#I'm a big fan of tyre management as a skill but I have to say 2017-19 was pushing it. like it was just The Only Skill for a while

[batsplat]

i think several things that impressed me the most is that acosta also has sprints to contend with, so double the work on the weekend compared to marc’s 2013 season. plus with modern aero dirty air is now a prevalent thing, which wasn’t so in 2013, so tyre management is crucial, of course, he still has to master that, but there are elders of the sport that still can do that (not naming names jack miller) and acosta is still doing better than them! ducati today has a super developed software that determines tyre wear, and that lead to the entire ducati lineup picking a soft at cota this year, and pedro has literally on his own picked the correct tyre, which was a medium. i know that the ducati’s most likely followed pecco’s lead, but they’ve all run race pace in practice, has not one of them felt dubious about the soft? this was a pretty great indicator of pedro’s instinctive understanding and feel for the tyres, the bike and the track conditions. and most importantly, pedro is already fighting a very competitive marc!

like, we don’t know how pedro would fare in a title fight rn, but we also cannot tell how mentally 2013 marc would have coped with not immediately being on the best bike and not fighting at the front.

don't really have much to say beyond, yeah, completely agree with all of this. how quickly he's gotten the hang of the tyre management is insanely impressive and was far from a given... look at how the moto2 field this year has been completely mixed up by the switch. he struggled basically for one race and since then, he's kept progressing

the austin thing was very funny to me yeah. I do vaguely get pecco's reasoning for his tyre choice, but obviously it's a sign of confidence to be willing to go your own way. the contrast with jorge martin is quite fun - despite jorge's general air of confidence verging on cockiness, he was spooked into making the wrong call and following pecco's lead. (admittedly, I imagine he doesn't trust his judgement as much as he perhaps should after the phillip island fiasco last year.) pedro didn't let himself get psyched out into the wrong call, he went a different way from all the ktm's, absolutely paid off for him

and yeah, the marc 2013 point is true... I think this is partly an expectation thing - if he'd been on a worse bike he probably would've handled it fine, I just reckon he would've crashed a lot. the sprint thing is another important reminder that different eras are just. very tough to compare. I think you can go two ways on this - on the one hand, pedro's definitely having to deal with more strain as a result of just how intense race weekends have become, plus he's only now trying out this format (unlike everyone else in the class who already did it last year). that being said, the experts seem to think that the best way to adapt to a bike is to actually ride it in race conditions, so it's not implausible that the sprints have allowed someone as talented as him to get to grips with the motogp bikes faster. it's tough to compare! all of these things are tough to compare! all we know for certain is that pedro is incredibly impressive and is going to go on to win a shit ton of stuff

[charles-leclerc-official]

Hi, I am curious what you think about Leclerc vs Sainz. I feel like a lot of Charles fans underrate Carlos (imo he's an upper midfield driver, very solid) but also many Carlos fans treat him like the second coming of Christ, it's insufferable.

Do you think he's pretty close to Charles in terms of ability? I mean he isn't terrible, but Charles is better in the metrics, like one lap pace, race pace, tyre management, race starts, W2W/overtaking (did I miss anything else). I think some of it also comes down to the issues in Charles' garage but I don't know to what extent, I don't have the numbers. I would love to see corrected data from anyone if it's possible, but idk.

I feel like the gap should be bigger. But maybe ironically I am one of those people who underrate Carlos. He is a strong driver but I don't see him in the WDC conversations whereas Charles often is.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong but Charles has outperformed and maximized the SF-24 more than Carlos has. Suzuka, Spa, come to mind. I don't recall Carlos doing anything particularly extraordinary with the car this season (again please correct me if I am wrong!!) but he has been very solid.

I do know for sure that in terms of raw talent, Charles is better than Carlos. Higher peaks too.

I mean, I think that the numbers and data really speak for themselves. By any measure Charles is the better driver, but that doesn't mean that Carlos isn't a solid driver who pulls consistent results. Two things can be true and I think that usually gets overlooked. The comparison fallacy a lot of people try to paint when comparing any drivers is that if one driver is better then it means the guy they are comparing him to is bad, when those are not the only options. You can have two good drivers on a team and one be better than the other, it happens a lot.

As far as fans go, I don't really like to attack anyone for hyping their driver. Of course fans are going to say their driver is the best, we all do it, so I don't think that's unique or anything to read too deeply into.

Your assessment it pretty accurate as far as performance goes. Charles pushes things to the next level and demonstrates his skill weekly. I agree, Carlos has been solid, nothing extraordinary, but solid.

I think Carlos' best performance this year as far as driving goes was probably Austria. He stayed close enough to the front even with the SF-24 struggling to be able to podium when Max and Lando went out. Australia was probably his best qualifying lap (possibly tied with Monaco tbh)

Pretty close is subjective. I don't think they are in the same category, I think Charles is the better driver in just about every category and the data does support this. Correcting the data for all their DNFs and car trouble would be an undertaking. I believe someone did that for them through 2023, but we have more data now so.

And the gap between teammates shouldn't be too big. If it is then there is a problem. Either with the talent the team has hired or the car. They are in the same car so the gap isn't going to be massive if they are both driving well, even if one is better. Ideal results are 1-2s or as close as we can get to that.

I think one reason people get lost in the gap to the teammate "debates" is they just take the result stats and the H2H graphics, when digging into the actual track performance and data reveals a more detailed look at a drivers actual performance. Results only tell you so much. And of course there are just a lot of things that are outside a driver's control.