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Author Topic: Top 5 F1 Drivers Of All Time?  (Read 6427 times)

Offline Alonsofan

Top 5 F1 Drivers Of All Time?
« on: January 13, 2019, 12:54:42 PM »
Before rejoining this site at the end of last season I was reading this discussion on the BBC website and I wondered what your thoughts were and why??
Who are the greatest five F1 drivers of all time?



guest3164

  • Guest
Re: Top 5 F1 Drivers Of All Time?
« Reply #1 on: January 13, 2019, 01:18:26 PM »
Thankfully I am too young to have seen most  :tease:  Also a few of those from the 80s/90s were before I really got the F1 bug properly. 

I'd say though something along the lines of (in no particular order)
Senna
Clark
Fangio
Schumacher
Hamilton

It is a great thing though as even with the statistics, it is still highly subjective.

Offline Alonsofan

Re: Top 5 F1 Drivers Of All Time?
« Reply #2 on: January 13, 2019, 02:09:02 PM »
Great line-up there Luke....apart from Schumacher  ;)

guest3164

  • Guest
Re: Top 5 F1 Drivers Of All Time?
« Reply #3 on: January 13, 2019, 02:26:47 PM »
Maybe I meant Ralf...

Okay, I didn't, no one would ever pick Ralf.  Not even Ralf.  Well, maybe he would, but he does not count.   

Michael Schumacher was outstanding, yes everything was set up for him to win, but he was incredibly dedicated and when he had to put the speed in, he was metronomic.

Offline Alonsofan

Re: Top 5 F1 Drivers Of All Time?
« Reply #4 on: January 13, 2019, 03:01:37 PM »
You leave Ralf alone he is....mmm...nice  :DntKnw: hehe.
Just one thing, I didn't see Fernando on your list?? I don't know youth of today  ;) hehe

guest3164

  • Guest
Re: Top 5 F1 Drivers Of All Time?
« Reply #5 on: January 13, 2019, 03:19:30 PM »
Alonso... Never going to get in to a greatest of all time, unless it is the list of drivers who made the greatest amount of poor decisions  :tease: 

Youth of today... I wish  :'(

Offline Alonsofan

Re: Top 5 F1 Drivers Of All Time?
« Reply #6 on: January 13, 2019, 04:09:08 PM »
Cheek... |-( hehe
Although he did make some very bad decisions  :'(
He still will be in my top 5 especially after he made Schumacher retire (the first time)  :D

Online Jericoke

Re: Top 5 F1 Drivers Of All Time?
« Reply #7 on: January 13, 2019, 05:23:07 PM »
'Best driver' is such a broad idea.  Some truly amazing drivers never get matched up with machinery to show off their skills, and others have their careers flattered by having better cars than they might deserve.

To me if we're discussing Top 5, I want drivers who CHANGED the sport.

#1 is Fangio.  He's the first repeat champion.  He's a legend in the sport, and unless someone provides evidence he was eating children in his spare time, I don't see how he can be knocked from the top.

#2 is Michael Schumacher.  He was the ultimate team player.  He understood that the driver was part of a large team, and if he could work as close as possible with the 300 people supporting him, then greatness would follow.  He put in so much work the rules of the sport had to change.

#3 is Jackie Stewart, in addition to winning three championships, he was very vocal about the sport becoming safer for drivers.  If it wasn't for someone like Stewart, the sport could easily have collapsed as the public became tired of watching people die for entertainment. (As an added bonus, he led the way on not accepting tobacco sponsorship.)

#4 Lewis Hamilton.  I'm not an F1 historian, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but he's the first champion to attach himself to an F1 team while young, and then see it through to becoming a champion.  Now most F1 drivers enter the sport through a sort of 'driver academy'.  He also has a nose for being part of the popular culture.

#5... this is harder for me.  I started following F1 after Senna passed.  I don't really know much about Prost or Clark, or what they brought to the sport as racers.  Senna proved that passion could win, but he wasn't the first.  Prost showed that detail could win, but he wasn't the first either.  Certainly Gilles Villeneuve and Niki Lauda were very much in the same moulds of Senna and Prost, and I'm sure other previous examples exist.

I'm going to have to go with a driver that I saw race, and a little out of the normal 'top driver' discussion: 

Mika Hakkinen.  When he spun out of the lead in the 1999 Italian Grand Prix, he was caught on camera crying.  This was the best reminder I've ever seen that the drivers are human beings first and foremost.  They are dedicating their lives to our entertainment, and it's an insane amount of pressure I could never imagine.  We don't often get these reminders, although Vettel came close in 2018, his voice breaking over the radio as he apologizes to his team after a crash.

Offline cosworth151

Re: Top 5 F1 Drivers Of All Time?
« Reply #8 on: January 13, 2019, 06:07:06 PM »
1. Fangio: He had the highest win percentage ever in F1. He won 46.15% of his starts. In the 7 complete seasonshe raced, he won 5 WDC's an finished 2nd in the other two. He won his 5 WDC's for 4 different teams - Alfa, Ferrari, Mercedes and Maserati. And, he did it all in his 40's.

2. Jim Clark: Like Fangio before and Schumacher after, Clark was the master of his era.

3. Jackie Stewart: Jackie was more than a great driver. His crusade for increased safety changed F1 forever. Those of us who were around in the pre-Stewart days remember what it was like when F1 fatalities were common. Sir Jackie changed all of that.

4. Michael Schumacher: This one is a mixed bag. Like the previous three, Schumi was the driver that defined his era. He and Ferrari dominated the early years of this century. Sadly, he was equally famous for many incidents that could be called ethically questionable. Like Dale Earnhardt Sr. in NASCAR, fans either loved him as a great driver or despised him as a dirty one.

5. Sir Sterling Moss: The greatest driver never to win a championship. To many, he was the prototype English F1 driver. He was the opposite of Schumacher in that he was famous for his sportsmanship. For example, he famously when Mike Hawthorn was threatened with a disqualification at the 1958 Portuguese GP, Moss defended him to the stewards. Moss would have won the WDC if Hawthorn had been excluded. Still, Moss did the right thing.
“You can search the world over for the finer things, but you won't find a match for the American road and the creatures that live on it.”
― Bob Dylan

Offline Alonsofan

Re: Top 5 F1 Drivers Of All Time?
« Reply #9 on: January 13, 2019, 06:53:07 PM »
Wow!! Some brilliant choices there.
I completely agree with you there about Schumacher Cosworth, he is just like Marmite love it or hate it....personally I hate it hehe.

I like your choice of Mika Jericoke, another driver who beat Schumacher in his prime....twice....reminds me of a very yummy Spaniard  :swoon: :swoon:

guest3164

  • Guest
Re: Top 5 F1 Drivers Of All Time?
« Reply #10 on: January 13, 2019, 07:44:51 PM »
I think I should add in context that I was no Schumacher fan, I cheered on Hakkinen and some Spanish dude, I disliked his dirty driving and the second driver thing.  But the dominance Ferrari enjoyed was in no small part to the work he put in.  Was he a cavalier genius like some before?  No, but he largely defined the modern F1 driver and the modern F1 team.  I began to appreciate him more as a passionate racer when he returned to F1 with Mercedes and began to 'almost' cheer for him, maybe because by then he was less a machine and more a human racing for fun. 

If I was to list the 5 drivers who meant most to me personally, it would be a very different list.

Offline Calman

Re: Top 5 F1 Drivers Of All Time?
« Reply #11 on: January 13, 2019, 07:52:21 PM »
Jericoke & Cos's lists would be a good call from my end, so pretty much along those lines.

I'm really surprised that nobody included Pastor Maldonado???  :D

Best Regards,
Cal :)
Anyone Have A Decent Pen?

Offline Alonsofan

Re: Top 5 F1 Drivers Of All Time?
« Reply #12 on: January 13, 2019, 08:04:02 PM »
So what you are trying to say Luke is that you hate Marmite (can't blame you) and you are a closet Pedro de la Rosa hehe

guest3164

  • Guest
Re: Top 5 F1 Drivers Of All Time?
« Reply #13 on: January 13, 2019, 08:18:35 PM »
I love Marmite and I loathe Maldonado and weep at the fact that in the records book, he is the last Williams driver to have won a Grand Prix.

Back to Marmite I think!

Offline Alonsofan

Re: Top 5 F1 Drivers Of All Time?
« Reply #14 on: January 13, 2019, 08:35:06 PM »
I am afraid the chances of that stat changing this season for Williams are slim to anorexic but you never know  :DntKnw:

 


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