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

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Originally Posted by ioan

Drivers that died on track seem to have a fanatic support from emotional people around here.

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Of course there's an element of lost potential when a driver dies, but my admiration for Gilles Villeneuve has nothing to do with the fact he died on track. It is based on what I saw of him, and read in contemporary race reports, and saw on tv, when he was alive.

Unfortunately I only got to see him race myself on few of occasions; the Race of Champions at Brands Hatch may have been the first time, and then there were a handful of British GP's I attended and saw him around the pits & paddock.

Far more important than any statistics are the opinions of his peers, who were also his rivals. These are men who set out to beat GV at every opportunity, and rarely admitted that anyone was better or faster, than themselves.

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Originally Posted by ArrowsFA1

Far more important than any statistics are the opinions of his peers, who were also his rivals.

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Ridiculous.

The Championship title, which is a statistic of the seasons racing, is the only important thing in Formula One and is decided by who scores the most points, not who has the most nice things said about them.

Anyone who believes that opinions of other drivers has anything other than sentimental value is watching the wrong sport.

If you want a contest where popularity is important, go watch Big Brother.

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Originally Posted by ioan

Drivers that died on track seem to have a fanatic support from emotional people around here. To the extent that a driver that was beaten by several other drivers while driving the same car is considered to be one of the best ever!

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As Arrows said, it's to do with the potential argument...like George Best for instance.
Imagine what Jean Alesi would be had he died in 1991 for example....! Surely the greatest ever!...
Likewise, Stefan Bellof is another who is often forgotten about, but if you look at what he did he was very possibly as good as Villeneuve, especially when you see his Group C performances.

I think the Gilles case is a lot to do with the fact that he was the first top driver from his coutry in F1, and there is a lot of partisan support in particular, he was also a show-off like Peterson, so that always gets people's attention. But as one of the 3 greatest ever? Not even close. Car control, determination possibly, but to be the greatest is far more than just those factors.

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Originally Posted by tamburello

Ridiculous.

The Championship title, which is a statistic of the seasons racing, is the only important thing in Formula One and is decided by who scores the most points, not who has the most nice things said about them.

Anyone who believes that opinions of other drivers has anything other than sentimental value is watching the wrong sport.

If you want a contest where popularity is important, go watch Big Brother.

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I disagree.

The objective in a race is to win
A champion should be the driver who most successfully meets that objective, i.e. the one who is the best at winning a seriesof races.
A points system is a means to an end, a means to evaluate who is the best at trying to win. It is not an end in itself.
If you want to establish a ranking, then a points system is an end in itself, e.g. football leagues, who gets places on Bernie's charter flights, etc.

Thw question is "Who is the greatest driver?" It is not "Who is the best accumulator of points".

Bruce McLaren scored more points than Jack Brabham in Cooper cars, but it is absolutely ridiculous to say, as some statistical websites do, that he was the most successful, or best, Cooper driver when Brabham won two Championships and seven GPs while McLaren won three GPs.

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Originally Posted by tamburello

If you want a contest where popularity is important, go watch Big Brother.

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My point has nothing to do with popularity. It is about the recognition among GV's peers that, as one of them said, "he is the fastest of all of us". That's a recognition of ability and talent not popularity, and it's a tribute rarely conferred by intensely competitive people on a rival.

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Originally Posted by ArrowsFA1

Would I be right in guessing that you don't rate the likes of Stirling Moss, Ronnie Peterson or Chris Amon very highly then?

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Moss I rate highly. He achieved significantly more than gilles and was far better.
Peterson was very talented, but far too inconsistant.
Amon was good, but nothing special.

I have also made a number of points that you have left unanswered.

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Originally Posted by fousto

As I recall Ferrari basically gifted the title to Jody when left a even table GV would have won the title that year.

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bull****. JS got his title fair and square by outracing and outthinking Gilles. In anycase, if GV was so good as you make him out to be, wouldnt he have had an easy ride over someone like JS. So why didnt he, not even in qualifying?

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Originally Posted by ArrowsFA1

Far more important than any statistics are the opinions of his peers, who were also his rivals.

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Probably the stupidest thing I have seen on this forum for a long time.
So if Reutemann says Gilles is the best driver around, then beats gilles 12:4 in qualfying and scores 3x more points, which matters more? Answer this please.
Get it in your head - Opinions are biased, FACTS not nearly as much. The emotional support for gilles was always amazing, but the driver behind it all was not as impressive as made out to be, which is shown by the fact he was beaten by two teammates in row, neither of whom could be said was the best driver around that time.
How many times did Fangio, Senna, Schumacher, Prost did get beaten by teammates, let alone get destroyed bigtime by non-WC teammates?

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Originally Posted by ArrowsFA1

My point has nothing to do with popularity. It is about the recognition among GV's peers that, as one of them said, "he is the fastest of all of us".

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If he was so damn fast, why did he get beaten two years in row by different teammates, and pretty badly by one of them? Or is that irrelevant, because that teammate praised Gilles after his death?

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Originally Posted by Osella

As Arrows said, it's to do with the potential argument...like George Best for instance.
Imagine what Jean Alesi would be had he died in 1991 for example....! Surely the greatest ever!...
Likewise, Stefan Bellof is another who is often forgotten about, but if you look at what he did he was very possibly as good as Villeneuve, especially when you see his Group C performances.

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Group C is not F1 though. And especially considering that Jacky Ickx wasnt exactly driving fantastically when he retired from F1.

Garry Walker, why do you have such a low opinion about Didier Pironi? In 1981 he was very unlucky - whenever he was fighting for podium, the car let him down and in fact he even didn't finish on podium.

In some way he was similar to Gilles, a real fighter, who even didn't care about team orders and I think in 1982 he would have given GV a real battle for the WDC if both drivers had survived until the end of the season. Didier was a bit 'crazy' too and probably due to mistakes failed to outscore for example Laffite in 1980 (as was also probably the case in GV and JS battle the year before).

But I generally tend to agree that G. Villeneuve is a bit overrated. Drivers that die tend to be more glorified than others. However, I think Pironi is underrated compared to Villeneuve.

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Originally Posted by jens

Garry Walker, why do you have such a low opinion about Didier Pironi? In 1981 he was very unlucky - whenever he was fighting for podium, the car let him down and in fact he even didn't finish on podium.

In some way he was similar to Gilles, a real fighter, who even didn't care about team orders and I think in 1982 he would have given GV a real battle for the WDC if both drivers had survived until the end of the season. Didier was a bit 'crazy' too and probably due to mistakes failed to outscore for example Laffite in 1980 (as was also probably the case in GV and JS battle the year before).

But I generally tend to agree that G. Villeneuve is a bit overrated. Drivers that die tend to be more glorified than others. However, I think Pironi is underrated compared to Villeneuve.

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Scheckter also was regarded as wild in his early F1 days. See 1973 Silverstone.

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Originally Posted by Garry Walker

So if Reutemann says Gilles is the best driver around, then beats gilles 12:4 in qualfying and scores 3x more points, which matters more?

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Statistics on a page or a website are just that - statistics. They provide no background as to the many, many different factors involved in making up those numbers, just as points in the final WDC standings tell you nothing about how those points were won.

Reutemann's opinion is significant because he raced in the same team at the same time as GV. He was there. We weren't.

Statistics and opinions matter, but taking either one in isolation will never give you as full a picture as the two together.