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As a sport, F1 can be tough to judge. Which car is better and by how much? We always take these claims with a pinch of salt. Also, there is always this question of how good a driver is. It's so hard to judge because each car is different. One could be quicker in a particular car and then struggle when the characteristics change.
To add to this, how do we compare two drivers that are on different machinery? We just cannot. The only possible comparison is between a driver and his teammate. That is why sometimes a mythical perception of a driver may develop over time where they are possibly not as good as many perceived them to be.
In this feature, we will look at three drivers on the current F1 grid that could have inflated perceptions around them only because their teammates are not good.
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When the teammates are just not good, it always makes it hard to judge because we don't what is the true benchmark of a car and how much a driver should be extracting from it. This is precisely why sometimes we see two highly rated drivers team up and one of them completely dominates the other.
So without further ado, let's take a look.
#1 Alex Albon (Williams F1)
Alex Albon's perception has seen an overnight change ever since he started driving for Williams. The Thai driver did not have the best 'first career' in F1 where he was more or less the 'other guy' in Red Bull as Max Verstappen brought the most results. The unceremonious exit from the team meant he was away for a year and came back with Williams.
His stint at WIlliams has been very impressive. Albion has filled the shoes that George Russell vacated last season and that has helped him raise his stock in F1. So much so that there have been rumors of him being courted by Ferrari and well as Red Bull for the second seat on the respective team.
This is where we need to exercise caution because while there is certainly evidence of him pulling the weight of the car consistently in the last two seasons, how do we know that this is the level at which a Williams is supposed to perform? Especially when we have two drivers like Logan Sargeant and Nicholas Latifi in the other seat.
While some factors like consistency and race craft do hint towards a very impressive driver in that WIlliams, unless he's up against a strong benchmark, there's a possibility that we might just have an inflated perception of him.
While it's hard to take a call either way, Alex Albon might be one of the drivers that belong on this list.
#2 Yuki Tsunoda (AlphaTauri)
This is Yuki Tsunoda's third season in F1 and it's safe to say that this has been his best in terms of overall performance. The Japanese driver has shown maturity and appeared to drag out results from that AlphaTauri that do not seem possible.
In the first couple of seasons, this level of performance and consistency was not really there for Yuki and it seems to be an added wrinkle in his game. He has been so good this season that Red Bull has been forced to change the driver line-up, fire Nyck de Vries and bring Daniel Ricciardo into the team.
Having said that, there's one thing that we arguably should keep in mind. Compared to the first two seasons of his F1 career, this season Yuki had a completely different benchmark in de Vries. In the first two seasons, he was teamed with a seasoned campaigner in Pierre Gasly who had already won a race with the team. While Gasly could take the most out of the car consistently, Yuki struggled.
While Yuki seems to have become more consistent, did his overall performances in the first half of the season look better because he had Nyck de Vries as a teammate? Maybe, maybe not. But it surely merits Yuki's entry in this list as one of the drivers that have an inflated perception in F1 because of poor teammates.
#3 Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin)
This might infuriate a few of the loyal Fernando Alonso fans but the question is certainly there to be asked. In the first half of this season, Alonso is easily one of the top two or three drivers in F1. The driver has almost seemed rejuvenated with a competitive car under him.
Not only that, he's also seemed like someone that would continue to perform at a higher level and not have off days. Alonso was always rated highly by the F1 paddock and even last year many rated him as the sixth or seventh-best driver on the grid. This year he's leapfrogged many in front of him though.
This is arguably why we might need to look back at his teammate in the last two years and the one he has now. In his two years at Alpine, Alonso was teamed up with Ocon in a relationship that turned sour by the end but what was interesting was the relative pace of the two drivers.
Overall, Alonso did edge out Ocon but it was nip and tuck until the end where one weekend the Spaniard did the better job, and in the next it was the French driver. Now, he has Lance Stroll teaming up with him and the level of his teammate has dropped significantly.
It's a rarity that Stroll even gets close to Alonso over an F1 race weekend and is known to make too many mistakes. Could that be playing a role in an inflated opinion of the Spaniard?
Or is it just a case of a driver upping his game as the stakes get higher? It's hard to say either way but this does make a case of having Alonso on this list.
