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Car Or Driver

Car or Driver  

34 members have voted

  1. 1. Car or Driver

    • Car
      24
    • Driver
      10


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there importance is equal, you can't have one without the other if you want to be successful. i think in a bad car the driver makes a bigger difference, in a good car less so, but no matter what the circumstances are some drivers will always shine above their team-mates, and that is what makes a great driver.

a mediocre driver can win in a dominant car but i somehow doubt that a mediocre driver has ever won the championship. which suggests that (over a season) drivers do make a difference. also if a mediocre driver dominates a race in a dominant car, can he still be considered mediocre? - after all he did exactly what he should of done.

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I don't think so. I've always said that JV did have had a dominant car, but he was battling nonetheless against his teammate and, indeed, his team to take his WDC. That was skill, not luck. Luck is simply a set of variables that a team/driver hasn't addressed, for one reason or another. Ideally, the best teams/drivers seek to eliminate 'luck' in trying to cover all possible scenarios that could happen. A driver eliminates luck through preparation, concentration, and racecraft....all of which take skill.

In the case of JV, had he been less focused and had less skill, he would not have won....even in a dominant car.

I was kidding of course. Just trying to pacify the extremists. I don't think for one minute that any driver who has won the WDC is not deserving of his accomplishment. Others seem to cut down everyone but their favorite. I'm not really into that. JV's "art" was lost in the new cars, with traction control and groved tires and that skill set he possessed was not one required any more. As everyone seems to agree the new F1 is all about driving the best car on the grid to become world champion. Because of this the driver input has less effect then it used to. I am confident to say if you gave JV the best car on the grid last year, he would have won the WDC in it. Much Like Alonso, MS, MH, JV, DH. All the past world champions have driven the best car on the grid. That about says it all. I mean come on guys. A rookie driver is leading the championship, what the hell does that say about driver skill and experience. Let any of the current top ten F1 pilots drive this years McClaren, and suddenly they would become a title contender.

IMO that is a shame. It does nothing for F1 and dimishes the driver to a level, that people start to wonder exactly how much skill is needed to drive these things. The WDC is just a tag along that goes with the WCC.

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Murray, rather than tediously address all your points, I'll try to get them in one lump. The scientist in you wont like that, but there it is anyway.

You've listed 10 years' worth of racing. In those 10 years, you had McLaren and Ferrari, Ferrari and Williams, McLaren and Renault and now McLaren and Ferrari all being genuine title contenders for their respective years. This isn't debatable, my friend, it's fact. All of those years, except '97 and '04 saw two teams with cars so close in performance that the determining factor in a race win was the driver or team strategy (which ultimately put the onus on the driver to do his part in that strategy or it would have been a failure). I noticed you've qualified your list by saying 'genuine best driver'. Doesn't that sort of prove what I've been saying? The driver makes the final difference in a race win.

Your other points I see no reason to debate with you as they don't help us establish which is more important, the driver or the car (like the bit about the driver's salary compared to the cost of the car...it's interesting, but I frankly don't know where to go with that one! I think it has zero relevance to this as you're comparing the salary of an employee to the cost of a car...a better determination would be to compare the salary of the driver to the other team employees.)

For the sake of staying focused, I'll lump everything not under the driver's control as being the 'car'. I'll even go with Fangio's estimation that 95% of a race win is due to the car, not the driver. More often than not, there are at least two teams that can fight for a race win (I won't debate this with anyone as it would involve too much research on my part to prove what I already know to be true). My contention is that the 95% 'car' gets a driver into position to win, but rarely guarantees it. If this logic were true, please explain how Mikey's Ferrari could split Mika and DC in '98? Surely Mika was in the superior car to have won the championship and surely DC, in the same car, should have been right behind him (like '97 when Frentzen came second to JV in a dominant car). The next year Mika won the whole thing again (must be a dominant car because he won the championship..and only a dominant car would do that, right?) but look who was behind him...Irvine. Next was Frentzen in a Jordan and fourth was DC...in the same car Mika was driving. Do I need to go on here? It's clear, just from this, that the car gets you into position for a win, but doesn't guarantee it. 95% puts you on the front row, so to speak, but the driver delivers that 05% needed to win.

I could go on, but I'll leave this with a more recent example. Last season, the Renault was widely regarded as being a dominant car. Many posters here even sought to diminish Alonso's feat of 2 WDCs by claiming that anyone in the Renault could have done it. Not so. Fisico has ever been regarded by the other drivers as being the 'best' driver out there (I believe he was even awarded something like that by the other drivers not so long ago in the post-season awards ceremony). The Renault provided it's drivers with 95% of the elements needed to win, and from that we saw that Alonso's skill was the deciding factor.

So, who's more important? The driver. Fisico and DC prove that even a dominant car cannot guarantee a win..hell, it can't even guarantee 2nd in the WDC.

[it must be said that this only applies to teams that are in the position to win in the first place. Mikey the Schu in a Spyker would certainly be a place or two ahead of where they are now, but he's hardly be in a position to win.....I would think that goes without saying, but some posters have brought this up, no doubt thinking themselves brilliant for it. Unfortunately, that isn't the case..sorry.]

Phiew! This is why you are the chief priest! :thumb:

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Hi Mike. Very nice post. I did read it last week, but I was on holiday in rural Scotland, where you can only get internet access for about an hour at a time, even when you book in advance! Then when I got back I didn't have the energy to resurrect the thread. Anyway, I still disagree, at least to some extent.

You've listed 10 years' worth of racing. In those 10 years, you had McLaren and Ferrari, Ferrari and Williams, McLaren and Renault and now McLaren and Ferrari all being genuine title contenders for their respective years. This isn't debatable, my friend, it's fact. All of those years, except '97 and '04 saw two teams with cars so close in performance that the determining factor in a race win was the driver or team strategy (which ultimately put the onus on the driver to do his part in that strategy or it would have been a failure). I noticed you've qualified your list by saying 'genuine best driver'. Doesn't that sort of prove what I've been saying? The driver makes the final difference in a race win.

Yeah, my phrase "genuine best drivers" just means those drivers who we want to see fight it out for the WDC, because we think they are the best ones. In order to make sense of the idea that cars don't matter much because the top ones are roughly equal, you have to have all the "genuine best drivers" in the top cars. Otherwise drivers who could/should have won, won't - purely because of the car! Take 1999 as a good example. I agree that driver difference was decisive between Mika and Eddie, but what about JV or HHF? If they had been in the Ferrari, they would surely have beaten Mika that year, so I don't think you can really say the driver was the main difference that year. Car differences eliminated all the "genuine" driver competition, and he was left fighting only DC and Irvine.

Your other points I see no reason to debate with you as they don't help us establish which is more important, the driver or the car (like the bit about the driver's salary compared to the cost of the car...it's interesting, but I frankly don't know where to go with that one! I think it has zero relevance to this as you're comparing the salary of an employee to the cost of a car...a better determination would be to compare the salary of the driver to the other team employees.)

:lol: My thinking was the following. I admit it's not perfect, but nevertheless it's an interesting estimate. It only takes a small fraction of the top teams' budgets to make an F1 car. The vast majority of their money is spent on extra things to make them faster than the competition, and presumably they spend the extra money on the stuff that will make the biggest difference. So it's interesting that they don't compete that much over the best test drivers say, or even the best race drivers. Instead they spend most of their money building better wind tunnels or supercomputers than the opposition.

My contention is that the 95% 'car' gets a driver into position to win, but rarely guarantees it.

Yeah I agree with that. You still need a good driver to win, so you can't guarantee winning just by building a good car. But my objection is that you don't need the best driver. I think more often than not the differences between the top drivers are obscured by the differences between the teams.

Btw I'm happy to admit the drivers do make a difference, often a very big one. But as you know I want the WDC to be entirely settled by the drivers, whereas it seems to me that the cars are at least as influential as the drivers in settling it, on average.

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I'm sure this must have been asked before, but a search turned up nothing, so I'll give it a go.

We've all seen great or promising drivers (Alesi, Sutil, even Senna) languish in uncompetitive cars, but we've also seen great drivers (Alesi and Senna again) do great things in lethargic cars.

So, will a great driver pull out a fantastic performance in a slow car, or will a mediocre driver repeatedly pull podiums out of the best car on the grid?

Ah ! Old debate pulled out of the mothballs again. Tis a strange one my friend. When your favorite driver does well, you will probably here that 'it was the car', and when someone elses favorite driver does well, you will hear from them ' it was the driver' and so it has been since the beginning of time.....with the exception of MS of course

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