One has to seperate Max's achievements and F1's general development. It's not his fault he couldn't race in better times and he's hardly put a foot wrong in 2 years of racing now. He has the best car but so does his teammate... and it's a world of difference between them.
F1 general development is as poor as anyone could have predicted at liberty's takeover. We've had one championship worth it's salt in the past 7 years, and that year they bungled it so bad that the only people keen on remembering it are the ones who felt wronged. Everyone else just attempts to act as if that year didn't happen. DRS kills all race-craft around overtakes and the cost cap is detrimental to the sport, straight bizarre sometimes (Sainz). The people running the sport have never been as disrespectful towards every other stakeholder (drivers, teams, fans). I hope we some day find a worthy successor to what F1 used to be.
Agreed F1 is a mess. You cant seperate Max's achievements and general F1 as he and his team races within the rules set by F1.
The "Cost Cap" although required to reign in spending of the big teams is broken and has led to worse racing on track and skewed the barometer towards single team domiance.
Its obvious to everyone if you nail a new set of regulations then your competition will struggle to catchup. Therefore leading to one team and ideally two drivers (not one) dominating for a few years. This is nothing new, same for Mercedes and turbo-hybrid era. In that era we had the artificiality of 'tokens' blocking drivetrain development. Once dropped the gap to Mercedes, engine wise began to close. Leaving aside the rule changes to slow them down.
If say Ferrari or another works team nail the 2026 regulations then theres every chance someone like leclerc could do a verstappen and win almost every race for 2-3 seasons. Until the next change. Because no one can catch up due to the cost cap.
The cost cap also handicaps some teams unfairly. AM and Mclaren managed to get their new wind tunnels outside of cost cap because work started on them before the cost cap began.
Williams want to upgrade their facilities some of which are 20 years old. They should be allowed to do so outside of the cost cap. But FIA said no. So Williams are stuck. Try to develop the car with out of date facilities or sacrifise the car and prize money to develop the facilities. Catch 22 and utter bullshit.
Half the teams dont even get anywhere near the cost cap limit on a yearly basis.
Also drivers have to be more careful on track with overtakes and defending. No point defending too aggressively if it damages your car and costs you down the line with upgrades you then cant afford to bring to the track. How many 'lick the stamp and sent it' lunges have we seen since cost cap started? Alot less.
How many times have we seen drivers and teams let other drives through for position "as its not them we're racing" or "thats not our race" ?
Will disagree on the one championship in past 7 years statement. 2017 and 2018 were good years in which vettel and ferrari as a combination blew chances to beat hamilton to the title. Whatever innovation or grey area ferrari were exploting, it gave them a chance at a championship. We wont get that sort of innovation under the cost cap as everyone's too far behind RB and chasing just to copy the car concept nevermind improve on it.
So i think we are unfortuntely stuck with one team domination per rule change era for a good while yet. Records will be padded out as the number of races increases.
The only way to judge seasons like 11/12/13/19/20/22/23 where a single driver had no competition even from his teammate, will be in a decade after that season. Opinions change as recentism becomes history.
One of the best examples is Seb Vettel at RB. We would judge him very differently if he retired after title no4 rather than go on to struggle at ferrari and AM. Its modern day formula one, where the machinery makes more of a difference than the driver. The pendulum swung the other way in F1's glory years of the 70s & 80s.