wow your wife likes f1.. lucky... i dont have a wife but gf shes not into that kind of thing at all lol...
and yes there is marginal difference in the drivers and if they all had the same car or if they took it in turns to race a lap in the same car so its exact same there wouldent be much difference but of course as you said the drivers to bring some skill in the way they take the corners and how much they press the break before and after taking corners and so on, and also on the track they are racing, like some of the tracks they went into knowing red bull would win they are like this is red bulls track they are the best at it and how much ferrari used to spend on practising, now they cant do that