Heartbreak for Schumi

[Powderkeg]

While I appreciate Schumi's talent, I am glad he's retiring. For me, the years from 2000 up to and including 2004 were some of the darkest years for F1. Ferrari's dominance made the sport very boring to follow.

Ummm, how is that any different from McLaren/Honda's dominance in the late 80's and early 90's, or Williams dominance in the late 90's?

Sorry, but that's just Formula 1. It's almost never a good race, or a competative season because the rules are such that one team can become clearly dominate. I often joke about F1 rules not permitting passing on track, but it's only a half-joke. Fact is, on-track passing among the lead cars is very rare in F1, and having 2 teams fighting for 1st place without reliability issues being involved is almost unheard of in F1.

 

[Powderkeg]

There is no doubt though that if you look back at the last decade, no other team has had so many years where they have had the consistently reliable and fastest car and driver.

Obviously if Ferrari were dominate the past decade no other car would be as dominate as they were.

But look here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Formula_One_World_Drivers'_Champions

Look at 1984-1991

In fact, if you go from 1980 to 1999, you'll find that Williams or McLaren won the championship 16 times out of a 20 years span.

You must be young if you think that one team dominating F1 is anything new. The only thing new is it's Ferrari, and not Williams or McLaren that is dominating.

 

[Powderkeg]

There is no doubt though that if you look back at the last decade, no other team has had so many years where they have had the consistently reliable and fastest car and driver.

Obviously if Ferrari were dominate the past decade no other car would be as dominate as they were.

But look here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Formula_One_World_Drivers'_Champions

Look at 1984-1991




In fact, if you go from 1980 to 1999, you'll find that either Williams or McLaren won 16 times out of a 20 years span.

You must be young if you think that one team dominating F1 is anything new. The only thing new is it's Ferrari, and not Williams or McLaren that is dominating.

 

[slider]

While I appreciate Schumi's talent, I am glad he's retiring. For me, the years from 2000 up to and including 2004 were some of the darkest years for F1. Ferrari's dominance made the sport very boring to follow.

I feel a little bit sorry for the dude. Mainly cos of the dislike of him, (esp in the UK). Here there was a lot of dislike for him. But I admired his single-minded dominance of the sport. I guess it was the same feeling I got when watching Pete Sampras cruising through early rounds (and inevitably winning the final) or Tiger Woods' early career (I don't know a great deal about Golf...).

In addition he had that comical bad guy thing going on (ask Damon Hill!).

The pursuit of perfection is to be admired isn't it!?

 

[Bludd]

But this is one driver in a single team.

 

[slider]

Good point. Nature of the beast I guess. The closest to kudos the rest of the team gets would be the Constructors Championship (or whatever it's called).

Mind you, I regularly read of Schumacher focusing the the team. Dunno if we can really get a measure of that. Hmm.

 

[Bludd]

I was mostly replying to powderkeg, but I agree with you, slider. Schumi's been known as being very hard working and team-oriented.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Hakkinen was never the driver that Schumacher was and is. He gave a good chase when he had the better car. Yes, it had reliability problems, but when it ran it was unquestionably better than the Ferrari.

Well you say that, but I don't buy it!, don't get me wrong I have the utmost respect for Michael, I don't even care about his "dark side" he's exceptional driver period, but so was Hakkinen and Alonso is and many others. Schumachers fantastic career is a sum of many things and the driving skill is just one of many. Nobody else has such a strong nr. 1 position in his team as Schumacher has, everything is always done for Schumacher, and that really helps when 1/1000 of a second can make a difference.

Also FIA wanted Ferrari to succeed when Ferrari was struggling, call me paranoid, but I'm telling you there were decisions made that helped Ferrari to rise on top.

Hakkinens fight against schumacher was more than just a good chase, he won the championship two times in row against schumacher, and it's easy to say that he had a better car, maybe it was a bit faster overall, but certainly not on every track and there were things favouring Schumacher as well for example him being the nr1 driver at Ferrari. At Mclaren you only got your team mates help when you had earned it and thus made matematically inpossible for the other driver to beat you. Schumi got an advantage because of this, it's a fact and it made a difference.

I wouldn't put either of them in the same class as Schumi. If you had put either one in the Ferrari at the start of this season then neither one would have had a chance to win the championship.

Alonso is only where he is at now because the Renault was so dominant at the first half of the year and Ferrari had so many troubles. It certainly wasn't his great driving that put him there. Raikkonen simply makes far too many mistakes. Qualifying seems to be a major problem for him, and he makes some bone-headed decisions in traffic, such as his running into the back of the RST when overtaking it on an otherwise empty track.

Raikkonen will probably win the championship next year, but that will be because there won't be another top driver in a top car to compete against him, not because Kimi is worth a crap.

I'm 100% sure that if Alonso would have driven Ferrari and Schumacher drove somewhere else besides Renault, that Alonso would have cruised to victory easily. There would have had to be a first class driver at Renault to stop Ferraris nr.1 driver to win the championship. In my book the first class drivers are Schumi, Alonso, and Kimi, those are the guys that can make it happen and that's why they are driving in the best teams getting most amount of money and being nr. 1 in their team, (off course Schumi has the clearest nr 1 position)

Ok Kimi has made some mistakes, but he doesn't make them often anymore. The 2004 season was interesting when Kimi almost won the championship against Schumi eventhough the car was really slow compared to Schumis Ferrari. I think Kimi is easily as fast as Schumi is right now, it remains to be seen whether he can capture the Ferrari team to the degree Schumi did, if he can then the results will be great. With or without competition, like I said he only needs competitive car that doesn't brake and the rest is DONE!

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

In fact, if you go from 1980 to 1999, you'll find that either Williams or McLaren won 16 times out of a 20 years span.

You must be young if you think that one team dominating F1 is anything new. The only thing new is it's Ferrari, and not Williams or McLaren that is dominating.

That's a very superficial analysis. Just look at the number of wins Schumacher had in those championship years. Very few other drivers ever managed to come close to that number of wins in a season, and Shumacher's managed it several times. If you look at those other drivers, at best they managed to win half the races in a year. That's almost Shumacher's average, and he's done better than that.

When one driver and one team is winning 11/13 races out of a 15-18 calendar (depending on the year), then that is really dominating, and that's why there was all this panicked rule-changing when everyone was saying F1 was too boring because of Shumacher and Ferrari. It wasn't because Ferrari seemed to be dominating and equalling past teams like Maclaren and Williams, it was because they were actually dominating, and doing better on a race by race performance across the whole year. You would see Shumacher come across the line 30-60 seconds ahead of second place, after slowing down in the last few laps.

Look at the numbers since 1980. These are the number of wins the world champion got while driving that team's car to the world championship:

Maclaren Championship race wins: 5, 5, 4, 8 (Senna),4, 6, 7, 8 (Hakkenen), 5.

Williams Championship race wins: 5, 1, 3, 9 (Mansell), 7, 8 (Hill), 7

Benneton/Renault: 8 (Shumacher), 9 (Shumacher), 7

Ferrari: 9, 9, 11, 6, 13 (All Schumacher).

You suggest looking at the last 20 years to see that other teams and drivers have dominated F1 in the same way as Schumacher/Ferrari. I contend that those stats show the exact opposite: Schumacher/Ferrari have dominated more.


BTW, I'm not that old, but I do remember watching the cars go round with turbos, ground effect skirts and (later) active suspension before they were all banned.

 

[_xxx_]

But don't forget that there were much less races in a season a few years ago.

 

[Powderkeg]

That's a very superficial analysis. Just look at the number of wins Schumacher had in those championship years.

Go check out who came in 2nd to those championship drivers. It's almost always their teammate, driving the same car. This is especially true with McLaren who had both Senna and Prost on the same team. Same with the Williams. They normally finished together, positions 1 and 2.

Remember, I wasn't talking about the dominate driver, I was talking about the dominate team.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

But don't forget that there were much less races in a season a few years ago.

I think that's a bit of a red herring. In 1981, they went up to 15 races. Last year was the busiest year with 19 races. You would have thought that would have given other drivers a chance to make an impact, but instead it just gave more opportunities for Ferrari to excel.

It's quite interesting to also look at the points margin too.

I think that 20 years ago, there were four or five teams that could win races regularly. Now it's down to two, and that's where the dullnes comes in. The top couple of teams have just stretched away from the rest of the field, whereas in the 80's/90's the racing was much closer.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Go check out who came in 2nd to those championship drivers. It's almost always their teammate, driving the same car. This is especially true with McLaren who had both Senna and Prost on the same team. Same with the Williams. They normally finished together, positions 1 and 2.

Remember, I wasn't talking about the dominate driver, I was talking about the dominate team.

I did check and that only happened four times in the last 16 years. The two last times in the last decade were both Ferrari dominated championships where they came first and second. It's certainly not going to happen again this year, so that makes it four times out of 17 years.

To say "almost always" is incorrect. There's usually one dominant driver in any team. It's very rare that two drivers are equally matched, equally able to drive the same car to it's fullest, or equally lucky in a race.

For a long time people used to say that Schumacher was worth an extra half second to any car, and more in the rain. That's why Ferrari paid him so much money, built a team around him, and then won so many championships with him.

 

[Powderkeg]

I think that's a bit of a red herring. In 1981, they went up to 15 races. Last year was the busiest year with 19 races. You would have thought that would have given other drivers a chance to make an impact, but instead it just gave more opportunities for Ferrari to excel.

It's quite interesting to also look at the points margin too.

I think that 20 years ago, there were four or five teams that could win races regularly. Now it's down to two, and that's where the dullnes comes in. The top couple of teams have just stretched away from the rest of the field, whereas in the 80's/90's the racing was much closer.

20 years ago there were 2 teams that could win races. McLaren and Williams. That was it, almost every race was one by one of those 2 teams, usually McLaren.

For example, in 1988 McLaren won 15 of the 16 races, and led all but 27 laps for the entire season. The only reason they didn't win all 16 races was because Senna ran into the back of another car when trying to lap him. Even Ferrari never dominated like that. 1988-1991 McLaren won both the drivers championship and the constructors championship every year, as they did in 84 and 85.

91-97 Williams won the drivers championship 4 times, and constructors title 5 times.

And McLaren did that with 3 different drivers behind the wheel. Williams did it with 4 different drivers. Take Schumi away from Ferrari and they wouldn't have done it once. Ferrari's dominance was due to the driver, not the car, and if you doubt that ask yourself where the #2 driver for Ferrari usually finished.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Go check out who came in 2nd to those championship drivers. It's almost always their teammate, driving the same car. This is especially true with McLaren who had both Senna and Prost on the same team. Same with the Williams. They normally finished together, positions 1 and 2.

Remember, I wasn't talking about the dominate driver, I was talking about the dominate team.

So here you're saying it's down to the team and car, but I've proved that wrong.

Take Schumi away from Ferrari and they wouldn't have done it once. Ferrari's dominance was due to the driver, not the car, and if you doubt that ask yourself where the #2 driver for Ferrari usually finished.

Now you're saying it's nothing to do with the car, it's all down to the driver.

Make your mind up!

 

[Deepak]

All over for Shcumi

So, one of the greatest careers comes to an end.

 

[Bludd]

He drove impressively today, but I must say that Alonso is a deserving champion. Very cool to see Massa win his home GP, first brazilian to win in Brazil since Senna.

 

[Powderkeg]

So here you're saying it's down to the team and car, but I've proved that wrong.

No, what I said was other teams have had similar streaks of domination to Ferrari, and you've proven that right.

All you are trying to do is support the false claim that no one had done it before. No single driver had done it before, but as far as team performance goes, a single teams complete domination is nothing new to F1. There have been 2 other teams with similar records of domination as Ferrari.

Now you're saying it's nothing to do with the car, it's all down to the driver.

Make your mind up!

In Ferrari's case, it's mostly the driver. With Williams and McLaren is was mostly the car.

Is that really such a difficult concept for you to understand?

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

No, what I said was other teams have had similar streaks of domination to Ferrari, and you've proven that right.

All you are trying to do is support the false claim that no one had done it before. No single driver had done it before, but as far as team performance goes, a single teams complete domination is nothing new to F1. There have been 2 other teams with similar records of domination as Ferrari.


In Ferrari's case, it's mostly the driver. With Williams and McLaren is was mostly the car.

Is that really such a difficult concept for you to understand?

No, I showed you that if you looked at the stats you quoted, you were claiming "domination" when Maclaren or Williams won 5-8 races a year. I showed that the same stats showed a significant difference with Ferrari winning 8-13 races a year. Big, big difference in the degree of winning, even taking into account the number of races a year.

And of course you were completely wrong about the same team "mostly" getting first and second place in championships.

Is that really such a difficult concept for you to understand? Seems so...

 

[Powderkeg]

No, I showed you that if you looked at the stats you quoted, you were claiming "domination" when Maclaren or Williams won 5-8 races a year.

No, you didn't.

You showed how many races the Drivers Champion won during the season, not the team. HUGE difference.


You should have already been aware of that since I was very clear about McLaren winning 14 of the 15 races in 1988, leading all but 27 laps for the entire season, and you only listed Senna's number of wins that season, ignoring his teammate.

All you did was look at the chart on the link I posted and wrote down the number of wins. I guess you didn't notice that the link was to DRIVERS Championships, not constructors.

Here, try pulling your numbers from this chart instead:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Formula_One_World_Constructors'_Champions

1984 - present

Williams = 9, 9, 10, 10, 7, 12, 8
McLaren = 12, 6, 15, 10, 6, 8, 9
Ferrari = 6, 10, 9, 15, 8, 15

Doesn't seem so lopsided now, does it? Espcially with Ferrari having 1 less Constructors Championship than either Williams or McLaren.

Like I said, McLaren and Williams doninated as a TEAM. Ferrari was dominate because of 1 man, and 1 man alone. But Ferrari's level of domination has been the status quo for F1 for over 20 years. Totally normal.