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Has Vowles already been there and done that for 2026?

Regarding :-

How Alex Dunne's McLaren outing shows Red Bull that changing drivers isn't the solution

Interesting if Vowles really can feel a bit of "we've been there and done that" from Leclerc's comments. Having the prior two seasons as development for 2026 might well pay off for him (or is it 2027 for when Williams is going to be in the hunt?).

Leclerc will love that Ferrari if it turns out to be the fastest car on the track. And part of being the fastest would be if he had to do less management to extract the lap time.

But I hope he does have to work hard, and they all do. Driving a racing car is more about just having lead feet and turning the wheel, it's about the mechanical sympathy needed to predict what the car needs to get that extra tenth of a second of performance, over each lap of a 300 km race. That's a Grand Prix. And if Leclerc has a high workload, good he's got high talent and a high salary.

Back in the day drivers had to manage their own revs and gear changes so as not to break the 'box nor the engine. They had to do having only a feel for what the brakes were doing, what the engine and transmission was doing and what the tyres were doing. They had some intuition as to what their opponents where facing only by driving close enough behind to see. Now they have massive compute and team resources guiding them through every lap.

I hope 2026 brings about a series of race in which the drivers are all to busy trying to race to whine endlessly about each other.

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