Schumacher tops poll of Greatest Ferrari Driver ever, followed by Kimi:

 

https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/133054/schumacher-tops-greatest-ferrari-driver-poll

 

Must have been a youngish audience they polled. 

Schuey never allowed his team mates to race him and crashed out his title rivals,

and Kimi lucked into a title when McLaren mysteriously threw it away (whilst under threat of expulsion from F1).

 

What about :

Villeneuve, clearly the fastest of his era,

Lauda, who came back from death to win the 77 title,

or the near invincible Ascari

(check  his 1952 results in particular F1 GP entered 6 Wins 6 Poles 5 Fastest Lap 6 )

(and he kept on winning the next year)

Or Juan Manuel Fangio with 5 F1 titles in 8 seasons and won 46.15% of all F1 championship GPs entered , plus 2 Sebring 12hrs, a Carrera Panamericana and 2 seconds in the Mille Miglia.

 

Like all F1 it should be the Car that should be in the league table and not the driver.

 

F1 is 90% car, 10% driver.

 

At least MotoGP is closer to50/50 !

 

 

Fangio is the all time great F1 driver, but not I think the all time great Ferrari driver.

 

He only drove for the team for one season ('56),

the cars weren't even Ferraris (except in name) having been designed and built by Lancia,

and he was gifted the championship by Collins, who gave the great man his car during the Italian GP, though he would have taken the title himself if he had not.

He massively put Enzo Ferrari's nose out of joint by leaving for Maserati when the championship was over.

 

Fangio got a lot of second places in sports cars. Some young upstart called Moss kept doing him over.

His only non F1 Ferrari win in a major race was the '56 Sebring 12 hours.

 

In comparison with Ascari in 53 the F1 championship wins were 5-1 in favour of the Italian, and it would have been 6-0 had Fangio's teammate not accidently taken Ascari out of the final race.

 

 

 

 

Edited 16 November, 20178 yr by camelspyyder

2 hours ago, lol-lol said:

 

Like all F1 it should be the Car that should be in the league table and not the driver.

 

F1 is 90% car, 10% driver.

 

At least MotoGP is closer to50/50 !

 

 

 

SO why do you bang on about lovely young Dutch boy Max Verstappen so much rather than praising Adrian Newey and the RB design team to the skies?

 

 

Edited 16 November, 20178 yr by camelspyyder

Toro Rosso keep Gasly / Hartley for next year.

13 hours ago, camelspyyder said:

 

SO why do you bang on about lovely young Dutch boy Max Verstappen so much rather than praising Adrian Newey and the RB design team to the skies?

 

Adrian Newey is a great aerodynamicist etc as proved by the performance of the Red Bull car where chassis is more important than pure engine performance.

Shame AW went off from RB for a while to work on the America Cup Yachting project as RB could have done with him at that crucial time and it took many months to push the package back on track when he returned.

 

As to Max, on those rare occasions when the talent of a driver is allowed to be more than the 10% of the effect on car performance ie like in the wet in Brazil last year, he made the other drivers looklike mugs.  Sadly the vast majority of the time ie in the dry and on circuits that are virtually impossible to overtake on due to the effect on a following car to its downforce, we have 90% of the "race" as a procession.  Queue..

 

 

 

 

 

   

Practice 1 Abu Dhabi on Channel 4 now.

Interesting stuff seeing the sensors and bits and pieces on the cars,

Great Q3 laps by Bo77as, Riccardo and Hulkenburg!

 

Perez must surely get a penalty for dangerous driving.

 

 

 

 

Edited 25 November, 20178 yr by camelspyyder

Mercedes 'B' driver takes pole, while Max the wonder Kid is 0.37 secs slower than his team mate and almost a second off of the pole time.

 

Agree that Perez must get a penalty for dawdling around and then heading for the pits. 

Yeah, if we're going to have a Dutch champ, he'll have to cut out off days like today. 

 

Still, he tends to star on Sundays and thats when the points are paid.

Well, I couldn't find my telescope to see where the Ferraris and RedBulls were.

 

Somehow you knew that Mercedes would give them a kicking at the last race just to extinguish the glimmers of hope they had for next year.

Agreed. Mercedes seemed to be flexing their muscles ahead of next year. They need to improve how their car works in traffic though, was very keen to see them go wheel to wheel.

Lewis talks about the A and B drivers in F1.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/42132327

Lewis Hamilton on Vettel, Alonso, Verstappen, winning a fourth title & his future

Lewis Hamilton is talking about his rivals, and sharing the sort of information Formula 1 drivers usually like to keep to themselves.  "We're the four strongest drivers," he says, referring to himself, McLaren's Fernando Alonso, Red Bull's Max Verstappen and his erstwhile title rival Sebastian Vettel of Ferrari. "I really hope we are all in the fight next year. It would be friggin' amazing."   In the year in which he became a four-time world champion, and unquestionably Britain's most successful grand prix driver, Hamilton has had battles with all of them, mostly robust but sportsmanlike. And occasionally, in Vettel's case, not. How does he approach a contest with them?  "You look at them all slightly differently," he says. "They all have different characteristics. Sebastian, for example, from this year, you could say: 'Give more space.' Not in a negative way.   "Max - takes a lot of risks. Also you have to give more space but he is more inexperienced than the other guys.  "Fernando - toughest driver there is, so you have to keep that utmost respect for each other but you've really got to play your cards right."   Does he feel he can race physically closer with Alonso than with the others?  "It seems so," Hamilton says, thinking back to their side-by-side scrap through five corners in Mexico last month, where he clinched the title. "He was very hard and tough but fair. Friggin' heck - his race-craft is mighty.     "But Max's race-craft is very impressive. He's doing wonderful things but he is going to grow so much over the next 10 years. I don't think it will a problem, it'll just be freaking tough.   "Wouldn't that be a fight? Even I'd pay to see that."

 

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/motorsport-f1-2017/alfa-romeo-returns-formula-1-sauber

 

Interesting move by Alfa

31 minutes ago, vrskeith said:

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/motorsport-f1-2017/alfa-romeo-returns-formula-1-sauber

 

Interesting move by Alfa

 

Is not Alfa just another branch of ferrari/fiat. ????

1 hour ago, lol-lol said:

 

Is not Alfa just another branch of ferrari/fiat. ????

Autonomous business's????

3 hours ago, vrskeith said:

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/motorsport-f1-2017/alfa-romeo-returns-formula-1-sauber

 

Interesting move by Alfa

Fiat simply trying to revive the Alfa brand which is flagging 

20 minutes ago, gadgetman said:

Fiat simply trying to revive the Alfa brand which is flagging 

Indeed, Alfa are entirely owned by Fiat. So nothing but a rebadge to raise status of the brand.

1 hour ago, LightRain said:

Indeed, Alfa are entirely owned by Fiat. So nothing but a rebadge to raise status of the brand.

 

Are nearly all brands flagging except Dacia ?   

 

Vast quantities of stock they are trying to ship at high prices but now having to cut their margins or sell at a loss due to the flagging UK economy.  

 

 

 

2 hours ago, gadgetman said:

Fiat simply trying to revive the Alfa brand which is flagging 

 

Absolutely, they've destroyed Lancia (another F1 make) on every export market and need to avoid ruining another brand.

Motorsport worked as a tool to resurrect Maserati  (even if the MC12 was a re-bodied Enzo) so now its Alfa's turn.

Its 20 years since they had a significant motorsports presence so it's another welcome bit of badge-engineering.

14 minutes ago, lol-lol said:

 

Are nearly all brands flagging except Dacia ?   

 

Vast quantities of stock they are trying to ship at high prices but now having to cut their margins or sell at a loss due to the flagging UK economy.  

 

 

 

 

I doubt the UK economy features very much in Alfa's troubles - they must sell what 7 cars here a year?

Just now, camelspyyder said:

 

I doubt the UK economy features very much in Alfa's troubles - they must sell what 7 cars here a year?

 

And that is After Top Gear made the Alfa" G something or other"  their car  of the Year.   

4 hours ago, lol-lol said:

 

And that is After Top Gear made the Alfa" G something or other"  their car  of the Year.   

 

Ignoring its ugly front end too.

A quite shocking amount of spin in Kubica test reporting by Andrew Benson on the BBC with the headline

 

"Kubica fastest in WIlliams test"

 

Impressive.

 

Facts:

 

1Sebastian VettelFerrari1m37.551s

2Valtteri BottasMercedes1m38.490s0.939s

3Max VerstappenRed Bull/Renault1m38.736s1.185s

4Sergio PerezForce India/Mercedes1m38.818s1.267s

5Esteban OconForce India/Mercedes1m39.148s1.597s

6Carlos SainzRenault1m39.444s1.893s

7Robert Kubica Williams/Mercedes1m39.485s1.934s

8Stoffel VandoorneMcLaren/Honda1m39.782s2.231s

9Kevin MagnussenHaas/Ferrari1m39.810s2.259s

10Sergey SirotkinWilliams/Mercedes1m39.947s2.396s

11Charles LeclercSauber/Ferrari1m40.666s3.115s

12Lando NorrisMcLaren/Honda1m41.714s4.163s

13Brendon HartleyToro Rosso/Renault1m43.345s5.794s

14Pierre GaslyToro Rosso/Renault1m44.827s7.276s

 

The BBC then trumpet Robert as fastest in the Williams, outpacing Sergei Sirotkin (who?) by nearly 0.5 of a second and 0.1 faster than Stroll on Tuesday.

 

However, Kubica went 3 grades softer on tyres than SIrotkin, and the Stroll quote is a bare-faced lie. Stroll was faster by 1.2 seconds according to Autosport.

 

Finally chief reporter Andrew Benson managed to make up this "stat":

 

On Wednesday, his deficit to Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel, who set the fastest time of the day at the end-of-season test aimed at trying out Pirelli's 2018 range of tyres, was within 0.1secs of that of the fastest Williams driver Felipe Massa in qualifying at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix last weekend.

 

Is this meaningless? Was that Q2 when Massa was quick or Q3 (his official qualifying time) when he wasn't?

 

The real position for Robert is that on Tuesday his deficit to fastest man Kimi was 3.5 seconds, on Wednesday 1.95 seconds to Vettel.

 

 

 

I am really impressed that Kubica is good enough to be considered for a comeback, and I hope he gets a chance to race.

I know that testing times are very misleading, but nowhere near as misleading as  Andrew Benson's column!