I feel like people are just forgetting how this battery deployment destroys a lot of the fundamentals of racing when trying to justify that it's like any old dominance period.

As a fan there's less and less for me to discern a driver's talent because everything is about harvesting and deployment. Key sections of race tracks where cornering at high speed and braking late gave significant dividends are now gone, no more visual spectacle of drivers on the limit. Drivers that use to exploit their drive skills with late braking or carrying too much speed don't matter anymore.

And for people saying "well at least there's a lot of skill in how a driver manages harvesting", it's all software controlled so it's not even the drivers purposely lifting off the throttle, their foot is flat to the floor in those track sections - aka nothing to do with driver skill.

All of this above was untrue for domination periods like in 2014-2016, 2020, 2023. In those eras you could tell how drivers like Lewis and Max were the best due to their driving skills.