quovadis
Honorary Master
Agree to disagree.
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F1 2025
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quovadis
Honorary Master
satanboy
Psychonaut seven
satanboy
Psychonaut seven
Sorry, fixed it.
Mike Hoxbig
Honorary Master
You mean the first two races. Kimi missed out with it being his third race. Are we making up things now to turn him into a prodigy...The last three drivers to make the fast lap in their first three races have become world champions
View attachment 1810896
satanboy
Psychonaut seven
He is not one of the three.You mean the first two races. Kimi missed out with it being his third race. Are we making up things now to turn him into a prodigy...
Mike Hoxbig
Honorary Master
Exactly, the others did it in their first two races. Adding him forces you to make it first three...
satanboy
Psychonaut seven
Well, he isn't world champion yet.
imaskidaddle
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2025 F1 Japanese Grand Prix Driver Ratings
The first perfect 10 of the season has been awarded in RacingNews365's Japanese Grand Prix driver ratings!
racingnews365.com
2025 F1 Japanese Grand Prix driver ratings
Driver | Team | Rating | Season average |
|---|---|---|---|
Max Verstappen | Red Bull | 10 | 9 |
Kimi Antonelli | Mercedes | 9 | 8.1 |
Isack Hadjar | Racing Bulls | 8.5 | 6.6 |
Alex Albon | Williams | 8 | 8.6 |
Ollie Bearman | Haas | 8 | 6.8 |
Lando Norris | McLaren | 7.5 | 8.1 |
George Russell | Mercedes | 7 | 8.1 |
Oscar Piastri | McLaren | 7 | 7.8 |
Charles Leclerc | Ferrari | 7 | 6.8 |
Lewis Hamilton | Ferrari | 6 | 6.8 |
Fernando Alonso | Aston Martin | 6 | 5 |
Nico Hulkenberg | Stake | 5.5 | 5.6 |
Yuki Tsunoda | Red Bull | 5 | 6.5 |
Pierre Gasly | Alpine | 5 | 5.1 |
Liam Lawson | Racing Bulls | 5 | 3.1 |
Jack Doohan | Alpine | 5 | 4 |
Carlos Sainz | Williams | 4.5 | 4.5 |
Gabriel Bortoleto | Stake | 4 | 5 |
Esteban Ocon | Haas | 4 | 6.1 |
Lance Stroll | Aston Martin | 3.5 | 5.5 |
thestaggy
Honorary Master
Steady there. He is one of the greats, but there have been many cases where a driver has done something special.
Fangio at the Nurburgring (in its original 'Green Hell' configuration) in 1957 is likely still the benchmark for ''greatest ever drive''. He lost the lead after a botched pit stop, coming out in 3rd place and 51-seconds behind the leader. With only 10 laps to go, he overturned that deficit and retook the lead on the penultimate lap, setting lap times faster than in qualifying. In his hunt for the win, he had broken and reset the lap record 9 times, including a stretch where he set a new lap record for 7 successive laps.
Thanks for that. What a feat.
Fangio was amazing.
while his skill was unmatched at the time, you have to wonder how that would translate in modern times.
it is possible that his skill ceiling became the minimum skill needed to get a seat even as a pay driver.
but at the same time it is also possible that his skill ceiling was so much higher than everyone else we have ever seen, that if you put him in a modern car, he would set even greater records. we will never ever know.
same with Sena/Prost. manual gearboxes, letting go of the steering wheel to change gears while in a corner, how would those drivers perform in the modern car?
how would the modern drivers compare in the old cars is something we can measure, but what would be the point?
put Lewis, Max, Alonso, Charles,George, Lando, Oscar all in the 1989 Mclaren and have them race Silverstone as a show race and see how those times compare to what was done at that time....
1989 Mclaren because it is arguably the greatest F1 car ever. and the other options for the greatest car ever did not have manual gearboxes.....
while his skill was unmatched at the time, you have to wonder how that would translate in modern times.
it is possible that his skill ceiling became the minimum skill needed to get a seat even as a pay driver.
but at the same time it is also possible that his skill ceiling was so much higher than everyone else we have ever seen, that if you put him in a modern car, he would set even greater records. we will never ever know.
same with Sena/Prost. manual gearboxes, letting go of the steering wheel to change gears while in a corner, how would those drivers perform in the modern car?
how would the modern drivers compare in the old cars is something we can measure, but what would be the point?
put Lewis, Max, Alonso, Charles,George, Lando, Oscar all in the 1989 Mclaren and have them race Silverstone as a show race and see how those times compare to what was done at that time....
1989 Mclaren because it is arguably the greatest F1 car ever. and the other options for the greatest car ever did not have manual gearboxes.....
Mike Hoxbig
Honorary Master
I enjoyed reading that, now I need to go look for a video...
thestaggy
Honorary Master
Jean Claude Vaaldamme
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I'm not talking about what he did in this race. He had much better races before.
I am talking that he has probably the 4th fastest car on the grid and he keeps getting wins and podiums consistently since middle last year.
If he was in the Merc or maybe even Ferrari, he would win the championship this year. If he was in the Mclaren it would be 2023 all over again
He is driving brilliantly. He would never win the championship in a Ferrari, the car just isn't quick enough right now. But he is doing a fantastic job in his jaloppie.
I think the RB actually has really good pace this year, I think it's fast. Just in an extremely tight window so when he is able to get it there, he does really well and when he isn't, he's finishing a little lower.
thestaggy
Honorary Master
That is the age-old dilemma when comparing athletes in any sport across different eras.
Developments in science and technology certainly change things. Certain skills needed in order to be successful fall away while new ones emerge as well.
In F1 specifically, the best drivers in the early years tended to come from engineering and mechanical backgrounds. Fangio specifically was working as a mechanic's apprentice at the age of 13, and by the age of 16 was the ride-on mechanic for racing drivers (in those days there was both a driver and mechanic). Prior to the emergence of aerodynamics and the rise of electronics (~70s), technical knowledge and understanding of how a car worked was of great benefit to a driver. It also explains why the better drivers of this period (30s through 60s) tended to be older, more experienced drivers. They understood what made a car work from a mechanical side. No computers, no magic tyres, no Ron Dennis working magic with aerodynamics. Bruce McLaren and Jack Brabham coming from mechanical backgrounds and going on to be successful racing drivers turned car builders/team owners is no coincidence.
Nowadays however, it is more akin to fiddling with a computer while you drive, an entirely different concept to what Fangio would have been familiar with. You can legitimately let someone spend years ''playing'' on a simulator like iRacing and they would be able to climb into a racing car and do reasonably well, while having next to no technical understanding of how a car actually works.
I also think safety plays a part here as well. Drivers from yesteryear knew acutely well that every time they climbed into their car it could be the last time, and this weighed heavily on them when it came to risks taken and how fast they drove (Lauda lost the '76 title to James Hunt because he retired from the last race of the season, citing unsafe conditions). Jackie Stewart recounted that after winning the '68 German GP in torrential rain, the first thing he asked Ken Tyrrell was who had died, because there was no way someone didn't crash in those conditions and the track was known to be deadly. Modern drivers still take risks, but the levels of safety (car and track) are not even comparable. Taking Copse, Eau Rouge or 130R flatout now vs even 20-years ago is not as risky.
All the above aside, my take is -
- Max Verstappen beats Fangio if they are both driving an RB19 around a modern parking lot track.
- Put Max in a Fangio's 250F and unleash the two around the original Nurburgring and Fangio wipes the floor with him.
Small thing, but I think you are referring to the 1988 McLaren, the MP4/4. That's the one that won 15/16 races.
correct. my bad. no idea why I said the 89 one, I know it was the 88 one.
both years they had Prost and Sena
Jean Claude Vaaldamme
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Follow the money.
Decades ago sport was done mostly as a sideline. Springbok rugby players still had normal jobs. You obviously needed some talent, but many that did have great talent did not pursuit a sport career because it was not paying well.
Today the big sports can not only be a job, some sport can make you extremely rich. So only the best of the best will participate mostly. Yes you can have a Stroll, but he will never be a champion.
Being a F1 champion today, really means you are the best in the world. Competition is on another level to get a F1 seat and even more so to get a seat in a top car. Money cant buy you the fastest car.
thestaggy
Honorary Master
I was touching on driver skills and ability over the decades, not money.
But to address the monetary aspect; motor racing has always been a rich man's sport. In the pre-war Grand Prix era and early years of F1 you had wealthy ''gentleman drivers'' alongside your factory teams. So you either bought your way into the sport or one of the big teams saw potential. Then emerged the privateers of the late 50s and 60s, Lotus, Cooper, Brabham, McLaren, etc and teams had to seriously start paying for talent as the factory teams (Ferrari, Maserati, Mercedes, Alfa, etc) now had competition.
Stirling Moss claimed to have earned £8,000 across 1960 and at the time he was one of the highest paid drivers in Europe. Adjusted for inflation, that would be the equivalent of £158,000. The median salary in 2024 for postgraduates in the UK was £45,000. While not comparable to what F1 drivers earn today, Moss would be living quite comfortably in 2025.
For his final season in F1, Jackie Stewart earned an estimated $600,000 as the highest paid driver in the world. Adjusted for inflation, that would be $4.3 million in 2025. Still not a bad sum of money.
What changed in F1 was Bernie Ecclestone. Up until he challenged the status quo, the race hosts/organisers monopolised the money and then only paid the teams and drivers a fraction of what they made in starting fees and prize money. Eccelstone put the bargaining power in the hands of the teams as a collective and opened the taps.
Then of course you had the emergence of sponsors and endorsements in the late 60s/70s, Jackie Stewart being the first driver to really take advantage of paid endorsements/personal sponsorship.
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