Top 10 greatest drivers of all time.

[Mikey G]

Senna
Lauda
Clark
Andretti
Fangio
Prost
Schumacher
Donahue
Foyt
Belloff
Earnhardt\Tony Stewart

[BDunnell]

In 1996 he finnished 3rd in the R.A.C. Rally, in a frontwheel drive Skoda!!

Few drives in motorsport have given me as much pleasure as did that! What a superb exhibition of handling an underpowered, two-wheel-drive car. Proves you don't need four-wheel-drive and a lot of power to be exciting.

[D-Type]

1 - Ayrton Senna
2 - Tazio Nuvolari
3 - Jim Clark
4 - Graham Hill
5 - Jackie Stewart
6 - Sandro Munari
7 - Jacky Ickx
8 - Juha Kankkunen
9 - Rick Mears
10 - Dale Earnhardt

Please read the second posting on this thread

To make this more interesting, can I suggest that people should write a couple of sentences about each driver they list

[AndyRAC]

Few drives in motorsport have given me as much pleasure as did that! What a superb exhibition of handling an underpowered, two-wheel-drive car. Proves you don't need four-wheel-drive and a lot of power to be exciting.

Look at some of the in car footage - completely calm and in control. Fabulous effort, and his interviews were cool, and calm personified. And if I remember rightly, one of the other Skodas, Emil Triner, had the fastest time on the long Hafren stage.

Slightly off topic, but I wish the WRC was set up to enable lightweight 2WD cars to be competitive over a season, so a more even split of Tarmac/ Gravel.

[BDunnell]

Look at some of the in car footage - completely calm and in control. Fabulous effort, and his interviews were cool, and calm personified. And if I remember rightly, one of the other Skodas, Emil Triner, had the fastest time on the long Hafren stage.

Slightly off topic, but I wish the WRC was set up to enable lightweight 2WD cars to be competitive over a season, so a more even split of Tarmac/ Gravel.

I agree completely. Of course, the WRC was very briefly like that — in 1987, the first year after the end of Group B as the leading category. No-one really seemed to notice, given the sense of anti-climax the Group A cars seemed to generate, but I thought it was a great season. Three performances above all others stand out — Jean Ragnotti in the Renault 11 Turbo on the Portuguese Rally, Pentti Airikkala in an Opel Kadett GSi on the Manx International, and Louise Aitken-Walker in the Peugeot 205GTi on the RAC. Just like Blomqvist on that 1996 RAC, all were superb exhibitions of spectacular front-wheel-drive motoring in underpowered machinery, and on three very different events to boot.

[William Sanders]

My ten best ALL-TIME are:

1: Mario Andretti
2: AJ Foyt
3: Richard Petty
4: Michael Schumacher
5: Alain Prost
6: Dale Earnhart
7: Ayrton Senna
8: Jimmy Clark
9: Rick Mears
10:Jackie Stewart

I chose my list in an ALL-TIME format as career achievements over time. Mario gets my vote as number one because no other major racer in history has won races and championships in so many types of cars over so many years. The same holds true for Foyt and Petty who rate high in my book because of what they accomplished over so much time. Men like Senna and Clark may have been the most brilliant in their own time but did so in a relatively short time span (tragically in both cases). Schumacher or Prost would rate higher on a different type of list - say the greatest ten years - but Schumey did have a whole team built around him. Soon a young German named Vettel and an American named Johnson may crack this list.

[oversteer]

I do not know enough to accurately rate the drivers (though I suppose I could fall back on tallies of wins). However, there is one driver who impressed me with his rapid return to racing after a serious accident:

Niki Lauda

To suffer serious injuries on a track noted for its treacherousness and immediately jump back into the sport is impressive to me. I look forward to seeing the film later this year (Rush), and I hope it will be interesting and well presented.

[driveace]

Just to add a small note here.
I was up in Duns a couple of weeks ago to watch the Jim Clark Rally,and took two friends to show then Jims grave in Chirnside Cemetary.There was a florist putting flowers on Jims grave.I assumed that the Motor Club who ran the rally paid for them ,so I asked him.
He said NO,Jims sister is still alive,and she comes into my shop every month and pays for flowers to be put on Jims grave every two weeks from May until October Every year .
As regards Stig ,I have been in a lift with Stig,chatted for over 45 minutes with him in Cyprus,spoke with him at last years McRea stages maybe 2011,got footage of all the events when he did the rallsprints in late 80s,and he is sensational ,and a nice guy too. Iwould say maybe the best rally driver ever and I worked with Henri and rated him way above anybody else even though I may be biased

[Don Capps]

These lists tend to say far more about the person posting the choices, the timing of the topic, and the state of the forum (or magazine) than anything else.

The choices are opinions, informed or otherwise, quite subjective, and rarely very informative -- an observation derived from seeing dozens upon dozens (although it seems more like hundred upon hundreds if not thousands upon thousands...) of threads on this topic and its variations.

Personally, I have not a clue as to whom the "top 10 greatest drivers of all time" might be, nor do I waste much time pondering such things, in great part because I really do not care.

That there have been "great" drivers is, even I would suggest, a given, although such a superlative is often much abused by its being bantered about so readily by some, confusing "great" and "successful," which some would suggest are not the same at all, although some succeed at being both.

Some that might be considered as being "great" may not be necessarily very admirable, whereas some of those worthy of admiration might never be considered as "greats" even though they should be.

It never ceases to amaze me that someone still competing can be even considered as a superlative such as "great," given that it takes the passage of time to consider and then make such distinctions. Of course, that rarely bothers anyone given the very nature of these discussions in the first place.

Nor does "liking" someone automatically make him a nominee for greatness.

There is also a tendency to omit those beyond a Certain Time or in various modes of automotive sport, as well as there being a very marked trend to focus almost solely on one form of racing -- a redundent comment from above, but one worth repeating since it indicates the blinders that more often than not make such things even more irrelevant than they already are.

Just a few thoughts on the topic.

[zako85]

I don't know where he would fit in, but this list probably has to include somewhere Seb Loeb and who knows maybe a few other rally drivers, perhaps not all of WRC fame, but also from Dakar rally, hill climb, etc? Also Graham Hill could be worthy to be on the list, having won the triple crown of the motorsports.