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cavallino

Appalling Driving Standards On Display In 2008 - Contd.

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Another race of utterly miserable driving performances from 'top drivers'. It has been a pattern all year, amazingly we have a grid of drivers who can't drive in challenging conditions at all. Throw a bit of rain in, and things just get hilarious. DC showing why he is so well past it, it's not even funny any more. Webber was disappointing. Massa was well, we know he can't drive in challenging conditions, give him a car perfect for him and he is fast, otherwise he is nowhere.

I think if some of these drivers were thrown into GP2, they would have a lot to answer for.

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Except that the GP2 race was worse. And that's with ground effect, rear weight distribution and non-peaky/smooth engines.

Some of the spins were due to oil BTW.

Appalling Judging Standards from Cavallino On Display In 2008 - Contd. :D:lol:

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Actually it was the first display of action "a la old days" in a while. I am not referring to the pile of driving errors which were usual in the old days too, mind you. I am referring to the wheel to wheel action in the last laps by Kovy, Kimi and Alonso. A wonderful battle. Best thing in the whole season so far. And Hamilton showed amazing skills. So no complaints from this side (except that it was the snotty b#####d who won the race and "my boy" ruined his with some stupid strategy)

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Anyone who thinks that was a bad display of driving standards does not have the slightest clue of how Formula 1 was pre-200X Schumacher era of tiredly predictable electronically managed cars and acres of run-off.

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True, true, but I don't think it was only due to electronics.

And even in the dry there were races with 2 restarts, 14 car pile-ups, De Cesaris taking someone out at almost every race (wet or dry) .

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Bring back some p**s poor pay drivers and some really s##ty teams like Osella, Andrea Moda, Coloni, Pacific, EuroBrun, Fondmetal, Symtek and I'll guarantee those "good ol" days" will return.

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Bring back some p**s poor pay drivers and some really s##ty teams like Osella, Andrea Moda, Coloni, Pacific, EuroBrun, Fondmetal, Symtek and I'll guarantee those "good ol" days" will return.

Indeed! :lol:

Ah, De Cesaris. Nobody sucked like him for so long in F1.

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Nakajima Snr. also his moments, and Taki "taki times" Inoue or Michael Andretti or Salazar (the infamous shunt into Piquet being the only reason he's remembered).

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Nakajima Snr. also his moments, and Taki "taki times" Inoue or Michael Andretti or Salazar (the infamous shunt into Piquet being the only reason he's remembered).

That, and the amount of money he paid so as to be just a sparring for Piquet's boxing skills.

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LOL ... :lol:

Well F1 rejects made a top 3 of the years with most rejects.

The results:

The Annus Horribilis Award

This award is handed out to years, with great numbers of reject drivers on the grid (or at least, the entry list).

3. 1976

2. 1989

1. 1994

3. 1976

binder.jpg

jap.jpg

Hans Binder drives for Williams/WolfKazuyoshi Hoshino in the Tyrrell

Hans Binder made appearances for the struggling Williams/Wolf team (left), another 1976 reject was Kazuyoshi Hoshino (right), seen here in his Tyrrell.

Cutting to the chase, 1976 overflows with rejects for several reasons. For one, the deal between Frank Williams and Walter Wolf saw nine drivers share their cars, including Hans Binder, Warwick Brown, Masami Kuwashima, Michele Leclere, Emilio Zapico and Renzo Zorzi.

Add to that a huge number of unsuccessful drivers, private entries and one-off appearances, which gave us all of the following: Conny Andersson, Ian Ashley, Harald Ertl, Bob Evans, Divina Galica, Boy Hayje, Ingo Hoffman, Loris Kessel, Lella Lombardi, Brett Lunger, Damien Magee, Jac Nelleman, Patrick Neve, Karl Oppitzhauser, Larry Perkins, Alessandro Pesenti-Rossi, Ian Scheckter, Alex Ribiero, Otto Stuppacher, Tony Trimmer, Emilio de Villota and Mike Wilds.

Worse still, there were the Japanese teams and drivers, including Kazuyoshi Hoshino for Tyrrell, Noritake Takahara for Surtees, the Maki team and the controversial efforts of the Kojima outfit and its driver Masahiro Hasemi (whom FIA records inaccurately say set the fastest race lap at the Japanese GP at Fuji). Their efforts would set a benchmark which their countrymen haven't looked like improving by much.

2. 1989

raph.jpgsuz.jpg

Pierre rounds the Bus StopAguri smashes out

Aguri Suzuki failed to pre-qualify at each of his 16 attempts. Here he is in Germany (right), trying to create a detour through the stands. Pierre-Henri Raphanel was hardly any luckier, qualifying his Coloni just once, before leaving the team. Here he tries his luck in a Rial at Belgium (left).

1989 was a turning point in F1 history. It was a year which saw turbos banned and the semi-automatic gearbox introduced, and it marked the crossover between the years of relative amateurism, when any man and his dog could start an F1 team, and the years of ultra-professionalism, where things such as the television spectacle became important.

As a result, 1989 was a top year for rejects. It saw the greatest number of entries per race ever (39), but in order to raise standards it was also the year of the pre-qualifying lottery, when 9 drivers would not pre-qualify and 4 more would not qualify. As a result, underprepared teams such as Onyx, Rial, AGS, Osella, Zakspeed, Coloni and EuroBrun all struggled to make the grid with any regularity. EuroBrun never made it at all, and Zakspeed only twice.

Their drivers, by and large new and inexperienced, also struggled as a result. Try out this list of rejects: Olivier Grouillard, Luis Perez Sala, Bernd Schneider, Yannick Dalmas, Gregor Foitek, Piercarlo Ghinzani, Volker Weidler, Pierre-Henri Raphanel, Joachim Winkelhock, Enrico Bertaggia, Oscar Larrauri and Paolo Barilla. These guys contributed 106 failures to qualify or pre-qualify, not to mention Gabriele Tarquini, who DNPQed 8 times, and Aguri Suzuki, who was gone by Friday afternoon at every single meeting.

1. 1994

belmondo.jpgdalmas.jpg

The son of Jean-Paul had a slow yearLarrousse were esperate for some cash

While Pacific trundled away (left) at the back of the grid, ultimately wasting Paul Belmondo's time, most other teams were searching high and low for pay drivers. Larrousse went back to the future with Phiilippe Alliot and Yannick Dalmas (right).

Ah, the year of the pay driver. In the advent of rising F1 costs and the string of horrendous accidents (which forced costs up even more), teams often had to depend on drivers whose ability to pay was more important than his ability to drive. A record (for recent times) 46 drivers drove in 1994, including 14 rookies. Lotus, Larrousse and Simtek would all use 6 drivers throughout the season.

Add to that the difficulties faced by the Simtek and Pacific teams, and 1994 would prove to be a year of opportunities either limited or cut short. And, as a result, rejects galore. Whilst the two teams mentioned above would be the only teams to be considered 'reject teams', the list of drivers considered as 'reject drivers' is enormous, in size and above all quality (or lack thereof).

Pedro Lamy's F1 career was sidetracked by a leg-shattering testing crash - and Lotus also had to resort to the service of Philippe Adams twice - meanwhile David Brabham, Alessandro Zanardi and Olivier Beretta struggled with their cars. Franck Lagorce never got a proper chance, while Paul Belmondo had to pay for a fruitless Pacific drive, and Simtek had to opt for (wait for this) Andrea Montermini, Jean-Marc Gounon, Mimmo Schiattarella and Taki Inoue. Larrousse also had to plumb some depths, going with Yannick Dalmas, Hideki Noda and (the clincher) Jean-Denis Deletraz towards the end of the season. As Frank Sinatra would say, 'it was a VERY good year'.

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And a top 3 with the "What Mirrors?" Award

Drivers receive this Award for having a reputation as moving chicanes, ignorant of overtaking etiquette.

Here's the list:

3. Olivier Grouillard

oli1.jpgoli2.jpg

The sweat is dripping Yes, there are mirrors there

At least we're sure that Olivier HAS mirrors.

Some drivers are polite when being lapped, whilst others are notoriously not so. Luca Badoer, for instance, would probably take fourth place in this list if we had a fourth place, but his antics are outdone firstly by Frenchman Olivier Grouillard.

To be fair to the slick-haired man from Toulouse, his manners have not always been under question, at least not during his first year with Ligier; then again he had Rene Arnoux as a team-mate, and Arnoux's blocking job on Alain Prost at Monaco, which lost the Professor 12.2 seconds in four laps, would have put anything Grouillard did in the shade.

What cemented Grouillard's reputation were two horrendous years with Osella (or Fondmetal), during which on several occasions he refused to let the leaders by, most notably at Adelaide in 1990, where Nigel Mansell shook his fist at the Frenchman in front of the on-board camera. Unrepentant, and excusing himself using the performance disadvantages of his cars, Grouillard took his blocking skills to Tyrrell in 1992, but thereafter was seen no more in F1. The leading drivers, at least, were pleased with that.

2. Philippe Alliot

alliot.jpg

Alliot's Larroussse

It was Philippe's performances in his Larrousse that let him to be labelled as a bit of a blocker by James Hunt.

This charming fellow out of the car, who occasionally was also dynamite inside one, Philippe Alliot could also be quite a headache for the leaders whilst being lapped. Early in his F1 career he established a reputation for blocking the leaders, and as a result became a regular target for James Hunt, commentating for the BBC alongside Murray Walker.

Alliot too had a leader shake his fist at him in front of an on-board camera. The leader in question was Ayrton Senna, and the race was the Spanish GP in 1989, where the Larrousse blatantly chopped across the McLaren's bows, eliciting Senna's outraged response.

But the incident which tops them all was at Estoril in 1990. Alliot in the Ligier did the same thing to Nigel Mansell's Ferrari as he had done to Senna the previous year, but this time the Englishman nudged him into a spin backwards into the armco barrier at high speed. Mansell was fortunate to go on and win the race, whilst many, Hunt especially, thought Alliot had received his just deserts.

From memory, Hunt called him a "bloody idiot" on air, and that just about summed it up.

1. Andrea de Cesaris

dec.jpg

De Cesaris' Alfa

The Alfa of Andrea de Cesaris - one of the most feared chicanes in in mid-80s.

Going on his latter years, it would be unfair to put Andrea De Cesaris at number one. Indeed, by the 1990s he was becoming one of the team bosses' safer choices. But it was his early career in the 1980s which cemented his reputation for red-misted driving where he would keep drivers behind at all costs, whether they were trying to pass or lap him.

A classic example: the 1982 Swiss GP at Dijon. This would be Keke Rosberg's maiden victory in his championship year, but along the way he got stuck behind De Cesaris' Alfa for lap after lap, losing some ten seconds in all to Rene Arnoux's Renault. It was not the first time these drivers had clashed, and by the end of the season they were off their mutual Christmas card lists.

Though he would mature with age and experience, it seemed as though De Cesaris must have always flunked his etiquette classes, for as late as 1992, ESPN commentator David Hobbs remarked that "at some stage in almost every race [he] does something that raises the ire of his other drivers" after he had nearly taken leader Nigel Mansell out of the race.

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I mean my God those guys made the current crop feel like the platinum generation.

I've never seen such a capacity to catch these cars despite greater speeds and sensitivity at any of the older generations. In the old days it was lose the rear and that's it folks.

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To be more clear, I believe the actual level of skill of today's drivers is really high and it gets better year after year.

However for some reason, the driver error rate is also still high, given the driver's skills!

Perhaps the modern drivers are a lot closer to the edge and often overestimate themselves!

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I won't call the driving standards appalling, but if you were watching F1 for the first time you would find it hard to believe that these guys are the best in the world!!!

I think the conditions mixed with the first full race without TC in the rain, and the fact that most were driving with worn inters or inters when full wets were the right tyres the driving was just passable. The teams certainly didn't do their drivers any favours (tyre choice) put it that way.

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I thought alot of the offs were due to aquaplaning which to an extent isnt within the drivers control.

So its very difficult to say driving standards have gone down,

considering every driver was driving a V8 Formula 1 car with intermediates on a track which had EXTREME wet conditions and having to push to the limit to keep the temperature in the tyres.

Im pretty sure none of us would of been able to drive those cars there today like many of the drivers did. (except Massa who spent more time trying to figure out which way round the track he was meant to be going).

Massa spinning on the exit of the corner several times is no excuse. he was just plain S**t today.

Many drivers today who went off were the ones I expected to go off. Due to their frequent over exuberance like Sutil and Piquet Jnr.

I do hate Coulthard now with a passion due to his stupid driving which he ended up taking out Vettel who probably could of got alot of points maybe even a 3rd. He was on fire this weekend nearly matching Webber in a Toro Rosso and fighting with the Renaults in qualy.

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Driver errors are more than usual in the rain. (Right now I remember Brazil 03 and start laughing xD) That, plus the strategy errors and you have Silverstone 08. So this day is not going to help you make your point Cav. Try again next GP weekend...

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