Best Ever F1 Driver

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (michaelm @ Jan 6 2008, 10:11 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><div class='quotemain'>I think it is hard to over-rate michael schumacher. He certainly did not have the fastest car for his 2 benetton world championships, although the benetton perhaps was still faster than it should have been . He absolutely destroyed martin brundle at benetton, probably explaining martin's antipathy towards him as a commentator. I also don't think the ferrari was necessarily always the fastest car particularly for his early world championships there. Like rossi, he was also a pure racer and tried to win every race or failing that to finish as high as possible, even at the expense of his overall championship chances on occasion, which has to be admired.

Even apart from his driving ability, still evident in his storming drive in his last race when he did the impossible and passed multiple cars on the track in a modern F1 race, he was also brilliant at building and inspiring a team and at developing a car. If you remember, the year that he broke his leg and eddie irvine could have and probably should have won the championship, eddie was right on the pace when michael got injured, gradually fell off the pace when he was not around, then got back on the pace when michael returned and started developing the car again. That said, ferrari appeared to me to have a weird attitude, in that they didn't seem to be very keen on winning the championship with irvine rather than schumacher; shades of hayden and pedrosa at honda, perhaps.

Yes, I am a schumacher fan-boy .

Have we forgot Adelaide 94 when he put Damon Hill up on two wheels to take the title... and 97 when he tried to ram Villeneuves side pod to take him out?

He lost my respect.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (an4rew @ Jan 6 2008, 11:02 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><div class='quotemain'>Have we forgot Adelaide 94 when he put Damon Hill up on two wheels to take the title... and 97 when he tried to ram Villeneuves side pod to take him out?

He lost my respect.
Do you respect Rossi? Have you forgotten a certain race in Spain with a guy named Sete? Double standard?

Gilles Villeneuve.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (an4rew @ Jan 6 2008, 08:02 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><div class='quotemain'>Have we forgot Adelaide 94 when he put Damon Hill up on two wheels to take the title... and 97 when he tried to ram Villeneuves side pod to take him out?

He lost my respect.


<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Jumkie @ Jan 6 2008, 08:34 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><div class='quotemain'>Do you respect Rossi? Have you forgotten a certain race in Spain with a guy named Sete? Double standard?
+1

I hear this all the time, people talk about the 94 Adelaide incident, Jerez 97 and even Monaco 06. Schumacher did some controversial stuff for sure, he's still one of the best ever, and still NOT overrated imo. WITH or WITHOUT the adelaide incident, he WAS the best that season, and he WAS the deserved winner. Hill was, overall, just not good enough. Period.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (an4rew @ Jan 6 2008, 07:02 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><div class='quotemain'>Have we forgot Adelaide 94 when he put Damon Hill up on two wheels to take the title... and 97 when he tried to ram Villeneuves side pod to take him out?

He lost my respect.
Schumacher was a tough hard win-at-all costs ........ He was bloody good, but not always sporting. His actions on some occasions are difficult to defend.

However, I do see some parallels, although not exact with rossi in that he was held to standards of behaviour not applied to other people. There were similar incidents with senna and proust, and one of the reasons apart from his genius that senna was so good at passing was that he often only gave the other driver 2 choices, to let him by or crash. I recall one season when schumacher was involved in 2 fairly identical racing incidents, one where he was behind and one where he was in front both of which were claimed to be his fault.

If you get the same coverage we do with martin brundle as the chief commentator, it is fairly obvious that martin has an intense personal animosity towards schumacher which I believe coloured his commentary significantly. I saw a long interview with brundle a few years ago where he admitted that schumacher basically finished him as a top-flight driver by being so much faster than him at benetton. I have to say brundle did impress me once though, when he had the monumental crash in melbourne which occurred right in front of where I was sitting after which he ran straight back to the pits and got in the spare car for the re-start.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (michaelm @ Jan 6 2008, 11:18 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><div class='quotemain'>Schumacher was a tough hard win-at-all costs ........ He was bloody good, but not always sporting. His actions on some occasions are difficult to defend.

However, I do see some parallels, although not exact with rossi in that he was held to standards of behaviour not applied to other people. There were similar incidents with senna and proust, and one of the reasons apart from his genius that senna was so good at passing was that he often only gave the other driver 2 choices, to let him by or crash.

Senna was a maniac i still feel sorry for his title loss to Prost in Japan.

I like a racer who takes risks and he was side by side with Prost and had the line for the next corner but somehow Prost didn't see him.
whether Senna would have overran the corner or not is debatable but that just finished it

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Jumkie @ Jan 6 2008, 07:34 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><div class='quotemain'>Do you respect Rossi? Have you forgotten a certain race in Spain with a guy named Sete? Double standard?

I thought this was F1 forum?

The race your referring too was a racing incident... Rossi was at least half a bike length up and bikes are tricky with the different lines they take to one another.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (an4rew @ Jan 6 2008, 04:00 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><div class='quotemain'>I thought this was F1 forum?

The race your referring too was a racing incident... Rossi was at least half a bike length up and bikes are tricky with the different lines they take to one another.
Actually, its a MotoGP "forum" on a F1 thread.

Anyway, I think I got my answer: Double standard.