Who do you currently regard as the 3 greatest Formula 1 drivers and why?

[555-04Q2]

1. Schumacher - his record and consistancy for 16 years speak for themselves. Yeah so he had a few incidents in his career, but every genius is flawed. No one has ever dominated F1 the way he did, not even the great Fangio.

2. Fangio - dominated the sport well into his 40's, an old man in my book!!! Consistant and brave, he was untouchable when he was in a groove.

3. Prost - a race master who let his racing do the talking and not his qualifying. He should have won more WDC, but 4 WDC and 51 wins is still a brilliant track record.

[ShiftingGears]

LOL. If he was so talented, why did he struggle against some of his teammates?

*One of the most talented, I should've said. It is impossible to gauge the most talented.
Reutemann beat him in his first complete debut season, yes, but Villeneuve only got better.

[tsarcasm]

Fangio - The tires were skinny and he was old and fat. 5 WDC's with out dying in a car, remarkable talent.

Senna - A Natural born star. He and the car were one.

Schumacher - No one has even pushed and pushed as hard as Michael. Today's drivers should emulate his approach.

**All great leaders/$$owners/and Drivers are schrude operators at times because they want to win.

Rindt, JYS, Clark, Gilles, Prost, are all great and probably posess better characters though...

[D-Type]

Not quite true actually. ~ if Senna hadn't run into Williams' Jean-Louis Schlesser in Monza and prevented McLaren's clean-sweep of the year, he actually would have lost the title by winning that race!

I don't think you understand the way it worked. It wasn't a case of 'dropping results' per se, it was a case of selecting the best n scores out of N races. So if n was 5 and N was 8, if after 7 races a driver had 2 DNFs, 4 second places and a sixth place and then went on to win the eighth race he would drop the sixth place and count 1 win and 4 second places, etc. So, if Senna had won in Italy it would have improved his score, not reduced it. Admittedly, if he had to drop a score to accommodate the 10 points then he wouldn't have improved his score by a full 10 points. Sit down with a pencil and paper and work it out!

The reason for the 'best n from n' rule was twofold.
1. Cars were less reliable so a driver's championship chances would not be punished by a car failure
2. It kept the championship open for longer so the organisers of late season races wouldn't lose out at the gate because the championship had already been decided.

[D-Type]

Now, let's try and answer this?

First a couple of questions:
Are we talking about a driver's performance In Formula 1? e.g. if considering Andretti, do we ignore his USAC, Indianapolis and Daytona wins? or in the case of Stirling Moss, his sports car performances in the Mille Miglia, Le Mans, Targa Florio and Nurburgring 1000km?
Is this limited to Formula 1, post 1950? e.g. for the likes of Chiron and Fagioli, should we consider prewar races?
Are we talking about best on track (e.g. Gilles Villeneuve), most successful (e.g. Schumacher), best personality (e.g. tony Brooks), most innate natural ability (e.g. Senna, Clark), most skillful after learning his trade (e.g. Graham Hill), greatest (combination of the preceding), or what?

Having got that out of the way, based on performances in World Championship races, I nominate:

1. Juan Manual Fangio - Seven Championships. And the respect and regard he received from his fellow drivers. They were not ashamed to rate themselves as "Compared to Fangio..."

2. Alain Prost. - 'Only' two (or was it three?) championships but it could so easily have been three more. Again he was considered 'the man to beat' by his fellow drivers, including Senna.

3. Michael Schumacher - Simply on the grounds that he has won more than any other driver and has the respect of his peers.

Ayrton Senna? - Suzuka 1990 disqualifies him from any consideration as a 'great' driver. Why? This is the only case where a driver has admitted publicly that he started the race with the plan: "If he gets ahead of me I will drive my car into his"


Now, if we base it on lifetime performances in all forms of racing by drivers who have driven in Formula 1, the order changes:

1. Tazio Nuvolari - Yes, he did compete in a couple of Formula 1 races in 1947-49 before the Championship was inaugurated. Look over his career and there are some epic performances - the 1935 German GP where he defeated the 'invincible' silver arrows in their own backyard; the Mille Miglia where he switched his lights off and shadowed Varzi over the mountains; the Donington GP where he hit a stag in practice and won the race despite driving with his ribs taped up, etc.

2. Fangio again - but you can include the drive to second place in the Mille Miglia with one wheel steering and his long distance South American Races.

3. A tie between Stirling Moss and Louis Chiron
Moss for his sports car performances and his successes with 'outclassed' cars.
Chiron for winning over such a long period from the 1927 Spanish GP to the 1954 Monte Carlo Rally with a few World Championship points gained when he was semi-retired.

A J Foyt - He would be up there if the Ontario GP had been for Formula 1 cars and not Formula 1 and Formula 5000. Simply because he is the greatest racer in any form of racing, apart strangely from Formula 1. Indianapolis, USAC dirt tracks, midgets, Sports cars (Le Mans and Sebring wins), etc.

[BeansBeansBeans]

A great post D-Type, but a couple of corrections. Fangio won 5 World Championships and Prost 4.

[D-Type]

A great post D-Type, but a couple of corrections. Fangio won 5 World Championships and Prost 4.

Doh!

Posting from work without checking

[tsarcasm]

I know not the answer...but did Fangio win early championships? Before the FIA sanctioned the Official WDC.

[D-Type]

I know not the answer...but did Fangio win early championships? Before the FIA sanctioned the Official WDC.

No, it was simply brain fade. He won his first World Drivers' Championship in 1951 and his fifth in 1957.

Earlier championships were the European Drivers' Championship in the thirties and a World Manufacturers' Championship in the thirties. One of the best websites covering that era is The Golden Era of Grand Prix Racing - click to follow the link.

Formula 1 was introduced before the CSI inaugurated the World Drivers' Championship in 1950. The Formula was sanctioned by the CSI in 1946 and the first races run in 1947.

[tsarcasm]

thanks for the link great stuff!!