Is Micheal Schumacher simply the best f-1 driver ever?

[Bononi]

Originally posted by kdr
i've not been around long enough to give an accurate assesment...

btw...i consider maradona to be the greatest ever footballer, but thats a completely different ballgame

Have you ever heard of a certain Pelé ?

And if you're argetinian, there were better argetinians players than marradona...

But anyway you're right, TGF and marradona are in the same league.

[Jordi]

Well, Math classes sucked

[Legend]

Originally posted by paul-collins


"I wasn't able to drive every car at top speed straight away. In that he is better than me," said Prost, referring to Schumacher's amazing ability to push it to the limit on his first flying lap out of the pits.


That sounds a long way from Legend's quote:

Prost: "Schumacher is better than me"

And Red, I disagree that Stewart's quote hints at any sort of assertion that Schumacher is the best of all time. He does say

quote:

Mr. Collins did you read the title of the article? That is the one I have quoted!

I have just quoted some people related to the sport, whether they say Schumacher is the best of his era or the greatest ever.
Now the only thing I wanted was for ANTI Schumachers to psycho-analyse the comments of those champions and try to come with some excuses to dismiss them as valid argumentations from my side. Scheckter is in love with Ferrari, Lauda is a good driver but is dumb when he opens his mouth, Irvine has to much bleacher in his head and to many girls in his Jacuzzi, Prost has been quoted wrongly by BBC and volllaaaa, Schumacher's success is brought in another context, by bringing those champions and their comments in another context!

I am just glad that so many people in the forum have voted for Schumacher, it is more than I had hoped for. The votes that counts for me the more than the votes of Schumacher fans like me or Anti Schumachers votes are; The votes of those people saying:" I am not a Schumacher fan but I must admit......

Cheers to all

[Legend]

Originally posted by Bononi


Have you ever heard of a certain Pelé ?

And if you're argetinian, there were better argetinians players than marradona...

Who is Pele? lol

Bononi are you talking about De Stefano?

[Dani Filth]

if we talk about Football players .. i tink Van Basten ... or Cruiff .. and back to topic ... TGF is one of the best ...but don't compare him with the likes of Fangio, Clark .. Many of you say Fangio is better ... why .. are you guys over 70 years old and seen Fangio racing ...
and LIZ ... please .. Mario Andretti .... in my opinion .. an average driver(not the same thing to say about Michael .. he su**s big time)

[Jordi]

Mario Andretti, an average driver? Dani... check Mario's resume, please

[paul-collins]

Originally posted by Legend
... did you read the title of the article? That is the one I have quoted!

I have just quoted some people related to the sport, whether they say Schumacher is the best of his era or the greatest ever.

Yeah, but Stewart didn't write the headline. BBC did.

And I have no beef with the assertion that TGF is the best of his era.

[paulzinho]

I agree with Paul here, Schumacher is a great driver, but IMO he isn't the best ever, for me there were other drivers who were superior but that doesn't mean I hate him, far from it, i think he's superb.

But the greatest? No, not in my opinion.

[freud]

Originally posted by freud
Someone once said about Michael Schumacher:

"He, who is without fault".

Actually its very difficult to find a flaw in his driving technique. His mastery of the equipment is precise and his car control is exemplary. His stamina is better than any driver in formula one and his super fast reflexes help him achieve that ultimate perfection that very few drivers have demonstrated in teh history of formula one. He is an example of extreme form of talent. He is a 'Maestro'. Watching him drive at Spa is like listening to Beethoven... pure genious.

Michael Schumacher has to be and is one of the best formula one driver ever.

I am sorry for quoting myself.
Actually when I said Michael Schumacher is 'one' of the best drivers ever to drive a f1 car, I didnt mean that he IS the best ever.
For me, Ayrton Senna will always be the best ever simply because his level of determination and his passion for the sport was immortal.
Michael Schumacher is the greastest and the best driver of his era. He is a 'Maestro'.

[J.McClane]

My 2 cents worth............

I have said many a time before Shu is a great driver, but the best ever? No.

Stats don't really mean anythin' anymore.

Lets be 100% honest here.
F1 cars of today are much eaiser to drive then the ones from the Senna & Prost days. They finish more races per season then they used to and they now race more races per season too. So it was obvious the Senna & Prost records would be broken.

Give it a few more years and someone will come along and say exactly what i have just said WHEN Shu's records get broken.

Shu is the best around at the mo, but the best driver so far (not ever) is Senna.

[alexb]

Originally posted by J.McClane
My 2 cents worth............

I have said many a time before Shu is a great driver, but the best ever? No.

Stats don't really mean anythin' anymore.

Lets be 100% honest here.
...

Actually stats are the only objective criteria we have for comparing drivers. Others are just personal opinions and preferences. It's absolutely impossible to carry on experiments and test sessions to determine who's faster in different cars on different tracks. If you disregard stats for any type of driver comparison, there's no objective ground in discussions of which driver's better.

[Bononi]

Stats are nothing... uhn... I think when you pick up certain drivers, you're right. The cars are easier to drive ? It is really something to see, I'm not an expert to compare this kind of thing, but drivers of the past would suit well in these cars ? Who knows ?

[paul-collins]

The problem with stats is that they can't possibly reflect changes in the description of the competition. Especially counter stats, like number of wins, or number of championships.

Baseball works because the basic dimensions of the game haven't changed. The ball is (supposed to be) the same as it was in the '30s, the park dimensions are very similar, and even the number of games played has stayed roughly the same. So it lends itself very well to statistical analysis.

Racing, with a different number of races, different technologies, vastly different levels of safety, does not lend itself very well to statistical analysis. For example: JYS held the record for GP wins at 27 for a very long time, but he retired at the peak of his career because of safety concerns (and to reinforce that decision, his best friend and teammate died in practice at the last GP JYS was to race). How many might he have won if he felt as confident in the cars' safety, the circuits' safety, as TGF does?

[Legend]

Originally posted by J.McClane
My 2 cents worth............

Stats don't really mean anythin' anymore.

Lets be 100% honest here.
F1 cars of today are much eaiser to drive then the ones from the Senna & Prost days. They finish more races per season then they used to and they now race more races per season too. So it was obvious the Senna & Prost records would be broken.

Give it a few more years and someone will come along and say exactly what i have just said WHEN Shu's records get broken.

Here I give you another 2 cents:

The cars of the future will be much much easier to drive from the cars of today, well let's say in 20 years. And perhaps we will have 25 races instead of 17 we have in the present time. Now I try to come with some ideas why a man can never ever become the greatest driver in the future! You must give some comments on the matter defending what you have posted above which I have quoted!

Why a man can never become the greatest ever again because.....

1. …. the cars of the futures will be so much easier to drive!
2. …..the drivers of the future might have more races pr season.
3. …...because the drivers of the future will not have to compete against drivers like Fangio, Clark or Senna.
4. ……no matter how much a driver in those day might win and win and win, he will never become the greatest ever.

Could those be your words? Now you can use the other 2 cents I gave you to tell me is there anything wrong with my prediction of the future drivers, and if I might be right the best driver in the entire history must have lived back in the 1920’s or maybe before. The cars must have been much harder to drive then, don’t you think?

[Kex]

I was going to write a nice big post about why Michael had it easier than Fangio, why Senna was better than Prost etc etc. But people would pick holes in it so I'll just do the list:

1. Juan-Manuel Fangio
2. Michael Schumacher
3. Ayrton Senna
4. Jim Clark
5. Alain Prost

------------------
no particular order

Mansell, Lauda, Piquet, Moss, G Hill, J Brabham, Stewart.


.....so in answer to the question, no. Even though I've named a "number one", I don't really think it's possible to name the greatest driver ever. You can pinpoint the greatest driver of each era of Formula One, but not the whole 53 years.

[Legend]

Oh by the way, "stats" mean nothing anymore, it puzzles me why we still have grand prix racing, and why some people are even counting, who won, where, and how many times? And why there is a WDC title, because all of them mean nothing anymore! At each race drivers are risking their lives for something that means absolutely nothing at all......
And why should we fans bother to watch something that means nothing at all? :confused:

[Red]

Originally posted by paul-collins
The problem with stats is that they can't possibly reflect changes [...]

Paul, I don't think that this was Alex' idea. I believe that if you disregard stats then nothing else will work. Let's just say that the comparison is absolutely useless and irrelevant.

By the way, good point Alex.

[paul-collins]

Red, I wasn't saying that Alex was wrong. Quite the opposite - proper stats are, as he said, the only objective form we have to compare. Anecdotal evidence is extremely unreliable.

If you noticed my reference to baseball, you'd have understood that I don't discount stats at all. (Not your fault for not paying attention to what must appear to you to be a very, um, provincial game.) There's a fault line in discussing baseball, and I prefer the statistical side of baseball analysis. Proper stats, mind. Not the meatball mediahead stats like "batting average, home runs, RBI." I'll stop there before I totally bore everyone.

[Bononi]

Yeah, but the main problem remains in the technology and the budget of the teams. We look back in the last 3 decades and there were always dominant teams, Ferrari, McLaren, Williams and Benetton, very different from the 70's and ealier. So it's a case of being in the right team at the right time, and logically having the talent enough to be there. In addition to that, having the luck to remain alive, like in Senna and Gilles case, jus to mention two.

[DNQ]

It seems to me that Jim Clark is the forgotten man in all these conversations...he was magic that man, I never saw him race, born 18 years after he died, but hell was a quick as anything.

[AllonFS]

Stats are an indicator of performance, they can not give the whole story. Clearly they illustrate the most successful driver of that year, but between years and eras they have significantly less usefulness. Ascari dominated in 1952, won every race he entered; but the stats of 4 wins and 36 points are not comparable with the winning season of any modern champion.

So I don't believe we can make useful comparisons between drivers from different eras, and therefore can not use stats to say one driver is greater than another. That's why I personally have a top 6 in no particular order. Any decision on the greatest is subjective, and then stats can be used and manipulated to support that subjective choice.

[Legend]

I have a very morbid scenario for you guys! God forgive me!

Well, if Schumacher died at the next grand prix, will that effect the people's view on him?

Damn me! But I am heavy metal musician I am fascinated by death, that would probably explain it a bit!

[AllonFS]

No, he'd just join a long and very sad list of drivers taken before their time. Death doesn't make a driver better or worse, just no longer here. It would also lead to the same questions about what he might have achieved as we have for Ascari, Clark, Senna etc.

[Legend]

Allon are you sure if we had a voting poll after he was killed in a GP, there would be no more than 19 votes on his account now?

[paulzinho]

I disagree with you legend, if that were to happen it would be very sad but I don't think it would change anything other than what Allon mentioned.