Sixteen races in the archive, but it’s like starting from zero to zero: Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton are divided by six points in the standings with still 156 points potentially still available from Austin to Abu Dhabi via Mexico City, Interlagos, Losail and Jeddah. Both are returning from recent penalties discounted on the starting grid to introduce fresh components at the power unit level and from Bahrain to Istanbul the elements on which to set an analysis on who is the favorite to win the title are not lacking. We have decided to divide the comparison between the Red Bull driver and the seven-time Mercedes champion. Here are our verdicts.
Pilot: Verstappen – Colleagues and insiders agree that for now the fastest, coldest and most constant in the cockpit was Verstappen. The Dutch driver has won seven races against the five claims of the reigning champion and overall has made fewer mistakes than Hamilton, who has instead stained his schedule with gross errors (Imola and Baku above all, with the red flag to save him. in Emilia Romagna) or anonymous weekends as happened in Monaco. Max has little to blame with the exception of the crucial ‘closure’ at the Copse, which cost him a zero and a power unit to throw away. The knockout in Azerbaijan and having been a pin at the start in Hungary are not zero – or almost – attributable to the class of 1997, who, however, is now called at the moment of truth: do not tremble at the showdown, a phase in which the Hamilton’s experience can make a difference. Verstappen has always denied those who claimed that Hamilton was a more complete driver than him. Now he will have to prove it.
Machine: Verstappen – Taking up the in-depth analysis by Federico Albano and Carlo Platella, the RB16-B net of the tracks still in the program and considering the unknowns represented by Qatar and Saudi Arabia seems to still have something more than the Mercedes W12 despite the test of force expressed in Turkey. Here you will find all the details that led to this conclusion.
Team: Verstappen – At the moment there is no match between the walls, the strategies and the execution of the pit stops. In Red Bull they can blame themselves for the serious mistake in Monza, where a very long stop for Verstappen led to the collision in the Prima Variante between the Dutchman and Hamilton. Even simply defending the second position Max would have earned more points against Lewis Hamilton, but that episode remains the only strategic flaw for a team that at the moment has proved more cold and lucid than Mercedes in making important decisions or in reading the races. According to our estimates Hamilton and the Mercedes wall have lost almost 60 points in hesitation or bad decisions. A huge amount.
Allies: Hamilton – Sergio Perez in Turkey is once again a factor in the world championship fight just as Valtteri Bottas has done his job, which is to win the Grand Prix by subtracting important points from Verstappen on a Sunday in which Hamilton was forced to come back. In view of the upcoming races, however, in the light of what has been observed so far, especially in qualifying, the Scandinavian could prove more effective than Perez in playing the role of squire. In the hand-to-hand fight the Mexican is superior to the former Williams, but the difficulty in extracting the maximum performance from Checo from Red Bull, especially on the flying lap, could leave Verstappen at the start to manage a situation of two against one , without counting the probable insertions in the front rows by the Ferrari drivers and Lando Norris, who will think exclusively of their respective races, but which could further distance Perez when the traffic lights go out from the top positions.
The result of this analysis therefore sees Verstappen ahead of Hamilton by 3 to 1. Furthermore, taking up the survey we submitted to you a few weeks ago, 56% of you readers had indicated the winner of the 2021 championship in Dutch. The die is cast, starting next weekend there will be six races in seven weekends and we will find out whether the Dutch lion will actually dethrone the English Sir or whether Hamilton will definitively enter the F1 legend by becoming the most titled driver by detaching Michael Schumacher also under this statistical heading.