brakeboosted

😮‍💨 It always bums me when this starts up each year. It shifts the focus away from the parties that actually make success happen. It’s a shame that this performative PR game shifts so much credit and emphasis away from the real heroes of F1, the engineers. It’s wielded as a political tool for influence and aimed at shifting public perception in the media by sporting personalities that want to attach success to themselves, while distancing themselves from any shortcomings. It’s not one person that does this, but it surely must make a lot of people laugh a bit each year, and also induce a lot of eye-rolling. To be clear - Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc have no bearing on the efficacy of the SF-26 or the SF-27 chassis, or the Ferrari PU in either year. They are drivers, not engineers, and they do not know what is “fast” as they’re high school educated athletes. Else they’d just build the cars by themselves. This is in essence saying “I told the team we need more horsepower”, and acting like it was the missing revelation. It’s like painting a picture that there’s a hapless group of wayward dullards scurrying around the factory just hoping and waiting for a driver to instruct them on CFD analysis and advanced kinematic design and materials composition. Engineering. Engineering. Engineering. Drivers have an utterly negligible impact on the car. It must be said repeatedly until it sticks, because it is true. If Ferrari wins the the engineering battle next season, they’ll have a shot at a championship. They lost it on BOTH the chassis side with several deficiencies, and the PU side with several deficiencies this year. If the engineering team wins that battle against the other teams in 2027, there’s a shot at championships. If they don’t, there’s not. We’ve fallen short of the bar of F1-75 and SF-24, but improved on SF-23 and SF-25. Engineering must take another step forward. The prevailing constant is that the drivers will have next to nothing to do with that, either way. Fred has been methodically rebuilding the Ferrari inner working on the engineering side since 2023. To win, that effort must come good. Give these genius engineers the credit (and blame) they’re due, as macro results are entirely their doing.