Do different drivers prefer cars with different characteristics? Apparently not, according to Tom Stallard.
The British engineer, who has worked over the years with names like Jenson Button, Carlos Sainz, Daniel Ricciardo, and now alongside Oscar Piastri at McLaren, believes that every driver looks for the same basic characteristics in a car, and that champions are distinguished by their ability to adapt to the vehicle.
“One of the great myths of Formula 1 is that different drivers like different types of cars,” Tom Stallard explained on the Beyond the Grid podcast, hosted by Tom Clarkson – “The truth is that every driver has the same ideal car and the same things they look for: what varies is what they hate and what makes things difficult for them. And the more you can widen the operating window of ‘I can deal with this, I can deal with that, and still be very fast,’ the better you can perform. This comes with experience.” – he pointed out.
Especially this year, there has been a huge performance gap at Red Bull between Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez, even though both, at least on paper, have identical cars.
“I think usually, when a driver is so dominant within a team, it’s because the car is in a window or has characteristics that the other driver struggles to handle,” Tom Stallard added, attempting to explain the vast gap between the two drivers.
“If you can improve these characteristics, you will reduce the deficit between the drivers. However, it doesn’t mean you can eliminate the problem. It often happens that race conditions expose the weaker driver, or that it’s necessary to do a much longer stint than originally planned. So you never fully bridge the gap. I think some drivers have a very wide window in which they are happy and can get the best out of the car and mold the car around them, while other drivers struggle to adapt to these limits of a car, even though they may be brilliant with other limitations of a car.” – Oscar Piastri’s McLaren’s race engineer concluded.
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