@UCRXo1FQ2gdTs-_OHk_3mkgw if Bottas would be ‘allowed’ to race, he could possibly take away points that would otherwise go to Hamilton, decreasing chances for their first driver to win the WDC. Also, if they would fight with each other, they could hinder each other thus underperforming for the constructor’s WC, too.

He was always "allowed to race". It's fair game at the start of a season. But, when Hamilton starts pulling ahead in the points and becoming the title contender, those points are more important to protect. Hamilton is usually the one qualifying in front, usually the one ahead on track, not because Mercedes dictate it that way, but because Hamilton is that good, and Bottas just isn't. If Bottas got off to a great start and is leading the championship and ahead of Lewis, then the strategies would favour him. Just like with Rosberg at the team it was always more even.

But don't count him out yet. He might well and truly come to play as a second driver for merc and george once lewis retires. He might also be a second driver at other teams like red bull ferrari and mclaren later down the road. He is by far one of the best no. 2s on the grid

@@button4boy Tell me you don't really believe this. Ham is there golden boy or god how ever you want to look at it. And they will do nothing to put that at risk. Even F1 as a whole has Ham as the god of the sport. Very rarely do see them not using kid gloves with him. With the cars to day it is so easy to make one driver look better than his team mate. 1 setting down on power that's all it takes. no matter HAM will always be F1's god going forward deserved or not. and that treatment has lost fans to the sport.

Bottas's reaction at Monza seeing Hamilton's crash was PURE GOLD! Oh No, Anyways! Man you just killed the guy without seeing him!

Hamilton and bottas both said that if one of found a setup that worked really well they'd tell the other.

Hamilton and Bottas get to decide the qualifying order on alternating weekends every year. Hamilton isn't favoured when it comes to the tow/clean air.

Bottas, Rosberg is quicker, can you confirm?

They take turns towing each other. One week Bottas is being towed, the next it's lewis

Anybody can give a tow in qualy well except maybe someone like Mazepin lol

He was still out qualified by a lot, I don't mean getting 2nd. I mean several 10ths down.

@@howdareyou41 sometimes the #2 driver ends up with things to test they cant take the risk on with the #1 driver. Its really hard to fully judge a #2 driver but if you consider that their role is to give the #1 guy the best possible outcome then bottas is a legend.

Bottas' contract never claimed for him to be a number 2. He's never been in championship position, so there's no point to favour him over Lewis. That's how it works and has worked throughout history

@@dylantarboton Spot on. You're one of the rare people here that understand that.

@@GonzoDonzo Yeah and if he was the better driver than Merc would've given him the better car. You think Merc just hands out the best car to the worst driver because they like him so much? No LH is in the best car because he's the best. If Bottas was better, he would've been #1.

Good point, I agree he played a vital role in pushing teams to make mistakes

Bottas and Barrichello to Schumacher are the best 2nd Drivers

It's no coincidence Bottas has been at Mercedes 5 years, with Lewis winning everything Bottas job was to assist that and to confirm the WCC... Which he did flawlessly. He is however no superstar

True, with the second Redbull or Ferrari not showing up half the time, Bottas as the second Mercedes always gave Mercedes more strategy options etc.

@@sethnicholson8048 coincidentally, bottas and Rubens at there stint as there teammates dog, both have 9 wins, unless bottas can somehow secure another one. But seeing how imo, without the penalty at monza, he probably woulda won, it isn’t totally out of possibility.

facts

and even his last yeat at RB was complete rubbish

@@MHWGamer due to Car Errors but i would Not consider 2 wins in His Last year rubbish

@@janvandeloo5854 the only thing I truely remember about that season is Danny Ric climbing out of his car every other race. He wasn't terrible, the car was rubbish I should better say

@@MHWGamer Daniel and Max were probably the most talented pair since Prost/Senna honestly. Not much between them in '18 either except Daniel's exceptionally French PU's

It was just more public. Every team prioritized one driver when they are competing for the championship against an opposing driver

@@adhilAKApeekaboo even Hamilton/Rosberg?

@@GirlOnBus no Hamilton/Rosberg both barely followed any team orders and they didn't need team orders because they were miles ahead of other teams.

@@GirlOnBus in that case they were fighting each other so there were very few team orders

@@GirlOnBus there was no one close to merc, so they were allowed to race

From the subtitles it seems the thing that was cut was a claim that during the race of the infamous "Valterri it's James" incident, he could've won.

Bottas barely makes mistakes in general.

No that's a requirement for popularity. People con themselves into defending a driver for ruining his teammate's race out of brat-like spite (be that Vettel before he calmed tf down and grew up, or Verstappen), then having done that they have to convince themselves that defending the indefensible must have been worth it. Bottas should have wrecked otherwise good races at every opportunity, he should have deliberately broken rules knowing that his by then legion mindless supporters would be enough reason for the stewards to cave in, he should have refused to accept any responsibility for anything. More than anything else he should have had an influential and by all reports even more vile father to intercede on his behalf. In normal life that kind of behaviour attracts contempt and marks the person out as merely pathetic, but personality cults are not real life.

@@jimcrelm9478 What the actual F ?

@@Elias_g1 We should sat him down and force him to listen watch SuperMax for a couple of hours as a therapy/torture session.

@@dyingearth Tsunoda Swearing endlessly may be a better punishment.

I really want him to win at Sochi.

You think he hasn't been going all out?

@@JP-ug1xr I don’t think so. I seems to me like he restricts himself for the benefit of the team.

@@TheOvieShow People out here really acting like Bottas could have won more races and perhaps even championships if he'd wanted to, but instead he deliberately held himself back. Get a grip. He's a great driver, he's just not on the level of a driver like Hamilton and was comprehensively outperformed.

@@rvfharrier Some people may say that but did I say that? Did I say he wouldve won championships? I said i wanted him to go full out, which implies he did hold back sometimes, which he does. Doesn’t mean I think he’ll win championships, it just means i want to see his full potential.

We can dream :)

Next year is a brave new world. Who the fuck knows how this'll turn out... For all we know, Mercedes could end up backmarkers and Giovinazzi could become a WDC.

@@mitchell-wallisforce7859 BUT HERE COMES SEBASTIAN VETTEL

Honestly next year is the great unknown. Red Bull will fight the title until it's secured, it might gonna compromise them next year. Mercedes in the other hand I'm not so sure. Will they go for the title or will they split the car development.

@@rizkyanandita8227 They have said that they've stopped developing the 2021 car. Big names to look out for next year: Mercedes, McLaren, Ferrari, and Aston Martin Teams that I think will have a substantial improvement: All the remaining teams except Red Bull who'll need to play catch up so not in the top 4 therefore in the midfield. So basically 4 way title fight and super tight midfield battle. No backmarkers. Fingers crossed🤞

Surprised he missed that.

@@abhiverma9294 Not so surprise if you had certain opinion in mind in the first place. It’s called “confirmation bias”, which essentially says that you’ll look for evidences that support your perspective, and neglect those don’t, deliberately or not.

Looks like you have a bad case of confirmation bias @jsquared1013. What you are saying is not true, only what you imagine.

That's a baseless conspiracy.

Average distance behind is Massive. Albon went from 5 seconds to lapped. Gasly was usually about 20 seconds further than Alex behind. Perez was 4 seconds ahead of Bottas in France in a track favouring RedBull. Still, Sergio is the closest only really going off track the second race of Austria onward. Even his close 4th at Styrian Grand Prix wasn't that Great. He lost 4 seconds on a slow pitstop to finish half a second behind Valterri. Engineers estimated the RedBull was 17.5-20 seconds faster a race at the RedBull Ring. This means Sergio was about 12 seconds slower.

Yeah I agree. They wanted rid of ricciardo f0r a similar reason mercedes were secretly happy when rosberg retired. It meant they could get a proper 1:2. Ricciardo was too close to verstappen and if I remember rightly it cost them on raceway quote often

@@patrickgiordan5483 You can dominate with a great second driver but the Most gaudy dominations are McLaren 1988-89, Mercedes 2014-2016 and Williams in 1987.

Yeah, absolutely absurd to include RIC in the "other" RB driver category in the video

This is again though when verstappen was extremely young and he still is

ricciardo was world champion material back in the day

Um... Did you forget that it's perez first season in rbr? Versus bottas 5 years?

@@hazardous5723 That didn’t stop Albon did it?

@@hazardous5723 bottas got 13 podiums, including 3 race win in his 1st season for Merc so...

@@hazardous5723 Shall i point out all the stupid talentless crap that Perez has pulled? or should we talk about the first 5 years of his career? Perez is garbage.

@@ia303 not hard to do when your car is miles ahead of the competition

Coulthard, Barrichello, Webber, Bottas. They're quite easy to compare. If you ask me : COU > BOT > WEB > BAR I don't think Barrichello was that good. We can see he had another opportunity in the best car with Brawn, and Button, despite being lesser than Schumi, still dominated easily. Of course it's not an exact science, just my opinion but my feeling about the 4 lasting dominant pairings since I started watching F1. Coulthard is the only one that could have been a deserving world champion. He even beat Mika in 2001, but Mika was completely off for some readon that year, to the point of quitting at age just 34.

@@hugolouessard3914 in my opinion a 2nd driver should be dominated, if both drivers are too similar they crash or fight too much, the 2nd driver shouldnt have any own ambitions of winning the title for the role of just being there to help your first driver i think there are no better drivers than Bottas/Barrichello

@@hugolouessard3914 Bottas already has more podiums than DC... and more points than all of them.

@@crymsun The changes in # of races per season (about 25% more now than 20 years ago) and in the points system (for most of DC's career a win was only 10 points) make comparisons like that kind of meaningless.

@@crymsun OK, but Mercedes is more dominant than McLaren ever was during Coulthard's time (even 98/99 there were less races and the car was unreliable). And about the points, I think you're aware that the points system changed twice since the late 90's, and the average points for a position more than tripled !

Major headache because he was to good??? That’s super funny. He was good for sure but in 2018 he got trashed by a 20 year old so bad he fled to a midfield team. Let’s not act like Ricciardo was anywhere near Verstappen from Monaco onwards. Before that he was very strong in comparison to Verstappen.

@@HerreDePerre haha spot the fan that's only started watching F1 this season 🤣🤣 yes of course he did. Look at RB's struggles to find a replacement for him, it's taken them 20 years to find a (possibly) adequate short-term 2nd driver. That's the whole point of my comment, GaslyAlbonPerez's record against is nowhere near Bottas' but including Ricciardo there artificially inflates it. Ricciardo was wayyyyy too good to be a true number 2 driver like Bottas or Barrichello, and when he left to avoid them pigeonholing him then he put the second seat plans into a tailspin.

@@HerreDePerre Trashed?Lmao,his engine died million times,how the f he can beat anyone like that

Agreed... although he was also a strong #1 driver, beating every teammate at Williams. :)

Bottas is not even remotely close to Hamilton on race pace. Quali pace is another story tho because Bottas is very good over one lap.

@@crymsun That's why I think this move to Alfa isn't as bad as it seems for him. I don't expect it'll take him too long to get used to the car, and soon enough he'll be in a position to lead the team as a #1. At least mentally, I'm sure that'll be a better environment for him.

saves me writing it, cheers!

Taken this to mind, for me one more thing has to be asked. Could you have a definitive second driver, that consistantly get's second place, when there is another team, challanging for wins? If Bottas in 2018 with Vettel, or now with Max, would be so close, to challange for second, would't that mean, he also would be in the position to challange for wins alot of times? I think if you want your second driver, be on par with a driver from another team, that is on par with your first driver in qualy, race speed and results you have to accepet, that he will fight for wins and thus the championship.

But Mercedes were incredibly dominant in 2019 and 2020

@@skrlaviolette He's finished 2nd 18 times to Lewis as a Mercedes Driver. Of Course Max, Seb, Charles, Daniel, Kimi and Carlos have quite a few 2nd places since 2017 as well.

Rosberg still did way better than bottas in head to head comparisons both in quali and race AND a better win Ratio as well. Hamilton was clearly better than Rosberg, but Nico is heavily slept on considering that his only rival for the time he was in championship contention is someone who a lot of people would argue is GOAT.

You can’t really make performance comparisons with people in differcars

You forgot China with the safety car.

And 2021 with the 43 hour pitstop in Monaco and the horrible strategy in France costing him two more podiums... don't get me started on Imola.

well yes, I would love to see some statistics including only races they both finished, cuz Bottas has a lot of dnfs and Hamilton had 62 race finish streak :D

Down bad 😔

Yes!

A shame theres no jazz

*sad Schumacher noises*

Absolutely, also he is now much more mature and calculator, you can see also in his approach with the fans, always thanking them also when he perfectly knows that they booh him.

@@videomozzi399 Can you imagine the outcry if he gave those booing the middle finger.

Nobody was anywhere near as fast as Merc in 2020 and yet Bottas still only barely beat Verstappen thanks to some luck

@@deeznoots6241 in 2015 when Lewis won the championship in Texas, Rosberg was 3rd in the championship.

well in 2013 rosberg also finnished close to hamilton and hamilton was clear number one that year as you could see in malaysia that year...

@@OwTim At least he then won 3 consecutive races. Bottas didn't win consecutive races at any point in his career; even Charles Leclerc has already.

This is a great analogy!

omg I used the same Pippen analogy! Spot on. Jordan himself said the Bulls wouldn't have won so many without Pippen.

When Jordan retired for two years, the Bulls were still pretty competitive with Pippen leading the team. If we saw more of the Russell-Bottas pairing, then we could really see how good Bottas could be in Mercedes.

Pippen would have been the star-player in every other team, with the Bulls he was the second best player of the league having a harmonious relationship on the court with the best player of the league. What could go wrong!

I'm sorry, can someone please explain to me why this analogy makes sense to you? :) I have no idea who that is, I'm afraid.

That happened once. Look up Denny Hulme.

yah poor guy getting to race F1 cars for a living

They're eight thousand times better.

I don't rate Webber as highly as you do. I think he was less good than Bottas, it's just that in 09 and 10 Vettel wasn't at his best yet. The mast 3 years the gap was enormous !! Last year 13 years to 0 something like that... Sure in 2010 he was in contention for the title until pretty late but he had the best car and Vettel had had more reliability issues, and as I said wasn't at his best yet.

I think the dominance of the Red Bull cars of that era means we don't appreciate just how good he was. He was regularly putting in pole laps that blew the rest away, and off the grid he would pull away at seconds a lap for the first few laps, then be able to manage his pace. Also, he was so good that it disguised the occasional car weakness: such as when he won something like seven races in a row after being behind at the summer break. That wasn't the car, that was Seb doing his thing. It's just a shame that he doesn't get the recognition because his strength was driving super fast rather than the wheel to wheel battles we love to see.

@@tomhutchins7495 I'm not trying to depreciate Vettel's skills, he was really impressive. However, the car was clearly the best, even in 2010 and 2012, even if it was by a lesser margin than 2011 and 2013, and he did a very good job, but I think it's only in 2011 that he clearly reached his peak. And from then, Webber was quite far behind most of the time. Well, far behind for a good driver in a dominant car. In 2011, he got 3rd by only 1 point, very very far from Vettel in the standings, despite the car being miles ahead of the competition. In 2012, he finished only 6th in the championship. And in 2013, he didn't win a single race, had just half the points of his teammate, and was justa few points ahead of 5th place, despite the car being the most dominant it was ever been !! He wasn't even able to get a vice-champion place, when Barrichello did it in 2002 and 2004, Bottas did it in 2019 and 2020 And Coulthard did it in 2001, despite not havinga car as dominant, unreliable, and having Michael Schumacher as an opponent.

If you are pretty sure Russel will beat or be equal to Hamilton in the beginning...I really don’t care about what else you have to say

You know, opinions are like assholes, everybody's got one :D I am entitled to my own opinion and I don't really care if anyone cares about it. If there's a conversation to be had, I am willing to have it in a civilized matter, you telling me you don't care for my opinion because you disagree with it doesn't affect me in the slightest and doesn't really make for good conversation. I am by no means an expert and I will always agree that I could be wrong as sure as I may be. From what I see, George Russell (2 l's this time, I just noticed I missed one before) is the better driver - see Spa qualifying as the latest evidence for this) and since he already drove the Merc and had a really good outing I believe in a top car he can win races... just as Lando Norris showed (even though he didn't win races and is not yet in a top car but a strong one), just as Charles Leclerc did with a top car at the time, but not the best car.

Vrum's Adventures So your entire basis for this statement is 1 qualifying session? Considering he would be outpointed by his teammate if it wasn’t for that “race” he “earned” a podium in, it is very easy to point out logical errors with your opinion

@@rickhaavisto9023 I believe you are misreading what I said... that Spa quali was just the latest evidence... and probably best indicator yet. Rain is a great equalizer of car perfromances leaving driver skill to show. He beat everybody except Max. Still, with a car that should be at most fighting for a place in Q2 (where Latifi got a grand total of 2 times and Russell makes it look like that's the norm) he made it to Q3 3 times this year so far. Ignoring Spa, Russel and Latifi have 6 points each... so please don't point out logical errors with incorrect facts.

Vrum's Adventures Yes, they both have the same points, but excluding Spa, Russell is behind his teammate in points... Qualifying speed doesn’t matter if it doesn’t translate to race pace...

Lewis has always won by a pretty substantial margin in the Bottas era. The smallest gap to second was 46 points, just under two clear race wins. I'd say he probably still would have won his four titles in the Bottas era had he had a different teammate. This season is the closest by far, but Bottas hasn't really had an impact.

"Incredible qualifying performances in qualifying, to qualify in a good qualifying postion compared to his teammates qualifying position in qualifying."

Bottas has secured many points this season, despite his 3 DNFs and Baku when he finished outside of the points.

I understand those who hate on him, I mean, you have the best car in the whole field and doesn't want/can't fight for podiums and wins? Seems cowardice. But for Merc, he was the best they could ever get in that no.2 position.

@@VGOM2000 He was fighting for poles and wins though...

@@VGOM2000 uhm... he got 9 wins and 55 podiums with Merc.... and almost half the points. Pretty sure he can and does fight for podiums/wins.

@@crymsun He just couldn't step up his game against the likes of Hamilton and Verstappen. That's what I'm talking about, but yeah, those are good numbers nonetheless.

No for 2 reasons: That would leave out the decimal place. Besides, there's a cap. So the distribution isn't skewed like it would be if there were no cap (as in, you could finish 1 millionth).

@@Gameboob You don't need an infinite domain for a distribution's mean to exhibit a skew relative to other measures of central tendency. You are right that the median looses the decimal place, which is not a great result, The problem is there are no decimal places and the difference between the various places (eg 1st and 2nd versus 11th and 12th) is not the same. Taking the mean has implicit assumptions that aren't met by the ordinal numbers. Measurements like lap times can be averaged and the result is a number that still makes sense as a lap time. The average of how you place in a set of races is (usually) not itself a valid place the median is. I'm honestly not sure how to properly preserve the kind of granularity you get from using the average without violating the underlying assumption of the statistic you are using.

Multi 21 though

Red bull did that too tho, during Vettel/Webber

@@EmyrDerfel The multi 21 incident is about Vettel IGNORING Team orders. Red Bull tried team orders often, but both their drivers ignored them frequently.

Also, Lewis getting the better strategy skews the stats a bit. There have been multiple races where Bottas has been the net race leader, or could've challenged for the win pace wise, but got fucked strategically by a safety car etc. Im not saying it would ahve a huge effect, but it's definently something to keep in mind.

Yes, this weekend was fantastic for Valtteri. Pole, Sprint winner and Last to 3rd in the main Race.