Drivers who set the bar

[JimClarkFan]

List doesn't make sense without Fangio or Jim Clark.

[marcush.]

List doesn't make sense without Fangio or Jim Clark.

Yes and no .Fangio you have to just realise how old he was when he achieved all his success and in what a short time and few races ..I´m not convinced he would have had any success if you transferred him even into the 90s .
It was just so different back then .I might be terribly wrong though .

The same goes with Clark .He might have been the best driving talent the world has ever seen ,no doubt about it .But what new did he bring to the sport , raising the bar in what exactly?
I do not remember him as someone who put in more effort oder focus or whatever into it he was a ultimate driving talent in the sense of Villeneuve ..but you might be able to shed light on my maybe wrong views ..

[JimClarkFan]

List doesn't make sense without Fangio or Jim Clark.

Yes and no .Fangio you have to just realise how old he was when he achieved all his success and in what a short time and few races ..

So where is the 'no' part? Or am I missing something in translation lol.

[RB7ate9]

Of the drivers on the grid right now most have raised the bar in some way shape or form.

Vettel: Raising the bar using his finger. Also really young and two world titles or something.
Webber: Mid-race vomming raising the bar on team-mate prepared food.
Alonso: Raising the bar for Spanish drivers and the young with bushy eyebrows.
Massa: I said most drivers.
Hamilton: Raising the bar for the melanin-rich motorsportists.
Button: The most mediocre world-champ since Villeneuve.
Schumacher: 7 world championships; some more legit than others.
Rosberg: The bar raised for beauty and multi-linguism.
Raikkonen: The bar for amount of --- not given has never been set higher.
Grosjean: Many seemed to believe he was just high at the beginning of the season.
Maldonado: Raising the bar of stupidity to insane levels.

I could go on...

Very true. The thread title never really does mention what standard the bar has been set for....

[siskue2005]

Funny to see here some people having a tantrum cuz THEIR favorite driver didnt make the list in the OP

and some of them need to learn the difference between "setting a bar for the entire sports/drivers/team from there on" to just being best amongst selected few and winning some WDCs!

[marcush.]

i just watched a Gordon Murray interview where he mentioned the Prost /Senna relationship and how it lifted the team to new heights as the two were so much more demanding and willing to adress every aspect of the car and team...Senna excelling especially with strategies ..giving excellent input and ideas.

[JimClarkFan]

i just watched a Gordon Murray interview where he mentioned the Prost /Senna relationship and how it lifted the team to new heights as the two were so much more demanding and willing to adress every aspect of the car and team...Senna excelling especially with strategies ..giving excellent input and ideas.

One thing about Senna which I am unsure of is could he develop a car? He had so much talent that he could sit in a dog of a car and drive it unnaturally high up the grid, but I feel that the exact ability that makes him so fast, and the same thing for L. Hamilton, hindered his ability to develop a car.

[timbo]

i just watched a Gordon Murray interview where he mentioned the Prost /Senna relationship and how it lifted the team to new heights as the two were so much more demanding and willing to adress every aspect of the car and team...Senna excelling especially with strategies ..giving excellent input and ideas.

One thing about Senna which I am unsure of is could he develop a car? He had so much talent that he could sit in a dog of a car and drive it unnaturally high up the grid, but I feel that the exact ability that makes him so fast, and the same thing for L. Hamilton, hindered his ability to develop a car.

He could, he worked very tightly with engineers. For example, Prost complained at 1989 that Senna made Honda change their engine throttle response so it became harder for him to drive.

[marcush.]

back then Gzaham Hill used to sit in his car and check damper settings by hopping up and down in the car at standstill for extended periods of time ...when Clark seemed to have a very sparse but good reporting with chapman telling him with few words what he needed from the car or describing what he felt.

[JimClarkFan]

i just watched a Gordon Murray interview where he mentioned the Prost /Senna relationship and how it lifted the team to new heights as the two were so much more demanding and willing to adress every aspect of the car and team...Senna excelling especially with strategies ..giving excellent input and ideas.

One thing about Senna which I am unsure of is could he develop a car? He had so much talent that he could sit in a dog of a car and drive it unnaturally high up the grid, but I feel that the exact ability that makes him so fast, and the same thing for L. Hamilton, hindered his ability to develop a car.

He could, he worked very tightly with engineers. For example, Prost complained at 1989 that Senna made Honda change their engine throttle response so it became harder for him to drive.

hhhhmmm... I'm not sure that qualifies as development, certainly its not a good example because we don't have the results of that. I'm tallking about taking a car that is not winning races and moving it forward to a car that is capable of winning races. We never really got to see that from Senna I feel, Senna in my opinion was helped by Prost's superior ability to develop the car.

[Nando]

Senna went more on feel then actual science i think.

Like sitting on the grid asking the team to take out half a PSI just so his mind could have some rest.
Made zero difference in performance but he won the race because he had this confidence that it would help him.

Although not saying everything he did was just feel or pseudo-science if you will but i think he did more of that then the professor Prost who was slightly more scientific.

The mental side is/was probably more important back then, then it is today.

[bill shoe]

Don't know if this is the ideal thread but it'll do. I'm holding Hamilton to a very high standard here, but that's how he should be judged. He's not a leader or motivator on his team.

Think Schumacher in his heyday or Alonso now. They don't just show up and drive fast, and they don't just give good development feedback. They are positive-energy motivational forces within their team. Schumacher never never never said anything bad about his team in public. Made him a boring interivew but I guarantee it resulted in the team winning more races. Alonso is obviously dragging a mediocre team by the scruff of its neck towards a world championship. Vettel is not that good but he's clearly a blue-chip team member of Red Bull.

Hamilton gets into public and passive-aggressive crap with his team about why he had a particular wing on his car for qualifying. I don't think this is a contract-is-up-for-renewal bad attitude. I think it's just who he is. He's outpaced a very good Jenson Button a million times this year but he didn't do it again today so the team must have done something wrong.

I say this as a genuine Hamilton fan. I loved watching his rookie season when he would consistently leave a new track on Friday a couple tenths behind Alonso, think about it overnight, and then take pole on Saturday by a couple tenths. Where did this brilliance go? Being the very best requires adding energy to the situation, not taking from it.

[timbo]

hhhhmmm... I'm not sure that qualifies as development, certainly its not a good example because we don't have the results of that. I'm tallking about taking a car that is not winning races and moving it forward to a car that is capable of winning races. We never really got to see that from Senna I feel, Senna in my opinion was helped by Prost's superior ability to develop the car.

In 1990 and 1991 his cars were not really that dominating, especially mid-season. But on both occasions by the end of the season things got better.

[RB7ate9]

Don't know if this is the ideal thread but it'll do. I'm holding Hamilton to a very high standard here, but that's how he should be judged. He's not a leader or motivator on his team.

I think that has a place on this thread. Every "age" F1 has recognized the kind of driver who steps up and becomes a real leader for the team that happens to drive the car on the track. I concur with the Schumacher of yore and the Alonso of now. I can't really place out a person from way back when (perhaps Clark, Graham Hill in '68 after Clark for sure, Gurney in '67 for AAR because, well, he was the leader that also drove the car).

Whoever set that bar set it in a higher level of driver's involvement in the team sport. Good observation.

[marcush.]

I´d think raising the bar is exploiting an aspect of the sport in a way nobody before did AND having success doing so is what this thread is about.
so if Lauda was the first to really engage into debriefs and long technical analysis interaction with the teams it was prost who took this further but Senna who introduced a whole new level to it ..an accepted standard today you just cannot even think of trying to do without.
Same with Fitness -today we see Drivers like Button even doing triathlons between races ...in the 70s and 80s not just drivers like Jmes Hunt usually sported a fag when not sitting in the car...unthinkable todays.