Driver Excuses

[mnmracer]

Firstly, I didn't know this, and secondly I find it hard to believe there is something wrong with the chasis when he is in an identical car to Ricciardo. We will see though.

Both Webber and Vettel have had wrong chassis' over the last couple years.

[NathanOlder]

Drivers these days are no different to drivers of the past, they get in the car each session risking their lives. The only difference is its safer today. That doesn't make the drivers any less of a man. I hate it when people say "back then, men were men". what a load of rubbish. Its those men from "back in the day" that hated the dangers and risks, that pushed so hard for the sport to change into what it is today. Drivers today are just lucky enough to race in the environment that Clark, Stewart, G.Hill & co were pushing for.

As for excuses, drivers dont tent to make excuses, they are just telling engineers what they want. Plus we hear what the drivers say while they drive, which always sound like they are "bitching" drivers from the 80's and before never " bitched" quite simply because we never had the chance to hear it.

[marcush.]

I´don´t think riskinfg your life is something that crosses your mind driving a formula 1 car at the Limit if you are any good at this.It was not back like this in the dangerous days as well ...nobody commits to a Corner in the sense of i go for it and if it is the last Thing i do....it´s more of _I am 100% positive this is doable ,at least for me in this very Moment.Unfortunatelly in the early days more things were made too Close to safe Limits for reasons of non calculated Engineering but empirical Approach to safety margins ....but with the knock on effects of process uncertainties .so if you do not actually design and build to exacting Standards inevitably some bits will fail unexpectedly..ouch.Thank god those hundreds of boffins are also there to at least try to calculate everything..
Very rarely a Driver lost his life in risking anything ..usually it was and is some additional quirk one could not allow for in advance...as you´d simply be too slow with those sorts of safety margins like those we should employ when driving on open roads .

And oh yes Drivers are complaining and making excuses for not delivering .If you are at a loss to explain why you have lost out to your teammate in the same Equipment you better have a good reason -even if it´s just for your own peace of mind..

[F1NAC]

Hamilton is in a similar state of mind, saying he never felt happier then now. I definitely can understand the feeling; since. 2009 he never really had a dominant car and always had to fight for his results. The exception might be in 2012, but back then the car and team failed him at several occasions.

Currently he has a dominant and (relative) reliable car. After years of strugling Hamilton gets the feeling of satisfaction.

I would really like that Alonso have one chance like him, he really deserved more than 2 championships. [-o<

[mnmracer]

It's a popular story that 'back then' drivers were real men and today's drivers wouldn't dare pushing like Fangio and Ascari and Clark did, but there really is no basis for saying that. When you are at the top level of auto racing, you do what it takes to succeed. Sure, there may be some low level drivers in some local cup racing that wouldn't dare step into a 1950's race car, but I have no reason whatsoever to believe that Formula One drivers of today would have been even a fraction of a second slower because of "lack of courage".

[MOWOG]

good open discussion on these topics iron out views, when you are always in the company of like minded people you all think the same and can't envisage another persons point of view, the wonderful thing about friendly discussion is that it challenges your own beliefs and those open minded enough can adapt.

Wise words, JCF. =D>

They remind me of the famous quote from Dudley Malone, to wit: "I have never learned anything from any man who agreed with me." How true.

[Glyn]

Hamilton is in a similar state of mind, saying he never felt happier then now. I definitely can understand the feeling; since. 2009 he never really had a dominant car and always had to fight for his results. The exception might be in 2012, but back then the car and team failed him at several occasions.

Currently he has a dominant and (relative) reliable car. After years of strugling Hamilton gets the feeling of satisfaction.

I would really like that Alonso have one chance like him, he really deserved more than 2 championships. [-o<

Alonso could have easily had more championships. But he is getting paid a hell of a lot to Stay with Ferrari / Santander.

Championships aren't everything.

[JimClarkFan]

good open discussion on these topics iron out views, when you are always in the company of like minded people you all think the same and can't envisage another persons point of view, the wonderful thing about friendly discussion is that it challenges your own beliefs and those open minded enough can adapt.

Wise words, JCF. =D>

They remind me of the famous quote from Dudley Malone, to wit: "I have never learned anything from any man who agreed with me." How true.

go me... that is a fine quote from Dudley

[Andres125sx]

Also I remember the year 2001 when Renault was fighting Alonso´s Minardi to avoid finishing last every GP, and then suddenly at Spa the car was fighting for the victory.

I don´t get what are you talking about here....

2001 was the debut for Alonso, with a Minardi, and he didn´t fight for the victory until 2003 with Renault, so there was no sudden change, not even in 2003 with Renault, its perfomance was pretty stable in the whole 2003 seasson

Might you explain this a little bit further?

All drivers since F1 is F1 depend on superior cars to xcell without xception, most of them overdrove crappy cars to find a place in such superior machinery without any other help than their family and self belief: Senna, Fisichella, Piquet, Hakkinen, Mansell, Raikkonen, Prost, Webber, Patrese, etc , BUT during the last decaces (when big manufacturers were running the sport) suddenly a minority gets the chance to drive it due to pure politics: Hill, Coulthard, Villeneuve, Alonso, Vettel, Hamilton, Ricciardo, Massa, etc.

I know it does add nothing to the debate, but man, someone who made his debut with Minardi cannot be included into that group. He actually is the last great who had to make his debut with such a slow car.

But that means nothing actually, now teams know the drivers some years before his F1 debut, so they don´t need to see how they perform with a slow car because they´ve been watching them on inferior categories.

Red Bull does not need to see how Kyat performs, he won F3 and that´s the reason he now drives a TR, but some decades back teams didn´t have so much info about how a driver performs before driving a F1.

See Hamilton, Dennis know how does he perform since Lewis was 12, so he´s being "tested" on all categories from karting to GP2. Once he jumped to F1 they didn´t need to see how does he perform with a Minardi, they perfectly knew his perfomance.


So I wouldn´t call it "political reasons", but teams now have tons more info about drivers so they can take a decision even before watching how they perform with a F1

[Mandrake]

If you watched the Race of Champions in recent years you could see that all drivers have preferences. MSC for example was awesome in all the open wheel cars, but whenever he had to run something closer to a "normal" car, he was above average at max. Surely, his special contract that he was not allowed to race this and that vehicle did not make it that obvious, but there are more examples of the other participants being good in one car and bad in another.

They are all very very good drivers, but with certain cars they just have the little extra over the rest of the field. This is the same for the current F1 drivers as well. Examples from Vettel and Webber, Alonso and Massa/Rai, Lewis and Jenson show that the way the cars are developed, has a huge impact on the driver performance. The only driver that is hard to judge is Alonso. Massa was no real measure. Although in qualifying he sometimes beat Alonso, showing the car is quick even with an average driver, his race pace was always worse than Alonso's (at least after 2009). Rai has also been beaten by Grosjean and while if given the perfect car as stated in the first lines, he can be properly quick, but he is too picky on car behavior to be able to judge Alonso. To be honest, Alonso is just like Button, Hamilton and Vettel. He won championships when the car was superior and drove to the personal max of car and driver combo in the years after. Putting him into the RB 10 would not make it a race winning car, he might even be beaten by Ricciardo.

All that said, a cracked chassis, a slightly malfunctioning system or just a bad set of tires is no excuse per se, but can be enough to alter the characteristics of an F1 car by so much, that the driver does not feel comfortable with it and thus makes his performance suffer. In the past those things were described as "a bad day". With today's technological knowledge, bad days can be broken down into actual bad days or "bad cars"

[Andres125sx]

About excusses, I think it´s the same as football. Some decades back nobody was profesional with 18 years old. Now they are, and they get bad habits too soon

In the 70´s when a driver reached F1 he already was a formed man, so F1 environement didn´t affect them that much.

Now they have 6 TV cameras around them even before they need shaving.... What obviously and easily turn them up into prima donnas

[turbof1]

It's a popular story that 'back then' drivers were real men and today's drivers wouldn't dare pushing like Fangio and Ascari and Clark did, but there really is no basis for saying that. When you are at the top level of auto racing, you do what it takes to succeed. Sure, there may be some low level drivers in some local cup racing that wouldn't dare step into a 1950's race car, but I have no reason whatsoever to believe that Formula One drivers of today would have been even a fraction of a second slower because of "lack of courage".

Most of all it was different. Those cars and tracks, especially in the time of fangio, were very deadly. I believe they actually pushed a bit less. back then.

[sennaf1god.94]

good open discussion on these topics iron out views, when you are always in the company of like minded people you all think the same and can't envisage another persons point of view, the wonderful thing about friendly discussion is that it challenges your own beliefs and those open minded enough can adapt.

Wise words, JCF. =D>

They remind me of the famous quote from Dudley Malone, to wit: "I have never learned anything from any man who agreed with me." How true.

And then not coincidentally appeared Andres125sx with his single minded "It´s all about Fonzo´s" World...

[xpensive]

Best of all is Nigel Mansell's "I got on the surface painting", when he slid off in Monaco 1984.

[Andres125sx]

good open discussion on these topics iron out views, when you are always in the company of like minded people you all think the same and can't envisage another persons point of view, the wonderful thing about friendly discussion is that it challenges your own beliefs and those open minded enough can adapt.

Wise words, JCF. =D>

They remind me of the famous quote from Dudley Malone, to wit: "I have never learned anything from any man who agreed with me." How true.

And then not coincidentally appeared Andres125sx with his single minded "It´s all about Fonzo´s" World...

Maybe the single minded it´s not me....

Maybe I was just asking for some clarification about your statement because that´s not how I see it AND want to know your point of view...

Maybe if you´ve read my whole reply you´d have realiced I´m not defending Alonso or criticizing any other driver...

But if you don´t want to answer don´t worry, single minded people like me can live with it... only that we tend to think when someone ignore a question or make a joke about it, it usually is because he doesn´t have a reply