Juan Manuel Fangio - Best (opinion)

Discussion in 'Off-Topic' started by mantasisg, Dec 25, 2020.

  1. mantasisg

    mantasisg Registered

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    There are many discussions of who is the best F1 driver ever. In my opinion all these discussions are pretty vain, especially as it gets more dificult to compare drivers the more time is separating them. The cars, tracks and whole organisation today is nothing like it was 50-70years ago. Old race cars used to require drivers to have more technological empathy, tires required more artistic skill to handle, but allowed balance on wider thershold between staying on road and leaving car in ditch and walking back to the pits on foot (if lucky). New race cars and whole organisation allows drivers to think about anything less than just going fast as much as possible and they go a lot faster than they used to, tires require less artistic skill and mastery, but a lot more sharp reflexes and ability to balance on thin line. Drivers may still have to walk back to pits on foot, but there will be no ditches to trap the car. Tracks safety is extremely high, but yet murphys law frequently is proven. In the past drivers could have just been themselves, but now they must carefuly think all their actions and words because of political corectness and huge ties with financial functioning and images of brands. Also back in the days the F1 was motorsport, now it is much more of a show, with racing itself having less to show and being more predictable.

    So not only technology, but also other circumstances are extremely different. Yet there are certain best racers in every decade or two. And it is fair of us to have a personal opinion of the best one. Why do we need that in the first place ? I guess everyone needs a hero, an absolute best one to follow up and to get ultimate inspiration.

    So in my opinion it is Juan Manuel Fangio who is at the absolute king of the kings of racecar drivers. To be honest I don't think he would have outpaced Clark, Senna, Schumacher or Hamilton. Although perhaps he could have done that when he was younger (born in 1911, started racing consistently in 1950s). I would be interested what Senna, Schumacher or Hamilton could have done in Fangios era. It is possible that they might have outpaced him, but would they have been able to preserve cars to the finish, would they have been able to avoid danger as much.

    There I have found this splendid documentary peace about Fangio in English (I wish there were more material about him). At one part of a driver from 50s is quoted saying that normaly performance ratio was about 25 driver/75 percent car (I don't know how they come up with these numbers, perhaps by common sense). With Fangio he says it was something more like 40/60. And thats because he was able to understand and not overstress the car to reach optimum performance. I heard similar things about Jim Clark, him winning with every sort of wear and tear on the car lower than any other driver. I remember watching modern F1 with fuel consumption statistics, and it was displayed that Hamilton was most efficient on fuel while also leading the race. Who knows how much driver/car performance dependance ratio is these days F1, I would guess that not more than 5%, perhaps slightly more with driver like Hamilton. This being said I think it is the main reason why older eras drivers were better than modern drivers, it is simply that more has depended on them, they were working on a lot more variables. Which most of them were eliminated by technology and ways of organisation, one thing. I think, safety has no influence on that although it must have reduced fear factor by a huge amount, which I think hasn't changed racing difficulty, but altered ethics of it, as some of the modern era racing manouvers would have earned potential killer status back then.



    here is another little inspirational video with music and all that nonsense

     
    IgnacioK likes this.

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