Legs
Podium Finisher
Seeing RasputinLives' thread about the underdog has reminded me of what I miss most about F1, and that's unreliability. I wouldn't want to see every race turned into a lottery, but F1 races don't keep me on the edge of my seat as they used to, and the reason is that the cars are too damned reliable.
I started watching F1 in 1989 (a year that was atypical in terms of having 47 or so drivers over the course of the year), but nonetheless, over the course of 16 races, with points down to 6th, 29 drivers scored points. Apart from the DNPQ no-hopers and the disastrously unlucky Ivan Capelli, every driver who put in a full season scored. And they were able to do so because of reliability issues afflicting the front-runners (check out how Gerhard Berger fared that season). There were routinely races with ten or less finishers, and ten different constructors achieved podiums (even last year, feted as being kerrrrazily mixed up, only saw 7 different cars on the rostrum). Then, there was always a realistic prospect that the cars in the top six weren't able to get to the chequered flag. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather have fantastic wheel-to-wheel racing than a slog-it-out reliability trial, but I yearn for those long ago days when there was a faint but realistic hope that the leader's engine might just turn into a cloud of smoke, allowing the underdog through for a surprise win from time to time... A little piece of my love for F1 dies whenever 20-odd cars finish a race...
I started watching F1 in 1989 (a year that was atypical in terms of having 47 or so drivers over the course of the year), but nonetheless, over the course of 16 races, with points down to 6th, 29 drivers scored points. Apart from the DNPQ no-hopers and the disastrously unlucky Ivan Capelli, every driver who put in a full season scored. And they were able to do so because of reliability issues afflicting the front-runners (check out how Gerhard Berger fared that season). There were routinely races with ten or less finishers, and ten different constructors achieved podiums (even last year, feted as being kerrrrazily mixed up, only saw 7 different cars on the rostrum). Then, there was always a realistic prospect that the cars in the top six weren't able to get to the chequered flag. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather have fantastic wheel-to-wheel racing than a slog-it-out reliability trial, but I yearn for those long ago days when there was a faint but realistic hope that the leader's engine might just turn into a cloud of smoke, allowing the underdog through for a surprise win from time to time... A little piece of my love for F1 dies whenever 20-odd cars finish a race...