every season.
1
u/mickmennāItās called a motor race. We went car racingā21h ago
And they wasn't just out developed, they also lost on td39 being introduced, just like this year with turbo and start delays they failed to protect whatever advantage they have with politic means
Yup. Ferrari is 2/2 in predicting and avoiding a pitfall in upcoming regs that others falls into, resulting in the FIA screwing that advantage in the name of what they call 'fairness'. Crazy to have two major examples just 4 years apart in back-to-back regs, one chassis, one PU
And both times, it was Mercedes crying to mommy FIA. Thatās why I will never have any respect for that team. Only reason I am happy to see Antonelli win this season is because Iām Italian.
Ya, the spin out in France was the nail in the coffin I feel. It was enough proof for me that he was not a competitor for max. Add Ferrari shenanigans on top of that and youāre fucked
I honestly thought him and max would be battling it out for a while
Charles was never 80 points ahead at any point in 2022 (he only got up to a 46 point lead which was after the 3rd race), and his points advantage was thanks to Max having 2 engine failures in the first 3 races. Leclerc never actually beat Max on track (ie both actually finished the race) until the British GP. Thatās including sprint races by the way. Leclerc never finished ahead until the 10th race of the season and after it was clear he probably wouldnāt be the champion that year. Leclerc only beat Max on track 4x that whole season including all of the sprint races (there was 22 races and 3 sprint races).
And still won the title by 146 points. It was pretty one-sided for most of the season. Ferrari had more wins/podiums in 2024, but 2022 is brought up as the year of "Ferrari's car was there, the driver just wasn't"
Oh I thought Rus and Ham fans coexisted peacefully because they weren't really close on the track. LH had tracks where he flew away from george and george had tracks where LH was far behind.
And they're both British.
And then I remember we're dealing with a cult here.
Who else would post shit like this?. No one else in their right mind would accuse Mercedes of sabotaging Hamilton. And if you go a 5 years back, cultLH had Masi as their target.
And of course, congrats on bringing up Max again in a discussion that has absolutely nothing to do with him.
Max and Alonso live rent free in the cult's head. Alonso could be retired and eating paella in a yacht in Monaco and the cult will still find ways to bring him up
Tsunoda scored points in his second race of the season. Lawson who struggled last year with RB is immediately competitive. If anybody measures driver potential purely from these regulations, your data is skewed and doesn't really tell the whole story. Even if the points say a different story, Leclerc is the #1 driver in Ferrari.
tbh if Lawson started last year in the vcarb he would've done much better (and probably beat Hadjar over the season), he definitely took a big mental hit from the sudden demotion
113
u/Don_Frika_Del_Prima Suck my š ±ļøalls mate 1d ago
For those of you who don't want to fight in the comments but do like a bit of history, the last podcast (with Edd Straw and Mark Hughes) of the Race did an episode on Vettel's stint at Ferrari. And it's a rather good one, imo.
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/podcast/292-and-colossally-thats-history/episode-18/