Michael Schumacher

[Tiptop]

Michael Schumacher - My view

Although you can't take away that he really is a great driver, after all he has 6 WDC BUT i think he will never be regarded the best for the following reasons....

1. Been in a good car since his beneton days (even the 1996 ferrari wasn' that bad!)

2. Always had team mates who give up wins not allowed to challenge

3. Always had a great team around him... although I must admit this is probably his doing

4. I always felt that Mika & Jacques were better drivers and they proved it when they had decent cars!

Any other views or comments greatly appreciated - please don't compare MS with Ayrton Senna as it's impossible to do so!

Tiptop

[Dani Filth]

4. decent . come on . who are you kidding .. cars that laped the opossition .. are decent ??????...
and btw . I'm not comparing MS with anyone ..

[BSchneiderFan]

1. Nonsense. The 1996 Ferrari was a dog, and had no business winning three GPs. Only since 2000 has he had probably the best car on the grid.

2. Occasionally, but more often he's had teammates who simply aren't in his league. But, as far as I can recall, only Rubens has ever actually gifted Schuey a win.

3. Yes, true. But, as you say, largely his doing.

4. Don't make me laugh.

[dangeradam]

i think he is a very quick very skilled driver but i have never grown to like him. I don't think he is the best ever. Although the stats say he is.

He has become alouf (spelling) and full of himself, this is why i can't like him, but i can't say that myself or anyone else wouldn't behave the same way after winning that many world titles and being paid that much. Maybe its just the way he is but he seems to think younger drivers owe him respect, maybe i have a perception problem.

I have much more respect for people that stand up to him like Kimi and Montoya and think Ralf still has some kind of childhood complex.

The titles he's really had to fight for, won or lost he's resorted to questionable tactics.

Like i said he a great driver i just don't like him for the reasons mentioned above.

[Tiptop]

1. 1996 ferrari was a dog to begin with but then was vastly improved half way through the season, 1994 benneton,1995 benneton, 1997 ferrari,1998 ferrari,1999 ferrari all good cars capable of winning races. Compare these cars to an awful CAR (1997 arrows) that really was **** put MS in a car like that and he would struggle!



4. I disagree Jacques was a better driver than MS but since joining BAR in a car that really was awful he's not been able to prove it

[dangeradam]

i heard a rumor that MS drpve the minardi 2 seater and turned a time that would have put it mid grid.

Anyone care to confirm or deny this ?

[Red]

He did drive the Minardi 2 seater, yes, and ESPN quoted Paul Stoddard:

Originally posted by Paul Stoddard
I have had the pleasure of sitting behind Michael in Italy in a Formula One car – Minardi's two seater – and let me tell you that guy is one hundred per-cent focused and one hundred and ten per-cent talented.

I learned an invaluable lesson in how to drive my own car. He was recording times in the Minardi two-seater that were within 107 percent of a fully fuelled Ferrari at the same track.

However I think that it's only Paul Stoddard exaggerating a bit. If he said "comparable" with 107% etc" I woul've believed him...

[Irv the Swerve]

Originally posted by Tiptop
after all he has 6 WDC BUT i think he will never be regarded the best

please don't compare MS with Ayrton Senna as it's impossible to do so!

So who do you think is the best then?
The only way to get an answer is compare drivers.

[Adam43]

4. Mika was close, but in the end couldn't Hak it (sorry only said that for the poor pun!). More accurately Mika didn't want to hak it as much. I don't think that McLaren had such a clear car advantage in 1998-2000. At the begining of 98, yes, but by the end of '98 I think they were pretty even and through '99 and '00 it almost changed on a race by race which was better.

Ultimately Michael has lasted longer. Not that this is a critism of Mika.

[f1manoz]

Mika proved what he wanted. Once he had, he walked away. He wasn't after all the records.

[Aysedasi]

Originally posted by Irv the Swerve
So who do you think is the best then?
The only way to get an answer is compare drivers.

But we've proved here time and time again that the exercise is actually pointless.

[garcon]

The idea that a driver must be regarded as "the best" by everyone will never hold. All this discussion, and any discussion about the qualities of driver a, b or x, will prove is that such things are (and should be!) subjective.

Tip Top will never regard Schumacher as "the best" for the reasons he states. Others - some who may even agree with his conclusion - will disagree with those points. If Formula 1 was purely about statistics, we could argue the case factually, and we could compare drivers factually. But - thank God - it isn't. We all have our own interpretation of what makes a driver great or "the best".

I happen to think Schumacher is easily the best of his era. I also believe Senna was the best of his. But for different reasons. And if I knew more of F1 and Grand Prix history, I may be able to say that Fangio was the greatest of his era for reasons beyond the fact that in those days most drivers didn't survive long enough to win 5 WDCs!

[Aysedasi]

Absolutely agree. Its quite entertaining though how we all get pulled into the "X is better than Y" debate, isn't it. I have my views and others have theirs - all subjective. Valid, but subjective.

[Spudgun]

You can only really judge best drivers of their time.

When you start trying to compare drivers from different eras it just doesn't work.

It's easy to say that Fangio, Senna and Schumacher are the best drivers of their time, but overall they are impossible to compare just from the diffrence in machinery for starters.

[jj2728]

Originally posted by Tiptop
Michael Schumacher - My view

Although you can't take away that he really is a great driver, after all he has 6 WDC BUT i think he will never be regarded the best for the following reasons....

1. Been in a good car since his beneton days (even the 1996 ferrari wasn' that bad!)

2. Always had team mates who give up wins not allowed to challenge

3. Always had a great team around him... although I must admit this is probably his doing

4. I always felt that Mika & Jacques were better drivers and they proved it when they had decent cars!

Any other views or comments greatly appreciated - please don't compare MS with Ayrton Senna as it's impossible to do so!

Tiptop

i think that you can compare senna and ms in that a) they were/are able to build a team around them and win... very few if any other drivers can do that, i have to look at jv, he had the perfect opportunity at BAR, but wasn't able to pull it off....b) both senna and ms are/were ruthless in their quests for titles, witness the japanese gp where senna punted prost off on purpose (as he later admitted) and ms doing basically the same to d. hill and jv (but, this IS a ruthless sport)....i think that up until the 2001 season, the ferrari was not the best car....the mclaren imho was superior.....i don't think that mika and jacques were necessarily better drivers, maybe at their peak they were the equal to michael, mika's pass of ms at spa in 2000 stands out to me as one of THE premier overtaking moves.....i think he should be regarded as ONE of the best simply for the records he has achieved, the fact that he is dedicated 100%, and that he is blindingly fast....i'll reserve my opinions as to i think is the best of all time.....

[Redblurr]

The bottom line is that all teams would love Schumi driving for them. I wonder why?

[Redblurr]

Eddie Irvine on Schumi
"I can't figure that bugger out. He's just fast, seriously fast. There's a quick corner here, Arrabiata. Me, Alesi, Berger and Larrini are all about the same speed through it, but he's something like 25km'h quicker. I've no idea how he does it."

hence a good and complete driver can develop a better car and set it up properly.

[BSchneiderFan]

I don't understand the perception that Schumacher is arrogant (though I have a suspicion that a lot of it, in the British press anyway, is connected to his nationality). In press conferences, he seems perfectly affable, and is ALWAYS at pains to thank his mechanics and the rest of the team, and to emphasise how much his successes are team efforts. By all accounts, he has a very good relationship with the Ferrari workers, and more than one back-marker has said how considerate he is (or was) in not screwing up others' qualifying laps, no matter how far down the grid they were likely to be. Yet he's "arrogant". Peculiar.

[climb]

Tiptop, My opinion is that you should take a look at the poll we are currently discussing, whise title is "how biased are we"; your contribution would surely be massive!

[Smokey 6 litre]

Originally posted by BSchneiderFan
Only since 2000 has he had probably the best car on the grid.

If you listen to the conspiracies the '94 Bennaton was the best car because it had traction control.

Originally posted by BSchneiderFan
as far as I can recall, only Rubens has ever actually gifted Schuey a win.

Ruebens was the only one who BLATANTLY gifted him the win, but its possible for others to submit to him in a less obvious way!

[BootsOntheSide]

The second and hird points on the list slightly blur together. As soon as Michael trounced Nelson Piquet at the end of 1991, Benetton invested heavily in new staff, facilities and technology to allow the team to match his potential performance. The choices of his team-mates for the next 2 seasons - Patrese and Brundle, both experienced drivers who could team him a lot, but weren't neccessarily fast enough to upstage him - appear to fit in with that.

My feeling is that, once the flash technologies were banned for 1994, Michael's car kept them while the other car was kept legal to reduce the chances of them being caught out. The team also illegally modified the fuel rigs for faster flow, leading to a near-catastrophe at Hockenheim.

Ferrari went to a big effort to hire the Brawn-Byrne-Schumacher package direct from Benetton, which was behind the 1997 and later cars. In 97 and 98 he defiantely didn't have the best car, 99 might've been but we'll never know.

Overall I think some of the comment here is justified as to why Michael isn't the greatest of all. However, you only have to think of some of his great drives to see why he's among the greatest - Spain 1994, finsihing 2nd despite spending 2/3 of the race stuck in 5th gear; Canada 03, somehow beating the far superior Williams package; and Monaco 97, Silverstone 02 and Spain 96 among his many awesome wet weather drives.

[Tiptop]

I agree smokey 6 the 1994 benetton supposedly had traction control a suspicion Ayrton Senna had from the start. I also read somewhere that the FIA found this device and to activite it you had to push back 3 times and subsequently the race bans followed..

[ljakse]

This kind of stuff has so many times been discussed without any result that I'm amased this thread actually has any replies.

Sorry...

[mansellmania]

Originally posted by Tiptop
I agree smokey 6 the 1994 benetton supposedly had traction control a suspicion Ayrton Senna had from the start. I also read somewhere that the FIA found this device and to activite it you had to push back 3 times and subsequently the race bans followed..

there is some debate on benetton being the best car.
That team was still small end of 99 and i dont believe it shrunk in 6 years time.

As for point 2 i wonder.. how many wins where gifted to him that you know?
Or how many times did a teammate move over for him? any idea?

Ive seen irvine move over melbourne 99 and rubens at austria, for a win.

Sofar ive seen poor DC move over for mika 2 times and for kimi one time.

Patrese for mansell and senna, as been said before, simply drove into his teammates, something i havent seen shumi do

[mansellmania]

Originally posted by Red
He did drive the Minardi 2 seater, yes, and ESPN quoted Paul Stoddard:

However I think that it's only Paul Stoddard exaggerating a bit. If he said "comparable" with 107% etc" I woul've believed him...

Wasnt it that shumi drove that 2 seater within 1 second of alonso's time in a single seater minardi?