F1 Fanatic

On their website, McLaren have put together a countdown to who they think are their 50 greatest drivers. Try and guess who the top 5 may be. These are the rankings so far….

50. Philippe Alliot
49. Michael Andretti
48. Nigel Mansell
47. Andrea de Cesaris

5. Hakkinen
4. McLaren – yes, Brucey
3. Lauda
2. Prost
1. Senna

it’s like they couldn’t think of 50 drivers LOL

5. Raikkonen
4. Hamilton
3. Prost
2. McLaren
1. Senna

They say on their site “no active drivers” so that takes Hamilton and Alonso out (and presumably Raikkonen as he still drives rally cars).

So if I follow their rules:

1. Prost (he brought the team back to the forefront after so many abysmal years)
2. Senna (he hung in Prost’s coattails and I am going to take a lot of flak for this…)
3. Hakkinen
4. Hunt
5. Lauda

No jihelle, I totally agree, Senna could drive ridiculous fast, no one ever said he could develop a car or move a team forward. Personally I belive it was the dream team of Lauda and Prost, two incredibly technically gifted drivers that really got McLaren into it’s golden era.

Although, you’d have to say, a FAIR amount of credit has to go to Ron Dennis and Gordon Murray.

5. Hakkinen
4. Fittipaldi
3. Lauda
2. Senna
1. Prost

Kind of confused if this is supposed to be driver ranking or usefulness to the team, obviously McLaren wouldn’t exist without Bruce. Prost pips Senna for reasons stated above.

As much as I like Button (and I really do), it would take a lot more from him to rank amongst the best five drivers for the team. I hesitated between Fittipaldi and Hunt but Emmo really let them down in a bad way to go to Copersucar. Hunt brought them glamour and Hunt all in opposite lock in a Marlboro liveried M23 is the stuff of legend.