The balance is probably around 90% the car and 10% the driver. In the years of RB dominance, a subpar driver like Webber almost got the championship. OTOH Alonso lost a decade in Ferrari and McLaren while being, tied with Hamilton, the best driver in the grid.
The 10% of what the driver adds to the mix is what makes Hamilton champion instead of Bottas.
Dunno if it's a valid comparison, but my kid races indoor karting. He's average level, that means he's within 1.5% of the best in race conditions (i.e. on a 40 seconds lap, he's about than 0.7 seconds behind the best on average). And given the time it took to reach that, I'd say that being a competitive pilot may be just 10% of the victory, but those 10% are super tough to reach.
I've been doing a bit of karting lately and the difference between a 58s and a 59s lap is crazy. Super hard to shave that second off, but it's also so obvious that the guy doing 58s laps is way faster.
Last year there was a hobbyist race on my local track and the person who won it was a guy who mainly practices at home on his computer. I imagine a gokart simulation is close enough to the real deal that training on it actually can help a lot. You can get much more fine-grained feedback on how well you're taking certain corners etc. One thing that trips me up is understanding the kart - my local ones have somewhat poor acceleration, so it seems it's not actually best to take the corners as sharp as possible and try to accelerate out of the corner, but instead try to maintain as much speed as possible going into the corner, even if you end up on a bad line. This would be easy to test in a simulation, but I just have to go by gut feeling.
The 1st rule we've learned is : you look all over the place, not just the kart in front of you.
The 2nd rule we've learned is : no skidding, never. That's really hard to do. But look at top pilots, they don't skid.
The 3d rule is : you do your best time on every single lap (super good pilots do almost the same time on most of their laps, within 0.3 sec range; it's hard to believe they do it, but they do !).
4th rule : figure out the best trajectory. According to my kid's teacher it's a question of 10 centimeters here or there (good luck figuring that out !).
Strangely, passing a car is the last thing you learn. But in retrospect,it's normal : most of the time you run after the one in front of you. The opportunities to pass another pilot are rare (most of the time you're much faster so the blue flags forces them to let you pass).
As a dad, I'd say : find a good teacher, it makes a big difference.
I don't think that matters as much as you might think. We have 3 race classes at our local track. The Pro guys (top level) are easily 1-2 seconds above the Pro-am guys (mid-level). Some of these pros are not exactly lightweights and are considerably above the minimum weight. Yet they manage to slaughter everybody else out there. You would think they had a disadvantage to the people who are running the baseline weight in the kart, but you sure can't tell it.
Now imagine that the wealthy father of another average level kid is allowed to enter the race with an expensive kart that makes 10% more power, has 10% more grip and overall gives the driver a "free" 1.5 seconds per lap. Suddenly an average driver can crush a top notch driver every time.
Because that's F1. There's not a balance driver/car. There are good cars, average cars and poor cars, almost all of them driven by good drivers. In karting (and many formula cathegories) the reverse scenario is true: there are good drivers, average drivers and bad drivers, all driving similar karts.
>>> Now imagine that the wealthy father of another average level kid
Indoor kart racing is, in my country, affordable to, say 50% of population (you may have to make some choices though). Count +/-120€ per month (2 training session + 1 race). Swimming lessons are 30€ per month I'd say.
Outdoor karting is really expensive and is for the 1% (which I'm not part of :-)). Count 1000€ per race, gasp !
F1 is well, for ultra rich :-) Plan robbing 1 bank, or 10 (binary joke intended).
But according to many, indoor karts makes you a great pilot because the machine doesn't compensate for your failures.
I have family that do outdoor karting, and they are learning just how expensive it gets. They are certainly not the 1%, and are actually considering switching their kid to spec miata as running a actual car is cheaper than karting. The kids they race against are sons (almost entirely sons) of ex f1 drivers, leading political figures of nations, and ultra wealthy. And this is all US based karting which has no segway into f1. It's truly a 1% sport, you either need to be ultra wealthy or very quickly get supported by someone with that level of wealth.
I've done outdoor KZ class (125cc 2 stroke, 6 gears, both front and rear brakes) karting, apart from a very wealthy parent most kids that make it to the top in Europe drive for factory sponsored teams.
So then I would like your prediction on who would become WDC:
* Hamilton/Verstappen in a Williams?
* Antonio Giovinazzi in a Mercedes?
Don't forget the classic "to finish first, you first have to finish"...a drivers skill is not just better reaction time or better peripheral vision, it's also mental calm, not making stupid mistakes on lap 69 of 70, situational awareness etc.
I have occasionally (and very recreationally) raced on track days. I do not know kart racing well, but even in a relatively slow (15 year old BMW) car, it's incredibly scary to race towards a brick wall at ~180 km/h and only brake at the last moment.
So I think that 10% is a lot of skill and dedication, but also a sort of numbing to that fear.
I've done a lot of track days. You realise how big the skill gap is between an average person like me and a proper fast driver.
I've occasionally gone into a corner way faster than I should with my abilities, frightened myself, but the car has stuck to the track. It made the corner. I couldn't do this intentionally, even knowing that I can throw it into the corner x mph faster than I'm comfortable with and I will come out the other end pointing in the right direction, I still can't do it.
Then you realise that if I gave my car to a racing driver, he would drive it like that in every corner of every lap. Because he has to, because if he doesn't he's giving away time.
It blows my mind.
My limit for how fast I can drive a car is so much lower than even an average road cars physical limits.
Agreed, I'm much more at the limit of the kart for every corner. If i crash, its not much $ out of my pocket. The value of the car is always at the back of my head when doing track days - even when its relatively "cheap", and thus I am slower. It take me much much longer to get up to the limit on the car :/
Also, a good driver might not be a good team member which might put them in a disadvantage. Räikkönen was considered one of if not the fastest on the grid during his best years but iirc wasn't very good as a team member in the car's development phase which hampered his and his car's performance
You can put whatever driver you name in a Mercedes from 2014 until today, and he will end at least in second place in the championship. I cannot imagine a single driver, not even Maldonado, that would end worst than 2nd except due to incredible bad luck with the car reliability.
Verstappen is an incredible good driver that probably deserves to win multi-championships. But as it is now, Bottas is closer to that achievement than him.
The ratio varies - I would say it depends on the car, teammates and team. But ultimately driver skill is what determines who gets to drive for Mercedes, Ferrari etc. So once a pairing has been made, either the drivers are closely matched, or one or both will be changing teams or leaving F1 all together.
> once a pairing has been made, either the drivers are closely matched, or one or both will be changing teams
That's not always the case. Eddie Irvine spent 4 years as n.2 to Schumacher pretty happily, only changing teams because Jordan offered more money. He was pretty spectacular on good days but nowhere as good as The Michael.
Right. The current era is definitely more competitive than past eras. Teams were often cash strapped back then, so sponsorship money trumped driver skill in some teams. Also Ferrari was very much Schumacher’s team. Irvine was his supporting driver much more than a true teammate, unlike what we have these days in most teams, including at Mercedes and Red Bull.
The driver matters more when the cars are close in performance. Any driver on the grid would have been either World Champion or runner up in a Ferrari in 2002 and 2004, Red Bull 2011 and 2013, Mercedes in 2014-2016 and maybe 2019. The only opponent would be the team mate. The car matters nearly zero in the fight with a mate, that is only about driving skill: how to be fast and when, when to try to overtake and when not, etc. Most F1 drivers are very fast but not all of them are as wise in their driving as they should be. Some of them regularly end a race and score points, others regularly crash or throw away good results. (And some drivers are there because they are backed by sponsors with the money needed by the teams they drive for.)
The 10% of what the driver adds to the mix is what makes Hamilton champion instead of Bottas.