The F1 season 2004

Schumacher has done this too. The 1994 Benetton in which Schumacher won the championship was inferior to the 1994 Williams of Damon Hill by some margin.

It's arguable that the 2000 Ferrari in which he won the first championship for Ferrari wasn't as good as that year's McLaren. He won plenty of races in '97, '98 and '99 in an inferior car too. He also won 3 races in 1996 for Ferrari, the most memorable being the first one in Barcelona in the wet where he just drove rings around everyone else in a car only firing on 9 cylinders. The 1996 Ferrari was an absolute dog of a car and no-one else would have even got close to a race win with it.

Michael.

 

Yes, he did. But Schumacher had an inferior car to Damon Hill - no great driver - and Jacques Villeneuve - who, in spite of all the hype did not live to the general expectation, leaving the impression that he was only as good as his car.

Whereas when Fangio won in 1957 the Ferraris and the Vanwalls were faster than the Maserati - and they were driven by Hawthorn and, above all, Stirling Moss.

This is not to say that Schumacher is not as great a driver. According ro statistics he was less dominant than Fangio. But I think it is impossible to say who was better.

That said, it seems to be impossible nowadays to really shine as in the old days - the fiersome circuits like the Ring or the long Spa (Masta taken at full throtle!!) are no more, and cars have too much grip.

So it is only when it rains or he has a problem that a driver can show his true greatness - as Schumacher did at Barcelona, I agree.

Anyway, Fangio is, for me, an enigma. He was devilishly competitive; yet, as Neubauer said, he was as shy as a maiden before her first kiss. Well, he was not shy, but he was rather a low profile, fond of his friends, happy for them when they beat him (which was seldom) and generally speaking a very nice person.

He was hugely respected by his colleagues not only because he was faster and more consistent but also because he was such a sportsman. Well, the same can unfortunately not be said of Schumacher - his crashes against Hill and, above all, against Jacques Villeneuve were very dirty.

Somewhere in the Net there is an onboard movie of the Schumacher-Villeneuve shunt, and one can clearly see Schumacher just tried to get him out - rather ugly. And, what is more, he didn't have the need to do it.

So while I acknowledge Schumacher is a very great driver, I'm a little reticent to say that I actually like him. Of course, this is of no importance at all - he is the fastest now, whether I like him or not!

 

"Not poles, RdS, that's still held by Ayrton Senna."

And it is difficult to see anyone matching pole in 50% of the races they entered.

Donnington in 93 showed why Ayrton was the best in F1. As he lapped Prost, the eventual winner of the championship that year in the fastest car, for the second time!

Later that year when Mika raced the McLaren MP4/8 for the first time in Estoril he showed his outright speed by out qualifying Ayrton. It wasn't Ayrton's best circuit and he didn't do one of his best laps but it was still a stunning achievement by Mika.

As racing has changed so much I wouldn't like to compare with the old days where many of the drivers ended up dead and so you needed a lot more bottle to race then.

Ian

 

Umm. I don't think so.

Senna entered 165 GPs and obtained 65 poles; 37%

Fangio entered 51 GPs and had 29 poles. 57%

I was talking about relative values.

 

Aha, but you didn't say that, ol' bean! When people talk about the pole record being the only that Schumacher hasn't claimed, they invariably mean the overall number, which is Senna's.

 

Umm... What I said, was:

 

On one thing we can safely agree, RdS, Juan Manuel Fangio truly was The Greatest. And a very nice man too!

 

Absolutely!

 

The whole world has been saying the new qualifying modus is boring. The TV stations, who make up a large amount of F! income, have been clamouring for a return to the old modus.

So what happens? FIA decides to leave everything basically as is, but to increase the time between the two qualifying sessions, making the whole thing even more boring.

I sometimes think the F1 supremos are doing this in a perverse quest for self-punishment: only when they have alienated every live or TV audience and dropped interest in the sport to sub-zero levels will they be content.

 

One subtle change though is that TV stations are now not obliged to show the first qualifying session, just the second, meaningful one.

I don't have a problem with that, the second session is the only one worth watching anyway, even more so this year since the two are so close together that getting a good lap on the first session is much less important than it used to be.

I'm more and more convinced they should just go back to the old system of qualifying: 1 hour, 12 laps on low fuel, free for all. They can still keep the parc-ferme system if they want to avoid teams building "qualifying specials".

In order to prevent the situation of no one leaving for the first 20 minutes I'd add a rule that each driver has to do at least one of his flying laps in the first 30 minutes.

Michael.

 

"So what happens? FIA decides to leave everything basically as is, but to increase the time between the two qualifying sessions, making the whole thing even more boring."

It was changed so that Q2 started at a specific time for the TV companies.

As far as I am concerned it changes nothing. Last year was much better than this. The format before that better still.

Ian

 

I wish they would go back to "proper" qualifying also

Some people are suggesting that they just scrap the first session and run just one session in the finishing order of the last race. I'd be strongly against that since it would be effectively implementing a handicap system into F1 which, whilst it might well make the championship more interesting and close, is totally against what F1 is about.

The way the FIA changes the rules of F1 seems to be getting more haphazard with every passing month. The knee jerk reactions they had to Ferrari's dominance in 2002 and even Senna's death in 1994 haven't helped at all. What's needed is to get some experts around the table and for God's sake test some different solutions before implementing them. People seem to have widely different views on the downforce vs. mechanical grip issue so why not do some tests to see which combinations really do make it easier to follow a car closely through a corner.

Michael.

 

Amen to that.

 

To be fair, Senna's stats include at least four years (around 62 GP) during which he drove totally uncompetitve machinery (Toleman, Lotus and to be honest the MP4-8)

Fangio could simply swap teams if his steed was not up to the job.

Having said that I will never forget watching the old man four wheel drifting through the Old Hairpin in the Mercedes. He was I believe in his 70's


PS. I have a signed Schumacher Bridgestone Cap for sale if any collectors are interested!!!!

I was fortunate enough to have met Senna on a few occasions, the last of which was on the Tuesday after the '93 Monaco GP. You may remember he suffered an enormous accident in qualifying (on the Thursay) and did not start from his accustomed pole position. He did however go on to win the race, despite the injuries he sustained on the Thursay.

I remember asking him on the Tuesday if he would be kind enough to sign a card for a friend of mine. He had to lift his right hand out of his jean pocket with his left and tentatively rest it on the table whilst signing for me But he had driven 78 laps round Monaco faster than anyone else just 48hours earlier.

I hope that conveys the truth that Senna was both a true fighter and a gentleman.

 

Merlin:

I agree you have a point, there. And even if we consider the Maserati '53 years of Fangio to be 'underdog days' and the Maserati 250F of 57 to be not the dominant car at all (both Ferraris and Vanwalls were faster on most circuits) he clearly had not to endure an extremely inferior car.

But Phill Hill talked about the Fangio factor: in these days, he said, it was 75% car and 25% driver, but with Fangio it was 60% car and 40% of the 'old devil'.

Of course, in Senna's days, the car was more important but he still managed to fairly often beat the competition in infrior machinery. Small wonder Fangio said he was the only one who could beat his 5 titles.

Now, Schumacher has done that.

Schumacher is an incredible driver - when I watch his inboard footage I can hardly believe he will make the corners - but I warm a little more to Senna and a lot more to Fangio: he was an incredibly competitive man on track and yet he was universally respected as an extremely fair driver and a generous person. How he managed that I don't know. He truly is the stuff of legend.

And Moss said that Fangio the man was even greater than the myth!

 

The truth will out ...

Mercedes are now admitting that their engine block is prone to cracking; the Ilmor chief will probably resign. The redesign will take a few months.

How can this happen? Isn't engine building a scientific process? It should be possible to methmtically model the demands on engine innards. Plus, engine makers routinely dyno test their new designs extensively. Why was the fault not caught earlier?

My only explanation is that McLaren and Ilmor have been spreeading their resources too thinly, what with building the SLR (ugh!), the Pentagon complex and a few new cars (MP4/18 stiiborn; 19 a disaster, 19b or 20 under construction already ...).

If I was in charge at Mercedes, I'd seriously question whether I got acceptable value for the amount of money they invest into F1. Nobody can expect to win all the time, but to be so dismally off the pace is a disgrace.

 

I wouldn't put it past Ron Dennis's megalomania to think of it like that but it's actually called Paragon....or were you being sarcastic?

Most times when I fly back to London, if the weather is good and we have to sit in the holding pattern SW of Heathrow you get very good views of the new Paragon complex. It does look very impressive from the air - the Yin Yang shape of the building and the water.

I think you're probably right that McLaren Mercedes have been spreading their resources too thinly or they have some kind of serious organizational issues. I wonder how soon heads will roll... I also wonder if Adrian Newey has lost the "Midas touch" or maybe has had to do too much management and too little designing.

Michael.

 

I was ... it really should be called the Pentagon. After all, where else is so much money burnt so ineffectively?

 

So Mercedes has fired the MD of Ilmor, Hans-Ulrich Maik, and given Alan Whitmarsh greater authority over both the chassis and the motor teams. It was clear that management problems are at least part of the roots of the technical problems.

As Ron Dennis is responsible for the management structure, shouldn't he have fired himself, instead of prolonging his contract (both signatures by his good self) at McLaren? Ah, wishful thinking.

 

Ahh...engine blowups, political in-fighting and backstabbing. Reminds me of a certain Italian team with red cars during the 90s . It's no way to run an F1 team.

Michael.