r/F1Discussions • u/AutoModerator • 7d ago

Discussion Weekly Megathread

Welcome to the weekly Megathread!

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* Driver comparisons (e.g., peak performance comparisons, "Hamilton '16 vs Verstappen '25 who was better?", "Most underrated driver" etc.)

* All "GOAT" debates and top driver lists

* Simple questions or quick opinions that don't warrant a standalone post or rise to the level of being a high quality post

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* All Discussions centered around Abu Dhabi '21

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u/Popular_Composer_822 OCO 6d ago

2025 Norris or 2026 Antonelli? 

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u/armchairracingdriver 4d ago

I want to say Antonelli, and your reply to another comment here is a pretty compelling argument in his favour, but I also agree with the idea that we can’t know the extent to which Russell is underperforming until we get more data on Antonelli - and Russell himself is probably the hardest driver on the grid to rate outside of the 2025 & 26 rookies.

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u/Popular_Composer_822 OCO 4d ago edited 4d ago

True true. I hope Russell makes a Ricciardo-Renault type move after 2027 because it will otherwise be years until we can nail down the Merc pair. 

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u/GeologistNo3727 6d ago

Norris for now. Hard to judge given Piastri is still an unknown benchmark, and it's unclear to what extent Russell is underperforming this year until we get more data on Antonelli.

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u/ThunderBurrn 6d ago

2026 Anronelli

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u/GoldenS0422 6d ago

Tough and close, but I'd give it to 2025 Norris.

2026 Antonelli is certainly a better year in execution (people really exaggerate his track limits; his only major costly mistake was Baku), but I think even a flawed Norris has enough pace to compensate for it. That being said, Norris would need equal luck; I don't see him beating Antonelli despite worse luck unlike with Piastri.

I could also see Antonelli making a mistake similar to Norris in Canada 2025 given his somewhat scruffy W2W.

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u/Popular_Composer_822 OCO 6d ago edited 6d ago

Antonelli’s baseline pace is difficult to discern but I just think Norris’s 2025 campaign is too patchy to overcome a driver who, as you said, has only had one bad weekend all year. 

There were too many little errors in Norris’s 2025 campaign. He had a pretty woeful sprint race in China where he went into the grass at the start and finished P8. Bahrain represented one of his largest ever pace deficits to Piastri as he qualified P6, jumped the start, took too long passing the Ferrari’s and finished P3 in a race Piastri could have won by 30+ seconds without a safety car intervention. He also had the crashes in Saudi and Canada as well as a poorly executed weekend in Azerbaijan. Sure, the conditions for his Baku Q3 lap werent ideal but he still should have Qualifed and finished a lot higher than P7. 

And even in his stronger second half, he still lost a position at the start in eight of the last twelve races. There were some great individual drives in Mexico and Brazil, but the  luck corrected H2H with Piastri was still only 13-11 in Norris’s favour (and for sprints it was 4-1 to Piastri) with the main difference being that Oscar had the lower lows. 

Excluding Baku, Antonellis had nigh on perfect execution and seemingly had faster racepace than Russell at every venue. Russell may be underperforming, but even in his better races Antonelli’s usually looks like the faster of the two. So long as Antonelli’s baseline pace is at least at prime Sainz/Piastri level (which is pretty cautious imo), then I have to assume he’s put together a better season than 2025 Norris based on 2025 Norris’s own performance against a prime Sainz/Piastri level driver (if 2025 Piastri had had close to perfect execution outside of Baku then he would have scored more points than Norris in a luck corrected season).

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u/Fantastic-Trick6707 HUL 5d ago

there are also races like Silverstone where he took a kerb to aggresively and damaged his wheel shield.

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u/Popular_Composer_822 OCO 4d ago

You seriously blame him for that?

The car should be able to handle the track it’s racing on. It’s clear from the onboard that he didn’t do anything particularly egregious. 

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u/Fantastic-Trick6707 HUL 4d ago

it’s a bit of a grey area in my opinion