Look, a lot of you are missing the point criticising Alan Henry and saying it's a "bad list", terrible, worst ever etc.

Any ranking list like this is one guy's subjective view. That's true even when you use statistics, as how you use them is a subjective choice.

If you don't like it, publish your own:)

That´s a one way to look at it but it gives the advantage to Alonso in terms of many more attempts to grab titles and wins, LH couldnt beat Alonso with this kind of comparasion even if he was best driver ever by far simply because he couldnt win 3 WDCs and 20 wins in one year.

The other way to look at it is to compare how they did so far during the time both were driving in F1. There Hamilton leads by 1-0.

If it was subjective it would be fine. Because at least then a consistent criteria would be applied. This isn't subjective though, it's positively ad-hoc.

So your saying there is no such thing as bad subjectivity? It not lunacy to rate Sato a better driver than M Schumacher?

Here's something:

1998: Won despite a huge reliability deficit.

1999: Won again despite a big reliability deficit and no help from team mate.

2000: Lost because of inferior reliability, maybe due to a slower car as well.

2001: Lost, because clear car inferiority and following lack of motivation.

So, depends entirely how you look at it.

Why didn't he do that with Senna and Prost? There's no point making sense of this list because it doesn't apply any consistent criteria. Henry has effectively done a list then tried to apply some reason to it. Not the other way around.

I never cared much for Michael Schumacher, but not even I would put him behind Mika Hakkinen; or, for that matter, outside of the Top 10. A Top 10 devoid of Michael Schumacher is a joke.

Only a close minded fool would rate a driver based on 1 year out of his whole career. Of course we know Henry was looking for any excuse to rate Hamilton higher. It had to be done. Fangio and Moss were team mates and Fangio dominated him yet Moss is no1. Nothing in his list makes sense.

1998 Mika had teriable reliability also. Mika earnt the title no question.

2000 Ferrrari had the faster car until SPA where they were equal, Mika totally OWNED the Michael, watch the press conference afterwards the Michael was shocked about how he was beat so badly! Also you can see that the Michael tried to push Mika onto the Grass at 210 mph, only Mika breaking stopped a accident. (Thats the poor sportman comments that Michael often recieves)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAmbIdwcmSo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeAVWhXhukc

2001 Mika lost motivation

I think the Michael was one of the all time greates and prehaps the greatest but not the fastest maybe the best allrounder.

I would have to say that I think Michael was the greater driver, just not the fastest driver.

Yeah, list all problems MS had in 98 here. It was outrageous he had some reliability problems that gave Mika the title. Mika in the meantime was enjoying perfect reliability and fastest car. Right.

Ridiculous. Really is.....

David Coulthard should be in the top 20 then.

What Autocourse list? But if he changed his opinion, I can understand that, because I did it too. During the MS-MH battles I thought MS was the better driver. Looking MS's career and teammates later on, I began thinking that I might have underrated MS's machinery in relation to Mika's, for various reasons. So the driving ability goes undecided I'm afraid.

2001, for the first time Mika didn't have a faster car than Michael. Enough said. 1999 obviously the exception but of course he could barely hold off Schumi's lapdog without the fastest car.

Basically from all the responses here the gist has been yeah Mika had the faster car, but the less reliable one. So it's interesting then that people feel Mika is therefore faster. The only year he had to go a full season upgainst a superior paced Ferrari he got annihilated and put into retirement.

The year's Michael struggled against a faster McMover he took the championships to the final races and imo only lost one of them thanks to Mika's teammate.

As for underestimating the Ferrari equipment, one only needs to look at the lap times from those seasons .It's pretty clear where the performance was and wasn't in the car and driver. When the car was fast the Ferraris were 1 and 2 or 1 and 3. When it wasn't it was 2 and 5/6.

There's enough examples to show that the extra tenths were coming from the driver and not neccesarily the car. Then there are examples like Hungary 98, Malaysia 99, and so on and so on. Very few examples of Mika overdriving his Merc. Can anyone rattle off 5 off of the top of their head where Mika stole a race by transcending his equipment (i.e. not having a 15km/h straight line advantage on the car he is passing).

You could rate him like that, but probably you would be alone in that opinion. It's not "bad subjectivity" though.

What I'd take issue with is the label "F1 drivers" when clearly a lot of the drivers were before F1. That's a factual error not an opinion.

You should have taken a look at Mikas team mates at the same time and all the drivers Coulthard has beaten since being mikas team mate and being so close to his speed.

Agree with you that similar standards should be used in similar situations. But maybe he thought that Schumacher was in that aspect worse than Senna.

In Autocourse, the editor does the top 10's for each year. The editor then was Alan Henry. Not once (even in his title years) did he put Hakkinen No 1. Schumacher was rated higher every time, Heinz Harald Frantzen was number 1 in 1999 (funnily enough, he didn't even make the top 100.....)

It just does not make any sense. If you think that way also (teammates/career for Schumacher) then good for you. I'd just also suggest you look at his very greatest performances, the cars he raced and the consistency this man had, before rating him. Consistency especially, because that's one thing Hakkinen never had a boat load of. Driving ability is all based on that. This is what the list should be about.

We'll have to agree to disagree.

I can say that Michael only won 2003 because of the late season tyre rule change and Kimi or even JPM should have won the WDC and BMW Williams or McMerc the WCC.

2000 up until 2002 Fiat were DEFIANTLY quicker than McMerc but I think they were quicker because of the Michales input.

Senna and Prost are not active drivers, so their abilities can be observed by their whole careers, LH has only raced a one season so he must be rated by how he did in this one season; he beat a 2xWDC with a same car. I dont like the fact that a driver with so little races behind him enters in a list of all time best drivers either, I´m just pointing out the possible reasoning behind him being ahead of Alonso.

Worse? If he applied that sort of reasoning his list is even worse then. Because what he is effectively saying then is it's okay to be a nasty, dangerous and deaddriver, just not a really bad, nasty, dangerous driver who happens to be German, alive and won practically every other Grand Prix entered.

Because there's plenty of scope for debate that Senna's driving was markedly more dangerous and malicious than Schumacher's ever was.

So Henry must think its clearly better to use your McLaren Honda as a battering ram at 150mph on Alain Prost's Ferrari then? Was anything Schumacher did as bad as that?

This coming from a huge Ayrton Senna fan BTW.

I agree, these kind of lists should only have drivers who have retired from racing and thus they could be rated by their whole career.

Unfortunately the McLaren still had a huge reliability deficit in 2001, so of course it was annihilation. Had Ferrari had similar deficit, say in 1998, the season would have been over with 5 or 6 races to go and looked exactly like 2001, 2002 or 2004 for Ferrari. So no differences between them can be found there.

I think your glasses have been too much MS-tinted. How do you know Mika didn't win races against MS with a similar car, or even with a car deficit? Odds are that he did - even Barrichello did.

And you should take a look at MS´s team mates. Barrichello was about as close to MS as DC was to Mika. Look how Rubens is doing against Button.

With a similar car isn't my point, with a inferior car, stealing victories he should have won.

Like I said we can quickly rattle of 5+ of such wins Schumacher achieved, I'm struggling to think of 1 Mika managed.

Even his 'legendary' pass in 2000 was because he had a missile in a straight line.

Schumacher's greatness came because he achieved a lot when he shouldn't have. That's why I find it hard to rationalise Mika being ahead of Michael for any other reason than punitive ones.

In 1998/99/00, I think looking at David Coulthard's speed should give an indication of where the McLaren Mercedes stood in the pecking order. For one, I don't think he was any faster than Barrichello or Irvine yet he seemed to always have plenty of pace over them and was curiously able to push or even be ahead of Michael Schumacher a fair few times.....

Yet as soon as Ferrari produced the better car in 01, Coulthard's (and Hakkinen's) stunning pace somewhat dried up. Funny thing that.

For me it makes a lot of sense, as I said I thought the same then, but now I think different. Estimates change as more information comes along, that's only correct thing to do, as these are just that - estimates and guesses.

Because Rubens is in his prime isn't he? And going down this road, while Button has won out overall, he's far from put Barichello back in the weeds, Indeed Barichello has been quicker than Button quite a lot more times than he was quicker than Schumacher. At all done in his geriatric years as well.

that's absolute rubbish and you know it.

Check out the qualifying differential in 2000 for DC/MH over the season. Then tell me Barrichello was that close to Schumacher, at any point.

Stirling Moss ahead of Schumacher????

Forgive me for saying so but Moss doesn't know what it is to be a World Champion in Formula 1. Great driver but he doesn't know how a WDC taste like.

The guy couldnt even beat his teammate Fangio, except for on one occasion where it looked like Fangio let him pass.

So at least Fangio should be higher ranked than Moss.

Would that be the one dubbed 'most overrated pass of all time'?

Any list may have the odd abberation explained by national bias or personal anipathy etc, but even if you take out the MS/MH positions and the "rational" behind it, this list has way too many cases that are just stupid.

All it serves as is yet more proof that people who are deemed "experts" by dint of their position are generally no better than us at knowing what's going on. Aside from its more obscure references from the depths of motor racing history, is this list any better than that produced by some of the more extreme fanboys on this site? As a fanboy list you can say "whatever, everyone's entitled to their opinion"; as some kind of meaningful analysis by someone supposedly in the know, its a joke.

You can't think of any, because for you, if Mika won, he by default had a better car! And for you Mika certainly never won anything with a car deficit. But as I said, that's extremely unlikely. Barrichello proves it to us.

Thats not true. DC was much closer and regularly beat him and out qualified him. The gap was small.

Never mind ahead of Schmacher - he's made him the best. Number 1. Greatest of all time when he clearly wasnt even the greatest of his time, or even for that matter in his team!!!. I mean you can make a case that Moss was better than Schumacher - not a particularly good one I'd argue, but a case nonetheless - but to suggest that he was better than Fangio is clearly ridiculous.

Basically the list is a joke and not really even worthy of serious consideration.

name me a race Mika Hakkinen flat out beat Michael Schumacher with an inferior car, be it qualifying or race. Give whatever evidence you like, in fact it would be better to show also their teammates performances also for comparison.

In this we should remember that Barrichello was new to the team and on top of that, all he could ever hope to achieve there was to be a good subordinate to MS. Kind of distorts the comparison. Or was for example Button's qualifying gap to Barrichello realistic in the first half of 2006? Sure wasn't.

Its actually worse than what you find around here actually. I dont think anyone around here would create a list with so many absurd judgments. Maybe this is a sign that Henry has gone senile and its time to be sacked. Hopefully his employers will do whats right.

As usual, when driver is supposedly wring more from his car than he should, its actually a case of opponent underperforming for one or another reason. You just cant find more speed than there is in your car, no driver can brake the laws of physics. For example, as much as everyone is amazed by Hungary 98 as a perfect example how Schumi beat Mika with brilliant driving, few remember (or acknowlegde) that Mika was having some problems and he slowed DC for many laps before team decided to let DC go for a win as Mika didnt have healthy car, it was too late though as DC has lost too much time by trailing slow Mika for too many laps. Anyway, it was great driving by MS and brilliant tactic by Brawn, but it requaired Mclarens problems in Mikas car and bad team decision for DCs case to be succesful.

I'm not asking if I can, I'm asking if you can. I bet even you could rattle off 3-4 of Schumacher's classic victories simply because they were such standout obvious performances. Can you rattle off with ease the same number for Mika? I.e. not my ('rosso corsa tinted view'), but yours.

Do it for 2001 then. Or 2002? Does not matter.

1997 - absolute supercar that was miles ahead of the competition, barely won the title despite of numerous blunders...thanks to Williams and underperforming teammate.

Oops, that wasn´t Mika

If you and Kar want to bash Häkkinen for 98-01, keep in mind similar strategy can be used against your hero. Can´t see how it can be seen differently, indeed...

I do agree Schumacher should be above Häkkinen on that list, though. The thing is, these lists tend to be based on nostalgia. Historical drivers are always better than current drivers. Notice how 98-01 rivals Mika and Michael are so close to each other (11, 12), while current top 3 is close as well (29, 30, 32). Top 10 only has 2 drivers from 80s/90s...and no MS, arguably the most succesful F1 driver of all times.

This is fair, but the point remains it's a race Schumacher's speed, Brawn's strategy and McLaren's incompetence won that they shouldn't have.

Then there's of course Spain, the Nurburgring (in the benneton), France multiple times, Shanghai and Imola 06, etc etc. I could go on.

What examples do you have for Mika? Maybe Spa 2000? What others are there?

You need to watch Monaco 1981 or Spain 1981. Just 2 examples from a driver, funnily enough, was also ranked behind Hakkinen.

Look - what I'm saying is that Barrichello won races against Schumacher in a car that was built for Schumacher and in a team that was built for Schumacher. So it is damn likely that Mika did the same, or better and much more frequently. And it's also damn sure that every time Mika did that, it went flat out unnoticed and the credit was given to his car! And that's why it's damn sure that every single mainstream list regards MS and MH tends to be heavily distorted in favour of MS.

1997 is an example of Michael at his best imo. Probably along with 2000 as one of his best seasons. Only let down by first his car and then his own sportsmanship.

If you're using that as an example of Michael not at his best you're really reaching.

Funily enough, I've always said Hakkinen and Villeneuve's title years (97/98) were very similar. Both had the best car, neither was a supercar but clearly they had the fastest cars. Only difference was, JV was merely in his 2nd year, Hakkinen in what, his 8th or something. Oh and Villeneuve outraced Schumacher in a straight fight on the track at the finale. Hakkinen didn't get that chance in 1998.

So you were saying? Or again, you simply didn't engage your brain did you?

Yep. How can we rate which car was faster, anyway?

Hungary 98 and Malaysia 99, poor examples. In Hungary, MH had mech gremlins. In Malaysia, there is nothing suggesting McLaren had better car. But I suppose Kar assumes Irvine´s pace showed how fast/slow Ferrari was, but Schumacher magically transcended above the laws of physics!?

All fanboy mythology, plain and simple.

In 1998 McLaren had a big reliability deficit, but Mika made less driving errors than MS. In 1997 IIRC Williams had no reliabilty deficit, but Villeneuve made more errors than MS.