Are the F1 drivers today at a higher level than in Senna/ Prost era?
Posted on August 19, 2012
Darren Heath
In response to the debate weΆve been having this week about the “pagelle” or marks out of ten for drivers so far this season, one of our regular readers, Martin Leaver, has put forward an interesting position.
He argues that with the cars so close together on performance in modern F1 and fine details of tyre use sufficient to take the edge off a performance, the drivers are actually more highly skilled than in the golden age of drivers in the late 1908s and early 1990s – the Senna/Prost/Mansell/Piquet era.
Martin writes:
” Personally, I think the standard is higher now than in Piquet-Prost-Senna-Mansell era. As the cars are much closer in performance and passing is more difficult I believe the standards are greater. While SennasΆ qualifying record is impressive compared to drivers since, the outcome was much less important. The refueling era and the high reliability gave an era where the drivers had to be at maximum concetration for the entire race, rather than conserving resources.
The current cars have too much grip relative to their power, but the error rate is much reduced from SennaΆs time. I remember working out that Senna had significant off-track moment/spin, car contact or crash in more than a quarter of his races.
“Based on that, you wouldnΆt be surprised to read that I rate Alonso ahead of Senna. I think the current level of the sport has pushed the current drivers to be the best weΆve ever seen – they need to be more skilled.
I believe the guys at the top now would have coped with the power: grip of the 1980s turbos and pretty much everything else is at a greater level except the gear changing.”
What do you think? Leave your comments in the section below?
Meanwhile the leading German motorsport title Auto Motor und Sport has issued its ratings today and below a table of how it sees the performance of the drivers. It should be stated that this is not a one off exercise, but the average of each driverΆs score from the F1 races so far.
Compare it to the JA on F1 ratings and the Gazzetta dello Sport ratings
Not surprisingly Michael Schumacher comes out a little better than in other ratings, as does Sebastian Vettel. Interestingly they place Pastor Maldonado close to the bottom of the pile.
Fernando Alonso: 9.09
Sebastian Vettel: 7.64
Lewis Hamilton: 7.55
Kimi Räikkönen: 7.27
Mark Webber: 7.00
Michael Schumacher: 6.73
Nico Hülkenberg: 6.73
Sergio Perez: 6.64
Nico Rosberg: 6.27
Paul di Resta: 6.09
Kamui Kobayashi: 5.91
Jenson Button: 5.73
Romain Grosjean: 5.64
Heikki Kovalainen: 5.55
Vitaly Petrov: 5.27
Daniel Ricciardo: 5.18
Felipe Massa: 5.18
Bruno Senna: 5.18
Timo Glock: 5.00
Pedro de la Rosa: 5.00
Jean-Eric Vergne: 4.91
Charles Pic: 4.55
Pastor Maldonado: 4.45
Narain Karthikeyan: 3.00