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Look At How Ridiculously Two-Tiered F1 Has Gotten
Mack Hogan
7/10/18 4:01pmFiled to: FORMULA ONE
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Photo: Daimler
Formula One has long been trending toward becoming two-tiered, with a
handful of real competitors racing alongside some poor bastards without
a shot in the world. This past weekend’s British Grand Prix was a case
in point, a good demonstration of how far off-pace most teams are.
This first popped up on on radar when Axis of Oversteer tweeted about
the massive gulf between the top and lower-tier teams. Racefans.net took
the time to compile a lovely chart showing each driver’s fastest lap at
the British GP. Let’s have a look:
Source: Racefans.net
As you can see, Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull are fighting for top
spots. Red Bull’s cars are noticeably slower than either Mercedes, which
are both slower than the Vettel and Raikkonen in their Ferraris. But
look past these three and it gets grim fast.
The next driver on the list, Niko Hulkenberg in his Renault, is a
whopping 2.709 seconds off Vettel’s pace. He’s 1.4 seconds off of the slowest of Red Bull car, meaning he’s basically counting on luck to
finish any higher than seventh.
At the same time, he has seven cars coming laying down times within 0.3
seconds of his fastest lap. Essentially, he has no hope at catching up
to anyone on the Red Bull, Mercedes or Ferrari teams but he has a troupe
of cars breathing down his neck.
Really, the competition in F1 seems to be for seventh place. Unless
someone at one of the top-tier teams crashes, breaks down or does
something heroically stupid, it’s hard to imagine any other driver
cracking sixth.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mack Hogan
Mack Hogan is Jalopnik’s bumbling summer intern. Despite being a self-proclaimed car critic, he bought a baby blue Lincoln with a landau
top. You probably shouldn't listen to him.
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TuckerMadison
Mack Hogan
7/10/18 4:07pm
Have you been watching F1 for a while? This is the way its been... For
example, in 1991 only two teams won races at least we have had 3 this year.
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Kevin K
TuckerMadison
7/10/18 4:29pm
This season was the first time in decades that by Monaco you had three
drivers from three different teams who had wins.
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