I am No.1

[Mezzer]

I hear you, like I say, memory fades and can be discoloured by the fact that he didn't fade gracefully at the end.

 

[Slyboogy]

Mezzer

If he was not ordered to let Mika through he would have won 3 races to Mika's nil in 1997

He never got repaid for his gentleman agreement to let Mika pass in 1998 and he seemed to get the brunt of Mclaren's woes
and he felt he was being treated as No2 by Ron

I agree with that, he should have won two races for McLaren before Hakkinen did, I'm not saying Coulthard was a world beater, but he was already on the backfoot going into the 1998 season.

 

[Il_leone]

Mezzer Well DC's replacement Montoya fared worse..instead of making him a world beater he got shoved out of F1 altogether

 

[gethinceri]

Button and Hamilton.
I'm surprised it took 24 posts.

 

[teabagyokel]

gethinceri - Yeah, I'm surprised it took 24 posts as well, but I'm not sure - while they were not the best of friends - that they ever failed to work in the best interests of the team, nor really took a lot of points off each other in the manner of Mansell/Piquet or Hamilton/Alonso. It went just about as well as expected if you ignore much of the hyperbolic reaction to it.

 

[Incubus]

Lauda-Prost in 1984.

Equally surprised no-one mentioned it either.
Now that was one pairing that worked rather well, in spite of Niki's open dislike of Ron Dennis. And come to think of it, not all that dissimilar to Button-Hamilton.

 

[Il_leone]

gethinceri

I did consider Button / Hamilton - the intensity of their rivalry did not reach the height of Senna and Prost because they were not battling hard for the championship just amongst themselves but with other drivers and they were not really going head to head in 2010

in 2011 obviously things intensified and 2012 twitter gate was probably the end of Lewis and Mclaren. Unlike other situations of pairings you could not say it destroyed the team almost

Obviously a case for you can't have two No 1's

I don't know what has happened between Ron Dennis and Lewis Hamilton post 2008 but it seems to have gone the other way to the point where they never spoke to each other again

I do agree with teabagyokel view

 

[Il_leone]

Incubus
Lauda was bought back into F1 because Marlboro wanted a world champion driver after giving Ron De Cesaris who ended up being De Crasheris

1982 and 1983 Watson actually outperformed Lauda in both seasons but obviously Ron could not drop Niki because of Marlboro

The opportunity from Prost being available meant Ron could build a new dynasty at Mclaren and sure enough Prost excelled whilst Lauda looked slow by comparison and had to use his guile and craft to beat Prost.

It took its toll on Niki who realised he did not have it in him anywhere to race and he did tick off Ron with his motivation in 1985 soldiering around in races and not sure whether he really wanted to race