Now that we can officlally declare Felipe Massa the 2008 WDC* , I'm thinking back to some other champions who were arguably not the best driver of the year. Keke Rosberg is a candidate, as is John Watson. You could argue that Hakkinen in 99 would have come a distant 2nd to Schumacher but for the broken leg, or that Damon Hill or Mike Hawthorn were just in the right place at the right time. The record shows them all as being champions; they may or may not have been looking like the best driver out there at the time.

Anyone got any favourites for people who are maybe average or slightly-better-than-average F1 drivers who just happen to have won an F1 world championship ?




* (Pending the stewards' amended results for the last 2 races.)

Prost was no where near Sennas level in 1989 and then he was gift wrapped the title in 1993 by Renault

Phil Hill became a WDC in 1961 because his teammate Wolfgang von Trips died.

Grand Prix racing has been lucky in that it has not had an undeserving world champion. Even those who looked unconvincing in their title year had deserved and massive success elsewhere (Denny Hulme dominating Can-Am, Phil Hill being a sportscar racer almost without parallel). And had Mike Hawthorn been 100% healthy I wonder just what he could have done - not many others (actually, OTTOMH NO-one) could beat Ascari in an identical car.

For those denigrating Rosberg remember mechanical problems late in a couple of races robbed him of 2 certain wins, he was a gnat's crotchet away from winning Austria, had a 2nd wrongly taken away from him over politics and qualified on pole on a turbo circuit using a Cossie. All in what was patently not the best car on the grid. Derek Daly was a decent team-mate and couldn't get it above 5th.

That's not to say that there are no drivers who deserved to be champ that didn't win. Moss obviously, Mad Ronald, Gilles. Jacky Ickx as well - people forget just how good he was in F1. Gurney.

But that reflects more on the Championship than anything else...

It's at times like these I wish Irvine had won the '99 title. Maybe then people would have conceded it is merely a marketing tool.

Define 'slightly-better-than-average'.

I remember you declaring Laffite for the deserving 81 champion as well.

Watson was never WDC

Nonsense. Had von Trips survived, he would have had to win the final race, or finish 2nd/3rd with Hill lower than 3rd/4th respectively. No way was it a given.

I think he was more deserving than Jones or Piquet. Toss-up between him and Gilles, maybe Prost as well.

Ah, just what we need, another sh.t stirring thread

Just to answer: so far there were no "maybe average or slightly-better-than-average F1 drivers" "who just happened to have won an F1 world championship".

I just looked in my imaginary dictionary, and it said this :
Slightly better than average : Felipe Massa. See "Jensen Button" (qv).

You are pretty busy with declaring drivers for 'deserving' and 'undeserving' WDCs for a motor sport fan who is rating the WDC only as a 'marketing tool'...

And?

Well, I'll try again.

I don't see the point in declaring Laffite, Gurney, Ickx, etc. for worthy WDCs if you don't care about the WDC title at all.

Clear enough?

Watson?????????????????????????????? He never was a champion

Mansell springs to mind, in the end he needed a far superior car.

Clear, but not the point I was making. If you're going to HAVE a WDC, it ought to go to the chap who has done the best job that year. IMO Laffite carried a POS through to a couple of wins and lots of good places, whereas Reutemann and Piquet had the two best cars. And Piquet didn't even have a team-mate to beat.

john watson certainly would hvae been an unlikely world champion; I guess that's why he never was one
kinda like saturo nakajima

Come on, Wattie was MUCH better. Better results than Lauda at McLaren, the only man to win in a Penske...

Ok, then, let me change Saturo N to ...Jean Alesi, Martin Brundle, Gerhard Berger, Ricardo Patrese, etc. Although I think Nakasan wasn't as bad as you are making him sound either. There is any number of fine drivers who don't rise to the final degree required to be wdc. Wattie was a decent driver but certainly would have made an unlikely wdc.

Ensign, it looks like you were four years old when Watson drove for Penske, and about ten when he was paired with Lauda. Your memory is astonishing

You know, I have watched entire 1982 season on DVDs (though it was the year before I was born) and after that I have stopped believing that Rosberg was lucky. He and Watson were great. Period.

There is an axiom you can win a lucky race (especially this season when leading drivers are subjected to a brain-fade every now and then), but you can't win a lucky championship.

If you think Ensign's feats of memory are impressive, you should see that Simon Schama. He can remember things even from before he was born.

My first memory of John Watson is him leading the Monaco GP on the first-ever Sunday Grandstand in 1977. I was indeed 4. I've been watching F1 pretty much constantly since 1981.

Your personal opinion is hardly a useful and objective yardstick to work out the chap who has done the best job in that - or any other - year. You have to know that others might have other personal opinions about that.

So its hard for me to discover any point made by you. Apart from talking about your own personal preferences.

Surely every post is opinion? It would be tautologous to start every single post with IMO.

nice that's a great memory to hang on to

Race results and WDC results are not an opinion. These are facts.

They used to be

Damn Ensign beats me on the earliest memory stakes (he is 6 months older mind) My first was Petersons Crash at Monza a year later, though I know for a fact I watched Hunt win the Championship in 1976 age 3.5.

Hunt was a pretty unlikely champion actually.

WDC results are opinion. They are based on the relative worth of positions compared with each other, which are in turn based on the opinions of the FIA. Can anyone definitively say a win is better than two thirds? It was in the 1990s, it is not now.

Thanks for confirming my point about yourself constantly trying to rate your own opinion as being more relevant and authentic than the facts.

I rest my case now.

So you can state definitively as a fact that a win is better than two thirds? But wasn't 10 years ago? That's an objective fact?

What do you mean with 'better'?

You always talk in unspecific and subjective terms like that, 'worthy', 'undeserved', 'best job'.

Bring along clear and replicable definitions, and we can talk.

I would like to see that written into the FIA rulebook.

The chap who has done the best job that year shall be declared The World Champion.

I see what you're trying to say ensign, and I agree to some extent. The points system now awards consistency a lot more, and the old systems awarded wins more. However when you go back and apply today's points system to past championships, most of them turn out the same. Only with some really strange points system would you get totally different results. I'm not saying I like the current points system (I don't), but in most cases it wouldn't change who the champion was.



Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan WDC 2009

In that in the 90s a win = 10 pts, two thirds = 8 pts.

And now a win = 10 pts, two thirds = 12 pts.

So the latter is "better" for this spuriously factual basis.

But you're getting to my point with the WDC over who has done the best job. I don't think a WDC is needed, the points system does not necessarily point out the best driver, and many people think the best driver does not always win the title. So what's the point? There's no tennis world champ, or golf world champ. The events themselves stand as the achievement.

Rosberg was a much more deserving champion than mere race statistics demonstrate. His sole win,(?) the Swiss GP run in France, was just magic.

Another fact not immediately apparent on the DVDs, will be that he wrote off somewhere between 4 and 6 Williams tubs during the season and never had an crash, all by the simple expedient of driving over kerbs.

Patrick Head after Piquet's first Williams test, "it was great, he never drove over a kerb all day".

Totally agree that keke was a desrving wdc. After such a brutal year their was something poetic about the fact that it turned out to be keke. and anyhow, every championship has to be earned through a season long campaign, keke's was the most successful one in 82.

Er actually there is both Golf and Tennis world champs

kinda..

The Tennis Masters Cup is the season ending top 8 world ranked players in a tournament that is an amalgamation of the grand slam cup and the ATP World Championship. Winner is generally seen as the World Champ.

Golf has 3 'world championship' events The Accenture Matchplay, CA championship and the Bridgestone invitational that are generally the worlds top 64 or 50 players depending on the event. Golf has the world rankings, the US money list, the European tour, the Asian tour, then there is secondary ranking events beyond the main tours, the Gp2 of Golf and there are winners in all of them.

Thing is both sports are ranked by performance in fact it's very hard to think of a sport that doesn't have rankings. I can't think of one anyway.

Where Motor Racing differs is the importance of the rankings and its not just F1 where winning individual GP's has become less important. Nascar used to be the Daytona 500 and about a million other races each year, Now the Daytona race imho is less important in fact I'm struggling to remember who won this year (Newman?) IRL is the exception its still all about Indy.

And what's the point of the events then?

According to your weird philosophy they are not needed because the race winner is not necessarily the best driver.

Sorry, my brainfade. Watson isn't an F1 champion, lucky or otherwise. I stand corrected. I think I meant to say James Hunt, who won a WDC that was heading for Niki Lauda's hands.

But more importantly I like this from united :



So whoever wins the 2008 WDC, I will put aside the 'if' and 'but', and applaud him as worthy champion.

Thing is about Watson he did take the title down to the final race once in 1982 (just)

One wonders what might've happened if Watson hadn't been holding out for a better contract when Alain Prost was unceremoniously fired by Renault. Watson, after all, had outscored Lauda in both their years as teammates, and won more races. Can't see a Wattie vs. Senna showdown at Suzuka, all the same though.

If Alboreto had taken Rosberg out when lapping him Wattie would have been champ.

Also, the French flagman at Dijon nearly threw the chequer out 2 laps early when a Renault was leading. Had he done so and the race been called, Rosberg would have still been champion, but without a single win...