Schumi, Hamilton, Stewart or Senna?

[judasentinel]

If there are any F1 fans out there, who do you think is the greatest driver? Forget about records......I am talking about sheer brilliance in driving skill. When it comes to records, obviously Michael is the greatest, better than ANYONE else ever, and I dont think anyone will ever equal, let alone beat, his tally of records. But nonetheless, any opinions on this?

I have been watching Lewis Hamilton for 3 years now and he has impressed so far, more than Michael did in his first 3 years as an F1 debutant. But I dont think Hamilton will be able to beat Schumi.

What do you guys think?

[Ti Pit]

No one tops Senna.. sorry

[judasentinel]

No one tops Senna.. sorry

Why? Reasons? How is he better than Stewart or Hamilton or Michael?

[LivingMovie]

Mika Hakkinen!!!

I stopped watching when he retired.
FF to the current season, I'm hooked again.


Anyone tuning in for the Shanghai F1 Tonight?
Only 4 more hours until race time.




GO HAMILTON GO, Bring it back to McLaren

[judasentinel]

Mika Hakkinen!!!

I stopped watching when he retired.
FF to the current season, I'm hooked again.


Anyone tuning in for the Shanghai F1 Tonight?
Only 4 more hours until race time.


GO HAMILTON GO, Bring it back to McLaren

They are winning because of our car, man. McLaren are winning unfairly......lol

Yes, Mika was good. I still remember when in 99 or 00 he was winning, in Barcelona, and on the last lap, his car broke down. He cried like a baby. And when Schumi had won, in the press conference, he said, "This is NO way to win a grand prix".


Mika was good, I agree, but for some reason, his career was short-lived. I think Ron Dennis always does that to his drivers. Same story with DC, Prost, Senna, Alonso, Kimi and Montoya. All suffered and left (with the exception of late Senna).

I honestly do not want to see Hamilton win.....he is a terrific driver, perhaps close to Senna and Michael, but he is yet to prove it. I for one do not believe in worshipping a driver over a team. Since I am amongst the die-hard Tifosi, FORZA FERRARI!!

So, for me, Michael always was and always will be the ultimate.

[LivingMovie]

They are winning because of our car, man. McLaren are winning unfairly......lol

Hahha, Touche....

I for one do not believe in worshipping a driver over a team. Since I am amongst the die-hard Tifosi, FORZA FERRARI!!

Another valid point, but an unbiased viewer could argue both teams (McLaren/Ferrari) "bend" the rules.

Why were they trying to run intermediate's during the Fuji race? Do they last longer when your trailing a safety car? or did they really just get the email
late...:roll:

LOL either way, Kimi's run from dead last to 3rd in the rain last week was nothing short of "AWESOME" :bow down:

GL to your team sir, you know who I am cheering for.

2 hrs + change = race time

[CanadianGTR]

No one tops Senna.. sorry

Did you see the comparison video with him doing a lap of.... spa I think it was, with Schumacher in the picture in picture window.
Pretty much a decade of technological advances.... and as I recall the laps were identical almost.
It's amazing that Senna could do back then, what F1 drivers are capable of today with all of the technology behind the cars.

Plus it's hard to compare drivers of today and back then... racing now just doesn't have as much glory as it did back then.
I personally like Kimi out of these new drivers.

Also, all teams cheat... they have crews of photographers whose key purpose is to snap high-res shots of other teams cars during the race so they can reverse engineer them. Ferrari cheats just as much as McLaren... but F1 is a little bias towards Ferrari.
Aerodynamicists leave one team, goto another, take what they know with them; but how do you determine what someone KNOWS and what someone LEARNED working at that team?
It's all nonsense.
McLaren got caught because Alonso was basically trying to blackmail Dennis; which in turn lead to Ron pretty much calling Mosley and telling him to expect a call from Alonso because he's a twit.

Anyway... I could rant about F1 policy and politics all day long... but I won't.
We can save that for a meet/dinner session during the off-season. (I still have a lot of races to catch up on)

[judasentinel]

Just finished watching the Shanghai GP. Where are those now who had written my Kimster off? Where is Hamilton now? lol.........I love the guy......he has Schumi's attitude (Lewis), but I dont want him to win.

Spa is perhaps the greatest circuit for me........and although I havent seen Senna's lap compared to Schumi, I can safely say that while F1 has advanced technologically, that advancement has been ONLY in two areas - SAFETY, and COST OPTIMIZATIOn (which the homologation of engines and V8s from V10 are a part of). There has been NO advancement in speed increase, simply because it goes counter to the other objective of safety.

So, while it MAY be true that Senna did a great lap of Spa in his McLaren in the early nineties, you simply cannot compare his lap to Michael's, which perhaps WAS done in different timeframe, in a different car.

Speed alone is NOT an indicator of advancement.....speed with reduced outsput and standardized tyres (I hate that) is based on technical advancements that produce similar results with smaller engines and tyres with lower performance. Look at the lap times nowadays on any track. They are so much slower than before. This doesn't mean they are not moving forward. It just means that ever since Senna died, the focus has shifted from speed and performance to safety and spectacle. The elimination of the teams' ability to adjust rear downforce while in parc ferme', not allowing any moving aero parts, one tyre supplier, and the points system, all have contributed to F1 being a little less glorious. And the stupid scandals dont help either.

To me, Schumi was, and will always be, the ONE sportsman who I would actually love to emulate. No one has beaten his records and probably no one will.

[Neal]

Shumi only started winning when Senna was taken out... after that shumi dominated...

Senna>shumi > then everyone else....

but how come you don't want Hamilton to win? its like the Tiger woods story for F1... :P :-D im routing for the rookie

[Z-Tuned]

Hamilton? Come on too early to tell if its a fluke.

SENNA>VILLENUEVE>SCHUMI

Sorry Gilles has to be there, he may not have always been the fastest but the most fascinating daredevil the sport has ever seen.

F1s all time highlight

http://youtube.com/watch?v=kl2tIFxSEGA

[CanadianGTR]

So you're telling me there have been no advancements that help the cars go faster around a track from Senna's glory days to the turn of the century? Speed increase is relative.. are you talking top speed? acceleration? cornering speeds? I can assure there has been advancements in those areas.

Aerodynamics, tyre compounds, brakes, seamless shift transmissions?
Hell any of those areas ALONE help a driver get around a track faster.
If Senna and Schumacher are doing identical lap times... even if the cars have the POTENTIAL to be equally as fast, it would most likely require a lot more skill from a driver in Senna's day, that it does now in the times of Hamilton and Alonso.

Not to mention that there were far more opportunities to be overtaken in the 90's than there are nowadays. Racing today has more to do with qualifying and pit strategy than it has to do with driver skill and the cars.

[judasentinel]

So you're telling me there have been no advancements that help the cars go faster around a track from Senna's glory days to the turn of the century? Speed increase is relative.. are you talking top speed? acceleration? cornering speeds? I can assure there has been advancements in those areas.

Aerodynamics, tyre compounds, brakes, seamless shift transmissions?
Hell any of those areas ALONE help a driver get around a track faster.
If Senna and Schumacher are doing identical lap times... even if the cars have the POTENTIAL to be equally as fast, it would most likely require a lot more skill from a driver in Senna's day, that it does now in the times of Hamilton and Alonso.

Not to mention that there were far more opportunities to be overtaken in the 90's than there are nowadays. Racing today has more to do with qualifying and pit strategy than it has to do with driver skill and the cars.

I am not disagreeing with you on any count. My point is that from the time Senna died, the focus of most technological development changed from speed and performance to safety being the FIRST thing to consider. Secondly, I totally agree that the F1 of today is more about qualifying and pit strategy than ever before - doesnt mean that the race is not important. But here is the thing - in I think 2000, Michael was leading the race in Barcelona, but he had one more pit stop to make. There were 18 more laps to create a significant gap from the challenger (which I think was Mika). And Ross Brawn came on the radio and asked Michael if he could somehow create a 30 second gap in the next 18 laps, and Michael did just that. My point of this story is that since Senna's death, F1 has become much safer. Teams used to take risks and go all out. Now they dont. They have to focus on reliability/ Every penny spent on enhancing safety of cars and tracks, is that penny less available for performance upgrades. Prior to Senna's death, Gilles Villeneuve died, Rene Arnou died, Niki Lauda had that fiery crash at the Nordschliefe.......but not much was done. Senna's demise created the GPDA in one sense.

But there is also the point that (and I say this with caution) F1 cars' development is being carried out in a way that it CAN BE TRANSLATED to road cars. As a result, the developmental costs are being borne by FOM and sponsors, who effectively are contrib uting to the R&D for road cars. If somehow we were to totally cut the umbilical cord between road cars and F1 cars, we would see a much more aggressive development schedule and steeper curve. But it aint gonna happen. The raw power and aggressiveness of the days of yore (Senna's era included) is long gone and Michael was smart enough to realize that it wasnt worth his time anymore.

Look at the lap records for ANY track. NONE of them are from the last 3 years. WHY? Because there has been deliberate attempt to slow the cars down.........from V10 to V8......two tire suppliers to one, restriction on aerodynamic development to create speed, engine freeze, making engines last 2 races and then from 2010, four races..........ALL steps taken to curtail costs of development in F1, because it was giving Ferrari, McLaren, Honda, BMW, Renault and Toyota an unfair advantage over non-manufacturer teams. Now how fair that is, remains debatable. But these steps were taken to create a level playing field. And in doing so, while qualifying has been spiced up, the race effectively gets decided by the pit order, at least for the pole sitter. Barring any extraordinary events, the pole sitter wins. There is very little overtaking, etc.......I can go on and on and on...........today's F1 is NOT as exciting as the early 21st century ones.

But if you put Senna into an F2004 and michael in the same car, I believe that Senna would probably cave in before Michael, not because he was not as good, but because he was emotionally charged, and could be lured into making a mistake. Michael is a machine. He was not infallible, but he was almost perfect - like the Great White Shark - perfect killing machine, lol.

[CanadianGTR]

I hate the new "trying to make F1 more relevant to consumers" ********.
F1 is a sport of extremes, and pushing the limits of technology, not trying to make a soccer mom feel special. Does a soccer mom REALLY give a damn if an F1 car uses KERS or not? Hell no.

Also, the reason lap records haven't been set isn't for safety, it's for the other fact you mentioned about cost cutting. Same reason you see two pairs of teams running the same chassis.

If they want to cut costs they need to cut back on the budget allowed for the engineers, not by adding regulations. Regulations are great unless you have teams who can afford to give engineers a hundred million to figure out ways around it.

Schumacher was good when he wasn't making stupid mistakes... which can be said for any GOOD F1 driver (Alonso, Senna, Massa, Kimi, the list goes on). He wasn't a god, and he wasn't PERFECT. He was a bloody talented pilot of those machines, don't get me wrong... and I worship the ground he walks on as a driver... you have to be realistic in your praise and not simply blind because he's wearing a red suit. He was also great because of how he knew the car, and knew the workings of it, rather than just showing up to drive... leaving to sign autographs... and then doing interviews.

Like I said, Schuey was great.. but he wasn't perfect like you make him out to be.

[judasentinel]

PHEW!! lol..............we finally agree. I dont think Schumi was God, but I do worship the ground he walked on. And its not just because he was the greatest driver of F1. It has A LOT to do with him as a person, as a family man, and a team member. I am sure you know that when he joined Ferrari, he moved from the comfort of a hotel or his house to a vacant barn in the middle of the Fiorano circuit. He lived ON THE TRACK, through the development/tests of the Ferrari F1s. He would hold meetings there with his team. He would bring them pizza from a loca pizzeria.......and would spend countless hours thru the night, talking about how to enhance the performance of the cars.

I want to read the book written by the ITV commentator, James Allen. For me, Ferrari came first, and then Schumi, but as things stand, I love Ferrari because of what they achieved with Schumi, not with Rubens, not with Irvine, or Alesi or anyone else. I am not a fan of Ferrari road cars. I never was crazy for them......but their F1 team, I am crazy about it.

And yes, lap records cannot be set because cars have been slowed down, both for cost and safety considerations. Yet, the amazing scientists that they are, F1 techs have managed to squeeze out more and more fractions of seconds out of the reduced performance of their machines. KUDOS to them.

Let's just wrap it, if we all agree..........otherwise, let's keep this discussion going so we all can cross-learn and understand each other. There is some value that I am seeing in this discourse. Hope feelings are mutual..........:bow down:

[CanadianGTR]

I just don't want this to turn into an "okay that's great, but here's why I think you're wrong" thread.

It's opinion.