Hamilton got into that "winning" seat from the get go because of skill and not luck. When they show his laps side by side to the others you can clearly see he smoother and way more clever when it comes to choosing racing lines depending on the situation.
Michael's car maybe wasn't the best all the time but most of the time it was top 3 and a good couple of years it was the best car there. They also had more play room with strategy in the likes of refueling and never had DRS "to encourage overtaking".
Say what you want, but Hamilton is up there.
So who was/is the best of all time: Schumacher, Hamilton, Clark, Fangio, Senna (if you really think he belongs in the list in which case you have to add Alonso).
Impossible to tell.
Both drivers clearly got in to the sport through a combination of connections and ability - as most F1 drivers do - , one was just in a more fortunate position in terms of what their connections could offer.
Hamilton had a long-term relationship with Ron Dennis and McLaren going back to his youth, so he was fortunate in that Ron could give him a championship-winner (One of the McLaren drivers should've won in 2007) from the start. The last driver to be in that position was Jacques Villeneuve.
Mercedes was planning its F1 entrance but at the time didn't have a presence in the sport, so the best they could do was pay Jordan and then come to an agreement with Benetton to get Michael a seat. Had it not gone this way he'd have entered in 1993 with Sauber through their engine deal with Ilmor-Mercedes.
I also never said Hamilton was a bad driver, explicitly stating ''likely the greatest of his generation '' but not the best for me in the time (24-years) I have been watching the sport.
Talking about cars, Michael also drove cars that utilised heel-and-toe shifting, were nowhere near as stable/planted as modern cars and drove around tracks that punished the smallest of errors. Those slicked cars up until 1997 were twitchy as all hell due to rising engine power, removal of the electronic stability aids and aero reductions. Today you lock a wheel or run wide and there are acres of runoff and flat, forgiving kerbs. Throughout the 90s and in to the mid 00s a locked wheel or running wide meant thumping a kerb that would greatly unsettle or break the car or a trip in to the gravel trap.
In terms of ranking a top-10, its difficult comparing drivers from such diverse eras and rating drivers you never watched race, But if I had to;
1 - Fangio
2 - Clark (Fangio said Clark was the best)
3 - M. Schumacher
4 - Senna
5 - Prost
6 - Hakkinen (Michael said he was the best he ever raced against and the one that pushed him the hardest)
7 - Hamilton
8 - Alonso
9 - Vettel
10 - Mansell
Sign up with Google
mother %%*~¥~£~~£
