2008 F1 World Champion???

[lkjohnson1950]

Pretty spot on Luke. As for " the greatest of them all" I don't think Senna is worthy of shining Clark's shoes.

[Willy]

First and foremost, congrats to you and your son John. A most proud papa you must be.

I agree that Alonso would be much higher in my esteem if he could keep his mouth shut, but as was mentioned a few times in posts, all the drivers are getting younger and maturity comes with age and experience.

I will be cheering for Kubica to get those 12 points, as I feel he has the mental attitude over all the top placed contenders, in my mind.
If BMW can put his ass in a good car for the last two races.

[John S]

I will be cheering for Kubica to get those 12 points, as I feel he has the mental attitude over all the top placed contenders, in my mind.
If BMW can put his ass in a good car for the last two races.

Kubica hasn't had the mental pressure either yet!

Everything we have been talking about is about how the top contenders handle the pressure when challenging for the WDC, Kubica has not had the same pressure since it never looked like he was in serious contention.

We may know if Robert handles it better if Lewis and Massa stuff up again in China and he is staring at a real chance to take the crown, until then it's surely just speculation.

[Steven Roy]

For me Lewis is the best driver on the grid and by a margin.  It is all well and good saying that we can judge Alonso because he beat Schumacher but they were in different cars.  Last season in the same car as Lewis in his rookie season Alonso couldn't live with him and it was only because Lewis dropped so many points in the last couple of races that Alonso has not had to face a lot of hard questioning.

Lewis still makes mistakes but he is only in his second season.  Senna was making mistakes with a lot more experience than that.  Monaco 88 for example and that was his fifth season.

Raikkonen is a far better driver than Massa and hopefully next year's regs will let him show that again.  He has two fundamental problems with this year's car.  First it understeers and even Domenicali admits they have not managed to sort that all year.  Massa like understeer Kimi does not so he is struggling.  Secondly there is something about this year's regs that are punishing the smoother driver in each team.  For years we have seen the cars line up in Noah's arc formations but this year they are all over the place.  The driver with the more aggressive style in each team has a ridiculous advantage for some reason - Hamilton, Massa, Alonso, Kubica, Webber, Vettel.  All the smooth drivers are struggling.

JB,
You do Gilles a great disservice saying he did not use his head. I am surprised at you promoting the old stereotypical image of him.  Gilles was a great driver and at least the equal of Senna.  He drove a lot of those Ferraris the way he did because they were rubbish.  Canada 1980 is a good example.  Reigning team mate Scheckter couldn't find a way to get his car on the grid it was so bad.  Gilles finished the race 5th because he didn't let mere details like the laws of physics affect his performance.

When he was racing snowmobiles Gilles personally designed and built a revolutionary suspension system which was subsequently copied by all the works teams.  You can't do that without engaging your brain.  When he was at Ferrari and all the other drivers on the grid didn't think about their cars unless they were sitting in them he had a telex machine(for younger readers this was what came before faxes.  It was basically a typewriter attached to a phone line.)  Every day Gilles sent a long detailed list of suggested modifications or comments on the car to Ferrari's secretary at the factory and she would send back replies and comments from the engineers.  Gilles technically was light years ahead of any other driver on the grid.  He was doing things that only became commonplace in the mid 90s.  Unfortunately he is remembered as a glorified rock ape because he managed to haul cars into positions they had no right to be in by driving them sideways.

For my money Lewis is the closest thing I have seen to Gilles.

[John S]

 Secondly there is something about this year's regs that are punishing the smoother driver in each team.  For years we have seen the cars line up in Noah's arc formations but this year they are all over the place.  The driver with the more aggressive style in each team has a ridiculous advantage for some reason - Hamilton, Massa, Alonso, Kubica, Webber, Vettel.  All the smooth drivers are struggling.

Could this be anything to do with turning the traction control off? 

We were speculating before the season who may or may not find the difference hard to cope with.

[Steven Roy]

Could this be anything to do with turning the traction control off?

I have no idea John. I came up with this theory/observation about 6 weeks ago and I still can't see what is causing it.  I would have expected the loss of T/C and particulalry the electronic braking stability doodah thing to have helped the smoother drivers and I am sure I said as much here last year. I don' know if the cause is tyres or something on the cars.

The interesting thing is to an extent it was turned on its head at Fuji with Kimi better than Massa, Kovi qualifying close to Lewis, Piquet scoring points etc.  The only thing I can see that is different about Fuji is that there are a lot of late apex corners which need a smooth corner entry so it maybe there is something somewhere that affects the entry phase of the corner but I really sdon't have the slightest idea what the cause is.