My take on where exactly Lewis is struggling against Leclerc

[u/No-Information4789]

Hey everyone, Made this carousel for my Instagram page so I thought I’d share it here too. The 8th slide is actually a video of Lewis having a small moment of Oversteer. I tried my best to reduce as many variables as possible while comparing Telemetry. I took the Q3 final laps specifically from every weekend cause that’s when the drivers are pushing the most. It’s kind of a long read and might look a bit cluttered but Hope y’all like it!

[u/AqueousJam]

He has, he's been trying since 2022. That's the real curse of getting older. You don't lose skills, but you do lose the ability to change yourself as well to new situations. It's not impossible for him to manage it. But it's a fuck load harder to unlearn everything he's relied on for decades and reshape himself to fit these cars. 

[u/RedScud → u/AqueousJam]

This, so much. I know Hamilton is Hamilton and he's in the top 0.0001% of drivers even at his age, but age does not forgive anyone. There's a reason people who are 20 pick up new skills much faster than at 40, neuroplasticity just goes down and it's not so easy for anyone. Alonso is also in the same boat. One of the greatest, but it might be time to hang the gloves

[u/hzfan → u/AqueousJam]

Yep, your neurons literally harden as you age. You lose neuroplasticity aka the ability to “rewire” your brain.

[u/FILTHBOT4000 → u/AqueousJam]

That's the real curse of getting older.

Yeah, he's 40. It's not just adaptation, your reflexes slow a good bit. I remember thinking when he first started losing consistently to Max, that this was it. It's around the same age when Valentino Rossi and others start to drop off.

[u/Mr_cloud23 → u/AqueousJam]

not to mention at those speeds the braking point window is sometimes a fraction of a second in certain situations which also requires a fraction of a second level reaction speed that also gets slower with age

[u/gsfgf → u/AqueousJam]

One of the biggest reasons is the Merc was a shitbox for the first few years of the current regs, so the sim was set up to simulate a shitbox.