I remember seeing that live and thought there would be multiple fatalities but IIRC, the only injury was something like one of the drivers badly bruised his knees when he whacked them on the front edge of the cockpit while getting out. Wasn't that also the same race where Coulthard lifted and Schumacher rear ended him, followed by a bust up in the pits, because of course, Michael would never ever have deliberately caused an accident in order to gain advantage....(chinny reckon).
So as Hamilton has tested positive for Covid. We can see if his replacement can win, after all it is the best car isn’t it !-)
come on now Roy Not a chance. Not unless the car and the new driver are singing off the same hymn sheet and has had lots and lots of relevant seat time. Which they won’t have.
But but but but... most of his knockers state that anyone could win in his car! So are we not going to see Vandoorne, Gutierrez or Russell take his place and romp to victory??
If the replacement were Russell it would be interesting to see what he would do with a vastly better car. Joking aside there is something in the car advantage though... Bottas is not close to Verstappen, yet he is second in the driver standings. Likewise Leclerc who is languishing in sixth behind drivers who would not typically beat him in equal machinery.
Yeah ofcourse there is. I would wager that if you stuck every driver on the grid in a Toyota Yaris the results would look different. If you stuck them all in a formula ford without budget to change anything the result would be different. When you get to a point as a driver or rider, it no longer matters how good you are, the set up and development of your machine is the remaining time. There's a lot more time in that than the driver usually at a certain point. The days of mega talents driving shit boxes and winning at decent level is LONG gone. Last year I was at silverstone and was up a LeMan's winners ass in a road car on track. Set up. development. MONEY. With a sprinkling of great minds and feedback. I remember watching an interview with Schumacher where he repeated numerous times 'it's the car'. The driver isn't the key thing. And that was V10 era, which were a little harder to drive than the Hybrids of today but I am told by the guys I know who've driven them that they were still pretty easy once you got past the anti stall issues and pulling away at 13000 revs
To me they are very close, Bottas though has one less nil points race. Just a case of getting every point that’s available. I still don’t wholly wear the argument that the merc is the better car. Very often it’s not the fastest car out there, it’s just a good all round car that is built to exactly the same rulebook as every other car out there. Mix that with the talent of the best driver and the rest are history.
Yet Schuey won in a Benetton which certainly wasn’t the best car or the fastest at the time, then went to Ferrari when that car was shockingly underperforming year after year & turned it into a WC winning car. It’s not all the car, it never has been, just eventually the best drivers usually end up in the best car so the argument never goes away.
When Schumacher won in 1994 it was in a car that "may" have used banned traction control. His team mate Jos Verstappen is on record as saying Schumacher had the use of traction control. Ayrton Senna also said the same. That Schumacher was certainly prepared to cheat that year was later shown by his ramming Damon Hill off the track to win the title.
Yeah sure Jez, agree with all that, but the point I’m making is that he didn’t simply win because he had the best car, even then the Williams & the McLaren were better cars & the Renault was faster. He won because he was Michael Schumacher. A point he proved later on with Ferrari.
As Jez says, it's worth carefully considering all the ingredients here (my opinion only) but rather than enter the "he said, she said/my dad's better than yours" arena, i'll just say that I know that the fast emerging Ross Brawn team of the day could add some accuracy at this point.
Where have you found the evidence of that? I'm particularly interested when Senna is meant to have said that about Schumachers 1994 season as he passed away on the 1st of May that year.
Is that a nice way of saying that in 1994 Schumacher won the WDC partly due to his propensity to cheat, which was far greater than others? LOL!
That was definitely an element of the Schumacher “thing” A kind person would call it gamesmanship although shunting Hill off the track went a tad beyond that!
This quote is one source: “Senna himself was convinced that there was something different about Schumacher’s car,” former Williams team manager Ian Harrison told Autosport in 2014. “Whether there was or not I don’t know, but Senna was utterly sure there was.” The above together with: "Willem Toet, the Head of Aerodynamics for Benetton in 1994, believes it was Schumacher's technique that Senna initially mistook for illegal traction control during the Pacific Grand Prix." Two separate sources combined suggest that did believe Senna that illegal traction control was being used, Of course it does not confirm that Senna was correct.
That is never going to happen. Sitting in Hamilton’s seat is a poisoned chalice. If the poor sod who gets the drive ends up halfway down the field, it is because Hamilton is so good, if the poor sod wins, then people will say “I told you it’s the car”!
