I would like to now how a Ban works.Quote:
Originally Posted by spensonlizids
I know I think I have found a candidate here, so someone can show me.
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I would like to now how a Ban works.Quote:
Originally Posted by spensonlizids
I know I think I have found a candidate here, so someone can show me.
"So how do we know who's human?!"
I propose the blood test from my favourite film "The Thing". Aki, tie everyone down: We're gonna find out who's who around here.
Jackie Stewart - Thanks to him "being a tool" drivers are able to go out and race week after week without one of them being killed at the rate of one every three weeks. If you compare the numbers of drivers who died, to those who've died since Sir Jackie started championing greater safety, you'd be shocked.
My heroes:
Tazio Nuvolari - Yes, he does qualify as he raced a Maserati in an early Formula 1 race. A racer and competitor through and through, the legends are legion:
In his motorcycling days he crashed through a barbed wire fence. His back was so severely lacerated that when he was bandaged up he had difficulty in moving. Six days later they lifted him onto his bike and gave him a push start and he went on to win the Grand Prix at Monza. The Mille Miglia where he caught up with Varzi who had started before him, so he switched off his lights so Varzi couldn't see him and followed him over the mountains in the dark. The famous 1935 German Grand Prix where he beat the Mercedes and Auto-Union teams in his outdated Alfa Romeo. In practice for the 1938 Donington GP he hit a stag, he had the stag's head mounted and sent home to Mantua, and he went on to win the GP. In 1947 he entered the Mille Miglia in an 1100cc Cisitalia and was leading until the rain got to his electrics and he finished second. All in all probably the greatest racer ever.
Juan Manuel Fangio - He was 37 before he came to Europe. This can be attributed to the remoteness of Argentina and to WW2. He had won wild inter-city marathons in Argentina and such circuit racing as there was. When he arrived in Europe he was immediately successful winning his first Formula 1 race at San Remo after the Maserati mechanics had said the car was not repairable following a blow-up in practice and he put in an all-nighter rebuilding the engine. His World Championship career and five championships is well known. He also put in some tremendous sports car drives including finishing second in the Mille Miglia in an Alfa Romeo and winning Sebring in the fast but fragile Maserati 450S. The outstanding thing about Fangio was the universal esteem and respect he was held in by his peers. They have all gone on record as saying that in equal cars they couldn't match him. A great driver and a great man.
Stirling Moss - Being British I was subjected to the full Moss hype in my formative years. He wasn't the first British driver to drive for a continental team and win a grand prix - Hawthorn was. He never won the World Championship. But he was the first British professional driver devoting 100% of his time to being "Mr Motor Racing" including appearing on billboards advertising BP petrol etc. He competed, and won, in all forms of racing - rallying, Formula 3 and Formula 2, Formula 1, sports cars. Certainly once Fangio retired he was considered "the man to beat" by his fellow drivers.
Graham Hill - He was not a 'natural' driver in the sense that some were, he had no money behind him, but he learned his trade well. Well enough to win two World Championships, one Indianapolis, one Le Mans and five Monaco Grands Prix. His strength of character held the Lotus team together in 1968 after Jim Clark's death. Arguably he should have retired earlier which rather tarnishes his record in some eyes.
Jim Clark - The complete contrast to Graham Hill - a total 'natural' to the extent that he didn't know how he did it and was hopeless as a test or development driver. Compared to Moss and Hill he was a modest introvert. But he could drive anything. My favourite story is when he asked to try a vintage ERA at Rouen: despite never having driven a car with a preselector gearbox, after five laps he was faster than the car's owner who knew the car inside out. Two World Championships, one Indianapolis and a 3rd at Le Mans in a private entry. Considered by his peers as the man they measured themselves up to. His death shocked everyone and prompted the retirement of at least one driver.
Sir Jackie Stewart - another natural. He was the heir to Jim Clark's mantle. Three World Championships. A relentless campaigner for driver safety. This was misunderstood by many at the time, but some of his critics have later grudgingly admitted he was right. Later the owner of a successful F1 team. And let's not forget that he suffered from dyslexia which he didn't find out until he was retired from racing.
As I grew older I no longer had heroes as such. It's difficult to view someone the same age as yourself or younger as a hero.
If I could have remained permanently 14 or 15 I would have added the following to the list
Denny Hulme
Niki Lauda
James Hunt
Mario Andretti
Gilles Villeneuve
Alain Prost
and maybe Mikka Hakkinen
plus a couple of others
I would not include Ayrton Senna or Michael Schumacher on the list as their on-track actions (deliberately driving into the opposition) disqualify them from being classified as heroes.
And I won't consider the current crop until their careers are over.
He was just a funny guy. I like funny people.Quote:
Originally Posted by steveaki13
Yeah, because they are so unlike you...
Well, we can't all be such comedy titans such as you, my dear mental prisoner :D .Quote:
Originally Posted by dj_bytedisaster
Reminds me of the scene in Goodfellas, 'funny how, what I'm a clown I amuse you?' :p
Children!
Cool it right now. Personal insults are simply niot allowed.
What impressed me about Eddie that even though he wasn't the second best driver in the world, he did seem to just get better and better with age. He was booted out of F1 too early! :(Quote:
Originally Posted by Garry Walker
I liked Irvine. Spoke his mind, never whined at being a no.2 Ferrari driver and he unlapped himself from Senna!
Eddie was funny but I can't remember what his reasoning was for declaring that he was "quicker than Mika". It must have been because this was in 2001 when Hakkinen was well below par? But at this time, Eddie was outqualified 5 times in a row by Pedro de la Rosa and Hakkinen domainted the British GP.
I'm amazed at his thinking that allows him to believe even today that he was the 2nd best driver around. His explanation for Barrichello being far more impressive at Ferrari is simply that Michael wasn't as good after '98!! Wow, brushed off and dealt with, just like that!
Senna for me...
Please can we have a paragraph saying why he is a hero to you.Quote:
Originally Posted by sandokan
I am surprised he has only been mentioned a couple of times but my Hero would have to be Jim Clark.
He was Britain's first double world champion and raced purely for Lotus. In fact he was the only driver to win any GP in a Lotus between 1962 and 1967.. and he won 25 races in that time (ok one of them was at the start of 1968) and not one of his team mates managed to get a single win between them.
reading this is one of the best dream I was dreaming of !Quote:
Originally Posted by Mintexmemory
Well said about Jim Clark . From now, how often I will pray for your words to be words of God . let's alls judge things like a child, for a while !
Colin Chapman - brilliant thinker and innovator
Jim Clark - possibly the best driver ever and a total gentleman, proved you don't need to be an egocentric a-hole to be a champion
Riccardo Patrese - not too sure why, but probably due to the way he handled all of the vitriol thrown at him by dick head like James Hunt after the tragic death of Ronnie Petersen (Patrese didn't make contact with anyone at the start of the race, Hunt is the one who hit Petersen, but Patrese was blamed).
Damon Hill
Michael Schumacher
Ayrton Senna
If I had to pick one, it's be Nigel Mansell. Initially, it was because he was good enough to beat the best drivers, even if he wasn't considered the outright best on his own. It wasn't til a while after he retired that I truly appreciated how good he was. (I only started following F1 from about 1990)
He also showed in the Masters Series that he was good. Mansell was actually underrated IMO. He may have only won one F1 championship in a dominant Williams, but he also had 33 wins which is no mean feat!Quote:
Originally Posted by journeyman racer
[quote=555-04Q2]He also showed in the Masters Series that he was good. Mansell was actually underrated IMO. He may have only won one F1 championship in a dominant Williams, but he also had 33 wins which is no mean feat![/quote:uy7m2aay]Quote:
Originally Posted by "journeyman racer":uy7m2aay
Agreed, it is just a shame his legacy is tainted by his awful attitude out of the car. There was no one in history that could whinge and complain like Mansell could. Behind the wheel no one gave more or tried harder and some of his drives (87 British GP pass in Piquet on hangar straight, and his win from near the back in a Ferrari in Hungary) were simply astonishing.
[quote=anfield5]Agreed, it is just a shame his legacy is tainted by his awful attitude out of the car. There was no one in history that could whinge and complain like Mansell could. Behind the wheel no one gave more or tried harder and some of his drives (87 British GP pass in Piquet on hangar straight, and his win from near the back in a Ferrari in Hungary) were simply astonishing.[/quote:22fj4h9i]Quote:
Originally Posted by 555-04Q2
I think it would be a close race between Mansell and Ron Denis for biggest whingers in F1 LOL :p: Denis though gets my vote :D
One of the biggest black spots was the Xerox-gate scandal from 2007
Yeah it was. I am pretty sure it was not the first time happened. It probably goes on all the time, the others are just smart enough not to get caught!!!!Quote:
Originally Posted by anfield5
Wrong thread? This one is titled "Your all time F1 heroes!Quote:
Originally Posted by 555-04Q2
I gotta go with Jackie Stewart. Drivers were getting killed left and right, and Jackie did something about it. He left motor racing a far better sport. He was also a pretty good driver.
I have no doubt he was. However, I have found it peculiar over the years. Whenever the topic of top 5, 10 drivers of all time are discussed, in all forms of media, he's rarely, if at all, mentioned. It's the same names everywhere, every time, Senna, Clark, Schumacher, Fangio, Villeneuve, Prost, Moss, whoever else...Quote:
Originally Posted by Doc Austin
Heroes is a different discussion from greatest drivers, so my views are simply that ........... views.Quote:
Originally Posted by journeyman racer
I think it has to do with numbers and total wins. Stewart raced in the days when there were only 10 or 12 GPs per year, and he retired in the absolute prime of his career. He certainly had four or five more good years left. Had Stewart been able to race 20 times per year in the 69 Matra and 71/73 Tyrrels, we would have a completely different picture. As it is, I believe his winning percentage is pretty close to Schumacher's.
What makes Stewart great in my estimation is that he realized the danger and did his best to change things. Then he went out and won multiple championships in spite of knowing the dangers he was up against. In the middle of all of this, his friends were getting killed all around him. That's a level of commitment I simply can't imagine.
I'm not sure how a guy with three championships and a 27% win rate gets overlooked in favor of Gilles (another of my heroes) who had no championships and only six (or so) wins. Or Moss, also with no championships. That doesn't mean they weren't great, though. They just did not achieve what Stewart did.Quote:
It's the same names everywhere, every time, Senna, Clark, Schumacher, Fangio, Villeneuve, Prost, Moss, whoever else
In the end I think Stewart will be remembered more for the safety crusade than anything else, and that probably contributes to his being overlooked. I don't mean that he is respected less because of it, but I think people remember him more for that work that his driving.