Zhou deserves the praise. he did class for his rookie season, bottas is no easy teammate at all, and ESPECIALLY in qualifying, probably one of his best areas.
@@TommoMcCluskey Valtteri isnt a selfish teammate, he has and will help out a guy like zhou to benefit the team and be open and helpful about setups, tires etc and this fact has been in news interviews.
Zhou is a good racer but if they banned mazepin for having ties to the Russian government when the Ukraine war broke out why hasn't the FIA banned Zhou someone who has directly taken payouts from the Chinese government, a government which is openly committing genocide. either Zhou needs to make a public statement denouncing the ccp and return their cash, or he needs to be banned from the grid like mazepin. we can not normalize allowing these people who are making money off literal genocide into the sport, anyone who turns a blind eye to the ccp is a pos. but like everything else the fia says one thing then does another. kinda like how they preach about gay rights then race in countries where its punishable by death to be gay
@@askeladden450 how can you say he isnt a good at qualifying when he has the most poles this season lmao. You can be great in both quali and race pace.
@242turbo6 He's not completely on Charles' pace though. The 6-5 in the second half in favor of Carlos seems that way, but that's considering they took France Q2 time (Carlos was faster in Q2 but didn't set a time in Q3). Also Charles didn't really qualify in Brazil with the tyre fiasco and the red flag. In Mexico Charles' drs wasn't working in the second straight. I don't wanna take anything away from Carlos, he did great, but these stats make it seem like he pretty much beat Charles in the second half of the season in qualy.
I knew nothing about Zhou before this season other than people saying he was only a pay driver and wasn't really impressive in F2. He immediately made me a fan, and he has shown himself to be a great driver. Solid performances throughout the season with a car that decides to break whenever it pleases. Great move on Albon in Abu Dhabi and that save in Monaco was spectacular.
I’ve been a supporter of Zhou since he joined F2 in 2019 and he immediately impressed me, he had so much pace but was plagued by poor reliability from Virtusoi and unfortunately that’s the story of his 3 seasons in F2, he started in 2020 as the main favourite for the championship but again reliability literally took him from being on pole for round 1 and leading into the distance, to P6 in the championship come the season end which lead to Renault not giving him the F1 call up they wanted to give him for 2021, he was the clear favourite for the championship in 21 in the first quarter he looked dominant, but unfortunately neither him or Virtusoi had the pace or the consistency to catch Piastri and PREMA, no one in the entire field had an answer to that car. It saddened me to see all the hate he got from fans who knew absolutely nothing about him other than “Chinese, lot of money, 3 seasons in F2… pay driver” when in reality no, he’s a driver who like Norris has bucket loads of money but has the talent to 100% back it up and overshine that
@@TommoMcCluskey Yes, but I personally that's not relevant to 2022 tiers ranking imo. Yuki (likely) has a lot of potential to get even faster, but right now Gasly is still faster than him, so we can't say for sure Yuki will be as fast or faster than Gasly in the future. But I can see your points as well
@@zyxwl2015 same for me with stroll i mean the argument of he has been long at the team doesnt really make sense if both where before the regulations changes there and he even said that most came from 1 quali in the first part and second part he was equal with somebody getting called god like for the past races.
@@zyxwl2015 You can't just isolate a year and not consider the growth/lack of growth from the previous year, you won't have an accurate judgement for this years performance. Also if you actually watched the whole video, you would find out they're not on the same tier
Sainz has been a very underrated qualifier since joining Ferrari. I remember people thinking he’d have a hard time being within half a second of Leclerc.
@@elianioriofarrell I agree. It took him a long time to adapt to the F1-75. Had to change his driving style significantly. I think his race pace was fine over the last 3 races of the year though.
@@vukker7030 People say that, but there’s no evidence of such. What makes the car faster overall might benefit one driver over another. Regardless, his second half of 2022 followed the same pattern of 2021, and that car had no development.
Tbf most of the times he outqualified Bottas were when it was wet, and we all know how bad Bottas is when it rains. In dry sessions he regularly had the measure of Zhou
bottas and consistency dont go together tbh edit: sometimes he is good enough to outperform lewis, but sometimes, especially in the wet he is just nowhere
I would love to see a vid (perhaps baked into the end of season report) that covers *how Tommo would structure the 10 episodes of DTS for this season* Some notable stories are obviously the first wins and first poles, Haas' slight bounceback, Danny's struggle and departure, Seb's retirement, Merc's struggles, Ver-Lec battles... Want to hear what Tommo thinks!
Interesting! But I really don't understand how Kevin is not in the rapid category if Albon and Zhou is there. Haas is one of the slowest cars on the grid and he got it into Q3 multiple times. He is the only one who has managed a pole position out of the top 3 teams. He also put the Haas in P4 in Imola. Fair criticism of his races, but this is a quali video.
@@Tooms100 This season, yes. But Kevin is one of the greatest starters on the grid. He overtook 8 cars during 2 laps in France. When you are that aggressive then there are risks, but also great rewards for when you get it right.
Lance has made huge progress in qualification this year. Still not good enough but right direction. Moreover, his old strong sides (race pace, first lap) are still there.
Hopefully he can stop making silly mistakes that apparently warrant death threats, but I’m starting to see that it may just be a weird quirk of his. Similar to Maldonado, who was super fast, but would just have some really stupid crashes
Zhou has really impressed me this year. Considering Bottas being a talented driver, Zhou has really shown up! And Carlos, he's also impressed me alot. Especially considering Charles is an absolute animal of a qualifier, Carlos has been up there!
The fact that you could bet money on him making up multiple positions on lap one at the end of the season is nuts! Hopefully he can carry that form into next season alongside the King of race starts
Not to say that using the average is wrong, but an alternative is to use the median instead. That way you don't disregard outliers like Kevins 2+ second gap to Mick but neither do you punish them by effectively doubling the gap because of a single off-day. It's commonly used in stastics to mitigate the effect of outliers (as an example income statistics can paint a skewed picture of a populations wealth if 1% of them is billionaires while 50% lives in poverty.) Just a thought for future videos of this kind :) great video as always!
It would make more sense to describe their quali paces as a percentage difference. For example, outqualifying your teammate by 0.1s in Austria is impressive given the shorter lap, however in Austin, that would be very close.
@@IA-mg3gq it's not that big of a difference, austria is something like 1m 10s a lap and austin is something like 1m 30s. Thats a 22% difference which sounds like a lot but if you're comparing tenths it's not that noticable. 0.100s in austria is therefore comparable to 0.122s in austin. not really a huge difference. 0.200s would be 0.244s and 0.300s would be 0.366s. It's not really that noticeable and i think it's easier to then just show it as a number since that's easier to envision. we are used to seing times in quali, not percentages. Even though each track is different we still have a somewhat understanding of what difference 0.1s is and what 0.3s and 0.5s is and so on overall.
Most top 5 qualifications: • Max Verstappen - 20 • Charles Leclerc - 20 • Carlos Sainz - 19 • Sergio Perez - 17 • Lewis Hamilton - 11 • Lando Norris - 6 [!!!!!] To do that in the 5th fastest car is insane.
Lando lost twice to Daniel in the first half of the season, but in Canada he had an engine failure in Q2, and In Spain he was insanely sick. So the fact that these are the only two times Daniel beat Lando is...... really bad for Daniel.
Proud of Yuki What a comeback from last year K-Mag should be on rapid Zhou has been very impressive this season Lando deserves Quali God , best of the rest in a 2018 quality McLaren car Alonso and Ocon should both be on Rapid Mercedes Quali battle has been exciting
@@TommoMcCluskey wow you actually replied wow thank you I think K-Mag even if take away Brazil , that Haas has been decreasing in pace i think K-Mag has done a good job , similar to Alex who i understand has been a donkey car
If you look up the word "average" in the dictionary it just says Ocon. Average /ˈav(ə)rɪdʒ/ (adjective) "Esteban Ocon is the most average driver on the F1 grid, never shit but never good."
Lando is yet to be outqualified in the head to head battles, he beat Carlos both McLaren quali head to heads. He’s a beast in quali And the Merc drivers this year have been a sensational pairing icl imo they’re by far the best team pairing on the grid
@@danbruh33 you’re giving the impression that Max is way ahead on quali and race pace in equal machinery, which is not true. When it comes to quali, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there probably won’t be one better than Charles Leclerc these days. Dude is simply magical on quali even with a bad car. Imo he’s the true Mr. Saturday. Now when it comes to race pace people like Max, Lewis and Fernando are absolutely monsters, however I can’t absolutely compare them as they don’t drive equal machinery. The other drivers are below them leclerc included in race pace (imo)
@@illyricus. So when it's about qualifying, you can compare absolutely and come to a certain conclusion, despite different cars. But when it's about race pace, then it's simply not possible to conclude anything?
I think it would have been interesting to also see and take their average qualifying position into consideration, but still a really interesting and well done vid
Went ahead and did in a Bell/Pyramid distribution (of my own): QGD (3): VER/LEC/NOR RAP (4): HAM/RUS/SAI/ALO SOL (6): ALB/MAG/VET/ZHO/BOT/OCO MID (4): PER/TSU/GAS/STR SLO (3): SCH/LAT/RIC Always cool to check out tier lists!
A fine distribution, I think PER could be argued that he could be in OL over probably OCO (or ZHO?), perhaps he looks worse than he really is because Max is an absolute monster.
Zhoe showed great strengths this season as a rookie, but fam he is not rapid just cuz he's a rookie. How can one team mate be out qualified through out the season and then be rated as "rapid" and his overall faster team mate is just "solid"?
Gasly is faster than yuki. The stats are RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU. Just cause it's yukis second season at alphatauri does not mean he is faster. Gasly is the overall better driver pretty much everywhere. Also the Alphatauri has been the arguably 2nd worst car this season (because AT have had such high peak performance) and Pierre has not taken a step back, though yuki has advanced.
Also alex recently said he's still not 100% from his surgery mishap so still to do so well in quali which wasn't his strong suit in the rb so a big improvement
As a Lando fan I really hope McLaren can start the be competitive again when the new windtunnel is built. He deserves it. He defo has the quality to fight for podiums every week and maybe even a championship if he has the right car. Just hope he doesn‘t waste his career at McLaren
I want to dislike Zhou bc I think there’s drivers that deserve more of a chance in F1 like Robert Shwartzman and Theo Pourchaire but he really has proven he’s worth a race seat at at least a mid field team
I would've put both Mercedes drivers in quali god cuz it's obvious they are both extracting the maximum out of the car in quali. what more can you expect them to do?
No your context thing is nonsense, if you’re slower than you’re teammate then you’re slower regardless if you’re a rookie or not😂I agree with you but this was painful😢😂and putting Gasly in mid…mate…just no…👀and Checo in solid being half a second behind all season!!! This was triggering😭😂 still love the channel though🫶
Your analysis on the AT duo don't add up with what you said with other drivers. If a driver is 2 tenth faster on average there's no way he should be put on mid while the other one on solid. Not fair on Gasly
"Given the horrible car underneath them" -> Mercedes Other teams would kill for a car like that. P3 in constructors, not far off from P2. Absurdly good reliability, more often than not in contention for podiums and in the second half of the season even race wins.
they dont, their driving style is very different, and thats why george is not quicker than lewis on the race pace, his driving style comes with more tyre degradation
@@aydendutton20 i mean yes, i didnt mean to take anything away from George (sorry if it sounded like it), to do what he did against a 7 time world champ in first time of asking is incredible, but data doesnt lie on race trim lewis was on average faster, especially in the later parts of the stint and that just comes down to tyre management
I'm super impressed by Zhou. Had very low expectations for him but concidering he's a rookie and in a midfield car, plus some bad luck throughout, he has propper smashed it this year
As soon as you add expectations it isn’t really a tier list of how fast the drivers are in qualifying. It becomes how well they did compared to what you expect and that leaves space for a lot more unconscious bias
This video displays perfectly why if Mercedes, Ferrari & RB have very similar cars to each other next year, Max will probably win the title, his team mate just isn't up to it! Whilst George/Lewis & Charles/Carlos will take points off each other, Sergio is nowhere near Max's pace so he will always be getting maximum points! I knew it was close between the Merc boys but didn't realise how close Carlos was the Charles, fair play👏
You're so right about Zhou, he's been massively underrated imo, The Race made an overall tier list ranking the 20 drivers and they put him at 17th.. I would have easily put him in the top 10 for this season, it was almost as impressive as Leclerc was at Sauber, if anything, it's more impressive given he was against an established quick guy like Bottas and Leclerc was going against Ericson
The irony is that Perez's seat would be in jeopardy if Max hadn't destroyed Albon and Gasly. But here we are, with his teammates' expectations so low that you can literally be 0.4s slower and still have your seat fully secured.
To put Vettel into solid, especially next to Tsunoda seems inappropriate to me, with Checo and Bottas I think solid is fair, but again, I don't think they are on the same level as Yuki. All the others I think I agree, nice video!
For me Perez is pure Mid, and I really think he is the most overrated driver on the grid, he is miles of Max, during 7/8 Gp in the mid of the season he was no where in races... I just wonder how people put him higher than Carlos.. It blows my mind
Absolutely no disagreement with the tiers! The Mercedes pairing sure is exciting, Russell is one tough competitor! Curious to see what happens next year. The Ferrari boys too. Lando needs to get on that second Red Bull and then all hell will break loose with the top 6.
Tbh both Mercs should be quali gods, if the gap was a tenth ahead for either of them you would have put the one ahead in quali god but because they’re both incredibly rapid they make each other look more mundane
As an Aston Martin fan, I was pleasantly surprised with how competitive Lance was in qualifying this year. He even got the team’s best dry quali result with best of the rest in COTA
Lance is a fast driver, he also a second youngest driver to finished on the podium behide Max by just 12 days. But he sometime make a weird move and people will trash him for being a pay driver.
Stroll definitelly should get higher possition than Seb by my opinion mainly because Seb is a 4x world champ even tho yes not the youngest, also in places like Abu Dhabi the other drivers helped him out because it was his last quali (respect)
Sainz has been very impressive in the second half of the season.Overcoming that deficit to Charles and actually beating him(ik its not by much) is incredible. It's show on raw pace how fast and gifted he is. And there are people saying Checo is better than Sainz🤦
IMO, in the head to head graphic I think you should consider switching the greater than or less than symbol instead of switching the drivers faces around.
Okay, so... what's the logic in putting the guys that won their matchups BELOW the guys they won against? Wasn't it supposed to be based on actual speed (hence the title), and not expectations? Hell, you even acknowledge Bottas being able to beat Hamilton on his day, hence why you rated Zhou so highly. Yet, somehow with that logic, Bottas still ends up lower? Really, really weird ranking here.
I feel like Russell should maybe be in qualigod for your tierlist. I think if you're going to take in experience at a new team into context for other drivers, you should do it for Russell as well. The fact that he matched Hamilton this season and got pole with the third fastest car is enough.
He's very quick, yes, as he should be because he's been in the sport for 4 years. He's driven plenty of Mercedes cars in the past so he understands the characteristics of Mercedes specified parts. He's known to be Mr. Saturday and lost so if you put him in Quali God then Hamilton would have to be there as well.
@@silverghost289 I would agree for my personal tier list. I'm just making the point that Russell would prbly be higher than Hamilton in this tier list to be consistent with how he rated zhou over bottas and yuki over Pierre.
@@tedman8571 Situation with Russel is not the same with Zhou. Russel had been driving mercedes for 1-2 years( not that frequently but anyway). And he had a lot of experience from Williams as well. And this year’s cars are completely new so I doubt if driving the mercedes for the first time would change anything. And he got outqualified even though Hamilton was testing different set up( some of which were completely garbage). So I do not think he should be higher than Hamilton. Actually I think that Ham is the one who should be qualigod here.
Hamilton in 38, Russell has been in f1 for quite a while and is without a doubt in his qualifying prime. Experience within the team doesnt really matter because the cars are completely different than they ever were. Hamilton was faster.
@@frruxsdov8644 Again, I agree that Hamilton is faster. However, this tier list isn't about actually ranking the drivers in terms of pace. You make a good argument that Hamilton was faster in the beginning of the season with worse setups, but you also ignore the fact that they were virtually equal in the last half. Again, I agree that Hamilton is the faster qualifier, but I'm viewing the list through the framework that was set up for this particular tier list which considers years of experience at a team, how well they matched with a teammate, and how well they performed relative to their expectations coming in. You can disagree with the criteria tommo considered, but that is a different topic. I personally would not put Russell in my top tier for qualifying this year, but I'm saying in the scope of this list with the criteria that tommo considered russell probably belongs to be in the top tier for this list.
The tier list would be more useful/entertaining if it was about absolute quali pace instead of factoring in the ‘expectations’ or experience or ‘form’ of a driver. Certainly speaking of their expectations is good but not in the tier list itself. Like I feel like the rankings for Pierre and Zhou are certainly skewed because of that. It would also make the older tier list a lot more fun and useful to reference in years going forward
Being less experienced doesn't change how a driver performed, it merely means they get more leeway for not performing at the level of their teammate. Atleast in my book. I don't see how Zhou and Tsunoda, who were objectively slower than their teammates, can go in a higher tier than said teammates.
I very much disagree with the Pierre placement. Yes he should be better but I’m not sure how much more is left to get out of that car. I think yuki has taken a really big step forward but at the same time the car in terms of quali pace just isn’t good. Even tho last years alpha sucked it had good quali pace and this years car has none. There just isn’t much left to extract from it
Not sure I agree with the experience logic. Maybe name the tiers differently but you cannot say zhou is more rapid than bottas while being 2 tenths down. If that was the case then russell should be in his own tier for basically matching a 7 time world champion in his first merc season
@@silverghost289 You completely missed my point. The gap between a rookie and solid midfield driver should be expected to be similar to the gap between a driver who spent 3 years in a backmarker and a 7 time world champion.
You can't put Zhou over bottas when Botta was faster, imo you can still recognize the context that he did really well for a rookie against valteri while putting him lower in the tier list
I don't think you should rank them considering rookie or not, or experienced or not... this is ranking 2022 performance, if Bottas is faster than Zhou in 2022 then he should be ranked higher. If Zhou has the potential and outqualifies Bottas in 2023, you can then rank Zhou in a tier higher than Bottas in 2023. But I don't think it's right to do so in 2022 when Bottas literally outqualified Zhou (as much as I like Zhou)
Appreciate the fact how close Zhou was to Bottas in Quali, Bottas has beaten Hamilton in the same car on more than one occasion. The Hamilton who is considered to be one of the greats of the sport and I don’t feel like Bottas lost his “quali magic”. Absolute class job from a driver from which I expected very little (like a standard rubbish paydriver kind of driver)
This is a strange tier list, so we know that Pierre is a better qualifier than Yuki, but because of experience he is lower ranked than Yuki, that doesn't make sense to me
the whole list doesn't make sense. Stroll is lower than gasly and tsunado although he outqualified vettel in the second half of the season. How does that make sense.
Mercedes came in third in the Constructors, I’m tired of people saying it’s a horrible car. It clearly wasn’t given their ability to compete and win a race. Give those drivers an AlphaTauri or Williams (actually terrible cars) and they’re not coming close to competing or winning. Just because it wasn’t dominant doesn’t make it horrible 🙄
If you split Pierre Gasly and Tsunoda because of experience while Gasly has been faster, you should definitely do the same between Hamilton and Russel. Hamilton has been driving for Mercedes for almost 10 years and is the most experienced driver on the track after Fernando Alonso, so all the arguments that Gasly said certainly hold true for Hamilton. Russel did an amazing job with qualifying. Hamilton an average job of you compare it to his previous seasons.
Lewis and George should both be quali gods. The man has 103 poles which as we know is the most in F1 history by over 35 poles. Years with the team is irrelevant, it's about being able to extract the most out of the car he was given which is a universal skill that doesn't change between teams. The fact George qualified close to Lewis should say something about Georges insane qualifying pace
103 poles don‘t matter for a statistic that is just about this season. You could make an argument for Lewis being in quali god also this season but not with „103 poles“ as your argument bc that‘s his overall career and not just this season
Aston pitted Seb in singapore just as he was about to massively improve. So just with that one qualifying, the statistics would turn into his favour. Overall he was faster. The whole season.
I feel George and Lewis both belong in quali god. Seeing they almost always put in identical quali times tells me they’re both at the very limit of the car’s potential
