u/admiraltt

This dude is faster than Russell period. It was very evident today for me that Kimi will be the one to prevail in this championship fight. Today in a track that suited George, he went from pole to p3 and only got p2 from Kimi's engine DNF. Kimi was evidently faster than George today as soon as he passed Russell he immediately put a gap large enough so that George couldn't use the overtake. I think right now the verdict is while George may be equal or faster at one lap pace, Kimi over the race is faster than George, even with a endplate damage on Kimi's wing he was faster and I think George needs to have a hard look in the mirror and figure this out or he's staring down the barrel of a second driver role. This track should fit George like a glove as well as this track still being used for shakedowns so teams know this track like the back of their hand there's absolutely no excuse as to why George dropped from p1 to 3 like that.

So many people seem to think that this season might somehow be a repeat of 2025. The teams second younger driver is achieving great results and is predicted to be the world champion but in the end the more experienced first team driver prevails but I don't think this will be the case for two reasons.

The first reason is how close Lando was to piastri last year. Last year, Lando was basically neck and neck with Oscar all year long or perhaps even ahead of Oscar. For most of the season I can distinctly remember whenever Oscar got pole in quali or first in the race Lando was right behind Oscar especially in quali the margins were practically non-existent last year. Granted that might be because of the regs as well but many times they were seperated by less than a tenth or even hundreds of seconds

The second reason is consistency, more importantly Landon's consistency at getting top results last year. Lando last year bar, bar Baku, Saudi, Qatar,zaanvort, las Vegas, and Canada stood on the podium for every single other race of the year and I'm not talking 3rd he was consistently 1st or second and he would have been on the podium in both zaanvort,Vegas and qatar had his engine not crap the bed in the Netherlands, he wasn't dsq in Vegas, and had McLaren not strategize like a back marker in Qatar. Even in Saudi he finished 4th after starting in 10th due to his crashes. The point being is that besides probably Baku Lando consistently got damm near perfect results last year and most of the ones where he failed was entirely out of his control (besides Canada that one was stupid).

Those are probably the two reasons why I think George will not pull a Lando and prevail in the end because right now looking at George he's having moments where he's nowhere near Kimi right now Monaco and Miami especially. Even in Canada where it is one of if not his best tracks Kimi was right on his tail. Now yes ik people will say oh but neither Miami Monaco is George's strong tracks but I don't think that's a good excuse at all tbh, a driver who's world champion material should be able to still pull decent results even at their worst tracks but it's not looking like that for George. He was nowhere in Miami or Monaco and had this Monaco been in any other year he would have finished 6th while his team mate finished 1st, there was never a point last year where Lando finished that far behind Oscar ever.

Grand prix at one of if not his best track.

Entered here after his worst track and being no where near the pace of his teammate.

Merc brought new upgrades.

Sprint pole and win gaining valuable points on Kimi

Race pole again beating Antonelli to 1st

Race day, most people expected him to win or at least the podium

Led the GP for most of the race

PU craps the bed halfway through

Kimi wins the GP

Leaves Canada with a 43 point gap deficit to Antonelli, only two other times has an F1 driver able to turn around that large of a pt deficit to win the title(2012,2022)

Leclerc and Hamilton are less than 20 pts away from you

I am not exactly a Russel fan but I really felt for the guy today. He was supposed to close the gap to 1st place this weekend but he leaves with a 23 pts loss.