u/registaarole

Look I'm not here to be a contrarian. But the way this sub has been treating these two drivers is genuinely baffling to me.

Russell is in the fastest car on the grid right now and Antonelli is using that to absolutely demolish the field. Same car. Same tyres.

And what's Russell doing?

Getting lapped in Monaco. Qualifying P6 while his 19-year-old teammate goes P1.

The man is third in the championship, behind a teenager who's in his second full F1 season. And what's the excuse every time?

Luck. Software issues. Bad strategy.

It's never him, is it? He literally said "I wish I could take some blame." Mate your rookie teammate in the SAME car just won his fifth consecutive race. At some point the mirror has to come out.

Now let's talk about Sainz.

Carlos is driving a car that is overweight, underperforming and nowhere near where they expected it to be under the new regs. He missed qualifying entirely in Australia due to a PU issue. He started P17 in China. And he's still scratching points. 9th in China, 9th in Miami, 9th in Canada. Fighting for every single one of them against cars that are much faster. Williams is admitting that the car underdelivered. Sainz himself admitted it tested his faith in the project.

And through all of that? No tantrums. No "I can't comprehend this." Just a "I need to be patient. I know we've hit a bump and my personal performance has been pretty good."

That IS good performance. That's what good racers do. They extract maximum result from a substandard package. We celebrated Alonso for this for years. We celebrated Sainz for this at Ferrari when the car was inconsistent and the politics were a mess.

Russell meanwhile has a car capable of winning every race and is getting lapped in Monaco. Funny enough, last year he was taking digs at the McLaren boys about how him and Max would have extracted better performance with their car that "should be winning every race".

I know the luck argument has some merit. Canada retirement was a genuine mechanical issue. Fine. But the qualifying pace gap to Antonelli, that's a pattern. Not a string of coincidences. And his response to all of it has been to sound increasingly like a driver who's lost the plot a bit mentally.

Sainz has far more points per car performance unit than "Future World Champion Mr Saturday" if we go about calculating it

Russell is not the man robbed by fate. He's being outclassed by his teammate and outgrittered by a guy in a backmarker.

And after all of this, it should be obvious that Sainz is a level above Russell. He's not a top 6 driver.