BBC’s Top 20 F1 drivers ever (list) (365 posts)

Topic tags: F1
  • Profile picture of Dizzy-A Dizzy-A said 1 year, 1 month ago:

    The 8 triple or more champions should have been in the top 10 with Ascari and Clark.

  • Profile picture of Kingshark Kingshark said 1 year, 1 month ago:

    @David-A

    No love for Moss? I always thought he was incredibly overrated, never won what is the biggest prize in the sport despite multiple opportunities; but the F1 world seems to like him, and rates him very, very highly.

  • Profile picture of matt90 matt90 said 1 year, 1 month ago:

    He’s rated highly because he could have won the championship 2 or maybe 3 times with better luck. He won more races than any other non-champion. And he backed that up being one of the most successful drivers in sports cars.

  • Profile picture of Kingshark Kingshark said 1 year, 1 month ago:

    Raikkonen could’ve won the championship 3 times without all the bad luck they had. That means nothing. There are so many more successful drivers who made more out of their chances than Moss; such as Piquet, Ascari, Brabham, and Fittipaldi. They are never rated as highly as Moss. What about Carlos Reutemann? Another driver who could’ve won 2 or 3 world titles with a little bit more luck, and is lucky to make the top 40 in a list like this. Who cares if Moss was successful outside of F1? The list is about BBC’s Top 20 F1 drivers ever.

    Why is Moss rated so much higher than he deserves? The only reason I can think of, is because he was British. (now let the UK fans attack me)

  • Profile picture of Pamphlet Pamphlet said 1 year, 1 month ago:

    I’m not even sure the “triple world champions in the top 8″ argument should stand at all. Senna didn’t deserve ’88 and arguably ’90, and yet he’s often in the top 3, if not #1.

  • Profile picture of plushpile plushpile said 1 year, 1 month ago:

    @Pamphlet

    Senna didn’t deserve ’88 and arguably ’90

    Really? What is this based on?

    So there was the Suzuka incedent with Prost, but does that mean he didn’t deserve ’90?

  • Profile picture of Pamphlet Pamphlet said 1 year, 1 month ago:

    @plushpile He had less points than Prost in ’88.

    As for ’90, I said “arguably” because Senna had the best car that year.

  • Profile picture of Dizzy-A Dizzy-A said 1 year, 1 month ago:

    @pamphlet – Almost all champs had the best car in the year they won. I say, there’s usually a reason certain drivers end up in the best cars, and whoever wins the title, deserves it.

    @Kingshark – I can rate Moss above some world champions, but not in the top 10.

  • Profile picture of Pamphlet Pamphlet said 1 year, 1 month ago:

    @david-a That doesn’t mean they all deserved their championships. ’97 comes to mind, as do ’05 and ’08. There are lots of other seasons that barely make or almost make the count as well (like ’93 or ’03).

  • Profile picture of matt90 matt90 said 1 year, 1 month ago:

    “They are never rated as highly as Moss.”

    I’m fairly sure they normally are actually, or at least Brabham and Piquet often are. And assuming it is Raikkonen rather than Hamilton in this list, clearly bad luck is being considered, as that is how they must be justifying such a high placement. It’s certainly why I’d place him in the top 20 over Hamilton. You say Moss was given the chance, and failed- if you are given the chance, finish every race you can in 1st or 2nd, but your car fails through no fault of your own, you have done everything in your power. How is that a case of not making the most out of your chances? Perhaps it’s more a case of drivers like Reutemann being underrated than Moss being overrated. I’m not saying that Moss should be rated higher than some of the other greats, but there are clear reasons why he often is- one being that he raced until ’62, and by that time was the second highest driver in terms of number of wins (he is comfortably in the top 20 for this stat now, and sits ahead of Brabham and Hill, who won less in almost twice the number of races, although for them they had it all come together for individual seasons in a way Moss never enjoyed).

    You say bad luck means nothing- not to you perhaps, but it does to a lot of people, probably most. It is fair that some retirements are the fault of over-driving the car, in the sense of being too hard on it. But not all. To blame Raikkonen for his many engine woes, or Moss for his various retirements would be a disservice to great drivers who simply didn’t have the same luck that their competitors got.

    To be honest though, an admittedly quick look through the stats doesn’t show Reutemann to have ever had a higher rate of retirement than any of his competitors. This doesn’t tell the whole story, I’m sure, but I don’t see a huge amount of bad luck unlike with Moss, although if you know more about his career I’d love to hear. If bad luck means nothing, then there is no reason for any poll or list, as it would be purely results based, depending on which stat you think is best- most championships, highest rate of championships, most wins, highest rate of wins etc.

    However, one thing that does count against Moss is his desire to mostly use British cars, which when they were fast were often fragile. In this respect he could have helped himself more, although he had good reason to not race for Ferrari in particular having been jilted by them in the past.

  • Profile picture of matt90 matt90 said 1 year, 1 month ago:

    Actually, a quick look at an old Octane article I have, analysing Moss’ potential, thought he could have had 4 potential championships from 1956 to 1959 if he and his rivals all had perfect reliability. This includes 2 championships from Fangio, one from Hawthorn, and one from Brabham. There also wouldn’t have been such a large gap between Moss and Fangio in ’55, he would have finished adrift in ’60 due to missing races from injury, and would have narrowly lost to von Tripps in ’61, edging out actual champion Hill for 2nd.

  • Profile picture of Karthikeyan Karthikeyan said 1 year, 1 month ago:

    @pamphlet – While I can understand your self-righteous decision to question Senna’s ’90 championship, for ’88 it was – ‘Only best 11 results counted toward the championship.[4] Prost scored 105 points during the year, but only 87 points were counted toward the championship. Senna scored 94 points, with 90 points counted toward the championship by virtue of winning more races. Thus, Senna became the World Champion, although he did not score most points over the course of the year’*. How can you put the blame on Senna when the rule is like that?
    * Quoted from wiki

  • Profile picture of matt90 matt90 said 1 year, 1 month ago:

    It was a quirk at the championship at the time (considering that reliability that year had little impact), but you can’t deny that everybody knew the rule was there and that it meant that drivers had to go into races going for wins or broke, which Senna did. If you were to take 1988 off Senna, you certainly have to give him the fact that he was unlucky with reliability and a ridiculous stewarding call in 1989. He had one poor race, but then finished higher than Prost in every race the two finished that year.

  • Profile picture of Kingshark Kingshark said 1 year, 1 month ago:

    Senna had no reliability issues in 1988 unlike Prost’s one. That Mclaren was bulletproof. Prost out-scored Senna despite his misfortune by 11 points.

  • Profile picture of Pamphlet Pamphlet said 1 year, 1 month ago:

    @ridiculous – The rule was utterly stupid, but just because it was the rule and not Senna himself doesn’t mean that he wasn’t weaker than Prost that year. But then other people have pointed that out already.

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