u/n0tfr1

I've added flairs for all of the 2026 drivers, but let me know if you guys also want flairs for the teams, junior formulas or for older icons (past champions, or older popular fan favorite drivers).

Over the coming weeks, I will add also the ability to add multiple flairs (once I figure out how to), and maybe even emojis to make them stand out more.

Also added post flairs to help make it more organized and easier to see the content you want to see.

I was bored in the offseason and so decided to go back and rewatch races from the 2012 and 2013 seasons, and what I found was quite weird.

The amount of times there was a Lotus finishing on the podium or even contending for a race win was absurd, and even more considering the driver lineup they had. I don't have a secret hate boner for Raikkonen and Grosjean or anything, but the fact that they were able to contend so regularly really made me wonder how good those Lotus cars really were, especially when you look at their careers after those two seasons.

The "on paper" Results:

WCC: Finished 4th in both 2012 and 2013.
WDC:
Raikkonen -
3rd in 2012
5th in 2013 (Missed the last 2 races of the season or good chances he finishes 3rd again as he was 3rd for the majority of the season until AD).
Grosjean -
8th in 2012 (Literally got BANNED from 1 race due to his on track shenanigans at SPA and thus dropped behind Massa).
7th in 2013

Just because RBR won the WDC and WCC does not mean they were better, looking back they obviously was a night and day difference between the level of drivers (Not even mentioning that Ferrari had Prime Fernando Alonso and McL/Merc had THE Lewis Hamilton + Button/Rosberg). Prime Vettel and "washed" Webber were easily much better than returning after a sabbatical Raikkonen and Grosjean (I would argue Raikkonen was closer to Webber and Massa than he was to Alonso, Hamilton, and Vettel). Also, what Raikkonen and Grosjean achieved in f1 post 2013 prove that they were flattered by a good car IMO.

Teammate H2H for both 2014 onwards (I tried my best to luck correct but its not perfect):

Raikkonen 🇫🇮 (Alonso):

Quali H2H: 3-16 ❌

Race H2H(NON DNF): 1-15 ❌

Raikkonen 🇫🇮 (Vettel):

Quali H2H: 21-57 ❌ (Vettel struggled heavily to adapt to the 2016 Ferrari due to weaker rear end and strong front end, more of a testament to Vettel's adaptability/driving style rather than Raikkonen improving).

Race H2H(NON DNF): 18-49 ❌

Raikkonen 🇫🇮 (Giovinazzi):

Quali H2H: 24-31 ❌

Race H2H(NON DNF): 35-15 ✅

Grosjean 🇫🇷 (Maldonado):

Quali H2H: 29-5 ✅

Race H2H(NON DNF): 10-6 ✅

Grosjean 🇫🇷 (Gutiérrez):

Quali H2H: 12-9 ✅

Race H2H(NON DNF): 6-7 ❌

Grosjean 🇫🇷 (Magnussen):

Quali H2H: 38-35 ✅

Race H2H(NON DNF): 22-24 ❌

[Feel free to correct me in the comments if I glossed over any major incidents or made any other mistakes, I had to use multiple sources for these H2H stats and they aren't ever perfect].

No hard feelings with Giovinazzi, Maldonado, Gutiérrez, and Magnussen but none of them were exactly F1 superstars. Alonso and Vettel were quite respectable teammates (duh), but Raikkonen didn't exactly have the best record against either one of them.

Notable things Raikkonen did after 2013: Monaco 2017 POLE & Cota 2018 WIN (Both on pure merit).
Only notable thing Grosjean did after 2013: Spa 2015 Podium (Vettel's tyre exploded with less than 2 laps to go but fair play to be in 4th regardless). TBF driving at HAAS doesn't exactly set a driver up for success either way, but the teammate H2H didn't justify him moving up to a better team either.

Basically what I'm tryna say is that the career trajectories of Kimi and Romain after leaving Lotus strongly support the argument that the car was a highly competitive, top-tier machine that masked their later struggles.

I'm also not gonna sit here and claim that the Lotus Renaults were rocketships or anything but I do believe that over the whole season, they were barely, overall the best/most consistent car. I think my claim for 2012 is actually something that has been said by many people before, but not so much for 2013, but I do think that to some extent you could argue that the 2013 Lotus had the potential to be as good as the RB9 that year but it simply lacked the drivers. Although RBR was the main engine "partner" and Lotus had the "customer" team support but yet again these regulations were based on the aero more than the engines, and it's not new for a customer team to be faster than the main engine team in such regulations as shown by McL in 2024 and 2025.

Although Adrian Newey is one of the greatest engineers in F1 history, he is also human at the end of the day and won't guarantee you the best chassis/aero on the grid (ie Aston this year or the unused 2003 McL, 2004 McL or even 2006 Mcl). According to him, the most dominant car besides the RB19 of his was the RB6 (2010 RB), not the 2013 RB9. "In 2010, we probably had as big a performance advantage as 2023." - https://autoracer.it/adrian-newey-red-bull-2023-advantage-similar-to-2010/

(His core point was about the pure size of the performance gap. He was implying that the RB6 and RB19 represented the two highest peaks of sheer, raw speed advantage that Red Bull ever held over the rest of the F1 grid, he failed to mention anything regarding 2013 or the RB9). While the RB9 was obviously a great car, I think it was more Vettel jelling with the car and Ferrari being Ferrari and McLaren regressing SHARPLY from previous seasons, with Mercedes being focused on the 2014 engine regulations to make it seem more dominant than it was.

In Conclusion: I do believe that the Lotus Renaults were the overall best cars in 2012 and 2013, and if driven by the likes of Alonso, Hamilton, and Vettel would have won the championship.

BTW I do know the emojis make it seem like ChatGPT but I assure you I wrote every word myself (it took me almost 3 hours of research 🫩), the emojis I just threw in last second to make it somewhat readable/understandable cuz the statistics were getting super cluttered and hard to read.

Recently there was a post in here (about Russell's Monaco penalty blunder) that made me think about Mercedes operationally as a team. That, and also Antonelli now matching Hamilton at 5 race wins in a row. Because of it, I went back and looked through the 2019-2021 period specifically at Mercedes race execution and their strategies.

And from my research I found a very inexcusable couple of races from Mercedes in 2020. 2020 was the year of the dominant W11, nothing new to discuss there but it really made me think why Lewis could never win more than 5 races in a row in such a dominant car so I went back and analyzed all the races that season:

Quickly recapping the other races before I get to the ones that matter - Lewis had a stinker in the opening round at Austria and a penalty from a collision into Albon demoted him from P2 to P4 (his fault 100%). Then he wins the next 3 races and finishes P2 at the 70th Anniversary GP as Mercedes just had worse tyre degradation than RBR that weekend and Verstappen stormed to the win easily.

Now the actual stretch of races begin:

Barcelona - 🥇
Spa - 🥇
Monza - Pitting Hamilton when Leclerc crashed and a safety car came out but the pit lane was closed - cost him the win.
Mugello - 🥇
Sochi - Told Hamilton the wrong part of the track to do his practice starts at which caused him to get penalized in the race and cost him the win yet again.
Nürburgring - 🥇
Portimão - 🥇
Imola - 🥇
Istanbul - 🥇
Bahrain - 🥇
Sakhir* - COVID (missed)
Yas Marina - COVID (yes he did race and finish P3 but he was not advised to by his doctors yet he did it anyways. he was still recovering from COVID and was, didn't race at "100%" and felt "destroyed" from fatigue after such a grueling race which was fine for everyone else)

*not even mentioning the strategyfest that sakhir was for mercedes even without lewis in the car.

Looking at other historic win streaks like Verstappen in 2023 (10) and Vettel in 2013 (9), it really makes you think that RBR have always been the best team operationally and in order to get such win streaks you need so many factors to be perfect; the machinery (dominant and reliable), an amazing driver (preferably generational), and a team that can operate at a high level for the entire stretch without making silly unforced errors.

Not to mention stuff after like Hungary 2021 which cost Hamilton the title just as much as Abu Dhabi or Azerbaijan that year.

The one on the right was the only one I could find with a wrong package.

When the season began I was sure it was going to be 2014-2016 Mercedes all over again with maybe a bit of Ferrari (like in 2015) mixed in between for podiums and the occasional race win here and there. But McLaren's progress from just Australia to Japan and then from Japan to Miami/Canada has been immense and I do think they have the 2nd best car right now. The only problem is the gap to Mercedes themselves and the points that McLaren have thrown away (especially for Norris) this season:

- Australia: TBF nothing against McLaren here they pretty much did the best they could and Norris finished P5 which was the maximum he could have gotten in that car holding off a faster Verstappen too at the end. He did hit debris and get front wing damage in Q3 which might have affected his qualifying position but I don't think he was finishing ahead of Mercedes and Ferrari in that race anyways so P5 was the best possible finish.

- China: In the sprint he beat a faster Antonelli (I believe Antonelli had a penalty that went against his finishing time for crashing into Hadjar) to a P4 only behind Russell and the two Ferraris. Best possible result pretty much. In the race he couldn't even start cuz of mechanical issues.

- Japan: He spent much of the practice sessions in the garage. FP2 was limited by a hydraulic leak, and an Energy Recovery System (ERS) battery issue sidelined him for the majority of FP3. Without much practice he ended up P5 in the race only really beating Hamilton from the top 3 teams, a bit of a missed opportunity with Piastri P2 but that happens sometimes, not the most frustrating thing ever.

- Miami: He won the sprint from sprint pole when the conditions were right for the car with Piastri P2, good points. In the main race, he finished a whole pit-stop ahead of Piastri and only lost the race to Antonelli because of the undercut which McLaren did not even try to cover off for whatever reason. I think that was a win gone because of McLaren incompetency.

- Canada: Once again during the sprint when things got bad between the Mercedes cars and Antonelli slipped, Norris kept the pace up to be right up there with them and capitalizing on the situation snatching P2. Then in the main race McLaren start the race on INTERS for some reason and while Norris does get to the lead he has to pit from it cuz of McLaren strategy. If he starts on something more "normal" like the softs I think that's another easy P2 for him at the worst with Russell retiring and we assume Antonelli still wins.

Again, this is all hypothetical and part of racing but Norris could genuinely be P2 in the championship right now with 91 points (even assuming his finishes of P6 in China and P5 in Japan). I think the discussion about Norris being the best driver this season has already happened on this subreddit before so no point doing that again but I felt like there was no discussion about his horrible luck and the McLaren incompetency that could end up costing them a potential shot at the drivers championship come seasons end.