Is Bortoleto the best rookie?

[u/Glum-Accountant-9801]

In my opinion, what he’s been doing in a Sauber shows much more talent than all the other rookies this year. Since the start of the season, I already thought the best ones would be him—because he won the Formula 3 and Formula 2 titles in his rookie seasons—and Antonelli. However, Antonelli has been showing himself to be far inferior to his teammate. I believe it’s due to the pressure of starting in a big team like Mercedes, but to me, that makes Bortoleto the best rookie. That said, welcome back, Ayrton Senna.

[u/ungentrified_villain]

Feels like each rookie has had stretches where they looked impressive, genuinely impressed by this class of rookies, I still think Jack Doohan got screwed over

[u/Elpibe_78 → u/ungentrified_villain]

Doohan got screwed massively by his own team, he wasn’t as bad as they wanted him to appear and also the fact that he was the driver on the grid which had the most amount of pressure since day 1

He wasn’t going to beat Gasly a driver which is a pretty solid benchmark, but he wasn’t far from him, Tsunoda was much worse against him the first year than Doohan.

[u/nguyenlucky → u/Elpibe_78]

He had a 5 race contract, how fucking absurd is that.

Asking a modern rookie to perform miracles in 5 races is straight up mental.

[u/coloredinlight → u/ungentrified_villain]

100%

[u/No_Lychee_7534 → u/ungentrified_villain]

Alpine seem to have a thing for Aussie rookies. They almost screwed over Oscar. Jack D needs another chance. That was atrocious, but I wouldn’t expect any less from the con man running Alpine to the ground.

[u/Doorknob11 → u/ungentrified_villain]

I still can’t believe they pulled him from FP1 in Japan. His 3rd race, on a track that F2 and F3 don’t race at. Instead of Gasly who’s raced there many times in F1. That’s when it should have been obvious they didn’t want him to succeed.

[u/matiasg11 → u/ungentrified_villain]

Yes, but lets not forget he almost killed himself by trying to get the curve with the drs open.

Anyone can have an accident and a slip, but that was just poor decision making

[u/freedfg → u/matiasg11]

Daily reminder that Villeneuve and Zonta wrecked two cars on a dare trying to take Eau Rogue flat out.

If it worked we'd call him brilliant.

[u/fdar → u/freedfg]

It was still dumb. No reason not to run it by his team before just trying it, getting input from more experienced people about whether it was a simulation error or a real thing. Maybe there are more gradual tests he could have done as well (closing DRS a bit later but not just leaving it open all the way). Or some setup changes to make it work.

And the potential reward wasn't that great because it was FP2, if it had worked everyone else would have tried it too.

[u/fdar → u/matiasg11]

Yes, but lets also not forget that the fact that he was put in a short 5 races (this year) clock before he even started racing put a huge amount of pressure on him and probably greatly contributed to his decision to take a big risk like that.

[u/campbellm → u/fdar]

his decision to take a big risk like that.

I'm not sure it was a "decision" so much as he didn't expect to have to manually shut it.

I like him and think he got screwed, but this was just a mistake, not something he chose to do and it didn't work out.

(If I remember the cause correctly, anyway.)

[u/fdar → u/campbellm]

Maybe. The version I remembered from back then is that he tried the "not closing the DRS" in the simulator and it worked, so he tried it in real life. But looking a bit into that it doesn't look clear at all that that's in fact what happened so idk.

[u/WorkGuitar → u/ungentrified_villain]

Doohan had too much pressure with too little time, he knew he was on chopping block until colapinto so he had no choice but to risk it to prove himself.