Opinion F1® 22 | Feature trailer

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@Meza994 wrote:

@SomaticCoast375Start of last season? General opinion in the paddock? Bottas whole career at Merc once Hamilton understood the high downforce cars?

Theres plenty of proof that Bottas is a slower driver than Norris especially on race pace. Lets just take a closer look at last season when Bottas had the best car and Norris arguably the 3rd best at the start of the season. Norris was 12 points ahead of Bottas after 8 races and Bottas had only overtaken Norris in the standings after Zandvoort, which was race #13. Thats fairly bad in the fastest car with a big gap to the 3rd on pace.

Conclusion: Norris is the better driver, when you dont like him thats your thing but objectively he is more talented and drives better

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Maybe a bit over simplifying things 🤔 It is difficult to compare drivers, when they are not in identical cars. And even this can change per season, like this year, when some drivers are struggling more.

But if you leave out all the reasons, like pit hassle in Monaco for Bottas, and don't look second half of the season for Norris, you could cut corners like this.

With the same thinking, we can say Russell is much better than Hamilton, Perez is soon as good as Verstappen (maybe even better)...

Part of the media likes to give individual driver ratings per performance. AMuS, F1i, crash.net and Planet F1. Obviously not at all representative of the whole circus and circle of pundits, but AMuS is legendary & solid and Planet F1 is a household name in F1 coverage. Anyway, their aggregate for the current season:

Autosport.com and The Race used to be included in these ratings too.

Personally I rate Norris higher than Bottas talent wise, easily. But on actual performance and in this season I find it hard to pick a clear winner as Bottas has surpassed expectations.

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@Meza994 wrote:
@mariohomohI agree that Bottas did well so far but his comparison is a rookie that was getting third in F2 as the 2nd most experienced driver (over the course of the whole season) which is not very impressive.

In the end almost all ratings are not having the car out of the equation. See Albon getting points in the clearly worst car still only rated a 8.4-8.8 or Vettel in the 2nd worst car getting points in Monaco gives him a 7.5..

The car makes over 95% of the result and the drivers pace less than 1% for good drivers. We will never agree on which driver is a tenth quicker or not but the overall opinion you get from commentators etc. is Alfa slightly ahead of McLaren. Thats also what Norris said after Miami but drivers and team principles are not a reliable source..

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I agree it is pointless guessing who is 0.1 or 0.2 seconds faster. It is impossible and all things are never identical.

And that was not my point in my previous post. I just commented your quick evidence based on half a season last year. I do not personally care, who is tenth faster and who isn't, but I think Bottas usually gets a lot of negative opinions he doesn't deserve. Great driver like usually all of them and much faster than any of us 😃

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@mariohomoh wrote:
@gizt7agreed. And people so very often conflate different things in the same debate. Driver talent? Driver performance? Driver performance accounting for incidents and team errors?

It'd be easier if people agreed on fixed goalposts before kicking off the discussion.

Back to NOR v BOT, as I said I believe that Norris is clearly the better overall driver talent wise and I can get behind saying he is performing better than Valtteri this season too, but this last comparison (2022 performance) can easily go both ways in my opinion.

I think it's quite the stretch to say that there's a clear winner in this face-off for 2022.

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Agreed. But Norris has so much more potential to

improve. Where as i cant see Bottas getting past the level he’s at now.

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@mariohomoh wrote:
@ajobling1983See no reason for that "but", mate. That statement gets a 100% agreement rating from me haha

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Haha sorry, didn’t mean to sound abrupt 😂