FIA Formula 2 Silverstone 2017

[Biscuits In A Red Bull]

Originally Posted by chunterer

F2 does not have much.more variables. Its all about setting the car up to make dodgy tyres last!

Rowland's is main flaw is hot headedness and he gets a bit rash when the bullshit tyres go off and all his hard work goes out the window but the guy has such natural talent. He doed need to work on maxxing set ups but if you don't have the right engineer or tyres then you ain't gonna win.

The current F2 is not an accurate and consistent barometer of talent. In 12 years how many times have the quickest/most talented drivers won it?

About half at most i reckon off top of my head i can think of:
Rosberg
Hamilton
Glock
Hulk
Grosjean
Vandoorne

A few decent ones came through having not won it but the rest were journeymen benefitting from the best team/engineer/ weaker field that season

In a one make series if you have artificial rules and too much emphasis on one element (in this case tyre enginnering!) it is bound to give a false representation.

So the list you've made suggests that irrespective, the most talented tend to rise to the top (Leclerc too). And if the "journeymen" that won (as if driver development doesn't happen - look at Markelov) were against weaker fields, then surely there were no talents to win the series? If Rowland can't look after the tyres then I'm sorry that's not good enough, and if he can't race against other drivers cleanly then again, that's his problem. Plenty of other talented drivers have done both successfully. I'm not denying engineers help, they obviously do, but the driver does the driving at the end of the day. It's a very good barometer as it tests an awful lot of the drivers' abilities. The fact Latifi has outscored Rowland over the last 3 rounds is telling imo.

If GP2/F2 has been a false representation then how come most of the champions tend to be quite handy in F1? Rosberg, Hamilton, Glock, Hulkenberg, Maldonado, Grosjean - all bar Hulkenberg have podiums in F1, and he's rather handy. Even those who didn't win the series but were frontrunners have made impressions - Pérez, Bianchi, Kovalainen, Nasr and even Petrov and Kobayashi at a stretch. Giovinazzi looked quite good too in the Sauber, given his inexperience. Vandoorne is currently swimming, even against Alonso, and what's to say Gasly won't do a better job than Kvyat? As far as I can see, you're taking your argument way too far in this respect. Yes, tyres are a dynamic that obstructs raw pace, but false representation? Not at all...