F1 Fanatic

Top 4 is always Senna, Clark, Fangio and Schumacher. Thats the order i think we’ll see them although despite being a Schumi fan i’d put Clark top every day.

In no particular order:
Clark, Fangio, Ascari, Moss & Stewart – maestros, gentlemen & sportsmen.
Lauda, Prost, Senna, Mansell & Schumacher – gladiators and opportunists.
Vettel & Hamilton – boy racers who may yet become gladiators or maestros. Or just stay boy racers.

@matt90

Looking at it like that does give more weight to the argument that Clark is the best F1 driver. However, you opened with mentioning his poor reliability, which may have cost him even more titles.

Maybe that is true, and it is definitely necessary to look at the full range of a driver’s career to judge their performance – but its a very dangerous game if we start getting into hypotheticals. After all, how do we know he wouldn’t have retired later from, say, a spin?

Its incorrect to say that he would have been champion in X year if he didn’t have poor reliability – because it takes no account of the possibility of crashing out, or other events which would affect the championship.

@cjpdk Oh I know it’s not possible to make any certain predictions (although as I said I think it looks like an oil leak certainly cost him at least 1 extra championship). But it just shows a wider range of stats often need to be looked at, and their reliability at least considered (unless you aren’t looking at any stats, purely apparent driving skill). What would be interesting would be to see how many of each driver’s retirements were a result of car trouble or driver error. I don’t know if Clark made many errors or not, and that goes for any other historic driver.

If Hamilton is on the list, he should have shown up by now. He’s only won one title and his last few years have been erratic. 2007 is still his best year in my opinion, which doesn’t reflect well on Hamilton.

I think it’s safe to say Alonso, Schumacher and Vettel are in the top 20, though I’m not entirely sure about Vettel. I think Raikkonen being in the top 15 can be justified (though he should only be 14th or 15th). Raikkonen’s McLaren years is what made him a great driver, he was consistent when the car wasn’t breaking down, and when he drove slow McLaren’s, he often put them further forward than they should have been. His first year and the first half of his second year at Ferrari were also as solid as his McLaren years. However the second half of his Ferrari career seemed to stick more in people’s minds rather than his good days. I thought Raikkonen on his day was solid as ever, but he lost his consistency.

I remember hearing Murray Walker say, in a video for the BBC website at some point in the last few years, that he thinks Fangio is the greatest ever F1 driver.

Piquet is 16th

There are four current drivers on this list and one or two of them should have shown up by now in my opinion, depending on who they are (Alonso and Schumacher definitely, and the other two likely to be Vettel, Raikkonen or Hamilton). If it’s Hamilton, he should have appeared already on this list. I could understand why Raikkonen or Vettel have yet to appear on this list, but definitely not Hamilton. If Button appears, this list has no credibility.

As for Piquet, 16th seems slightly low for me. I would have put him around 10th, 11th or 12th. He did lack a bit of class, but he was a fantastic driver in my opinion (definitely better than Mansell for me), and won the title three times.