Formula 1 Aramco Großer Preis Der Eifel 2020Formula 1
- Thread starter Jimlaad43
- 214 comments
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- 3,694
- South Australia
People still die in Motorsport. I was watching Le Mans when Allan Simonsen had his accident a few years back and I’ll never forget it.
Yes- safety advancements have brought the death toll down significantly. This is also true for coal mining, truck driving, fight sports and all other dangerous jobs. The world is a safer place than it was in the 50s, but Motorsport is still one of the most dangerous things a person can pursue.
Don’t pretend for a second that anyone at the wheel of a race car genuinely believes they can’t be hurt. There is still risk and bravery is still required to drive fast.
- 1,279
- Melbourne
- Nicky-Boy_7
But don't you think that is a bit unfair? Even if you do ignore the completely different worlds of F1 you're judging one person on first hand experience, and one not.
But he still fits what Martin said, RIC started in an HRT, the worst car in the grid, but via his skill and past reputation he advanced up to Red Bull which was one of the best cars at one point.Meanwhile countless other drivers have started at the bottom and stayed there.
That's all Brundle was getting at, the best drivers always end up in the best cars at some point. How long they stay in the best cars is down to a number of factors, but they always get there.
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- 16,066
- Melbourne
- ScottPuss20
- CheetahsMeow
I'm going to have to pull you up on this one. He was able to mount a championship fight in his first year, which no-one has been able to do before or since. Not even Verstappen was in such a position. "But he was in a top car with a top team, of course he was up the front!" I hear you cry. Look, just because you're racing for a top team doesn't instantly mean that you'll be successful. Hamilton proved himself from day 1, and met all of McLaren's expectations. Probably exceeded them in some respects. He could've succumbed to the pressure and failed to perform like Albon and Gasly, but he didn't. That's talent, not the car. He's definitely 91 wins and 7 championships talented. It's one thing to be in a good car but it's another to perform week in week out and beat your team mate in an equal car. That's the mark of a true champion right there - Senna, Lauda, Prost, Fangio and Schumacher could always perform when they needed to, and couldn't be kept down by any adversity. Hamilton is no different and deserves to sit alongside the legends of the sport.
- 1,036
- New Zealand
- noshog
This is what I don't understand... How do people not understand this ?
Even with the best equipment you still have to show up and perform faultlessly week after week.
If it really was that easy, Webber would've taken a championship (or 2) off Vettel... Rosberg would've taken more than one off Hamilton... One of Schumacher's team mates would've taken one or more off him.... These guys are multiple champions for a reason !
- 9,401
- Western Sydney
- mustafur
You got to remember and it gets easily forgotten that drivers beating drivers in top teams generally is a higher standard then another driver beating another driver in a lower team because the better team naturally attracts the better drivers(it's not absolute but as an average easily).
This era is a bit unique though as it's been a one team domination for such a long period that just by the maths your going to have World championship calibre drivers missing out massive chunks of their career being in a shot of even competing for the title.
It's very hard to work out exactly where each driver is in the pecking order though but generally those that have had alot of team progression are the ones with the Talent as the teams all go through plenty of drivers and have all the data.
This era is a bit unique though as it's been a one team domination for such a long period that just by the maths your going to have World championship calibre drivers missing out massive chunks of their career being in a shot of even competing for the title.
It's very hard to work out exactly where each driver is in the pecking order though but generally those that have had alot of team progression are the ones with the Talent as the teams all go through plenty of drivers and have all the data.
- 9,401
- Western Sydney
- mustafur
Ricciardo probably had more real pace, Perez was catching Ricciardo before because he was on a much better strategy with newer tyres as Ricciardo pitted earlier under the VSC(which went green basically as soon as he entered pits anyway) and Perez went half the race on the softs and had much newer mediums.
- 1,279
- Melbourne
- Nicky-Boy_7
- 355
- Virgin Islands US
Am I though? I don’t know Lewis personally. I don’t know how he and the team operate behind closed doors. I don’t have access to the data of how he drives. All my information of Lewis comes from second and third hand sources. The info shared to me by his teammates, his team, the telly presenters, and the rare morsels of subjective info he gives us in the occasional interview. Just because it’s happening right now in 2020 doesn’t mean I’m less divorced from the actual facts. Without knowing him personally, everything I know about Lewis is just as much hearsay as what I know about Clark. I know more about Winston Churchill than I do about Lewis Hamilton, and Churchill died before even my parents were born.
I'm not talking about their personality, but their performance. You're judging Hamilton on every minute detail that you can see today, whereas you don't have that luxury for the older drivers. How do we truly know the pace difference between those old cars, and how much was about the driver? We have very little data.
- 17,070
- United Kingdom
- 3,001
- Dundee, Scotland
10/10 on that item of work, very nicely done and fitting picture for the race win yesterday.
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- 4,538
- Australia
Any argument about getting into the fastest car doesn't always hold true to be honest. I mean it certainly has historically - however F1 for the last 30 years has had several periods of 4 to 5 years where one team has been the best.
- 355
- Virgin Islands US
My point was the exact same thing can be said today. Without having every team’s telemetry data in my lap, all I have to go on is roughly the same level of information available to me with regards to a race in the 60s: simple observation and 2nd/3rd party subjective opinion. There are fairly accurate race reports of every single grand prix, you know.
- 17,070
- United Kingdom
But.....you're watching it. You're seeing him race first hand. Every mistake, every win, everything. It's all there, and that's what you're judging Hamilton on when you say you don't think he's one of the best. That isn't the case for the sixties. Race reports and stats are never going to give you a similar picture of a driver, you're drawing on someone else's descriptions and feelings of the events, not your own.
Also again, comparing the wildly different cars makes no sense. The 60s and 70s were cars without any real downforce, manual gearboxes, low grip skinny tyres, and so on. They required a completely different skillset to a modern car. How would Hamilton have done in a 60s car? How would Jim Clark have managed a high downforce car on grippy slicks? It's impossible to know.
McLaren
Premium
- 45,391
- Texas
Right, that's why Ferrari's Constructor Title win margins in 2000-2004 saw 43%, 58%, & 55%, some of the highest win margins ever & the only 2 teams that got close to beating them were Williams & McLaren til' Renault came along.
1 Constructor is obliterating the sport by 30-40% win margins with 1 amazing driver and a solid backup & only 1 team can even get close. Because that's much different from back then.
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- 4,466
- Vancouver, BC
- GTP_Grand_Prix
I'd like to chime in here, if I may. There are essentially two main eras of Grand Prix racing, pre-1968 and post-1968, as 1968 was the year that wings started to appear. What's significant about this change is that it eventually lead to a more grip-focused driving style across the board. Before wings, the driving style that you had to learn to become fast was the 4-wheel drift, which is almost a lost art today.
Juan Manuel Fangio, Rouen, 1957
I'm not sure when exactly this driving technique came about, it's possible that it was "invented" by Tazio Nuvolari, as he was a consistent user of the technique, but there surely would have been others that made use of this driving style before. Link to a video that states that using the throttle to steer the car around bends was a "new technique" in 1938. Some beautiful examples being displayed starting at 4:17.
Throughout the 1970s you can still see some drivers trying to keep the 4-wheel drift relevant, despite the introduction of wings, Ronnie Peterson and Gilles Villeneuve are a couple of great examples. Sometime in the 1980s, the technique had died out after more than half a century of use, giving way to the grip-focused style that we know today.
So yes, driving a Grand Prix car before wings required a different skill set than what most modern drivers currently have. That doesn't mean that modern drivers can't learn to 4-wheel drift in no-downforce cars today... The thing is, people like Nuvolari and Fangio at their peaks would have had tons of experience of driving in this manner. They were in a different world.
With all of that said, I do not see these kind of comparisons as silly. I see them as fascinating. It's interesting to compare different eras and observe what has changed, and what has remained the same...
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- 16,066
- Melbourne
- ScottPuss20
- CheetahsMeow
- 4,538
- Australia
The best drivers always adapt and will be fast with any regulation change.
Think of how the cars changed in the last 30 years and how Schumacher was still elite across all those different regulations.
Same with Jackie Stewart, elite driver no matter whether the car had 1.5L engine, 3L, wings and massive slicks or not.
The approach is different now, you can find the limit by overstepping it, for instance Schumacher always used to make mistakes or crash in practice when pushing too hard. Because he could. Same with Marc Marquez. Getting away from those moments unscathed is a luxury that drivers rarely had. And if Schumacher or Marquez were in a different era, they'd be just as good, they'd just change their approach.
What skews statistics is that the seasons are longer, the cars are more reliable and the best teams are better for longer than at any other point in F1.
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