Quote:
Originally Posted by HeelToeShift
Just to prove the point that it is about how you take corners, all you need to do is watch one of these to see that the line Max takes which is much tighter than anyone else (Lec is close) is where he uses his ability to control the car and get out of corners better despite braking earlier. If you were to measure his distance traveled on a lap it would be shorter than anyone else's due to his lines. Other than Lec, I don't think anyone else quite has the ability to do this at nearly the same level and that is what separates him. Plus again, his car does not have any distinct material advantage over the other cars on the grid other than him driving it.
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The people working in F1 are some of the very smartest people in their field (the drivers maybe not so much). Teams put an extraordinary amount of effort, time and computing power in maximising a cars on track performance. If a particular (different) line suited a competitors cars characteristics then that would not go unnoticed by other teams and copied to see if it produced any benefit for their car. I'm not sure Perez represents a good yardstick with which to judge corner speed given he would have his car set up differently (as much as is possible) to Verstappens and is inherently a quite average racer.
If you are interested you should watch some in car clips of Alonso . He prefers corner entry understeer as a trade off for exception grip at the rear allowing him to get out of the corner earlier and much quicker.
Its not that he has invented a new way of going faster in turns, just maximising the characteristics of the car for the way he likes the car to handle. He won his championships in a Renault (against Schumacher) that had a woeful amount of understeer.
Its not that Verstappens preference for a pointy car and how he can best optimise his corner speed or Alonsos preference for maximum rear grip and his ability to get the car straighter quicker in a turn represents the maximum potential of their respective cars...IOW if the car was designed solely for maximum performance and driven by a robot the car could likely be quicker with more neutral handling characteristics.
Swap Verstappen and Alonso into the others car and they would both struggle.