Top 10 Driver Rankings of past seasons

[rjbetty]

To go with the past pre-season predictions thread, I decided to put some retrospective driver rankings of past seasons cos I thought it might be interesting. Feel free to comment. :)


1994

10.Johnny Herbert - Lotus wasn't too bad a car, but it was worst of the established teams, so Herbert did well to lead the team. His latent talent was shown with 4th on the grid at Monza - where on earth did he get that from? Finished close to the points on his one-off with Ligier too but disappointed in his final 2 races for Benetton.

9.David Coulthard - Another driver with a disjointed season. In the circumstances impressed, though never outqualified Hill. Could have won Portugal and was right up there at Monza before running out of fuel.

8.Ukyo Katayama - Pulled a great season out of nowhere to surprise everywhere. It was a VERY Maldonado-2012-like season, but without the big result, and wasting many good opportunities with errors, but the pace was there.

7.Heinz-Harald Frentzen - Fantastic 5th on the grid on debut, only outqualified by his team-mate once all season. A fixture in the top 10 in qualifying, with some sensational performances including fastest at Jerez on Friday (before being bumped to 3rd the next day) and 4th in Japan. Couldn't convert into big results though came 5th in only his second race.

6.Rubens Barrichello - Another driver who wowed by finishing a brilliant 6th in the WDC with 19pts! And he could have had so much more. Compare this to Irvine's 6pts, and you see he did a brilliant job. Another driver usually up there in qualifying - including that pole position at Spa. However, spinning out in race amongst other things highlighted racecraft was lacking somewhat.

5.Jean Alesi - Very quick and very unfortunate, especially losing a certain win at Monza from pole.

4.Gerhard Berger - Gerhard is ahead of Alesi here because he was no slower, but had a much better head, putting together a great season - including 6 podiums, and that memorable win at Hockenheim on his way to a clear 3rd in the championship with 41pts, to signal Ferrari's resurgence and recovery from an awful 3 past seasons.

3.Mika Hakkinen - just misses out on 2nd although I feel he was much quicker than Damon. Outqualified Brundle in every race - and only Schumacher had ever managed that before. Scored 5 podiums but never looked like winning as the car was far too slow. Was banned for a race for causing a crash - he had been involved in several collisions but overall did a great job to come 4th overall, with a strong final part of the season to vault up the standings.

2.Damon Hill - Previously a no.2, suddenly and without warning had the focus and expectation to fight for the title in terrible circumstances. He probably had a big role in sorting out the Williams car from it's shaky start, given the same thing happened when he was at Arrows and Jordan. Co-incidence? This is why he just sneaked 2nd here, as well as putting together a better season than Hakkinen, maximising every opportunity when many others would have crumbled. Tellingly, it wasn't he who cracked at the season finale, and he would probably have won that race even without the infamous collision. However, while Williams was nowhere near as dominant as before, they on balance surely had the best car again by some margin.

1.Michael Schumacher - Taking Benetton to unknown heights was an incredible job when Williams and McLaren had previously been unbeatable. Traction control rumours put a dampener on things, but this would certainly be countered by the large number of disqualifications, without which Michael could have won 12 or more races out of 16!

[rjbetty]

F1 1995

1.Schumacher - Who else baby?
2.Alesi - some way off Hakkinen, but when he was on it... Made few mistakes and put together a season so good he challenged for the title in the first half. However, Schumacher would have won the WDC as easily as in the Benetton.
3.Hakkinen - 2nd quickest out there by some way, but so many incidents meaning only 17pts.
4.Coulthard - For his 1st full season, to practically match Damon in qual was good. Missed out on several wins.
5.Hill - talking about annus horribilis. What a waste of a DOMINANT car dude! Can't blam Frank for being miffed tbh.
6.Frentzen - great season, so many points finishes. Annihlated team-mates. 6th in Portugal from the back with modern-day-level retirements (i.e. barely any) was suuuuper.
7.Irvine - Consistently qualified up there, though the ONLY reason he headed Rubens here is because Rubens had car problems and was psyched out. Irvine knew he couldn't do it on raw talent. Sounds like Rosberg and Hamilton really.
8.Berger - meh, but appeared to win Brazil when Schu an DC temporarily DSQd
9.Barrichello - Annus horribilis. Chronic car problems hugely held him back early in the season, but after that still a little behind Irvine in qualifying, all because of his mind. If you thought Lewis' 2011 was bad... Still did better than Irvine in races and finished ahead in the WDC. Unbelievable misfortune in losing 3rd coming out of the final corner in Hungary after 77 laps, sliding to 7th. Also lost points at Spain and Britain on the last lap!
10.Salo - Blew away Katayama, after Ukyo's brilliant 94.
11.Lamy - Had the beating of Badoer returning after a difficult time.
12.Verstappen - Some astonishing performances in that Simtek, including almost points! :o
13.Brundle - Shone against Panis, and came close to some amazing results, hounding DC for 3rd at Magny-Cours and losing out on a big result at Spa on the last lap, Bourdais style. Still got 3rd though. Outqualified Panis 8-3. Not bad for a part-timer.
14.Panis - Didn't look so solidly consistent this time, making errors. But had a great way of picking up points.
15.Herbert - Ironically, the 2 wins owed much to good fortune. Most successful season by far, but sucked, though he was stuffed by Flav.
16.Morbidelli - Mainly for that 3rd place and the way he held off the much faster McLaren of Blundell.
17.Badoer - Matched Martini for pace, qualified 12th in Hungary and 13th(12th?) in Argentina. It was he who was kept on rather than Martini who was like a Minardi family member.
18.Blundell - oh dear. Slower than Brundle, and without as good race pace. Scored more later in the year, but no podiums was a bit poor, especially losing out to Morbidelli.
19.Martini - Ok but not remarkable or as tenacious as 94.
20.Gachot - Led the improved team as well as he could. Not his fault he was rusty on return. I was really fond of Gachot so maybe biased...?
21.Katayama - 1994 form vanished as Tyrrell less competitive.
22.Diniz - Very good in races. Better against Moreno than expected?
23.Montermini - Pretty good but others were better.
24.Bouillon - pass.
25.Moreno - Out for 4 years and Diniz ridiculously favoured. Did alright then considering.
26.Schiatterella - Not the worst driver, certainly not. But not good.
27.Inoue - Surprise!

[steveaki13]

How the hell do you have Schiater-nutella as 26th and Inoue only 27th man......:mad::fasttalk:;) Clearly injustice.

Good work though :)

[rjbetty]

F1 1996

24.Lavaggi - Could you kindly move aside please?
23.Rosset - Race winner in British F3, 2nd in F3000 1995, nowhere in F1.
22.Montermini - Got no.2 treatment, but well off Badoer.
21.Katayama - Definite improvement over 1995, but couldn't score points to save his life...
20.Diniz - exceeded all expectations. Mature approach bagged 2 points finishes.
19.Marques - 14th on the grid in Argentina ahead of Brundle and co? Wooooo
18.Badoer - Not much to say. Looked much better than he did at Ferrari in 2009, that's for sure.
17.Verstappen - Often good races, often wasted by crashes.
16.Herbert - a bit lame tbh
15.Lamy - underrated, very much so imo. And all because of a difficult debut at Lotus. Reminds me of Heidfeld in that way.
14.Salo - Tyrrell improved slightly. Still easily beat Katayama.
13.Brundle - like his 1992, dreadful first half, only 3pts in first 13 races! Then a 4th at attritional Monza then a great 5th on his finale.
12.Panis - Much impoved. Monaco still a great drive even with outrageous fortune.
11.Berger - Meh Meh Meh!!!!! But stuffed by Flav, and this must be the year the car was wrong for his height. Believe me, I know how utterly delibilitaing this is so maybe I'm really harsh here!
10.Fisichella - Yeah I'm biased, deal with it! 2nd best debutant of 96. Beat Lamy who beat Badoer who matched Martini, and this is year 1, and only a half season.
9.Frentzen - Usual good performance, but 1995 it was not. Faded later on but came 6th at Suzuka.
8.Irvine - Quite quick but kept retiring and moaning.
7.Alesi - For all your experience, you sucked. For all the fans saying he was better than Schumacher in 1995(!!!!) look what you did in his car - very little of note. Hmphh!
6.Barrichello - Underrated underrated underrated. Much better for most of the season than 95, much stronger than given credit for, but faded quite badly in final races as things got stale and disagreed with Eddie Jordan. Also, moments like spinning out of 3rd at Interlagos failed to convince.
5.Coulthard - first season settling in. Car only 4th best at best but got 2 podiums. Far better than any other no.2 since Berger (not including Mika's late '93 flurry).
4.Villeneuve - Yes it was sensational and he did really well, but several planets behind Hamilton's debut season, so maybe shouldn't compare them.
3.Hill - Put together a good season (though wobbled late on) - though so you bloody should, in a car even more dominant than 1995! One of the top drivers, though crashing out in Spain after attempting "just once", as Mark Hughes put it, to take a corner the way Schumacher did, put him right off the track into retirement - since this was pre-playstation-F1 era (i.e. if you go off, simply rejoin).
2.Hakkinen - 2nd cos he was quicker than Hill I think, especially impressive coming back from almost death. 31pts a great haul in the slowest McLaren of all the mid 90s ones...
1.Schumacher - For all those who say Schumacher only looked good cos he had the best car (he didn't much of the time btw) and that the Mercedes comeback was a true picture and he couldn't win without a good car, I would take issue, and in way of correction, direct you to the 1996 Spanish GP.

[rjbetty]

How the hell do you have Schiater-nutella as 26th and Inoue only 27th man......:mad::fasttalk:;) Clearly injustice.

Good work though :)

I stuck Lamy in there, cos he did enough over enough races to be included. Though maybe Papis should have a place.


EDIT:

26.Papis - about as well as could be expected given he jumped in for debut mid-season with little preparation. He remains though, the only driver ever to be outqualified by Taki Inoue.

[journeyman racer]

I'd like to comment. But there's so much to take in, I can't be bothered.

Except to ask. If you only started watching F1 during 1997/98, how would you know how to put results in context?

[rjbetty]

Yeah that's a good question jr. I guess I don't but it's not particularly meant to be comprehensive or serious. Just an overview to see what ya think. ;)


And now for 1997 (seems it's become all drivers, not just the top 10 now), and I can't think of a better way to celebrate my 1000th post than to go back to the season where it all started for me.

1.Michael Schumacher - It's possible that the Ferrari was maybe only the 6th fastest car on average over the season. If you think about it, the Prost on Bridgestones was possibly a little faster on balance, especially in race trim. I believe the Jordan was faster - in hindsight it was considered a race winning car but the drivers were too inexperienced to make use of it. I believe McLaren's resurgence later on helped them average a little ahead of Ferrari. I think the Benetton was a bit quicker, though the drivers were uninspiring. And of course then there's the Williams. Although I think 2nd-6th overall between the cars is close.

This means that Michael could have done pretty much the same job, or better, driving a Jordan, Prost or McLaren etc. This puts it into perspective what a very Alonso-2012-like job he must have done that year. Especially when you consider that even though Irvine closed the gap from 96, he still had several races absolutely nowhere in the midfield. If this is true, then he should truly have been the hero of 1997 rather than the villain. :(

2.Jacques Villeneuve - For only his 2nd season (though having raced top-flight already), it was a great job, though with Damon gone the pressure and expectation seemed to get to him. Flipping well should have won given that car. He was the driver to shatter the Frentzen myth though.

3.David Coulthard - Given he was less experienced than Hakkinen, this was a very strong season. With a reliable car I'm sure a title challenge could have been on. The great unsporting injustice of Jerez - DC being made to move over to give HIS win to Mika to give Mika title confidence for 1998 (what about DCs 1998?!!!) - was an unfair shame, especially coming from such a proud racer as Ron. But DC was very impressive.

4.Mika Hakkinen - Slightly lame in the first half of the season tbh. Maybe now his 1995 accident was having some effect? Maybe not, since as Newey's presence was more felt, so Mika picked right up, almost winning Silverstone, and suffering incredible misfortune to also miss out on victories in Austria and most gallingly the Nurburgring, where on his 29th birthday, with a commanding lead, and having gone all those years trying to in his first race, he heartbreakingly retired. Then DC who would have taken the lead retired at the same time. And all this just a few races after Damon in Hungary! Still, he picked up his season to be one of the best out there.

5.Johnny Herbert - One of the most curious seasons of all time. I can remember when I was getting into F1, Herbert in the Sauber was an almost permament fixture in the top 10 during races, and I thought this was just the way it always was, not knowing any better. For years I have been so curious as to how Johnny put together this sort of season, as it never happened again since. It's a total mystery like Katayama's 94. But iirc Herbert qualified only +1.320sec off Villeneuve on average. Given that M.Schumacher was about 0.42sec off and Irvine 1.24sec, I still don't know how in a theoretically inferior Sauber with a customer Ferrari engine, he could perform so well. It seems that maybe Johnny had a latent talent (hey those 2 words are anagrams of each other) that could only be unlocked at certain times, such as Monza 1994. He was fantastic in races, conserving his tyres to get several 4th places etc ahead of more fancied cars. What would he have done in Melbourne if it weren't for Irvine (again!)?

6.Giancarlo Fisichella - These were the days when Fisichella was considered to be a future world champion (*sob!*). Small wonder when you check out his 97. Let's see, going in, Ralf was the early signing with Sam Michael as engineer, and probably given all the no.1 treatment etc. He was expected to be the leader with Fisi as a decent no.2 but a bit hot headed etc like Alesi. As it turned out, after a slow start, Fisi had the beating of Ralf in every way. Most points, highest average qualifying, highest grid slot, best result, most points, most podiums, outqualified Ralf 10-7 etc. And that was with a bad knee injury during the opening races which Fisi didn't make a fuss of.

Hockenheim was the day I became a fan of Fisi. Qualifying 0.022 sec behind experienced Hockenheim specialist Gerhard Berger, the race was between those two for the win, only for Fisi to retire with a puncture just 6 laps from home, while Ralf came a distant 5th. Drivers circuit Spa showed the difference between the Jordan drivers, Fisi qualifying 4th and finishing 2nd (with modern day levels of retirements i.e. none to speak of) while Ralf started well down the field and crashed trying to keep up. Fisi was also ahead at the other drivers circuit Monaco, qualifying 4th there too. Ralf was quicker at Suzuka though.

Fisi then finished just a few seconds off the win at Monza, qualifying and finishing 4th, before another 4th in Austria, leading Ralf. At the Nurburgring, he started 4th again, but was taken out by Ralf, who was so desperate to beat his team-mate he crashed into him, then also took his brother out costing him the title. Given that Alesi who started well down came 2nd that day, what could Fisi have done? All in all, an unexpectedly superb season.


7.Ralf Schumacher - That's not to say Ralf didn't have his moments too. Also remember, he was only 21 at the time an Fisi had done 8 races for Minardi. That's why this rivalry reminded me very much of Ricciardo and Vergne at Toro Rosso.
Ralf started well, qualifying 12th on debut and looking good for 6th in the race. Argentina was his moment to shine, on the podium, but only after taking Fisi out!! And then blaming him afterwards! Oh yes, back then the spirit of Maldonado was alive and well in Schu Jr :mad: Still, 3rd in your 3rd race at 21 ain't bad (seems quite Vettel-like). At Imola he started ahead of Fisi and could probably have fought for the podium if not for DNFing. Next opportunity was 3rd on the grid at France, only for a reckless collision while fighting for 5th in the race. He beat Fisi to come 5th at Silverstone but was miles off at Hockenheim. He caused a dangerous crash at Monza with Herbert, then blamed him (good heavens!) He was then fastest in free practice in Japan (iirc?) but no more points.

So a lot to learn, but he qualified only half a tenth of Fisi on average, with less experience, so had still done enough to impress.


8.Barrichello - imo underrated cos of 1995. One of the quickest drivers out there, but sadly mostly unnoticed in a Stewart. Started 11th in Stewart's first race before qualifying 5th at Argentina (Rubens seemed to go pretty well there) before a great 3rd (almost pole) in Canada. Not before finishing 2nd in Monaco though. I remember so clearly afterwards, that race which made me an F1 fan, there was memorably a funny looking Scottish man (to my 13yr old self) crying for joy. I didn't know who he was at the time. :) Also started 5th at Austria but this time, he spun off. Overall a great job and dominated Magnussen Sr.

9.Olivier Panis - At the time, I remember people going crazy about Panis, watching Monaco 97 I got the impression he was always winning races every season and was one of the top drivers. In hindsight, this was almost all Bridgestone however. I'm not trying to be mean, just that I think it's the truth. He was flying in Spain, and could have won if not for a lapped Irvine blocking him all over, probably still feeling sore over Monaco 96. Given that it may have cost Panis the win, and therefore Schumacher your team-mate the title... Well good going Eddie! What a huge shame about the crash as it will always be one of the unsolved questions of F1, what could Olivier have done? He was 3rd in the WDC at the time.

Come to think of it, I watched footage of that crash a few years back, and it struck me how relatively mild and minor it was, considering it resulted in 2 broken legs. The same crash in 2014 would be almost nothing in comparison. Just shows how things have come on.

10.Damon Hill - After some deliberation, I have awarded the ninth spot to Damon. He was a very mixed bag in 97, from the sublime to the ridiculous indeed. Let's get the cr@p stuff out of the way. Feet too big for the car. DNQd in Melbourne. Down the back at Imola too. Outqualified by Pedro Diniz somewhere (Monaco, Spa?), underperformed badly for a world champion early on, wasn't rallying the team.

With that out of the way, he was only poor while trying to get over the realisation that Tom Walkinshaw had led him down the garden path (I knoooow that feeling), came 6th at Silverstone woohoo! Then that day of days, when having started 3rd at Hungary, took the lead and dominated. Silly me thinking this was par for the course. 1998 would teach me a harsh lesson. Now Bridgestone would have had a big part in this, but where were their other runners that day? Shouldn't Stewarts and Minardis have challenged for points if the tyres were that hawt? Given that Yamaha's expertise was definitely in keyboards rather than engines, and the chassis surely can't have been THAT good, it just leaves one more variable - maybe old Damon really could switch it on when the stars aligned.

Damon then qualified 4th at Jerez, hundreths off pole. He would have taken it but for yellow flags. Now for the car to have progressed that much from the start of the season, maybe Damon played a big part in that. I mean, can you imagine Arrows getting that good if Verstappen had been retained?

[rjbetty]

AND THE REST


11.Jean Alesi - I like Jean, but I mean, how do you run out of fuel even though the team have been screaming to come in? Not a great season, though he picked up loads of points and podiums, but no wins again. Wurz outqualifying him twice in 3 races showed Jean's form was a bit rubbish.

12.Jarno Trulli - Shone like a star at some races, qualifying 6th at France. Kinda lame at others, finishing 30sec behind Nakano in A 6-7 finish in Hungary. Really?


13.Eddie Irvine - Another mixed bag. 5 podiums, including 3 in a row and almost winning Argentina, then loads of midfield nowhere results, perhaps showing that Ferrari maybe really was as low as 6th fastest car. His driving round the outside of everyone at Suzuka was so cool. 9th to 13th in my rankings are really close and Eddie loses out.


14.Heinz-Harald Frentzen - Oh boy where to begin? Hardly ever outqualified Villeneuve. Villeneuve! Sucked in general. Finishing out of the points in Brazil and Spain, in a Williams!! Utterly unthinkable. However, he was not happy and this affected him - badly. Patrick Head was his usual cantankerous self. Villeneuve was being all Nico Rosbergy in doing all manner of underhand things behind the scenes for the sole purpose of hindering Frentzen (call me old-fashioned but I'd prefer beating someone on pure performance, it would be a disgrace to me as a racer to do otherwise). Oh, he also got most of the misfortune going. Only 19pts after 11 races... But after that 23pts from 6 (actually that's not that great)

15.Gerhard Berger - A good start to the season, challenging for the win in Brazil, but then loads of 7ths etc. What going on man? 18th on the grid in Austria? Really? However, pole, win and fastest lap in Germany, plus opportunistically taking 4th off Irvine on the run to the line Senna/Mansell '86 style was great stuff.

16.Mika Salo - Ok
17.Jos Verstappen - A bit slower than Mika, but Tyrrell liked him. On for points in Canada.
18.Diniz - shone for his lowly standing.
19.Magnussen - Er... Qualified 6th at Austria, but mostly worse than Kevin.
20.Morbidelli - Absolutely nothing of note for the Happy Bubble reserve driver, save a nasty crash... He was stuffed by Sauber though who concentrated all on Herbert. Hmmm I don't remember Johnny ever complaining abut that, come to think of it...
21.Katayama - ok, but Trulli go faster.
22.Marques - Qualified 18th at Nurburgring. Also went better than usual there in 2001 funnily enough.
22.Nakano - Rubbish at first while reviled by Alain Prost, but when Alain grudgingly accepted him he became less rubbish and bagged 2pts, missing out on a 6th at Silverstone too on the final lap.

[journeyman racer]

Just my initial reaction to what I've skimmed through so far.

- Ukyo Katayama was pretty good in 94. It's a bit unfortunate for him that the records show that Mark Blundell got the better results. Regardless, Ukyo was the better of the two that year. I do remember him being in contention for a podium at Hockenheim and Monza, but it didn't work out for him. I can't remember exactly.

- With the possible exception of the engineering team of both 1995 Benetton and Williams cars gave me a 12 month course/lecture on the differences between both cars and where the advantage was for Williams, and how that advantage was supposedly 2-3/10ths. There is absolutely no way that anyone is going to tell me the popular notion that the Williams was superior to the Benetton that year. No one who watched the 1995 Spanish GP could come to that conclusion. If it was, then either Hill and Coulthard were tanking. Schumacher may be better than both, but he's not that much better.

- I don't see how Hamilton's debut year could be seen to be significantly better than Villeneuve's. The biggest differences I recall was the specialist British press weren't so bothered of the newbie having to follow team orders in 96, and that Hamilton hasn't yet done anything as good as Villeneuve's Portuguese GP win.

- Regardless of whatever the advantage was, I'd still put Hill as the best driver of 1996.

[rjbetty]

Hmmm that is very interesting to consider, especially about the Williams. Thanks for the thoughts JR. RJ.


Much of my thoughts about Benetton for 1995 are because I remember Ross Brawn saying something a long time ago, like the Benetton 1995 chassis was actually pretty average, but it was the Renault engine + Schumacher that made the difference. Also, I think there was a saying in the mid-90s that Schumacher was "worth a second a lap" or something like that.

[journeyman racer]

Both Williams and Benetton were using the Renault, both were using Goodyears (only tyre supplier), they were generally a harder compound. So there goes two major variables. The mid-90s GP cars were amongst the most aero reliant cars ever. I pick the Spanish GP because of the reputation the Catalunya has had, and the Schumacher's car was on heavier tanks!

Brawn was talking out of his bum. He would never have made a statement like that had he been working for a team with exclusive manufacturer support (Like with Mercedes). But Benetton being an independent team, funded by a clothes brand, they didn't care.

[rjbetty]

Well, here we go. My first full season.


23.Ricardo Rosset - Admit it, you're shocked.
22.Jan Magnussen - Worse than 1997. shake mah head indeed.
21.Shinji Nakano - Poor pace, but actually quite competent and consistent.
20.Esteban Tuero - shone at times, especially 17th on the grid in Melbourne, but overall not great, retiring 11 times.
19.Pedro Diniz - Compared well with Salo. Did well to get 2 points finishes and was quite mature in this respect.
18.Jos Verstappen - Started his Stewart stint well, but overall miles off Barrichello and unable to shine.
17.Johnny Herbert - Started the season strongly. 5th on the grid in Melbourne was fantastic, but after that fell out with Alesi in Argentina and fell off the face of the earth on performance.
16.Olivier Panis - Not much of a season. Managed 1 or 2 top 10 grid slots. Not bad in that car.
15.Mika Salo - Superb at Monaco and could have done even better. But otherwise too average and anonymous.
14.Tora Takagi - Well fast at times. Qualified 13th in Australia and Argentina.
13.Jarno Trulli - The poor Prost made his head drop, but still outperformed Panis. Held on for a vital point in Belgium.
12.Jean Alesi - Strong year for Alesi, great at Monza too.
11.Heinz-Harald Frentzen - Went missing mid-season but overall much better than 1997 with great bookends to season.
10.Damon Hill - Not bad for a 37/8 yr old. Some good drives later in the year.
9.Ralf Schumacher - Outqualified Damon 10-6.
8.Alexander Wurz - Brilliant job early on. Old head on (then) young shoulders.
7.Giancarlo Fisichella - Missed out on points early on, though much his own fault. Some great drives but overall not quite as spectacular as 97.
6.Rubens Barrichello - I feel he did at least as well as anyone behind him, coming 5th in Spain and Canada was cool.
5.Eddie Irvine - Improved pace, but fantastic steadiness in amassing 47pts means he pips those ahead to 5th.
4.David Coulthard - Narrowly beaten by Jacques. Things didn't go his way and his head dropped, but still one of the best.
3.Jacques Villeneuve - Considered more impressive than 1997 with several brilliant performances, though a few duds too.
2.Mika Hakkinen - Logical choice
1.Michael Schumacher - No title but was the bestestest

[rjbetty]

1.Michael Schumacher - Not his greatest year, but he was still the best.
2.Ralf Schumacher - In only his third season was simply scintillating and on great form throughout.
3.Mika Hakkinen - Not his greatest year either, but still the second best around.
4.Jacques Villeneuve - Brilliant throughout and never gave up, but maybe a bit too negative, and I don't know if he was as consistent as some, maybe a few more mistakes than some.
5.Rubens Barrichello - A very strong season in a car he could show his talent in. Faded by the end after departure announced.
6.Heinz-Harald Frentzen - Not as quick as Villeneuve or Barrichello I felt, but he put together such a consistently good season, having come back from seemingly the end of his career after 98.
7.Eddie Irvine - Another greatly steady and consistent season, but some very poor pace at times.
8.David Coulthard - An annus Horriblis, but suffered bad reliability. Won more races than 98 though.
9.Giancarlo Fisichella - A mix of great performances and disappointing ones, so on average ok.
10.Jarno Trulli - Should maybe be higher up. 6th in Spain was superb, along with many strong top 10 qualifying performances. But apart from his 2 points finishes, maybe struggles to actually put results on the board even accounting for the car?
11.Jean Alesi - Another mix of mediocrity with a scattering of moments of pure genius, such as challenging for pole in Spain and collecting a front row at rainy France.
12.Pedro de la Rosa - An impressive and steady debut season against Takagi.
13.Mika Salo - Very poor at BAR, extremely average at Ferrari apart from 2 good races. But he had been rusty having been away.
14.Olivier Panis - A little underrated. Great run to 6th in Brazil. Fastest lap at Hockenheim till Coulthard took it just near the end. Qualified in the top 6 3 times, ran 3rd in Japan early on. Better than he may have looked against Trulli.
15.Johnny Herbert - Mostly destroyed by Barrichello and wasting the car, until the final 3 races!
16.Toranosuke Takagi - A bit overlooked. Wild but quick for a 2nd year driver at the back.
17.Pedro Diniz - A mature approach and some great races to some 6th places were impressive.
18.Alexander Wurz - A bit harsh as was stuffed by Flav, but poor in races...
19.Stéphane Sarrazin - Great debut beating Gené, but spun 10(?) times in a race crash.
20.Alessandro Zanardi - Oh dear. But I could never see him being THAT good anyway as I feel the drivers in top teams in CART in 97-98 were not a match for those in F1. Had a run of 3 great races (Hungary-Monza) when given an engineer he liked, only for that time.
21.Ricardo Zonta - Poor season, but given the benefit of the doubt as the new team was a shambles.
22.Damon Hill - An embarrassment sadly, simply giving in after realising he wasn't going to beat Frentzen. Still some good moments like leading Silverstone and starting 4th at Spa.
23.Luca Badoer - Some strong races such as on for 6th in Australia and 2nd at the Nurburgring (4th after problems).
24.Marc Gené - A bit slow, but great performances at times like qualifying 15th at Hockenheim. Got better as the year went on.

[steveaki13]

I have some thoughts too. I will share them when I get a moment.

[journeyman racer]

1.Michael Schumacher - Not his greatest year, but he was still the best.

Accounting for all the variables, HHF was the best in 1999. Moral champ.

[rjbetty]

Accounting for all the variables, HHF was the best in 1999. Moral champ.

Yeah, it is very hard as it´s all subjective. I don´t know whether to try to rank everyone purely on what I think their performance was. But then some drivers who would be low down I feel did a brilliant job given their circumstances (such as a rookie), who even while slower than other drivers, maybe did much better with what they had and for where they were at. But it´s all subjective judgment. Just me thoughts though, and just thought it´s interesting to put them down.

As for Frentzen, he´s lower than expected cos I feel if you measured him against Michael he may not have been much better than Irvine, and when you take everyone´s cars into account (HHF had a darn good one), suddenly the picture changes quite a bit.

[rjbetty]

22.Gaston Mazzacane - Competent rookie, but not very quick. About 0.6-0.7sec off Gené with less experience, not bad.
21.Marc Gené - Solid season, but again not very quick.

20.Pedro Diniz - Though he continued to get slightly quicker over the preceding season, even so, this time seemed a step back and didn't look as assured. Some good moments such as starting 10th at Imola and 9th at Indianapolis, where he also ran 2nd in the race for a while. Otherwise quite forgettable with some crashes.
19.Johnny Herbert - A great disappointment following his seeming unlocking of performance at the end of 99. Well down the midfield most of the year and no points was poor for someone so experienced.

18.Ricardo Zonta - An improvement with a few standout performances such as starting 6th at Austria (outqualifying Villeneuve) and 8th in Brazil (ahead of Jacques again) and Canada, but otherwise slow and anonymous, also making errors.
17.Alexander Wurz - Struggled to score any points while Fisi got 18. A bad season, though Fisi got preferential treatment. When he got the latest specs for the final races, he started 5th at Sepang(!) though again faded in the race out of the points.

16.Nick Heidfeld - A trio of shocking back row performances in the first half appeared to seal Heidfeld's F1 fate for the rest of his career really. But in hindsight, maybe it was understandable it would take time to settle in such a difficult situation at Prost. More than matched Alesi in the second half, which was more representative but which went largely unnoticed.
15.Jos Verstappen - One of my favourite drivers. A great comeback with some VERY strong races in that rocketship Orange Arrows. Jos was one of the revelations of the season for me, running well up there in Australia, possibly a podium in Brazil before fatigue set in; fighting M.Schumacher at Silvertsone, before overtaking both Jordans to 5th in Canada and fighting R.Schumacher for the podium at Monza, settling for 4th. It was mostly the car however, which is why he isn't ranked higher.

14.Mika Salo - A mix of some strong performances, including a podium in Australia lost in the pits, hounding Villeneuve for 5th at Imola ahead of Jordans, running 3rd at Austria early on, and finishing 5th at Monaco and Hockenheim. However, everything else mostly mediocre.
13.Jean Alesi - Another mix of the sublime (such as starting 7th at Monaco and running in the points in the rain at Spa) and the ridiculous.

12.Pedro de la Rosa - After a rookie season at the back, the 29yr old got his hands on a mega car and made much more use of it than Verstappen, wowing at the Nurburgring finishing 6th when all McLarens and Ferraris finished, on for 3rd in Austria before retiring, having to start from the back after qualifying 9th at his home race, and starting 5th at Hockenheim. Canada was maybe the best though, starting 9th, he flew in the race, and sensationally overtook Mika Hakkinen for 3rd on merit. Many many points lost, but he fairly dominated Verstappen and was harshly sacked having been first in the queue for the BAR drive that went to Panis.
11.A solid but terribly frustrating season for Irvine, who annihlated Herbert (though tellingly not as much as Rubens had in 99). Points were very rare, so what a shame Austria was the one race he missed. Given he often went well there and Herbert finished just a few seconds of 4th/5th, what could Irvine have done...?

10.Giancarlo Fisichella - On the first half of the season would have ranked higher, but again this was undone by a poor 0pts in the second half. His end of the season was particularly woeful as was giving up and parking the car in Hungary. However he had suffered a massive testing crash which looked like it knocked him a bit. But needed a massive attitude change as time was running out for his career by now.
9.Heinz-Harald Frentzen - Lacked the brilliance of 99, though still drove well throughout. Was shown up by Trulli a fair few times on pace, but still one of the strongest drivers.

8.Ralf Schumacher - A high performing season, though like Frentzen it lacked the brilliant edge of his 99, as he felt threatened by Button. A clear 5th in the WDC in not the 3rd fastest car was very good though.
7.Jenson Button - Ranked this highly as he did what he did at only 20, straight out of British F3. Many anonymous weekends, which was understandable, but some wonderful ones too, which made Ralf look silly really. At the time, he made a huge impact as having only watched F1 properly from 1998, I never had seen a rookie like him yet.

6.Jarno Trulli - As the new guy, matched Frentzen in qualifying and had some great highs, starting on the front row at tracks as diverse as Monaco and Spa. Often showed Frentzen up with less experience, and I see no reason why he couldn't have won Monaco given he was leading and DC simply couldn't get past.
5.Rubens Barrichello - His season was considered disappointing, but I disagree. It was his first season in a top team, and immediately he matched Michael in Australia, setting fastest lap. Beat Michael all weekend at Silverstone, only losing due to developing engine failure. Also outqualified Michael at Austria (a very strong track for Rubens) and came close a few other times. Yes there were a few weekends where he was a little anonymous (especially the 'drivers' tracks Monaco, Spa and Suzuka) but overall noticeably better than Irvine.

4.Jacques Villeneuve - His last good season. Consistent and strong most of the time, with a fighting attitude. Shame his Honda blew having qualified 4th at Monza. Also ran right up there in Canada early on after a great start.
3.David Coulthard - Almost 2nd here, but Mika was a bit better again. This was DC's most convincing season yet, and at one point mid-season, he was the driver who looked to have the championship momentum.

2.Mika Hakkinen - A little disappointing compared to before, but still some great performances such as winning at Spa.
1.Michael Schumacher - Contary to popular belief, I do NOT believe the Ferrari was equal to the McLaren, but still slower, and I believe the commonly held view does a dis-service to Michael. I admit his final lap in Japan brought some tears to my eyes as the weight of what he was about to achieve started to really dawn. Crossing the line to finally, finally, bring the title to Ferrari after all those years of struggle, was probably my greatest highlight as an F1 fan. His whole race weekend actually was impeccable, as was Mika's, and for me the whole Japanese GP 2000 encapsulated the whole passion of what Formula 1 is all about.

[rjbetty]

- With the possible exception of the engineering team of both 1995 Benetton and Williams cars gave me a 12 month course/lecture on the differences between both cars and where the advantage was for Williams, and how that advantage was supposedly 2-3/10ths. There is absolutely no way that anyone is going to tell me the popular notion that the Williams was superior to the Benetton that year. No one who watched the 1995 Spanish GP could come to that conclusion. If it was, then either Hill and Coulthard were tanking. Schumacher may be better than both, but he's not that much better.

Hmmm, ok I'm gonna consider this, but given that Hill and Coulthard both scored more poles than Schumacher, I'm not sure yet? Are you sure the Williams/Benetton didn't just have a bad/good weekend that one time regarding setup etc.?


- I don't see how Hamilton's debut year could be seen to be significantly better than Villeneuve's. The biggest differences I recall was the specialist British press weren't so bothered of the newbie having to follow team orders in 96, and that Hamilton hasn't yet done anything as good as Villeneuve's Portuguese GP win.

Well, though I think McLaren probably had marginally the fastest car over 2007, just as I think they were slightly slower than Ferrari over the balance of 2008, I don't think Lewis until now has come close to having as dominant a car as Villeneuve enjoyed. As for overtaking moves to win, what about Hamilton's Germany 2011 for example? (also, just to mention Villeneuve didn't win the 1996 Portuguese GP :P )

As for team-orders, I don't know, but didn't Villeneuve finish ahead of Hill at both Magny-Cours and Hungary...?


- Regardless of whatever the advantage was, I'd still put Hill as the best driver of 1996.

Hmmm I respectfully disagree. Though Hill scored far more points than Michael, I don't know of him doing anything like Barcelona '96. He did win some races by big margins but he had a great car. So I have to put Michael ahead, by a fair way too.

It's good to discuss this stuff though.

[rjbetty]

26.Gaston Mazzacane - No surprise, but I liked him somehow and always wish he could have kept that Prost drive.

25.Alex Yoong - Couldn't show much in 3 races, but I felt Marques was a bit better.

24.Tarso Marques - Got all the rubbish parts but outqualified Alonso twice (by default in Malaysia certainly).

23.Ricardo Zonta - Looked quite good in Canada, though that was always an especially good track for him. Hockenheim was a clearer picture, qualifying 15th and retiring after collision damage...

22.Enrique Bernoldi - Unfairly maligned for daring to race Coulthard at Monaco. Then Coulthard did the same thing to Schumacher the following year - hypocritical much? Always tried his best and deserved better treatment. Outqualifying Jos 9-8 in season 1 was good.

21.Luciano Burti - Some way off Irvine, then suddenly went to Prost and outqualified Alesi 3-5, that's telling. I feel he was Marginally quicker than Bernoldi, though had some crashes.

20.Tomas Enge - Actually pretty good considering, I thought. Averaged 0.7sec off Frentzen in qualifying but was quietly very good in races, improving all the time, setting his best lap on the final one at Monza.

19.Jos Verstappen - Some amazing fighting drives, including even looking for the win in Malaysia, fighting Hakkinen and Frentzen before dropping back. Also ran 2nd in Austria for a while. However, was dog slow and outqualified by rookie Bernoldi a lot.

18.Jenson Button - I think enough was said about how dreadful he was in 2001, as evidenced by steveaki's signature. Maybe does a dis-service to Fisichella to only say it was Jenson being poor though?

17.de la Rosa - Sneaks in here cos he had a disrupted part-season. Outqualified Irvine 6 times in a row(!) but never once fiished ahead in races (in 2 years) as Eddie correctly pointed out. Still, 2 fighting points finishes were good.

16.Jean Alesi - Can't put him much higher really. He was ok at Prost, especially in racing and finishing, and was great to see him score 4pts. He was rubbish at Jordan though.

15.Jacques Villeneuve - Underperformer of the season, and actually averaged 0.009sec behind Panis in qualifying. Was great to see him score 2 podiums, until he stepped onto them and we saw his miserable face. Jeez...

14.Heinz-Harald Frentzen - Another who underperformed, outqualifying Trulli just once! And to think it all started so well with a very competitive Melbourne. Just went downhill, and his eventual 7th at Silverstone from 5th on the grid, when some cars retired, was extremely lame. Shame his 4th on the grid at Spa was wasted. Immediately faster than Alesi but his race pace seemed to lack a bit. Was one of the cars beaten by Alonso on merit in Japan...

13.Mika Hakkinen - Extremely lame, not Damon Hill lame because he did score 2 fantastic victories, as well as leading Spain by 30sec(!) until retiring on the last lap! What an OMGosh moment - crazy. Maybe it's too harsh to put him this far down, but I feel so many other drivers did well.

12.Olivier Panis - Surpassed all my expectations against Villeneuve. At the time, he was one of the revelations of the season for me, finishing 4th in Australia before being penalised, almost a podium in Brazil, a fantastic drive at Imola running 3rd for a while, then a 5th in Austria well ahead of Villeneuve. Unfortunately, he rather went missing in the second half when it became clear a McLaren drive was up for grabs and he was no longer the tester (i.e. he thought he's be quids in for that race drive had he stayed as tester), and this seemed to affect his performance.

11.Rubens Barrichello - This season was enough to shatter the myth that for me Rubens could go on to be one of THE very best drivers of all in F1. He was pretty weak in this car a lot of the time, though it was probably only slightly quicker than the McLaren, it's more that Michael drove so well. Still, ought to have won a race maybe, but 10 podiums ok but I'm not sure he deserves to be in the top 10 though only JUST misses out.

10.Eddie Irvine - Apart from a bad patch in mid-season, and opening his big mouth too much to slag off team members and declare he's the 2nd best driver, quicker than Mika etc. This was under the surface, a pretty good season for Irvine, who just seemed to get better every year. The car was dog slow, but under the radar, Irvine quietly climbed up the order during races, missing out on many 5th-8th finishes through unreliability, only just behind a MUCH less deserving Hakkinen (for the 2nd time in 3yrs) at the Nurburgring, and got a podium (he was the only driver to ever podium for Jaguar). The race pace was why he pipped Rubens and co here.

9.Nick Heidfeld - I think I was one of the few expecting a good season from Nick, but he exceeded even my own hopes, being a fixture around the points all season, much like Johnny Herbert in 97. Soaked up the unexpected pressure from Kimi great too.

8.Jarno Trulli - Had this been just for qualifying, I'd probably have put Jarno 2nd.

7.David Coulthard - Possibly his best season of all, though he wasn't that quick. I still don't know how he won in Austria starting from the 4th row, and the momentum looked in his favour early on. Complaining about Bernoldi wasn't really on though, given that Verstappen overtook several cars. I'm wondering if David is too low here, but it is SO close! Others are ahead due to levels of experience and circumstances overcome etc. There's really nothing in it, so 7th much better than it looks this time.

6.Ralf Schumacher - Would probably have put him 2nd but for losing his way toward the end of the season.

5.Juan-Pablo Montoya - Fireworks were long expected, but I don't think anyone thought he'd be in the running to win 5 or more races! Some journalists who ought to have known better eccentrically exclaimed he was so good he would beat Ralf in his first year (smh indeed!!!), while then saying it was preposterous that Fisi should be thought to be any good. Mentioning no names, but there were several! Anyway, an unexpectedly competitive Williams played a huge part, cos in truth Montoya only outqualified Ralf 6-11 (same as Jenson in 2000). Though that's no disgrace, it was in races he shone, and even though I'm not much of a fan, his Brazil pass was reeeeeally good (though maybe you went a bit OTT Nigel Roebuck, like, we should call men in white coats OTT). But still a great first season.

4.Giancarlo Fisichella - Hard to tell where he fits in, but he's RIGHT in the VERY close mix for 2nd I have here. Who expected him to destroy Button? Jenson struggled but I think Fisi wasn't given enough credit for transforming himself and showing great resilience. Most impressive of all is that he did all this without having to resort to Nico Rosberg/Sebastian Vettel/Many other drivers underhandedness and dirty trickery. It was all done in purity, for which I have great respect. I'm sure his Monaco crash was actually a suspension fault, yet he was blamed... :( Finished 6th in Brazil ahead of Alesi and Villeneuve in better cars, in the same race Steve's quote is from. Ahead of others this time (by tiny amounts) due to less experience, and defying expectations in difficult circumstances. This season really made me a Fisi believer again.

3.Kimi Raikkonen - Because of his incredible inexperience he is this high. Max Mosley and others campaigned quite viciously to refuse him a superlicence (smh!) yet he blew me away by matching an on-form Heidfeld all season. Just fantastic!

2.Fernando Alonso - Maybe a surprise, as on absolute performance he wouldn't be this far up yet. However I feel he would maybe be at least 12th on pure performance, and all this as a 19yr old rookie in a bad situation and car. The Minardi wasn't close to another car, yet Alonso beat Arrows, Benettons, Prosts, and even BARs. It's what he did for where he was at that edges him 2nd. I feel he deserves it slightly more than those behind.

1.Michael Schumacher - Simply the best, to the point he fooled everyone into thinking he had a dominant car that year (pssst he probably didn't - just check out Rubens for example, was he really that poor?)

[jens]

Should I give a ranking, how I rate their seasons right now in retrospect or how was I rating back then? :p

A lot of thoughts rjbetty, wow. I think one day I'll read it properly, but right now I am not going to deepen into it.

Some general thoughts.
2001 - I think M. Schumacher above, but behind him there was a very tight group from which it is hard to choose, who stood out more. Drivers like Coulthard, R. Schumacher, Trulli and Fisichella certainly belong into this group. I don't put Räikkönen or Alonso that high for 2001 since they were new and Räikkönen was actually outperformed by Heidfeld.

2000. M.Schumacher first, Häkkinen next, but then I think Villeneuve, R. Schumacher and Fisichella all have a good claim for the next positions. Beat their team-mates and scored well. Coulthard also had a good season. Frentzen and Trulli harder to judge since their car was unreliable and they lost a fair amount of good results.

1999. Frentzen - my driver of the year. M.Schumacher had a partial season, but for the time he raced he is also right up there. Häkkinen made a few blunders, but in terms of speed as good as always. R. Schumacher, Barrichello and Villeneuve were very good and crucially consistent as well.

[jens]

This means that Michael could have done pretty much the same job, or better, driving a Jordan, Prost or McLaren etc. This puts it into perspective what a very Alonso-2012-like job he must have done that year. Especially when you consider that even though Irvine closed the gap from 96, he still had several races absolutely nowhere in the midfield. If this is true, then he should truly have been the hero of 1997 rather than the villain. :(


Read a little bit. Here is what I disagree with. Even when cars of certain teams seem fast, we have to take into account other aspects. Consistency (Jordan wasn't consistently good on every circuit), reliability (McLaren-Mercedes kaboom engines cost Häkkinen potentially 3 wins), team work and strategies - they were the best at Ferrari; Schumacher and also Irvine's strategies worked well in the wet.

Look at 1999. Irvine wasn't very fast at all, yet he was fighting for the championship. All down to the superb team work of Ferrari, who even if they didn't have the fastest car on many occasions (are at least looked like in midfield), they maximized every opportunity. Your average midfield team is not capable of doing that.

[jens]

Having read all that through now...

I am having a hard time ranking all the drivers, because as seen each season seems to have around 15 decent drivers, who had at least a few standout performances here or there, generally seemed solid enough, and it would feel a bit unfair to put some of them well down the list then.

I think it would be easier to create a list of 6 "worst" drivers of each season.:p:

1997 season has always mystified me a lot. It is a bit hard to rate even driver performances. As you, rjbetty, mentioned - Johnny Herbert. Usually struggled against team-mates, but this time had a team-mate, who was nowhere and the car was good, so Herbert seemed good. Perhaps Sauber was really good, just like many other cars. And crucially the car was consistent, which was also important. On inferior Goodyear tyres and first year with Ferrari engines.

Anyway, in 1997 there were many teams, which could shine and have fast cars. But as explained in previous post, that doesn't mean Michael Schumacher would have won in all of them. Sometimes some cars could shine in unique circumstances (nailed the setup, tyres - Bridgestone - were superb, strategy happened to be perfect, weather/heat/circuit characteristics were perfect for the car, driver on superb form that day, etc).

What however unites all those teams is that your traditional midfield team is unable to sustain such challenge all season - sometimes mixing it with the leaders is the best they can do.

One interesting case of 1997 is Benetton. The drivers are often-maligned, but from what I recall, the car was pretty inconsistent too. Very fast on fast circuits, but when Alesi was 15th on the grid in Austria and Berger 18th, then - well - that very much shows the car was useless there!

Benetton is a great example of a team in 1997, who had race operations of a top team and could capitalize on other misfortunes - even if midfield teams could outperform them on pace, those teams didn't have the depth to collect many points over a full year. Benetton got results with consistency and reliability. Double podium in UK, 2nd and 4th at Nürburgring - purely down to reliability and good strategy, which several other less complete teams of the day didn't have. Outpointed McLaren even if McLaren seemed to have a faster car on average - but McLaren was much more unreliable.

[jens]

A few remarks.

1995
I would put Barrichello above Irvine. Granted, Eddie out-Q'd him, but in races Barrichello seemed faster and as mentioned, he lost a fair few points through incidents/unreliability.

Alesi would be my #2 too, behind him Häkkinen, Frentzen, Barrichello and only then Berger/Coulthard/Hill.

1996
Salo is an interesting driver. He is often considered to have "lacked speed", but he had an incredible knack for getting points on board at Monaco, in the wet in messy races with need for strategies/consistency. 1996 is perhaps Salo's best season. 5 points in Tyrrell-Yamaha. Was running even 3rd at Imola before car gave up. I'd rank him in top 10.

1998
For me Villeneuve and Frentzen were incredible close. HHF had a mid-season slump, but it can be claimed he outperformed JV in early and late season.

Alesi was one of the stars of the season for me, a top 6 driver that year. Often running in the points in the Sauber, but losing out due to misfortune (lost 5th at Monaco with oil leak, 4th in UK after a superb drive in the wet, good points in Canada and Austria with accidents).

Herbert was in the other Sauber and while overall he seemed to qualify pretty comparably with Alesi, the majority of race-related moments belong to the Frenchman.

Rjbetty, I consider it also strange that you rank Herbert 5th in 1997, but when Alesi shows him up next year, you move both of them well down the field.

-----

I have a soft spot for Alesi, so you can excuse me if I seem "overrating" him somewhat though I am aware since 1995 he never had such impressive season again.

The issue with Alesi seemed qualifying. In retrospect having studied the results I have to admit he wasn't stellar over one lap. He was out-Q'd by Berger even in 1995, which many consider to be an excellent season by Alesi. And in later seasons Alesi didn't have a very good qualifying record against team-mates either, I admit.

But conversely whenever Alesi's car was reliable and he avoided accidents, he often had a great race speed and could move well up the field.

I remember 1999 Brazilian GP. Alesi was around 15th on the grid. Then I was surprised that after 1/3rd of the race he was already in the points in the Sauber, overtook Fisichella, but then DNFd with car problems. Could have got podium that day!

[jens]

1997

Hmm... If I try to create a rating for this messy season...
M. Schumacher obviously first, behind him I'm inclined to put Häkkinen even second, but Coulthard and Villeneuve are also right up there. And Panis for his partial season. In the top 10 I am inclined to include also Alesi (for his consistency and podium-delivery), Fisichella (for his spark and speed on several occasions), Barrichello (often fast in unreliable Stewart-Ford), Herbert (consistency), Frentzen (closer to Villeneuve than points suggest).

This means I have to leave out some more inconsistent drivers like Berger, Irvine, Hill, R.Schumacher, Trulli. All of who had their moments under their sun, sometimes even truly spectacular moments, but not enough over a full season.

[jens]

I'd like to comment. But there's so much to take in, I can't be bothered.

Except to ask. If you only started watching F1 during 1997/98, how would you know how to put results in context?

What concerns seasons before 1998, I personally have watched quite a few full race videos plus FIA season reviews, which are two hours long and cover every race. So the past seasons almost feel like I have seen them as well in addition to the ones I have watched already live!

[journeyman racer]

What concerns seasons before 1998, I personally have watched quite a few full race videos plus FIA season reviews, which are two hours long and cover every race. So the past seasons almost feel like I have seen them as well in addition to the ones I have watched already live!

That's fine. You may have a lot of knowledge of seasons previous to when you started following to form a reasonable opinion. But sometimes, you might have to consider you're only seeing a part of the story, or a slanted view. Even when you watch a full race, you see it in a particular context, knowing the result. It's different when watching a race live and just taking it as it comes.

[journeyman racer]

Hmmm, ok I'm gonna consider this, but given that Hill and Coulthard both scored more poles than Schumacher, I'm not sure yet? Are you sure the Williams/Benetton didn't just have a bad/good weekend that one time regarding setup etc.?If you're meaning if it was a one off? Then it wasn't a one off.




Well, though I think McLaren probably had marginally the fastest car over 2007, just as I think they were slightly slower than Ferrari over the balance of 2008, I don't think Lewis until now has come close to having as dominant a car as Villeneuve enjoyed. As for overtaking moves to win, what about Hamilton's Germany 2011 for example?Villeneuve's is one of the all time great passing moves. If not, the best ever. Outside line of the Parabolica, where nobody ever drove on. Hamilton took advantage of a Ferrari on cold tyres.


(also, just to mention Villeneuve didn't win the 1996 Portuguese GP :P )
Didn't he?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Portuguese_Grand_Prix


As for team-orders, I don't know, but didn't Villeneuve finish ahead of Hill at both Magny-Cours and Hungary...?Yes at Hungary. But I as having a pop at the specialist British press.




Hmmm I respectfully disagree. Though Hill scored far more points than Michael, I don't know of him doing anything like Barcelona '96. He did win some races by big margins but he had a great car. So I have to put Michael ahead, by a fair way too.That's ok. I'm not as hung up about this disagreement, than I would with others. As good as Schumacher's Spanish GP win was, it was just one wet race. The Brazilian GP was also wet, and Hill lapped Schumacher. At what point do you say "Ok, that guy may've had the best car. But he still drove better than you/everyone else?" The Spanish GP adds to Schumacher reputation. But the Monaco GP was also wet, and he buried it in the wall on the first lap. Hill was leading by 30secs, roundabout halfway, before the engine blew as well.


It's good to discuss this stuff though.Yes it is. As a hardened fan, I appreciate that you started these threads.

[rjbetty]

Didn't he?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Portuguese_Grand_Prix

Ahaha you're right! I realised yesterday I messed up here, got mixed up with France. But I was listing that from memory (all kinda fading just recently, guess I've just had a lot on).

[journeyman racer]

I won't hold it against you.

[steveaki13]

Right finally got a bit of time.

1994 had 46 drivers used that season. Thats insane when we look back. At the time though it was the norm for small teams to employ 6 drivers in a car.

I have left out Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger because its not fair to judge them in this sort of fun list.

This is a combo of the little I remember from the time (only being 8 or 9) and refreshing myself by looking at stats. The drivers 42-30 are all random really. How can you judge two drivers who only raced once.

44. Jean Denis Deletraz - Has to be last. Entered the Oz GP and by the time he retired (through tiredness he was 10 laps down)

43. Taki Inoue
42. Hideki Noda
41. Andrea Montermini
40. Dominico Schiaterella
39. Yannick Dalmas
38. Paul Belmondo - Looked poor all season. Even in a Pacific.
37. Aguri Suzuki
36. Franck Lagorce
35. Philippe Alliot
34. Philipp Adams

33. Bertrand Gachot - Actually Qualified a few times and was far better of the Pacific cars.

32. Alex Zanardi - A lot of disappointing races in a car not up to much.

31. Jean Marc Gounon - Cant honestly remember much about him, but appears to have done OK.

30. Mika Salo - Only 2 GP's but I remember some excitement about him.

29. JJ Lehto - I seriously didnt rate him in 1994. Lapped twice by Schumi most races and way behind. Average at best really.

28. Pedro Lamy - Finished well when he did finish in his few starts in 1994.

27. Olivier Beretta - I always liked Olivier and the multi coloured Larrousse. Not a top season though.

26. David Brabham - In a tough year for Simtek he finished lots of races and did a good job.

25. Michele Alboreto - A sad season for the great man. 1 point only.

24. Johnny Herbert - Scored 0 points for Lotus all season, but actually did a good job in that car.

23. Eric Bernard - Had an average season, but makes the top 25 for keeping it on track and getting a podium in Germany.

22. Gianni Morebidelli - Had terrible reliability but despite only finishing 4 races he scored 3 points.

21. Eric Comas - Look at his season and in the Larrousse he scored their only 2 points, but was very consistant generally in the top 10 when he finished.

20. Andrea De Cesaris - Did brilliantly in Monaco considering his reputation to finish 4th for Jordan.

19. Ukyo Katayama - Never really rated him, he did an OK job in the Tyrell scoring a few points, but nothing more.

18. Pierluigi Martini - He finished well when he actually finished and so is in my top 20.

17. Jos Verstappen - In the Benetton for a lot of the season he was often lapped by Schumacher and generally IMO did an average job.

16. Karl Wendlinger - Thought he was doing a reaaly good job until his crash in Monaco.

15. Eddie Irvine - I remember really liking Irvine when i was really young, but in the end I drifted away from him really. He did a solid job though in 1994.

14. Nicola Larini - Only got 2 Gps in 1994, but in the dark weekend at Imola actually got a nice podium.

13. Nigel Mansell - Only 3 GPs so quite low. Did win the Australian GP though so maybe could have been higher.

12. Christian Fittipaldi - In the colourful Footwork he scored a couple of 4th places and looked generally on the pace.

11. Olivier Panis - Slightly affected by the 2nd in Germany in that crazy race, but he did what Panis always did in that Ligier/Prost as was to become. He looked good in a poor car.

10. Mark Blundell - In a decent -ish Tyrell I thought he did a pretty good job. He squeezes into my top 10 looking back.

9. HH Frentzen - I thought he look marvellous at the time. He was new and fresh and did a good job IMO.

8. David Coulthard - Only his first season, but an interrupted one. Thought he did a solid job.

7. Jean Alesi - I always thought he was average but exciting to be honest.

6. Martin Brundle - I thought Martin did a great job in 1994, if not for his exploding Peugeot's he could have been 4th in WDC as opposed to 7th.

5. Mika Hakkinen - 4th in WDC. He was brilliantly consistent and again but for the unreliability he would have been 3rd in WDC easily. The first 6 races he finished he was on the podium.

4. Gerhard Berger - 3rd in the Championship was a decent effort and done a lot better than Alesi.

3. Rubens Barrichello - Only 6th in the Championship, but in a Jordan in his first full season. I think he was brilliant. For me he did a great job in 1994.

2. Damon Hill - As in the Championship, Hill did a great job stepping up after Senna's death

1. Michael Schumacher - Despite the fact that he won the title in "that" way in the last round, I still believe Michael was the best. His performance in that car shook up F1 after Williams and Mclaren years.

[rjbetty]

Thank you very much Steve, but where´s JJ Lehto? :0 ! (Philippe Adams also missing).

Was interesting to see your views on the obscure drivers too.

[steveaki13]

Thank you very much Steve, but where´s JJ Lehto? :0 ! (Philippe Adams also missing).

Was interesting to see your views on the obscure drivers too.

Oh did I miss them. haha. I will add them in.

[steveaki13]

Oh did I miss them. haha. I will add them in.

There we go.

JJ Lehto really never impressed me and still looking back at his efforts, they seem poor. So he slots in 29th and I honestly cant remember much of Philipp Adams. He gets a 34th for a 16th placed finish.

[rjbetty]

So here´s 2002 before I go to sleep.


23.Alex Yoong - No surprise, but there have been many far worse drivers. Seemed to really improve after the lay-off, especially in race-trim.

22.Allan McNish - This seems quite harsh really given he was only a (32yr old) rookie (come to think of it, Allan seems one of those people who just doesn't age, he looks pretty much the same as 20-25yrs ago). Anyway, only outqualifying Mika Salo twice didn't look good, given Pedro Diniz managed it several more times. However his races were pretty strong, notably Malaysia. He also ran 5th early on at Monza and could maybe have scored at Monaco given he started ahead of Fisi and HHF who came 5th and 6th.

21.Enrique Bernoldi - His low placing doesn't reflect the improvement made over 2001. He was noticeably stronger, qualifying 12th at Austria and often racing in decent positions. Reminds me of Gutierrez a bit, never going to be a world beater but has some talent and could develop into a very good driver. My abiding memory of Bernoldi was in Malaysia 2002. Somehow I will never forget the TV images of the absorbing 3-way scrap between Bernoldi, Massa and McNish about halfway through the race. It was great and sadly overlooked stuff! Somehow all 3 cars looked SO lush and gorgeous - the orange and black Arrows, the blue and aquamarine Sauber (gawsh they were beautiful those Saubers, a far bloody cry from today) and the more-interesting-than-it-sounds red and white Toyota. Every car looked beautiful, even the Williams which I wished had actual blue, not fake-pretend purple (I've always hated purple masquerading as blue in all things throughout my life) - Bernoldi also overtook Michael Schumacher at that race by the way.

20.Anthony Davidson - I'm gonna put him ahead of the 2 behind cos he was a last minute rookie in the worst car. Qualified impressively close to Mark Webber on his 2 outings (which 'coincidentally' Mark was at great pains to point out just what a terrible nightmare those 2 races happened to be for him). Shame Ant binned his car both times.

19.Takuma Sato - I was pretty excited to see the reigning British F3 champ debut. However I kinda went off him after he took out a car in a reckless stupid move at the Malaysia start. Out of all the cars he could hit, it had to be his team-mat who was on for very rare and needed points that day. I feel this incident alone is harsh though, especially as Fisi returned the favour at the Nurburgring (the difference is points were absolutely not on the cards that day). What seals it for me is about the 300 other crashes Sato seemed to have. Now accidents do happen but this was taking the biscuit. For a team in such a precarious financial situation, the sheer amount of crashes was disturbing, as was his completely unrepentant attitude. Seemed pretty selfish really. In my eyes, he played a significant part in the fall of Jordan. :( That was the problem I had with him. I can honestly say I'd have preferred Maldonado in that 2nd Jordan. Can't leave this now paragraph though without saying Sato did show great raw pace at times, and it all came together in Japan.

18.Pedro de la Rosa - Scrapes ahead of Sato even though he did nothing of note all season. He did however outqualify Irvine by 0.7sec in Malaysia. As the new car came out, Irvine showed an amazing and highly useful ability to make the most of his situation whereas Pedro went missing, and continued his record of never finishing a race ahead of Irvine, often being thrashed on Sundays. He scores this high as it was hard to stand out in that poor car

17.Felipe Massa - Like Sato, I was quite a fan of Felipe, until he got to F1. Autosport in particular were guilty of overhyping him following the successful Raikkonen experiment. I think they ran a cover that screamed "Massa: The Next Senna" iirc(?) (honestly, could you beeeee any more clichéd?). They also shouted another headline "Massa: Better than Raikkonen" before the season. Well I think this season helped to demonstrate that Felipe never was truly as good as Raikkonen, though Heidfeld was now more experienced than 2001 but he did have less spark too. It all started so well, raising eyebrows in an upwardly direction by outqualifying Heidfeld for 9th, a track Nick was good at. The season was a bit lame after that, and there were all the un-Kimi like crashes etc leading to a Sauber-imposed race ban and being sent to boarding school at Maranello for a year.

16.Olivier Panis - Like his team-mate, a mixed season. Kept retiring all the time early on, but stood out a few times, such as qualifying 6th(?) at Hockenheim and finishing 6th at Monza some way ahead of Jacques. His final part of the season was pretty poor however when it was clear he was leaving.

15.Mika Salo - A solid season for the returnee, constant top 10s exceeded all my expectations as I believed Toyota would spend their first season towards the back with not much hope of points. His attitude let him down badly however, and Ove Andersson suggested it was this that essentially finished Mika's career.

14.Jacques Villeneuve - A dreadful first half of the year as Villeneuve's bad attitude and lack of leadership caused him and the team to suffer under new management. Once he started to swallow his pride a bit, performance picked up, raising Jacques a few places here.

13.Mark Webber - The highest placed rookie, almost grabbing 12th. I didn't quite realise at the time how good his season was. Dominated his not-that-bad-actually team-mate. Paul Stoddart said he was only marginally short of Alonso's 2001. I remember thinking at the time that his fairytale debut would be worth almost a whole decade of struggle, and somehow felt that the decades-worth of fortunate circumstances and timing in one day would be balanced out over the years to come. Strange...

12.Nick Heidfeld - Didn't shine as much as in 2001, but was more of a fixture in the top 10 on grids. Quite a few less points though. A shame neither Sauber could capitalise on 5th and 7th on the grid at Austria (always a mega track for them). Loses points for causing the Melbourne pile-up* but gains them back as it caused a fairytale race.

11.Jarno Trulli - Didn't stand out as much as 2001 I thought, though his qualifying remained top-drawer much of the time. Still struggled with bagging points, but Jenson showed maybe it wasn't all the cars fault, as Jarno could at times be a little limp too, but overall a good job, especially at Monza and the US, where he always shone.

10.Eddie Irvine - Really impressed me actually. This was Jaguar's poorest season yet, yet Irvine's attitude seemed markedly improved as he seemed to take the task much more seriously, showing resilience and desire not usually seen. He struggled early on, merely matching de la Rosa. However, when the B-car arrived and started to get dialled in, he bagged a commendable 6th at Spa when only 1 car from the top teams retired. Then he qualified 5th at Monza, grabbing the rare opportunity perfectly to secure an amazing 3rd, scoring every one of Jaguar's 8pts. What a turnaround! I personally believe that early season aside, Irvine was better than ever and was forced out of F1 far too early when he had plenty more to give.

9.Heinz-Harald Frentzen - A mini-revival after a poor 2001. Frentzen shone in the Arrows, particularly in Spain and Monaco, vigorously hounding Saubers in the former, and the Trulli train in the latter. In Monaco, Heinz said the Arrows race-pace was so good he could have won had he started from the front. Sadly the car had no money to be developed, and I believe it had potential, certainly to get 5th in the WDC. As it was, they came last.

8.Giancarlo Fisichella - Maybe I'm just biased. His season was a real mix of several very strong drives, combined with a few weekends (Nurburgring, Silverstone) where he fell off the face of the earth a little bit. His form wasn't great at times as he struggled to come to terms with his bad move from Renault (having been sold a load of blarney by Eddie Jordan), ut still showed enough to prove he was one of the better drivers in F1 at the time.

7.Jenson Button - What a revelation in the first half, after that shocking 2001. Challenged for podiums in Malaysia, Brazil and Spain, racking up a relatively large amount of points in a puny car. His season fell away as soon as his departure was announced though.

6.Ralf Schumacher - Nothing special whatsoever, but still a top driver.

5.David Coulthard - Being outqualified by Kimi didn't look good, but otherwise a canny and good season given the equipment.

4.Juan-Pablo Montoya - A qualifying and overtaking specialist, but overall maybe a little disappointing at times compared to the promise of 2001.

3.Kimi Raikkonen - Just mega really. Even after 2001, 2002 still surpassed my expectations as he outqualified David Coulthard 10-7. Only his machinery made him look worse.

2.Rubens Barrichello - May seem a surprise as mostly beaten by Schumacher again, but I truthfully don't think anyone else did a better job in 2002.

1.Michael Schumacher - No surprise. Probably not his best season really as I don't think he was always trying his best.

[rjbetty]

*With the Melbourne 2002 start pile-up, was I only one who noticed it before James Allen and Martin Brundle did? Ralf Schumacher had just flown over Rubens Barrichello and that had everyone's attention, but just as the camera cut away from the first corner to follow the leaders to turn 3, for a miniscule time I saw a load of smoke and cars starting to fly off, a split second before the camera changed. It was literally 'blink and you miss it'. I was like "holy s***!" Did you see that? And my family were like deadpan "uh". I was like "a whole LOAD of cars just crashed off!!" Being caught up in the Ralf/Rubens crash, no-one listened to me until after what seemed an age when the cameras finally showed the carnage and Allen and Brundle were taken by total surprise. But I just caught a glimpse of it happening in the instant before the camera cut away. :)

[rjbetty]

Salo is an interesting driver. He is often considered to have "lacked speed", but he had an incredible knack for getting points on board at Monaco, in the wet in messy races with need for strategies/consistency. 1996 is perhaps Salo's best season. 5 points in Tyrrell-Yamaha. Was running even 3rd at Imola before car gave up. I'd rank him in top 10.

I like Salo and want to believe he was as good as hoped, but I'm a bit unconvinced by his 2 years with Pedro Diniz, where they were a bit too close for my liking. However I never knew Mika ran 3rd at Imola '96!


For me Villeneuve and Frentzen were incredible close. HHF had a mid-season slump, but it can be claimed he outperformed JV in early and late season.

Yes, the perception at the time was that Villeneuve was much better than Frentzen, which I kinda agreed with. In hindsight I think they are very equal, but Jacques made the most of things while HHF found it tough at the top and couldn't adapt well enough.


Rjbetty, I consider it also strange that you rank Herbert 5th in 1997, but when Alesi shows him up next year, you move both of them well down the field.

Yes I totally agree this is strange. I could never figure Herbert out. He was considered to be one of the most naturally talented British drivers going, yet for much of the career, the actual performance he delivered was, not wanting to be disrespectful, a bit cr@p really. He was considered to be a future world champion and it seemed people talked about him almost the way they talked about Hamilton! It's as if Herbert had a big talent locked away somewhere, where through psychological issues or something else (maybe linked to his bad crash of 1988) much of the time it just wasn't translated to track.

However, it seems there are times when there may have been glimpses of something more than the averageness to which we were used. One was maybe his 1992 season where he outqualified Hakkinen over the year! He retired from almost every race though. His 1993 was considered very good, battling hard with Schumacher in Brazil for a podium (a track Herbert often wet well at). Then there was his debut in 1989, finishing 12(!) seconds iirc off the win. There was also Monza 1994, an anomaly which I have no idea if it was all down to the new-spec Mugen-Honda engine. Johnny came close to pole, starting 4th.

Then there was his 1997. Take the qualifying averages for 1997 which were roughly iirc

1.Villeneuve (Williams)
2.Frentzen (Williams) +0.374
3.M.Schumacher +0.420
4.Hakkinen +0.71
5.Coulthard +0.9
6.Alesi (Benetton) +1.0
7.Fisichella (Jordan) +1.1
8.Panis (Prost) +1.125 (part-season skews reading)
9.R.Schumacher (Jordan) +1.1
10.Irvine (Ferrari) +1.240
11.Berger (Benetton) +1.318
12.Herbert (Sauber)+1.320
13.Barrichello (Stewart) +1.560
14.Hill (Arrows) +1.740
15.Morbidelli (Sauber) +2.1 (part season)

Herbert said 1997 was his best season iirc. Given his large gap to good drivers like Morbidelli and Larini, it would seem to show Johnny found another level of performance in 1997. More impressive than his qualifying was however his races. Check out the 1997 results and you will see that Johnny routinely mixed it with McLarens Benettons Ferraris an even Williams. It all seems too hard to explain with just having a brilliant car. But I admit I have always been stumped on this one.


I remember 1999 Brazilian GP. Alesi was around 15th on the grid. Then I was surprised that after 1/3rd of the race he was already in the points in the Sauber, overtook Fisichella, but then DNFd with car problems. Could have got podium that day!

I remember this very clearly I'm sure I remember him running 8th at one point. But I really remember Martin Brundle remarking "Where did he come from?!" very much sidetracking what he was talking about to give a narrative on Alesi's weekend instead, such was the impression he was making. I hadn't realised however, that Alesi was that good to challenge for a podium! I had believed he would maybe have been on for 5th. I remember him retiring from 4th(?) in Hungary 1999 near the end, a while after Fisichella had retired from a good 4th in the pits (Fisi having run 2nd holding up Coulthard and co most of the race!)

[journeyman racer]

JJ Lehto was injured badly in a pre-season crash. Was this taken into account?

[steveaki13]

JJ Lehto was injured badly in a pre-season crash. Was this taken into account?

No I was just going from race performances and to be honest it was a long while ago I had forgotten that.

He for whatever reason still didn't perform.

[journeyman racer]

Well, he got really ****** up. Probably shouldn't have been driving anyway. Was doing ok in Spain, til it broke down.

Philippe Adams? I recall him being potted by Jonathan Palmer. I think also won the touring car support race at Spa, the same weekend he was competing in the GP!

[jens]

2002

I have a hard time ranking drivers in 2002, because many of them seemed to be doing well that year. We had big gaps between teams and several team-mate battles were close. Williams was close as well as McLaren and Renault. The last two weren't reflected in points, because Räikkönen and Trulli suffered from way more reliability issues. Also Barrichello had many more issues than M.Schumacher and was closer than that in reality.

Behind first four teams of course Fisichella, Heidfeld, Villeneuve, Salo, Frentzen, Webber, also Irvine and Panis – all good drivers. All in different cars, but getting points onboard.
Hard task to choose between all of them.

Easier to choose the bottom: Yoong #1, then Davidson #2 (though it was only 2 races), then Bernoldi, Sato, McNish and de la Rosa.

Oh, and unlike rjbetty I'd like to defend Massa. He made more mistakes than Räikkönen, but in terms of speed he was as close to Heidfeld as Räikkönen had been the year before. I remember before 2007 this was one of my main arguments, why I expected Massa and Kimi to be close in Ferrari and they proved to be so. So after 2002 I was disappointed that while Kimi had a top team seat, Massa was sent out of F1, because I felt in terms of speed Felipe had a lot of potential.

Other questions
Regarding Salo – the Finn's qualifying figures vs Diniz were pretty similar to Hill (97) and Alesi (99). And like Alesi, I think Salo's strength was race rather than qualifying. Diniz wasn't great, but he wasn't a slouch – he could outqualify his quality team-mates every now and then and he proved it against all three mentioned quality drivers.

Sadly for Salo he was never up against a great team-mate, which is why he remains a bit „unproven“ in F1. The only time was against Irvine, which was a difficult circumstance any case (stand-in driver, with lack of testing, for 6 races only). I'll go on a limb and say that in my view Salo was at least on Irvine's level in talent, but unlike Irvine, who got 4 seasons in Ferrari to flatter his talent, we never found out with Salo, who remains somewhat under the radar.

Villeneuve/Frentzen – yeah I understand, why did you have such perception, Rjbetty (Villeneuve much better in 98). It was my first season following F1 and I vaguely remember media trumpeting that Villeneuve was the new fresh World Champion, among top drivers, while Frentzen was considered a big flop. Media left an impression that there was a huge gulf between them. In fact, Frentzen was considered such damaged goods that at one point during 1998 there were even questions whether he could find a decent seat for 1999 at all – with rumours sending him to teams like Sauber and Prost! It was only later when I realized – hey, Frentzen wasn't really what the impression was around him in 1998, he was almost a match to Villeneuve.

I never considered Herbert an outstanding driver either. I considered him the same as Panis (I hadn't seen Panis' early 1997). They both seemed solid enough midfield drivers to deserve an F1 seat, but didn't have the spark. The spark I considered to have in Alesi, Fisichella, R. Schumacher, Barrichello, Trulli and the likes – who could put in spectacular performances here and there.

About 1997 – I consider Sauber's car pretty close to the Jordans and other cars, which were up there in second tier (as your qualifying average stats show). Now we know that Prost, Arrows and Stewart were flattered by Bridgestones. Jordan was very fast, it propelled Fisichella and also R.Schumacher to some good drives and results. All that on Goodyears. But there is no reason to think that Sauber wasn't an upper midfield car also, also enabling Herbert to put in some almost front-running drives, like the other teams around them. What Sauber additionally had, was good reliability and consistency.

Sometimes midfield teams punch above their weight, as a whole bunch of teams did in 1997. Some years are such, where cars are surprisingly close and even midfielders shine. Recall as late as 2012 – how could Williams and Sauber be that fast? How could Maldonado half-regularly qualify into top3 – speed, which he has never shown again (now getting trashed by Grosjean). Same sort of questions. But when the car is really good and the car suits driver well, it can pay dividends.

I consider Alesi having a shot on podium in Brazil '99, because he was ahead of Frentzen (later 3rd) and R.Schumacher (4th) at the time of his DNF. Remember, later Barrichello also retired and Irvine made an extra pitstop. Also I consider Fisichella to have lost podium, because he was ahead of Frentzen.

I remember Brazil 1999 was one of the catalysts for me to start thinking Frentzen and R.Schumacher were lucky that year. Reliability was very important in 1999 and for some reason these guys had it, while several other drivers didn't and lost lots of points in the process.

[jens]

1994

Very confusing year in terms of drivers. In addition to tragedies so many injuries (including Wendlinger, Alesi, Lehto), so many DQ's and race bans (including Irvine, Häkkinen). And top team seats given to rookies (Coulthard, Verstappen). I find it pretty odd that the second seat of both top teams (Williams, Benetton) was pretty much... well, how to put it... inefficient in terms of results and points.

So Schumacher and Hill way out in front, then behind them in WDC standings drivers from other teams (Ferraris, McLarens, Barrichello's Jordan) and only then come the #2 drivers of top teams (8th Coulthard, 9th Mansell, 10th Verstappen) – none of who had a full season and had either unluck or underperformance (partly due to understandable reasons - thrown into deep end).

And generally, as the older generation was bowing out (Prost, Senna, Patrese, Mansell, Alboreto, Boutsen) and some of the recent up-and-coming highly rated drivers were gone too (Modena, Moreno, Gugelmin, Capelli), the field was suddenly very young and inexperienced. Funny to think that Schumacher in only his fourth season (third full) was already one of the more experienced ones!

Regardless of car legality hard to rate Schumacher anywhere else than P1. It was also one of Hill's best seasons despite a difficult start (well of Senna's pace). But Hill was very consistent that year and barely made any mistakes bar the questionable Monaco start incident. Ferrari drivers solid as always - the only season out of five, when Berger got the upper hand over Alesi in team-mate battle more often than not, though in general I think they were pretty close and Alesi had to sit out 2 races due to injury.

Häkkinen, Barrichello and Frentzen all left a strong mark as the future of the sport. The other rookie Panis wasn't shabby either, well outperforming the more experienced Bernard. And as said, impressive season by Katayama. 5th on the grid in Hungary was a stunner. Lost a podium in Germany, when his throttle was stuck open. Really was faster than Blundell, but unluck and some accidents prevented him from scoring more.

[rjbetty]

Well, he got really ****** up. Probably shouldn't have been driving anyway. Was doing ok in Spain, til it broke down.

Philippe Adams? I recall him being potted by Jonathan Palmer. I think also won the touring car support race at Spa, the same weekend he was competing in the GP!

It must have been really hard for JJ Lehto, he had a broken neck. I think it was extremely harsh the way Flav treated him tbh, and I have noticed this from Flav at other times. There was the sacking of Johnny Herbert in 1989, still struggling badly with mangled feet, shortly after finishing 4th on his debut. Then there was the complete lack of regard for Gerhard Berger in 1996 and Alexander Wurz in 2000, who were both too tall for their cars . Most of us won't understand just how difficult that is: It's not just feeling discomfort, it is painful and actually impossible to make some movements as they physically can't be done.

Lehto qualified 5th first time out at Imola in 94. I wonder if he could have finished 2nd. He was on for an easy 3rd in Spain having started 4th, so those were two decent performances. The rest were sadly well below par though, but I will not hold it against him. How good do we think JJ was? I rated him as just a smidgen off Wendlinger, who was less experienced in 93? He matched Pierluigi Martini at Dallara in 92 and got a podium for them in 91.

As for Philippe Adams, I didn't realise he was "potted" by Jonathan Palmer ;) He also must have therefore been a decent driver. I didn't know much about him and just assumed he was hopeless.

[rjbetty]

24.Zsolt Baumgartner - Knew his limitations and had a good approach.

23.Nicolas Kiesa - I really liked him in British F3 and F3000, but in F1 was merely one of the very many competent drivers who have raced in F1.

22.Antonio Pizzonia - Probably the disappointment of the season, the most disappointing out of several disappointing drivers. This was someone set for a big future, a really big future. In one of my old copies of Autosport from early 1999 (only had it rarely then) there was a small news item, hidden in the British national motorsport section at the back. It explained how an obscure Finnish karter called Kimi Raikkonen was abandoning his maiden British Formula Renault season before it started, after testing, deferring it till 2000 in favour of another year of karting instead. The reason was he was spooked at the magnitude of Pizzonia's ability and it was felt he simply would not be able to compete.

Pizzonia duly took the title, followed by the British F3 title for (essentially) Marussia ;) in 2000. Now it was at this time a whole craze about young drivers started because of the stellar debut season 20yr old Jenson Button was having at Williams. This resulted in teams falling over themselves in a new fashion to find the next big thing. At this time, the name more than any other on peoples' lips was Pizzonia's. He came close to replacing Alex Wurz at Benetton during 2000 and was so highly rated he was offered race contracts there and then by Arrows and Prost for 2002 iirc. Pizzonia turned these down to pursue F3000 where he was kinda lame tbh. That, plus his making heavy weather of British F3 maybe were warnings?

Despite his fairly mediocre F3000 he was still hugely rated with "talent coming out of his ears" and "as fast as Juan-Pablo Montoya" according to Williams (and JPM was revered as a god at the time), so it was with excitement he was signed by Jaguar.

I honestly thought he'd pip Webber tbh, but instead shocked everyone by sucking - bad. It seemed he was just incredibly lazy and didn't apply himself, as while Webber fought at the front, Pizzonia was routinely well down the field with backmarkers. The gap was enormous, and even reading between the lines, there didn't appear to be anything shown that could beat Webber. Worst of all, he had an attitude to rival Nelson Piquet Jr, accusing Jaguar of sabotage etc. All this means he can't be rated much higher for me.

21.Justin Wilson - A bit harsh maybe, especially seeing I was a big fan of Justin (still am). Another driver from whom much was expected, Jonathan Palmer's greatest find iirc. Built up as better than Mark Webber (which I believed, with help from Autosport) having beat Webber (and all else) convincingly in F3000 2001. Wilson was known for having great starts in his Minardi, often getting up to around 12th on lap 1; a skill his team-mate had been better known for. However, I have to say I was disappointed with his qualifying, pretty well beaten by Verstappen 10-1 (who was well off form after a year out, and a rubbish qualifier anyway). Remember than Bernoldi had outqualified a better prepared Jos 9-8 over 2001. Still, despite needing to settle in at Jaguar I feel Wilson did better than Pizzonia.

20.Jos Verstappen - Had been quite poor in qualifying for Arrows in 2001, and said he was very rusty compared to that in 2003. He wasn't a good team leader and for the most part did little of note all year. However, there was one great moment - fastest in Friday qualifying at wet Magny-Cours! What a shame Wilson was excluded from 3rd (2nd?)... Verstappen also qualified a good 15th in Canada (always a great track for him) and finished 9th which was as good as it got.

19.Ralph Firman - I naively thought since he was more experienced as a rookie than Sato that he'd be closer to Fisi. As it turned out, in hindsight I think he did a very good job in the circumstances. Pushed as hard as he could from the get-go and outqualified Fisi fair and square at least twice. Given his equipment, I feel his 8th at Spain, holding off a recovering Button, was superb. All in all I feel he did better than Wilson, and all this given he missed 2 races with injury.

18.Marc Gené - Called up at very short notice for Monza, qualified 5th, finished 5th, 5th fastest lap iirc. Not bad. Not bad.

17.Jacques Villeneuve - Oh dear. I think this is the season more than any other which (rightly I think) left F1 fans unimpressed once and for all. He opened his big mouth a lot pre-season, dissing Jenson and trying to play the nasty mind games which worked so well with Frentzen. All year he had a horribly negative attitude and I didn't see anything of a champion here. For recent F1 fans who think Paul di Resta was gloomy (I personally think Paul was misunderstood - more on that another time), you should have seen JV - the guy had to be seen to be believed. Pretty routed by Jenson, though not that much in qualifying. It was in the races that he really sunk (unless anyone has information as I don't know all the ins and outs of JVs 2003), even though he often moaned that "not once did (he) qualify with lighter fuel than Jenson", preferring to put his eggs in the race basket, but then having unreliability when he seemed set to reap the Sunday rewards. Fair enough, but I then need to understand why, in the races that Jacques did finish, he didn't impress, and sadly embarrassed himself all in all.

But I can't leave without saying it all looked so good in Melbourne. I can honestly say seeing him 3rd in Friday qualifying wowed me and was one of the highlights of the season for me.

[Now I have a feeling that some people are really indignant over this right now and I've put people's noses out of joint. I am allowed to have an opinion which is what this is. Me not being happy with Jacques and calling him out is not the same thing as spewing "vitriol" and "hatred", before I get accused of that yet again. If I was doing that I would be calling him some of the names you hear about him on the net, and I'm not. Sometimes I think people just find it too hard to hear anything they don't like about their driver. Despite being turned off by his demeanour, I was still fond of Jacques and had great hopes for him for 2003, but whichever way it's dressed I think Jenson was simply better]

16.Takuma Sato - Another short notice sub, started 9th, finished 6th. Good job.

15.Olivier Panis - Qualifying seemed strangely close between the Toyota drivers, given Panis outqualified da Matta 13-3. I feel Olivier could maybe have led the team a bit better, though I still rated him highly.

14.Cristiano da Matta - Gets ahead of Panis for being a rookie. I really enjoyed his long fight with Ralf for 5th in Spain. Led Britain and qualified 3rd in Japan, with the promise of more for 2004.

13.Nick Heidfeld - The 2003 Sauber was a great disappointment given it had a Ferrari 2002 engine and gearbox, but the drivers didn't really shine either. As I thought, Nick had a small qualifying edge on Frentzen, but only scoring two 8th places all year until Indy was shocking. He truly went missing mid-season as I actually forgot he was in F1 for a while!

12.Heinz-Harald Frentzen - I was looking forward to the homecoming of Frentzen back to Sauber. I had always regretted not having seen Frentzen at his spiritual home the first time when he looked so good, and was hoping for a great flourish as HHF felt loved again to finish off his final few years in a nice way. I felt he would finish with 3 years at Sauber just as he started with 3 years. It started well with 6th-9th-5th in the first 3 races but from there... nothing. Crashing out on lap 1 at Monaco having qualified 17th was a real letdown, as were the track modifications themselves come to think of it. It was great to see HHF score one more podium to bow out. Comes ahead of Nick for taking more opportunities and banking the points to launch Sauber from 9th to 6th. Don't know if they could have done that if they'd kept Massa.

[rjbetty]

11.Giancarlo Fisichella - I wish I could have put Fisi 10th but that wouldn't be fair to Coulthard. Still did his usual good job, but by now all the years of disappointment were taking their toll as less deserving drivers continued to hog the plum seats. Most of all though, the continual bull and promises from EJ got Fisi down, and by now his face was scraping along the ground, as it became clear the car was another increasingly worse yellow shed. EJ was well as others (Alesi) still believed Fisi was capable of being one of the top 3 drivers in F1 at the time (given Alonso and Kimi still weren't quite up to speed yet), but Fisi was by now finding it hard to keep performing and was a little weak.

Although I don't ever know of him saying it, I always believed the biggest effect on Fisi's career was not being able to celebrate his first - finally - victory, being needlessly denied. It may sound like so much hogwash to most, but I know something died in my passion for F1 that day. It has never been the same since and never will. And that's me - who knows how that got to him. There is just something about that first win, not the second or third, that is so important for a driver; that enables them to grow and step up to new levels. Fisi was denied that quite cruelly. I was happy to see him win his other 2 races, but it just wasn't the same. It wasn't that they made a mistake and took his win away from him, it was that they gave it back to him. And the moment had long passed. Apart from the obvious death/injury etc, from a sporting view, this remains my all-time F1 lowlight - oh the irony!

In San Marino, at the next race, Fisi was strangely off colour, and privately some people knew something was not right with him that weekend. I think this issue actually affected him quite a lot, and is the culprit for people already feeling he was washed up before 2005 started.

Fisi did allow all these things to affect his performance over the season, simply giving up and allowing Firman to outqualify him in Spain, and get too close elsewhere. So I can't put him 10th.

10.David Coulthard - It may be a surprise to some to see DC ranked this high Oh dear. 7th behind even a Renault in the WDC didn't look good. However, as Coulthard routinely pointed out, his "reeeace peeeace" (sic - love the way he pronounces that) was still good.

9.Ralf Schumacher - There were 2 super duper wins in a row mid-season. By all accounts, Ralf was on great form, so much so, it caused Montoya to go scurrying off to McLaren. The rest of the year however, he truly sucked, and I feel only held onto 5th in the WDC (3pts ahead of Alonso?) due to the glut of minor points amassed during a long cruise-and-collect.

8.Jenson Button - Maybe he should be higher really. While Villeneuve behaved like a brat, Jenson conducted himself very well and definitely showed 2001 was behind him. Outperformed Villeneuve fair and square and I feel would have scored more points anyway, regardless of Jacques strategy. 4th in Austria very good, on for 2nd till the engine blew at Indy, and looking sensational in Monaco until that crash.

7.Mark Webber - Stunning qualifying pace all year. Should have taken pole at Interlagos. For those believing Webber was average all along, I suggest a look back over this season, only Mark's 2nd.

6.Jarno Trulli - So amazingly fast that even Alonso reportedly had to hold his hands up and say "what can I do (to match that)?" Usually on a heavier fuel than Alonso, Jarno actually raced very well at Indy and Japan (a close 5th from starting at the back). However, his Hungary race in particular showed that regardless of car issues, Trulli was the opposite of Coulthard as he had serious problems with his "reeeace peeeace", as Alonso lapped him...

5.Rubens Barrichello - Finishing 28pts off Michael wasn't that bad, and I feel Rubens was always underrated because he was in Michael's shadow, where hardly anyone else would have done better I think. However, when Michael won Imola, Spain and Austria in a row, Rubens wasn't even 2nd in any (3 x 3rd) which illustrated the difference perfectly. So unfortunate not to win at home in Brazil.

4.Juan-Pablo Montoya - The closest he ever came to the title. Again it was he who led the Williams charge with some superb races, such as winning by a minute at Hockenheim. However, Nigel Roebuck had to spoil it again by being an OTT fanboy i.e. How could Patrick Head be so horrible and mean to suggest Montoya could maybe lose a little weight *sob*. Montoya was better than in 2002 though lagging behind Ralf plenty of times also showed he wasn't quite a deity yet.

3.Kimi Raikkonen - At the time, I couldn't decide who was better out of Alonso and Raikkonen, for Kimi had demolished top driver Coulthard in only his 3rd season (4th of car racing), and almost won the title in an old 2002 McLaren! It had been significantly updated though, and Michelins were a huge boost in 2003, as was the much improved Mercedes engine which presumably greatly benefited from several key staff poached from BMW during 2002. BMW actually wrote Mercedes a letter to tell them to stop hounding all their staff. Still, this was remarkable from Kimi. However I don't quite get all the "unreliability robbed him of the title" stuff, given he had just that one failure all season, other than which the car was very reliable. At least 1 failure in a season must be expected surely? What drops Kimi behind Alonso is the several times he blew his qualifying lap and crashing into Pizzonia on the Spain startline, as I feel Fernando was more switched on than that.

2.Fernando Alonso - Simply incredible. I always believed he was special but I could not have forseen what he would do in 2003. Could have won 4 races(!) by my count (Australia, Brazil, Hungary, Japan) and came close at other times.

1.Michael Schumacher - His poorest year for a very long time, but I still feel he performed at a higher level than anyone else.

[jens]

It must have been really hard for JJ Lehto, he had a broken neck. I think it was extremely harsh the way Flav treated him tbh, and I have noticed this from Flav at other times. There was the sacking of Johnny Herbert in 1989, still struggling badly with mangled feet, shortly after finishing 4th on his debut. Then there was the complete lack of regard for Gerhard Berger in 1996 and Alexander Wurz in 2000, who were both too tall for their cars . Most of us won't understand just how difficult that is: It's not just feeling discomfort, it is painful and actually impossible to make some movements as they physically can't be done.

Lehto qualified 5th first time out at Imola in 94. I wonder if he could have finished 2nd. He was on for an easy 3rd in Spain having started 4th, so those were two decent performances. The rest were sadly well below par though, but I will not hold it against him. How good do we think JJ was? I rated him as just a smidgen off Wendlinger, who was less experienced in 93? He matched Pierluigi Martini at Dallara in 92 and got a podium for them in 91.


Interesting insight into drivers being too tall for cars and hence not being able to get the best out of their talents. This is always a tricky thing for teams. How to get the best out of a driver? Frentzen @ Jordan vs Frentzen @ Williams.

Lehto himself. I think he was a kind of solid midfielder, really perhaps not too dissimilar to Salo himself. Not a future star, but could get some solid results onboard, like the Imola '91 podium showed in wet/dry conditions.

I find it interesting though that Benetton signed Lehto for 1994, as Benetton must have been a pretty attractive team at the time as they were a firm Top3 team on the grid in 1992-93. Is there any information as to why Benetton signed Lehto and nobody else? And who else did they consider for the seat?

[jens]

2003

For starters... I vaguely remember myself answering some F1 questionnaire in late 2003... I don't remember anything else, but one thing was „my top6 drivers of the year“. And unless memory plays tricks with me right now (a possibility!) I think my top6 for the year back then was: M.Schumacher, Räikkönen, Alonso, Montoya, Webber, Fisichella.

Top5 understandable and obvious. I'd still choose them. Fisichella was for his impressive wet drives (Brazil, USA) and truly punching above his weight in a rubbish car on those races. But overall I think frustration got the better of him and many other races, where he was a backmarker without a chance of getting decent results, he really was nowhere. Hard to blame him, that Jordan was truly rubbish in dry conditions, barely better than Minardi. Hence Fisichella is hard to rate for 2003, because he didn't have the machinery to fight other drivers, but obviously back then I still believed Fisi was a top driver – only to be corrected once he got shown up by Alonso.

2003 saw Michael Schumacher finally getting some serious rivals in the form of Räikkönen, Montoya and Alonso. It already looked like those guys can genuinely race against Michael like equals and the long era of Schumacher's superiority as a driver was over. 2003 was also the season in which Räikkönen emerged as superior to Montoya in my eyes, about which I wasn't sure before (2002). But Kimi's consistency was impressive and more so than JPM's, who had the fastest car for a significant part of the season.

Webber was great and consistent, in qualifying and consistently delivering in the races too. The only issue was wet weather, because he spun out in both Brazil and USA.

I didn't really take notice of Button during 2003, he seemed unnoticably getting 1-2 pts per race here and there. It was only retrospectively and in 2004 when I took a much more serious notice of Button's talent as a front-running GP driver in terms of ability.

For Trulli this was perhaps the worst season during the period of 2001-2005. I certainly rate the other seasons higher, even if for 2003 he could still scrape into top10 in driver ratings I guess. His first half of the season was underwhelming though the second half was good. R. Schumacher and Coulthard both entered downward-spiral in their careers even if 2002 they still seemed fine and competitive.

I thought Sauber had a good line-up, but unfortunately the car was slow(ish) in the dry and this masked drivers' talent. I consider Heidfeld unfortunate to not have got strong results on board. Frentzen scored all points in the wet and in all those three races Heidfeld hit trouble. DNF with car problems in Australia and Brazil and in USA he was actually ahead of Frentzen, but made an extra pitstop for wet tyres and dropped behind. But was happy that Frentzen got his swansong podium.:)

I was semi-impressed with da Matta and as mentioned in other thread, predicted great things for 2004. Panis his usual self – unspectacular, but solid enough to get some points here and there.

Verstappen was running well in the messy Brazilian GP by the way. He could have finished well up the field if he didn't spin out... Like rjbetty mentions, Wilson made good race starts. Otherwise not much to add. I never truly understood hype around Pizzonia, because I was also following F3000 at the time and didn't see anything special from him. I remember, when Williams had a shootout between Heidfeld and Pizzonia before 2005 for the second seat, I was thinking - „hey, Heidfeld is by far the better of the two. How come you are not convinced and have to create some shootout?“

[jens]

2004

And while on a roll, I'll add thoughts on 2004 drivers too. Well, a season, which is considered one of the most boring ones of all times, is one of the nostalgic seasons for me. But not for racing excitement, but for my favourites doing well. I enjoyed Schumacher/Ferrari showing everyone up after a difficult previous season. And I enjoyed Trulli being on a roll with good results and a win too.

One of the big stories of the season was Button. I think it was a really significant turnaround as it added some extra light to driver talents. It made me wonder about the hype around Räikkönen, Montoya and Alonso. These guys had had very good cars in 2002-2003 and considered future WDCs, but 2004 showed that give a very good car to other talented young drivers like Button, and he can just as well look like a top driver and a future star with impressive results. So this made me re-evaluate some things and for the first time I considered Button as a top driver and potential future star (if he gets the right cars of course).

I also saw Trulli finally getting rid of his „unluck“ and really giving Alonso a tough time. I remember both Button and Trulli were team-mates at Renault, when it was an upper midfield car. Now both of them had better cars than that and could really shine. Trulli immediately qualifying 6th on his first outing for Toyota also showed to me that he was in great form, which was distracted by Renault politics a few races before that.

And of course, then I was also thinking that Fisichella, Webber and Heidfeld were top drivers (not on M.Schumacher level, but you get the point), but unfortunately didn't have a good car yet unlike Button, who finally got one. I think all three had a good season in subpar cars. Heidfeld in particular in the rubbish Jordan – finishing 10th at Nürburgring as one of the highlights of the season, outracing some guys in better cars.

I was impressed with the much-improved Sato after the horror of 2002 and once the endless reliability issues and also some driving overexuberance was sorted, he bagged decent points in late 2004. He didn't seem like a complete driver, but I thought he could have a decent F1 career with some great performances every now and then.

Ralf Schumacher and Coulthard started going downhill in 2003 and really lost the plot in 04, and them bowing out of top seats and going to struggling teams (Toyota and RBR) really made sense. In fact, I considered them fortunate to still have an F1 career beyond 2004. Ralf obviously had additional issues, like getting injured, which didn't help.

Massa, Panis, da Matta – okayish, but not great. I thought Massa's performance relative to Fisichella was similar to Heidfeld in 2002, and I thought this showed Fisi and Nick were roughly on the same level as drivers. As I had guessed previously anyway. Zonta surprised me a bit by showing up Panis and running 4th at Spa before engine blow-up.

Oh, and haven't mentioned anything about Barrichello. Usual solid strong #2 driver in both 2003 and 2004.:D And unlike DC, who was really getting shown up by Kimi in 03-04, Rubens consistently justified his position in the Ferrari by just being good enough for this role.

[jens]

Yeah, having written all this. It was a really hard time ranking drivers. I think I considered F1 to have at least 10 drivers (half of the field), who could challenge for the championship if only they got the right car and right circumstances (not suffering from unluck or being a #2 driver). Plus there were a few "questionmarks" like Massa, who seemed to have speed, but hadn't unlocked their potential properly. I considered Villeneuve to be part of this group pre-2003, who then dropped off. Same with R.Schumacher.

Impressive times in terms of driving talent. Once I think about it, it is not too dissimilar today. We have five world champions on the grid, then we have Rosberg, who is now challenging for a title. We have Ricciardo, who is matching a top driver. And then we have impressive Hülkenberg and Grosjean, who has potential, but currently held back by a rubbish car. Add somebody else and you can also have potentially up to 10 "top drivers", who can be at the front of the field in the right circumstance and give a run for anyone's money.

[steveaki13]

Right then.

I have wasted a load of time time doing 1994 and offended many JJ Lehto fans so its time for 1995

:p

46 drivers in 1994 and now just 35 for 1995. :confused:

35. Giovanni Lavaggi - Was terrible and retired each time. Cant say much more.

34. Jean Denis Deletraz - Better than 94, but 95 was still poor.

33. Gabriele Tarquini - One race only so who can say, but must be better than the last two.

32. Dominico Schiaterella - Who knows really.

31. Karl Wendlinger - Sadly didnt recover from the accident in 1994 and was poor.

30. Nigel Mansell - Way down here, because he never done a good job or really seemed interested. Should never have signed for Mclaren.

29. Bertrand Gachot - I always like Gachot and I guessed he done quite a decent job.

28. Andrea Montermini - He raced hard, but never really saw much of him.

27. Jan Magnussen - One race, but looked more promising than he ended up being.

26. Roberto Moreno - Had an uphill task and tried his best in the Forti

25. Taki Inoue - He was a poor diver but I liked him. :p

24. Max Papis - Average really but gets higher because I felt he was chucked in at the deep end a bit.

23. Jos Verstappen - Didnt get many races to make an impact but we could see his quality.

22. Ukyo Katayama - Was out performed by Salo and was generally poor.

21. Pedro Diniz - In a shocking Forti he tried his best and I have a soft spot for Forti.

20. Aguri Suzuki - Didn't think he deserved the Ligier seat but he did get a point.

19. Luca Badoer - Decent effort but no cigar.

18. Jean C Boullion - Cant remember much about him, except for how Murray Walker pronounced his name. :D
but scored 3 points

17. Pierluigi Martini - Up in 16th in my list despite not scoring a point. I thought he was very good in the first half of 1995.

16. Gianni Morebidelli - I always liked him (maybe it was just the name) and I loved the colourful Car, but back to his season, he got that podium in Oz but I felt he was very unlucky to be replaced during mid season

15. Pedro Lamy - Scored a point and also was reguarly in the top 10.

14. Mika Salo - I think he done a pretty good job scoring 5 points in a Tyrell which was a bit of a dog.

13. Mark Blundell - Dont know why but never really enjoyed his 1995 season. Never a massive fan of Blundells generally to be honest.

12. Rubens Barrichello - I thought the Jordan was poor in 1995, and he was helped majorly by the 2nd in Canada. Only just edged Irvine who I never at the time liked much.

11. Martin Brundle - I rated his ability in the Ligier, but It seemed unfair to me as a 9 year old, that he had to share. I still wish Martin had got the whole of 1995.

10. Eddie Irvine - He was only 1 point behind Rubens and his podium with Rubens in Canada was epic for Jordan

9. HH Frentzen - Did what he always did. Was solid.

8. Mika Hakkinen - Mclaren was as poor as last season really if not worse. So Mika did a decent job

7. Olivier Panis - What a job he did in 1995. 6 points finishes and finally got the chance to show what he would show for the rest of his career. A fighting spirit.

6. Gerhard Berger - Did an average job really. Outshone by Alesi, despite regular podiums. Just about gets ahead of of several others.

5. Jean Alesi - I think everyone in F1 was happy to see Jean win in Canada. He had a pretty good season really.

4.Damon Hill - Surprisingly I rank him 4th, despite 2nd in the WDC. I felt with some bad luck, he was average in 1995

3. Johnny Herbert - Herbert had always had the reputation of fun loving unlucky F1 driver. I am so pleased looking back that he had a decent season. Compared to 1994, he gave Schumacher much more back up. His win at Silverstone was just fantastic.

2. David Coulthard - First full season and won some races and matched Hill at times. I feel that was a pretty good effort for a first full season.

1. Michael Schumacher - No suprise that my number one is again the World Champion, he dominated the season completely and was miles clear in 95 IMO.

There we go.

1996 when I find time

[jens]

I find it interesting that Herbert was often considered unlucky, but it was all balanced out by his three wins, which were all fortunate basically. So I wonder, how unlucky can we consider Herbert to be at all? Since many drivers, i.e Heidfeld, keep chasing the win all career and never get "lucky" enough to get even one win, let alone three.

Other than that Herbert never had any realistic chances to win races and most of his unluck was while fighting at best for a couple of points. So where does this "Herbert - unlucky" mantra come from? Unless they mean the 1988 injury.

From the top of my head drivers like Häkkinen and Ferrari drivers were more unlucky at the time. So many reliability issues, Häkkinen DNF-d from the majority of 1994-1995 races, while looking to get a good chunk of points.

Once I checked qualifying gaps on Wikipedia and it was striking, how Wendlinger could be 2-4 seconds off Frentzen. That's a mindblowing difference. He really was nowhere on his comeback.

[steveaki13]

Sorry Jens.

Didnt mean to upset you. I guess its right that Herbert was lucky with his wins. I think its a British thing. It has been labelled as unlucky and it sticks.

For me though I still think he did a good job in 1995 and I stand by ranking him 3rd.

[rjbetty]

I have a lot to say about 2004/2005 too, maybe a bit for 2006, but then after that not so much as I left F1 for a few years, and am not really into it as crazily as I was before.

Until then, I will respond/add to some thoughts here, as they were very interesting to read. Thanks guys.


2003
I didn't really take notice of Button during 2003, he seemed unnoticably getting 1-2 pts per race here and there. It was only retrospectively and in 2004 when I took a much more serious notice of Button's talent as a front-running GP driver in terms of ability.

I think Button did really well in 2003. I actually thought he'd not do better than Panis in his first season. I now believe that Villeneuve was actually quite poor over 2001-2002 and that is why Panis pretty much matched him, whereas at the time I thought Panis was really that good (equal to Frentzen/Irvine or even better).

Jenson may not have looked that great getting mainly 7ths and 8ths, but I very much remember a few times he started last, through no fault of his own iirc. And he was on much inferior Bridgestone tyres. And by now, reliability was noticeably improved and starting to get to the current levels, so it wasn't like a ton of cars dropped out ahead. I think against the hordes of Michelin cars, and also that he wasn't exactly devoid of problems as Jacques might have you believe, he did a very good job.

I liked da Matta. I remember how wowed I was on his first Friday qualifying lap in Australia. Being the last one out iirc, I remember when his first sector time flashed up, he was 3rd! He finished his lap 11th iirc, but I was happy.

At the time though I didn't really understand how much of a huge difference it made to be the last car out as opposed to thr first car, with the difference being around 0.7sec to even maybe 1.5sec!

In my big rush, how could I forget Verstappen being apparently on target to win the Brazilian GP before sliding off on that river?! We will never know if Fisi would have overtaken him. Maybe it would be Verstappen who would have had his first win messed up. I don't really understand why it had such an effect on me for Fisi's to be ruined, but it did.

The hype about Pizzonia seemed to be from pre-2001. I agree that he was a real disappointment in F3000, finishing only 8th in 2002... Ricardo Sperafico outscored him both years.

I only first knew about Pizzonia early in 2000 when he was in British F3. One of the reasons he was hyped is because at Brands Hatch he won by a relatively ridiculous amount, creaming everyone including Tomas Scheckter, Takuma Sato, Narain Karthikeyan, Nicolas Kiesa, Gianmaria Bruni, Ben Collins (the Stig), Andy Priaulx, Matt Davies (remember him?), Marcos Ambrose and Gary Paffett amongst others!

By the end of 2004 I had lost belief in Antonio and like you Jens was dismayed at the Williams shootout which seemed to go on for months - just choose Heidfeld already! I remember either/both Sam Michael and Frank Williams explaining that their comprehensive appraisal was lasting so long as they believed Antonio really was "that good". (Shake mah head...)

I was pleased with da Matta in 2003, for a first season. I didn't think he was a good as Montoya but could still be a top driver in time. Such a shame he had a poor attitude and motivation after that, apparently because in a chat with M.Schumacher, da Matta explained his entry and exit to corners, and Michael was like "what about mid-corner?" and da Matta didn't quite understand mid-corner (tbh I don't quite, either!) and that messed with his head apparently. Or maybe it was just the uncompetitive 2004 machine that put him off.


As for 1995, yeah the gaps really were bigger than 1994 sadly with the new aerodynamic regulations. Inoue was 2.4sec down on Morbidelli. Bouillon was 1.6sec off Frentzen, Blundell 0.9sec off Hakkinen(!) and Katayama about 0.7ec off Salo, with Herbert 1.3/4sec off Schumacher too... I think Wendlinger was very hard done by indeed tbh, he came out of a coma! It wouldn't have been too dissimilar to what Michael Schumacher is going through right now, though clearly nowhere near as bad for Karl. It wasn't fair to expect miracles from Wendlinger straight-away.

Brundle's 1995 really impressed me when I understood it, especially Magny-Cours and Spa. He could have bagged 2nd in Australia too. I like most others feel it a total injustice he couldn't do the full season.

[journeyman racer]

I remember Brazil 1999 was one of the catalysts for me to start thinking Frentzen and R.Schumacher were lucky that year. Reliability was very important in 1999 and for some reason these guys had it, while several other drivers didn't and lost lots of points in the process.

HHF had 2nd place in the bag very late in Canada, before his brakes failed, causing him to crash. He was in control at the Nurburgring, and would've won, before hydraulics or something like that stopped the car. Had he won, he would've been within a couple of points from the title lead with two races to go. After that, anything could've happened. 1999 Moral champ is HHF.


I find it interesting though that Benetton signed Lehto for 1994, as Benetton must have been a pretty attractive team at the time as they were a firm Top3 team on the grid in 1992-93. Is there any information as to why Benetton signed Lehto and nobody else? And who else did they consider for the seat?
Michele Alboreto.


Other than that Herbert never had any realistic chances to win races and most of his unluck was while fighting at best for a couple of points. So where does this "Herbert - unlucky" mantra come from? Unless they mean the 1988 injury.
.
He was often in points positions at Lotus, before it broke down.

[rjbetty]

Did Benetton consider Michele Alboreto for the ´94 seat? That's a bit of a surprise. I know they considered Luca Badoer, and Paul Tracy tested for them.

I am personally surprised they didn't resign Martin Brundle really, considering he was harshly sacked scoring 38pts in 1992. Sure they'd have had the constructors' in the bag.


Herbert outqualified Hakkinen over 1992 at Lotus(!) iirc, but only finished 4 races, if that...

[jens]

Sorry Jens.

Didnt mean to upset you. I guess its right that Herbert was lucky with his wins. I think its a British thing. It has been labelled as unlucky and it sticks.

For me though I still think he did a good job in 1995 and I stand by ranking him 3rd.

No worries mate.

All I try to highlight is that there are a lot of expressions around (if to call them like that) that once you deepen into it, don't really mean anything significant. Basically many drivers can be called unlucky.

[jens]

Rjbetty, I agree that Button did well in 2003. This is something I learnt retrospectively. Back then when I was following 2003, I didn't get the impression Button was better than Villeneuve. He seemed more fortunate with less reliability issues to me. And like years have shown, uneven reliability can often have a significant influence in the outcome of team-mate battles. One of the better cases in point: Coulthard-Webber 14:10 in 2007. Though Webber was better, obviously.

But the last two races of 2003 did make an impression on me – Button was leading the US GP before engine let go (and he would have finished at least 3rd if not battled for second with Räikkönen) and he finished fourth in Japan. This strong finish prompted new team boss David Richards to claim that BAR was to become a truly strong team in 2004 - a statement which I was unsureof how seriously to take.

Villeneuve seemed fine to me around 2001-2002 even if not great. Fine in terms fo being about on level with Fisichella, Heidfeld, Trulli, etc. I rated all those drivers very high. Panis was okayish, but a smidgen off all of them. When Button matched Villeneuve, he seeme part of that „good“ group too, like he seemed already in 2002. So 2001 against Fisichella seemed a blip, when Button was too inexperienced and arguably didn’t have the right commitment to F1. I never thought Villeneuve was a match to M.Schumacher and an all-time legend. But from 2003 Villeneuve started slipping off this „very good“ label.

I am surprised to learn Benetton considered Alboreto. He must have been well past his prime by then. I was wondering more about, didn’t Benetton consider guys like Barrichello (who left a promising impression already in 1993 with his Donington drive), Christian Fittipaldi, Wendlinger, Herbert himself.

Thinking about it, Lehto was in a good position in the driver market. The old guard was retiring and the new drivers (Barrichello, Frentzen, Panis, Irvine, etc) hadn’t established themselves yet. So in this context Lehto looked like an „okay“ driver choice for Benetton before 1994. But it didn’t work out at all. And the new generation quickly took over before Lehto disappeared from F1 scene.

Benetton sacking Brundle is one of the mysterious things, because subsequently hiring past-his-prime Patrese and the next Benetton drivers didn’t make much sense, since they were way off in performance. And I guess there was a bit of bad blood between Brundle and Briatore, hence Benetton didn’t take him back for 1994.

I agree Brundle did well in his partial Ligier season in 1995. This also put a slight dent on Panis’ reputation as he seemed to have started out really well as a rookie in 1994 against Bernard.


HHF had 2nd place in the bag very late in Canada, before his brakes failed, causing him to crash. He was in control at the Nurburgring, and would've won, before hydraulics or something like that stopped the car. Had he won, he would've been within a couple of points from the title lead with two races to go. After that, anything could've happened. 1999 Moral champ is HHF.


I am aware HHF retired on a few occasions, but compared to drivers, whose car broke down in at least half of the races, it was a much better reliability.:)

[jens]

Drivers in 2005

So that was it. Michael Schumacher, who dominated in 2004, lost his crown. He was still driving very well, some of his performances were legendary (Imola race, Hungary qualifying), but he also made a fair few mistakes. The strangest one spinning out in China warm-up lap. I thought he doesn't have the reflexes of a young man any more, which is why he made more mistakes. But he was still fast.

But Alonso and Räikkönen took over the crown. It looked like they were worthy successors. Already seemed at least on level with M.Schumacher, even if car differences were big. It was hard to choose, who was better between Alonso and Räikkönen at the time. Both performing very well, but in different cars and circumstances.

2005 was a season, where some of the former driver ratings were shattered. A season, which showed that perhaps some of the drivers, who very highly rated before were not that good.

I expected Montoya to get beaten by Räikkönen. He took a lot of time to get up to speed, but since Canada his speed was very good. But he was still making clumsy mistakes and losing points. Typical JPM. It looked like inconsistency is what prevents from being a top driver.

Fisichella was suffering from lots of unluck. I still believed he had the potential to be very good, but was just shafted by Renault like his predecessor Trulli. Still, the season didn't make Fisi look good and he had a few serious off-weekends.

Trulli had a great 2/3rds of the season and was a firm top5/6 driver on the grid for me. But his end of the season was an uphill battle with being nowhere and R.Schumacher outpointed him with the final race. This hurt me and made me think Trulli really wasn't very good. Sad moment of "realization".

Webber was very highly rated prior joining Williams and was expected to show up Heidfeld, but it didn't happen. At one point he started making mistakes (Nürburgring start incident) and then underperformed. After Heidfeld's injury he got two fourth places, but it didn't convince me any more. I thought Webber hasn't got what it takes. In retrospect it was too harsh - I think he was at least a match to Heidfeld during their time together.

Drivers, whose reputation stayed intact and they still looked very good: Button and Heidfeld.

Button trashed Sato and scored super-consistently. But many people thought it wasn't convincing, since Sato "sucked". 2006 was supposed to tell, how good Button really is. Because proven quality driver Barrichello joined Honda. I still thought Button was very good and thought he'd likely beat Barrichello (very close to being a top6 driver throughout years), which would confirm Button as a top driver.

Heidfeld enhanced his reputation by outscoring Webber. He was signed as the lead driver by the new BMW Sauber. Things were looking up for the German, who just a year before wasn't rated at all and struggled to find a seat in F1.

A redeeming year for Coulthard - he was a bit better than the rubbish form of 2003/2004 showed. Red Bull athmosphere suited him. And the new 1-tyre-rule regulations. He looked like a very solid and competent midfield driver, not a washed-up man.

Massa looked solid as always - narrowly beat Villeneuve, who by all accounts was considered well past his prime now. Many criticized Ferrari for hiring Massa (who?), but I thought he could do a solid job, since I still remembered him being promising speed-wise even if results hadn't come.

[D-Type]

Folks, can we please limit discussion to seasons before any of the current drivers entered Formula 1 - one definition of 'History'. Otherwise it will creep up to the present day.

[steveaki13]

I understand and respect that but I believe if we talk about 2009 for example on F1 thread we get told to come here.

I would have thought anything outside the last couple of years is "history" really.

As long as there is an understanding between Mods on both sides about the fact we can only talk pre2000 say here. And we can talk post 2000 on the F1 thread.

Otherwise we get pointed in either direction by both sides.

[rjbetty]

Folks, can we please limit discussion to seasons before any of the current drivers entered Formula 1 - one definition of 'History'. Otherwise it will creep up to the present day.

Hi D, it´s cool, I respect your view too, but I kinda feel history is what's in the past. I'm only planning to go up to 2007 anyway, especially as I was away from F1 after 2007 till late 2009, and I've already done reviews/rankings for each year from 2010, in my ancient post history.


And now some thoughts on 2004 (I will probably only do some now )



24.Zsolt Baumgartner - Surprise! But did a respectable diligent job, being there to take a precious point at Indy.

23.Gianmaria Bruni - Was very disappointed and expected better from a driver I was a big fan of from British F3. Was only 0.7sec ahead of Baumgartner, showing he badly underperformed. Made Stoddy furious by parking an ok car at Indy - if Baumgartner had broken down, that would be no points.

22.Giorgio Pantano - Surely did better than Bruni, but anonymous and attitude was a bit lame too.

21.Jacques Villeneuve - Only a short gap away from being a few positions higher, but can't put him higher than this really. For a world champion very disappointing. Even taking into account the lay-off, he was the worst Renault driver between Wurz and Piquet Jr imo. I still believed in Jacques as at least a potential top driver and was excited for his Renault debut, believing he could be much better now he'd got out of the poisonous situation at BAR.

20.Marc Gené - Slammed as slow, but he seemed impressively close to Montoya to me.

19.Ricardo Zonta - Shone at Spa after qualifying 20th in an amazing 4th place, cruelly denied by DNF a few laps from home. Close to Panis, but that may be more Olivier being past it tbh.

18.Christian Klien - As good as could be expected for one so young. Pretty close to being the first F1 driver to be younger than me (less than 1 year - that's a good idea for an intriguing topic actually...)

17.Cristiano da Matta - A goodish 6th at Monaco but no more points. Some goodish low-fuel quali performances, but otherwise disappointing, but most of all his attitude and approach. I liked Cristiano and had hoped for more...

16.Olivier Panis - I liked Olivier and hoped for a good 2004 from him, but he was definitely past it now, getting caught up in several rookie collisions and errors. Had a better approach than da Matta and it was very gentlemanly of him to give up his place one race early so Zonta could take part in his home race at Brazil.

15.Timo Glock - What an impressive debut. Canada is a track Timo has always gone well at, but 7th (albeit after 4 disqualifications) in a car equivalent of this years Sauber was very good. Generally faster and more driven than Pantano.


More to follow...

[journeyman racer]

I am aware HHF retired on a few occasions, but compared to drivers, whose car broke down in at least half of the races, it was a much better reliability.:)

Who are you talking about? You might be thinking of another season. Hakkinen dropped it on his own a couple of times on his own. Schumacher and Irvine didn't. Maybe Coulthard, because breaking down while in a good/leading position happened quite a lot in his career, but HHF had him covered anyway. From memory, only Barrichello had chronic reliability problems from good positions.

[jens]

Who are you talking about? You might be thinking of another season. Hakkinen dropped it on his own a couple of times on his own. Schumacher and Irvine didn't. Maybe Coulthard, because breaking down while in a good/leading position happened quite a lot in his career, but HHF had him covered anyway. From memory, only Barrichello had chronic reliability problems from good positions.

I am talking about the whole field, starting with someone like Villeneuve, who had only 4 classified finishes. Or even HHF's team-mate Hill, who definitely had more issues than Frentzen, regardless of how well he was performing.

4 DNFs for Frentzen (one was a spin at Imola and one was car problem in Spain outside point position) was a sign of good reliability that year among his peers. Counting full-timers, only Irvine finished more than that, and Ralf Schumacher matched that.

And indeed both Coulthard and Barrichello had a fair amount of car failures. DC had 7 DNFs that year and usually, when he was in the race, he was ahead of Frentzen on the road.

[journeyman racer]

Coulthard was mediocre during 99. Prolific mechanical troubles only cover the fact he was, as can be seen by your thoughts. He finished second in Austria and HHF 4th. But tell me that Coulthard drove a better race? Hill was so disinterested during 99, that any race he finished, went 40-70 laps longer than what he wanted. Villeneuve only missed out on a couple of points positions. Barrichello may've missed out on a fair few points positions, but not enough to say he missed out on a really high place on the table, or diminish his reputation. Indeed, he got his reward by eventually getting the Ferrari contract. I'll stick my neck out and say HHF was the only one to be denied a win, from a leading/strong position, that year.

The claim that HHF was lucky, in any context, during the 1999 season, is the worst observation/memory in this thread.

[jens]

Sorry. If you read my posts I have mentioned that Frentzen did a very good job and is my driver of the year.

I am not driving about driving standards, I am talking about reliability ONLY. Sure, Frentzen performed better than Hill. But that's not the point. I am saying his reliability was also better. Ralf Schumacher's reliability was better than Zanardi's. Häkkinen's reliability better than Coulthard's, etc. Irvine's reliability was best of all, only one DNF at Imola.

In the same way - in 2012 Alonso had a great driving year, but also the best reliability. Not a single DNF with car problems. I mean good driving and reliability are not mutually exclusive - they both contribute to a good result.

Had Frentzen DNF-d from half of the races with a blown engine, he would not have finished 3rd in championship. Basic point. Look at his 2000 also in the Jordan. So many car problems, DNF-d from good positions at Melbourne, Silverstone, Hockenheim. This is where he was unlucky and lost many points.

[jens]

I'll stick my neck out and say HHF was the only one to be denied a win, from a leading/strong position, that year.


Erm, not really.

Häkkinen, Coulthard, M.Schumacher and possibly Barrichello all had issues in Australia and lost a win, which was inherited by Irvine.

Coulthard DNF-s from the lead in France with a car problem.

Häkkinen had a loose wheel at Silverstone. I don't remember if it was P1 or P2.

Häkkinen was punted out in Austria by his team-mate - lost win.

Häkkinen had a refueling issue and a puncture at Hockenheim - also lost win.

Coulthard was hunting down Irvine in Malaysia before a car problem - possible win challenge lost.

[jens]

The claim that HHF was lucky, in any context, during the 1999 season, is the worst observation/memory in this thread.

I may give a context.

First two races of 1999.

Häkkinen, Coulthard, M.Schumacher, Barrichello all had issues - so 1st Irvine, 2nd Frentzen.

Brazil.
Coulthard, Barrichello, Irvine (extra pitstop), Fisichella, Alesi - all had issues. Frentzen 3rd.

All in all Frentzen had collected 10 points in two races, while before any car problems of his rivals he was barely in points collecting positions.

Let's go into 2000. The other way around.
Frentzen was running 4th early on in Australia, later DNF from second.
He was running 2nd early at Silverstone, later DNF from 4th.

In terms of positions/competitiveness a better start than 1999, but reliability let him badly down.

[journeyman racer]

Jesus Christ! If you can't find a hole to pick, just make one, hey?

[jens]

Jesus Christ! If you can't find a hole to pick, just make one, hey?

It's ok. I am just trying to explain myself as a question was asked.:)

Other thing is that this thread is a mix of two different things - one is how or what we felt at that time, when we were watching, while being much younger. Other thing is how we view things today. Obviously these views change over time.

This Frentzen talk is not to take anything away from him, it was just about how I felt about his season back then when I was a small kid and defined things differently.

[jens]

What about driver rankings pre-1994?

Now it was quite a few years ago, when I was watching the full season reviews and full race videos from that era, but I try to recall.

1993
Senna as #1, Schumacher as #2 for me. Then Prost - he won the title, but it wasn't a convincing performance in a dominant car with Hill running close to him (but suffering worse reliability). Then obviously Hill had a good season. Both Ferrari drivers were okayish. Herbert had one of his best seasons in F1, certainly among top10 drivers of the season. And Brundle was decent.

Special mention to two very young Brazilians. Barrichello for a promising debut season and 'destroying' all his team-mates + that great race at Donington. Fittipaldi for getting a good score in the Minardi. From what I remember Warwick and Suzuki were qualifying pretty well in the Footwork, but didn't score many points. Don't know, how to rate them.

1992
It could be said Senna was once again the best driver though it is hard to compare since Williams was so much better. But obviously it was one of Mansell's best F1 seasons too as he comprehensively beat Patrese. And Schumacher was good in his debut season. Alesi put in a good show in Ferrari in wet races. Berger and Brundle were solid and good too – consistent and getting points on board.

Häkkinen stood out to me as a future star. I didn't remember that Herbert actually outqualified him as mentioned in this thread. We have been discussing here, how good was Herbert. It is possible that he was pretty good and promising all through 1992-1994, but the Benetton season as a #2 driver somewhat destroyed his momentum after which he was never quite the same again and repeatedly got beaten by team-mates.

The best season of Alboreto's swansong period (last 6 seasons in midfield) – consistently decent results. I am having a hard time remembering how exactly to rate the rest of the drivers in midfield and below that.

1991
Excellent season by Senna - #1. #2 for me would be Prost, who did a very impressive job in the unreliable and underperforming Ferrari. Then comes Mansell, who was fast, but all too often outqualified by Patrese and made a few blunders. Actually I rate Patrese really close to Mansell that year, with Riccardo suffering more misfortune.

Schumacher was obviously good in his last few races. Alesi was entertaining, but not very consistent yet. Berger solid as usual. Piquet got some decent results, but didn't seem to have much fire any more. Modena had a few standout performances – DNF from third at Imola, second at Monaco qualifying, second at finish in Canada. Certainly Modena's best F1 season.

De Cesaris was pretty decent actually in both 1991-92. Perhaps among two of his best F1 seasons, together with the 1983 one at Alfa Romeo. DNF from an incredible second in Belgium.

1990
Senna and Prost absolutely nip-and-tuck, I'd rate them as joint first. After them it is hard to rate. Boutsen and Patrese – fast, but not always convincing. Berger and Mansell – also inconsistent and couldn't match up to their team-mates.

Piquet ended up third in the championship, but from what I recall he was about a match to Nannini, who sadly got injured before the end of the season. Alesi was impressive, but still young and mercurial and made a few mistakes too among great drives. IIRC Derek Warwick looked pretty decent in the Lotus too.

1989
Senna as the best despite worse reliability. Prost had one of his least impressive seasons, so you could argue whether to rate Berger or Mansell up with him. Both Ferrari drivers were fast, but were suffering from horrendous reliability.

Patrese and Boutsen – their usual decent selves. Actually in 1989 and 1990 combined I'd rate Boutsen slightly above Patrese, which is why it was sad Boutsen got released by Williams just when the car was about to become a true spaceship. And Nannini made a serious mark that year by emerging as Benetton's lead driver.

OK, somebody else can carry on.:)