Driver market Crazy season impending

[airshifter]

My impression of your level of understanding of the sport is not an insult, but an opinion. You can prove me wrong with a good argument to correct my opinion. Your argument here does not align with your previous statement which required all drivers to be in equal machinery to establish who is the greatest. If we go with your revised statement, only exceptional drivers will rise into competitive cars racing at the sharp end of the grid. Which incidentally was my argument. So by your revised statement, the greatest drivers are the drivers that dominate the sharp end of the grid consistently above any other before them.

My actual statement was this....

As for the whole GOAT thing, really the only thing we can compare is drivers in equal machinery. And often they shuffle enough that it's rare to see the very top drivers in equal machinery. Over time they might spend a season or two together, but usually it doesn't last long. And if you do compare the drivers on the same team, often the "greatest" suddenly is proven to be "greatest" only when teamed with lesser drivers. The ones that are really on top fare just as well when put up against the best at the same team.

Nowhere do I say all drivers must be in the same machinery, but I do say that it's the best comparison. Nobody has disagreed that usually the best drivers end up with chances in the best cars, as their talents make them more desired. And we all know that at times lesser drivers end up in better cars for various reasons, as well as drivers that probably wouldn't be on the grid by pure merit, yet they have enough money to influence team desicions.

I'll gladly stand by my comparison of the best in equal machinery. Even in lesser machinery it's well established that the first person you have to worry about beating in F1 is your teammate. And when compared in that manner, often the drivers are somehow much more equal, and the machinery part of the equation is brought more to the forefront.


Your statement of.....

Even among those with the best equipment, one individual always stands out and dominates his category. And he is respected and revered for his achievement.

..... might be true of those that don't consider the car part of the picture. But since we all know the car IS a great part of the picture I'm sure the team bosses and such do as well. If you disagree that the car plays such a big part, name one driver in recent history that "dominated his category" when faced with another driver of high caliber in the same car. It hasn't happened any time recently. Often they don't really even dominate the lesser drivers that they share cars with.

Lewis has teamed with Fernando and Jenson before moving to Merc. Which of the two did he dominate?

It is interesting that you think drivers do not plan their career paths carefully. In your view, they blindly move teams and hope for the best. Which is nonsense. The ability of drivers to move teams is dependent on their perceive worth which is based on the perceived or rated level of performance. Drivers rated highly would seek to join teams also rated highly [Verstapenn, Perez, Sainz etc]. Drivers with lower ratings would try to find the best possible seat available at the time they are on the market to move teams [Bottas, Albon etc]. But highly-rated drivers tend to cause a stir which usually causes a number of consequential moves resulting from their move [Vettel leaving for example].

And these drivers have an army of advisors and career planners to steer them to where they have a good chance of fighting for the championship. If we take the career of two Mclaren drivers in 2004, both capable of being multiple world champions and both are one of the fiercest drivers on the grid. One becomes seven times world champion, and the other stagnated at double world champion with an open knowledge that if their career paths were reversed, the double world champion may likely be a nine-time world champion today. This did not happen by chance but by calculated risk.

You are yet to convince me that you know what you are talking about.

"Calculated risk" is a best guess, based on a number of factors for any driver. From there it's the luck of the how the team performs, not just the driver. Alonso didn't lose any driving talent because he went to a lesser team, nor did Lewis gain driving talent by going to Merc. I've said upthread that many of them could have changed records based on the luck of their choices, and you are saying pretty much the same. Twisting words to try to make an argument does nothing for any real discussion, and obviously nobody has claimed that they take a blind stab in the dark. But just like the rest of us, they don't know who the top team will be next year on any regular basis. If they did, they could probably make all their fortunes in betting and not have to drive.

The difference as I see it is that I accept it's a roll of the dice for their choices when all is said and done. You seem to think that those choices are brilliance when they work, and poor decisions when they don't. But you make exceptions to when a driver you likes ends up in other than a top car.... suddenly then it's the teams fault. If any driver was brilliant enough to always have the answer, they would probably have a lot more titles than anyone on the grid currently does. That applies to all of them.


I know your logic is often skewed by your driver preferences, but if the drivers decisions are so calculated as you say, why would Hamilton suddenly be worth ten times what they pay him when by comparison his teammate and four other drivers apparently made much more brilliant decisions last here. Wouldn't it be more logical that those making better decisions would go up in value? I'm sure no logical discussion will convince you that anyone other than your opinion knows what they are talking about. So we'll all just assume that Ferrari is getting ready to offer Lewis the half a billion contract...