Hey, I’m loving your testing series, I’m learning so much, so thank you! In the final review, you described Oscar and George as more cerebral drivers, and I was wondering how you would describe each driver’s driving style? I only really know the basics like “aggressive” lmao.
This is an interesting question! I definitely pay more attention to some drivers than others, so I probably couldn't really characterize every driver's style accurately. But I can point out some of the things I see in some of the current grid to give you some ideas of stuff to look out for to help you make your own conclusions!
First, I'd say that no one word describes any driver's style. It's more like a variety of sliders that each driver has some turned up higher than others. Some drivers are more aggressive, some are more technical, some are more strategic, more adventurous...and so on. You can really just pick any adjective that you think fits, but I'll just play around with these for the sake of example.
So...I described George and Oscar's style here as "cerebral," though that's not really all that describes their style. But compared to some other drivers, they may take a bit more of a thoughtful, almost academic approach to racing, learning the car, and learning a track. They're also both pretty talented at explaining things to others, and teaching what they know. We see this in some of McLaren's social videos where "Professor Piastri" casually explains different things about the car and driving it. We also see this when we get glimpses of George going over onboards and race trace with Doriane or Kimi.
But when you look at George and Oscar on track, despite having this one characteristic in common, their styles are still rather different. Oscar, as he is out of the car, tends to appear a lot calmer in how he goes about moving the car on track. I could describe his driving style as technical, and that fits closely with his overall intellectual approach. Whereas with George, he always looks like he's driving like he's got something to prove, and you can kind of see the energy from that. Neither is a better or worse thing, it's just what makes each of their approaches unique.
To elaborate some on what constitutes a "technical" driver, this is the kind of driving that largely follows a specific convention or school of thought when it comes to racecraft, and when executed precisely and in-tune with the car, it can yield consistently impressive results. Oscar's early-to-mid-season tear in 2025 is a good illustration of what a technical approach can achieve under the right conditions. However, as we saw later in the season, that alone isn't enough to guarantee success. Likewise, another driver I'd characterize as "technical" is Franco Colapinto. Watching his on-boards can almost feel dull sometimes for how textbook his style is, but in certain tricky bits of track, it's also downright pretty. In a better car, I could easily see Franco making podiums more frequently. (And with the Mercedes PU on board this year, the Alpine actually looks solidly midfield, so we might get to see that.)
Adventurous driving isn't quite opposite to technical driving, but it's more of its complement. It acknowledges best practices but it also colors outside the lines and looks for novel solutions. Drivers I'd describe as adventurous include Lando and Kimi Antonelli. Both have a style that involves practically slinging the car around the track to find the ideal line, they're both known for driving in a way that finds the absolute limit of the car they're in, and they often will take an approach on track that isn't considered conventional, but it works, and you will later see other drivers emulating it.
However, where I would say Kimi and Lando differ is that Lando is far more strategic, a trait that I think he may have picked up from his first F1 teammate, Carlos Sainz. I think Carlos has a bit of a wrong reputation with some people for being an "empty-head-just-make-car-go-fast" kind of driver, and he can definitely act the part, but don't let that fool you. Carlos can be calculating on track, kind of literally sometimes, and you'll occasionally hear him calling strategy from the cockpit, using the limited information he has from the deltas on his steering wheel and what he's able to observe to help himself, or occasionally help others gain or maintain track position. And you will also observe Lando doing the same thing sometimes.
As you mentioned, drivers are often described in terms of how "aggressive" they are, but it's not always a positive thing or even a fully necessary trait for drivers to have dialed up too much. Max Verstappen is probably most often described this way, and we've definitely seen how that can be a knife's edge. When it's working for him, it's really working for him, but when it's not, he's intentionally crashing into people. Carlos Sainz is actually a pretty good example of a more moderated aggression on track. He makes daring moves that sometimes pay off and other times very much don't, but he's not quite driving with the head of steam that Max often does (though Max has calmed down some in recent seasons). When a driver is aggressive, and it's working, that's good. When a driver is aggressive, and it causes a crash, that's often called recklessness and is rarely appropriately acknowledged as the other side of the same coin.
Tempering an aggressive racing style with being strategic, technical, or intellectual about racing tends to keep things more on the positive side and helps prevent recklessness. Taking on more of this, I think, helped Max mostly grow out of his "Mad Max" reputation from his early F1 career and grow into the kind of driver that won four championships. Some real-time examples of this kind of growth that you can observe happening right now would probably be with Kimi Antonelli and Ollie Bearman. They came onto the grid with the kind of aggression common to hotshot rookies, and when it worked it worked, and when it didn't, you had Kimi being called the "baby-faced assassin" and Ollie racking up nearly enough superlicense points for a race ban. But both drivers have begun to adopt some moderating traits and styles into their racing that, if their performances in testing this year are anything to go by, are already transforming them into formidable competitors.
So yeah...that probably went on a bit long and maybe didn't answer your question entirely, but hopefully it gives you some direction for how to come up with some answers of your own as you watch more racing. Thanks for the great question, and thanks for reading!
