All-purpose open-wheel (F1, IRL) racing thread

Lewis Hamilton was on the podium for his first nine races as a rookie.

He missed a championship in his rookie season by one point and finished tied with his teammate, Fernando Alonso... who was the defending world champion. He's gotten better since then.

Hamilton will own virtually every record by the time he is done.

Yeah, he's in a dominant car. That's because Mercedes could hire anyone in the world and Hamilton is a no-brainer. He's on the very, very, very short list of the greatest drivers of all time. Like, if the list is one person long, Hamilton is probably on it.

The level of driving talent in the field is really high. This is an era of great drivers. And still, the only one close to being in Lewis' league is Max Verstappen.

Historically you can make a case for guys like Schumacher, Senna, Prost, Clark... but I don't think you can really make an argument that any of them are better than Hamilton.

 

Again, my comment wasn't about Hamilton as much as the series.
I just went back and looked. Mercedes - with multiple drivers, not just Hamilton - has won 94 of the last 128 races.
The last time any team other than Mercedes, Ferrari, or Red Bull won was the season opener in 2013.
Formula 1 is the auto racing of Scottish or Spanish soccer.

 

The other side of that is imagining what Schumacher or Prost could do in one of today's Mercedes.

Hamilton's dominant.

 

Absolutely true. And ultimately it's impossible to compare drivers from different eras -- it can be hard enough to compare drivers from the same era in different cars. If I'm picking an all-time top 5 it's probably Hamilton, Senna, Prost, Schumacher and Clark. Not sure of the order.

Here's the argument against the two guys you mentioned vs Hamilton...

Schumacher had an absolutely preposterous advantage in that Ferrari. Not only did he have the best team with Ross Brawn and Jean Todt, and overall a spectacular car, he had Bridgestone building tires to his specifications for each race. It was virtually impossible for anyone to compete with that. (Of course he also won a title with Benetton without that advantage.) And when Schumacher came out of retirement he was beaten by his teammate all three years.

Second point on Schumacher: Dirtiest driver I've ever seen and it's not close.

As for Prost: While Hamilton is unrivaled in his era, there's a very strong case to be made that Prost wasn't even the best driver of his time. (And really, Prost probably doesn't get the full credit he deserves because he was boring as hell. People admired Prost but they LOVED Senna.)

So, ultimately, I don't think anyone would have been better than Hamilton... but (insert shrugging emoji). All otherworldly talents. And it would be fascinating if we could see Hamilton driving the deathtraps guys like Clark had to deal with around entirely unforgiving circuits. I've stood on the banking of the old Monza track. Those guys were insane.

 

I'd probably swap in Fangio for Clark.

But it's close.

 

This is interesting if you've never seen it.

Who’s The Best Formula One Driver Of All Time?

 

One can only imagine Hamilton's ELO has risen since that piece was published in 2018. Would love to see an updated Sagarin-like comparison. (Jeff Lynne's ELO is currently halted because of COVID-19.)

From a completely American oval track racing standpoint, Jack Brabham gets credit for starting the rear engine revolution at Indianapolis but it was Jimmy Clark in the Lotus that really broke the barrier. To do what he did, show up at the place and not only make the show but contend, lead and win, AND do the same in a limited NASCAR effort, is incredibly impressive.

Clark dominated in 1965 and probably won in 1966, although Graham Hill is credited with the victory. The 1966 race is a textbook example of how human error in manual timing and scoring can muck things up. It's quite possible laps for both Clark (who spun four times!) and Gordon Johncock were miscalculated, Clark because his car was painted nearly identical to Al Unser, who crashed late in the race, and Johncock because he wasn't credited with the lap under the red flag caused by the huge pileup coming to the green flag.

Clark's team pushed his car to Victory Lane, only to find Hill's car there. And Hill was astonished to find out he won, since he didn't think he passed either Clark or Johncock the entire race.

 

That was interesting. Thanks for posting that.

As @maumann said, it would be interesting to see Hamilton's rating now.

It's pretty remarkable to see Senna and Prost both so high when their 5-year eras overlap so heavily.

One guy who is really flattered by the peak 5-year methodology they used: Sebastian Vettel. He had four years in a virtually unbeatable car and a crappy teammate. They put another driver next to him and he got swamped and has looked decidedly human ever since.

 

Hamilton is the greatest in the modern era, but against the earlier era drivers I just can't put him on the same level due to the safety factor. Earlier eras had multiple drivers dying each season. Prost's quote about Senna not thinking he can kill himself in a car (and then doing so in short order) comes to mind. Big difference in Hamilton not having to deal with that.

 

This really became apparent last year on the anniversary of the Senna crash and the death of Niki Lauda. F1 will never be totally safe but to compare today's F1 with the roulette of the earlier eras, when the cars were, as PC says, rockets and death traps and tracks were monsters with nothing more than hay bales - maybe - to protect an off-course excursion and guys were wearing dress shirts and helmets that wouldn't protect you if you fell off a bike is tough. On-track incidents that get guys bitching on the radio about "dangerous driving" today were probably SOP not that long ago, as Martin Brundle will occasionally point out.

 

It's crazy to think we're not that far removed from an era when drivers would have to stop, get out, and try to save another driver from a burning wreck because safety crews were nowhere to be seen.

Also, the fuel tank used to be inside the driver's cockpit. What could go wrong?

 

And nothing to take away from today's drivers, whom I think are the best conditioned and prepared (particularly with virtual testing) in the history of the sport, today's cars are so much technology driven compared to even a generation ago. In particular, F1 has so many bells and whistles that the driver can almost point and shoot and assume the thing will stay underneath him.

Not to say the guy in the seat still doesn't make a difference, but you watch Gurney, Clark, Stewart and the others from that era just throwing the cars in the turns and over the bumps with what appears to be reckless abandon. And, in most cases, it probably was. But, man, you could instantly tell who was on the knife's edge of car control.

And death was not only a reality but acknowledged as part of the inherent danger, both in Europe and on the big car circuit. I think I've read where 13 of the 33 drivers in A.J. Foyt's 1958 Indy debut were killed in a race car.

Indy 500 qualifying has become "who has the best engineer?" If the driver can hold the throttle to the floor for four laps without a wall getting in the way, he's done his job. But the difference between Marco's pole time and Rossi's ninth-place run was all about hitting the setup, not the talent of the driver.

When you were hitting 200 mph plus down the straights and had to lift and brake to make the turns -- in an aluminum chassis surrounded by 75 gallons of flammable racing fuel and 750 horses and no aerodynamic assistance -- that makes me think of Hemingway's quote about bull fighters, race drivers and mountain climbers.

You didn't have to be crazy, but it probably helped.