Champions, But Not Greats

So, the question's not who is great but who isn't, and why.
Any more takers, and would any of those of you who didn't understand the question like another go?
 
Surely if the answer is deemed off-topic when someone disagrees that a driver isn't great and insist they are,it doesn't leave much room for answering the topic does it?
 
:dizzy:

Rosberg was off topic because the OP referred to Champions who have won the title but weren't considered greats.

As for the champions, I think the idea is to debate are they great or not.

Jim Clark yes, James Hunt sadly no. Etc etc.
 
The thread is about your opinion of the question, not your opinion of others' Incubus. The hope being that nobody falls out and we don't just get a very long thread about a particular driver, for which there will be a specific driver thread.
e.g.
Keke Rosberg

I hope that clarifies.
 
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Which champions aren't greats? I think 'great' is an over-used and much devalued term. I certainly wouldn't class any currently active driver as great.

So at the risk of upsetting gethinceri, my greats are Ascari, Fangio, Clark, Prost, Senna and Schumacher. Hence, all the others are merely very good champions.
 
teabagyokel said:
I think we can include, pretty uncontroversially, these drivers as greats:
Fangio, Clark, Stewart, Lauda, Piquet, Prost, Senna, Schumacher, Alonso, Vettel and Hamilton.

So, the rest:
Farina - No, short championship.
Ascari - Yes, dominant car but fought JMF in other years.
Hawthorn - No. Poor Moss.
Brabham - Dominant cars but yes since he built one of them.
P Hill - Course not.
G Hill - Triple crown, lifted Lotus in 1968. Yes.
Hulme - Narrow no.
Rindt - Yes. Competitive throughout career.
Fittipaldi - Yes.
Hunt - Icon but not a great.
Andretti - Yes.
Scheckter - Beat Gilles, competitive elsewhere, yes.
Jones - Not quite.
K Rosberg - Lucky... no.
Mansell - Yes, for all the guts and near-misses.
D Hill - No, didn't look great away from Williams.
Villeneuve - No, nearly mugged at Williams.
Hakkinen - Nearly threw it away in 1999. Narrow no.
Raikkonen - No, beat by Massa!
Button - Yes, because he's close enough to both Hamilton and Alonso.
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I agree for the most part with you teabagyokel except for Mansell. He needed an unbreakable superior car to be able to win the crown.
 
I don't think Piquet qualifies as a great champion in my opinion. Admittedly when I was watching him, I was a kid and a big Mansell fan but he just never seemed to have the magic of Prost or Senna. Being a multiple world champion doesn't make you automatically great.

In a similar vein I rather think Schumacher's greatness was more than a little tarnished by his dirty tactics, dangerous driving and poor second coming. I mean Rosberg was better than him for god sake.
 
Hunt - when you watch Rush if its a true depiction you just wonder what might have been if Hunt was more focused on racing like Lauda

He had the abilities but not the application to be a great due to his wild ways
 
Sadly, Ron Howard plays fast and loose with the truth in Rush so I wouldn't take that as your primary source for Hunt's racing career.
 
I agree totally with Galahad. (although I think that I would add Stewart to the list).

I have always thought that, to be considered great, a driver has to show the ability to excel in multiple forms of racing. Clark won the Indy 500. Graham Hill did likewise, plus winning Le Mans. Andretti had wins in F1, NASACAR, Indy cars and Le Mans racing cars.

None of today's drivers can match such versatility, in part because of the length of the F1 season, and partly because, unlike in days of yore, F1 drivers of today have followed a very tightly-constrained route to get there. To me, that not only results in limitations of the talents of the modern F1 driver, but also raises questions about just how valid the claim of them being "the best drivers in the world" is today. All that is unquestionable about today's F1 drivers is that they are the best of those that chose to follow the carefully prescribed sequence of F1-specific feeder series. How they rate against drivers in other disciplines is very much open to question IMO.
 
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Galahad said:
Which champions aren't greats? I think 'great' is an over-used and much devalued term. I certainly wouldn't class any currently active driver as great.

So at the risk of upsetting gethinceri, my greats are Ascari, Fangio, Clark, Prost, Senna and Schumacher. Hence, all the others are merely very good champions.
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Hard to disagree with this. I would add Stewart.

Of the currently racing drivers the only one I would consider adding would be Alonso. Vettel and Hammy are both very good drivers and are on the cusp, but maybe haven't done quite enough to get into the top of the pile. I'm thinking of years like Prost in '86 or Senna in '93. Alonso has consistently shown he is the best driver for the majority of his career.

Looking at other champions, I probably wouldn't add Lauda to the greatest list, my reason being he didn't drive very well when in an underperforming car. I am a bit conflicted over Schumacher because of the controversy surrounding many of his races and at least one of his titles. Also, he had a subservient #2 for his most dominant period. But the stats are too strong to ignore (and I don't mean the raw stats). Even though he had a dominant package for his Ferrari years, he still managed to outdrive the car.

I am also a little torn on Piquet. Yes, he had one of the worst personalities of all the champions, many of the statistics I have read are highly favorable to him. Perhaps he doesn't get the credit he deserves?
 
The best drivers drive not the best cars the best, but the worst cars the best.

The thing with Piquet is that he was never a driver to fear, but always seemed to luck into good results in the races. Take a look at 1987, he was blown away by Mansell at every race yet Mansell had the unreliability and 6 wins meant nothing.
 
cider_and_toast said:
Currently Nico does not fit the criteria of the topic under discussion as he is yet to win a title.
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Unlike his Dad, who was a Champion, a Great it's debatable, as I loved the way he raced when he had a car, he was great on his day, but all to often he never had the tools to do the job properly.
 
Prost the professor. He was more than happy to come second and get points, rather than race for first, he knew exactly what he was doing, but it wasn't very exciting.
Hunt liked the play boy image, so a bit of a prat.
Hakkenon, just dull. Likewise Raikkonen.

I'm sure some others will pop into my head.
 
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