8 replies to this topic

[RPM40]

I’ve always been a tad skeptical of the claims by the commentary team how superior the current drivers are due to natural talent, and no doubt they are due to having the shot, but I feel the relatively small entry pool into karting and progression means that realistically, there are likely drivers who tower over Senna that we’ll never see jump in a kart.

Of course it could be said of any sport, but due to the barriers of entry compared to kicking a ball or picking up a cricket bat, I think it’s particularly rampant in F1.

[Risil]

David Hume wrote an interesting essay about this idea back in the 18th century. About poets, military leaders etc instead of racing drivers, admittedly. When I've got a moment I'll dig it out and excerpt some quotes.

[noikeee]

Probably more than 50% of the grid are filthy rich. The others, are from societies wealthy enough in which somehow they could afford karting growing up. I think that says everything we need to know...

[Nonesuch]

how would our current drivers stack up?

 

Depends on the car.

On a more serious note, if you take a sport like speed skating for example, it's pretty obvious the level isn't that high when you get the same two or three men and women dividing all the long-distance titles (with one or two exceptions) over the course of an entire decade. Same in athletics, where even at the World Championships in London this year, the women's 10.000 meters was won by a massive 45 seconds to the number two. In only a 30 minute race.

 

In F1, it's still the case that drivers who win a lot also get beaten regularly. There don't seem to be a lot of these massive gaps that exist in quite a few other sports. Even when drivers are clearly better than their team-mates, they don't come out on top in races all the time, suggesting the gaps between them aren't that big. This isn't necessarily obvious, because if you look at the F2 or F3 field, there are some genuinely hopeless goofballs on those grids. There is actually quite a lot of filtering that goes on before drivers end up in F1. Not always, but probably most of the time that holds true.

 

I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who would be better drivers than Vettel or Hamilton, but who just don't care for racing, or who never came into contact with the typical ladder-to-F1 style of racing (another huge filter, the US and Brazil have pretty big but domestic-focussed racing scenes), or who just didn't have the funds or ability to find their way into a junior scheme like, for example, Vettel and Hamilton.

[RPM40]

Depends on the car.

On a more serious note, if you take a sport like speed skating for example, it's pretty obvious the level isn't that high when you get the same two or three men and women dividing all the long-distance titles (with one or two exceptions) over the course of an entire decade. Same in athletics, where even at the World Championships in London this year, the women's 10.000 meters was won by a massive 45 seconds to the number two. In only a 30 minute race.

 

In F1, it's still the case that drivers who win a lot also get beaten regularly. There don't seem to be a lot of these massive gaps that exist in quite a few other sports. Even when drivers are clearly better than their team-mates, they don't come out on top in races all the time, suggesting the gaps between them aren't that big. This isn't necessarily obvious, because if you look at the F2 or F3 field, there are some genuinely hopeless goofballs on those grids. There is actually quite a lot of filtering that goes on before drivers end up in F1. Not always, but probably most of the time that holds true.

 

I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who would be better drivers than Vettel or Hamilton, but who just don't care for racing, or who never came into contact with the typical ladder-to-F1 style of racing (another huge filter, the US and Brazil have pretty big but domestic-focussed racing scenes), or who just didn't have the funds or ability to find their way into a junior scheme like, for example, Vettel and Hamilton.

 

Thats a very good point.

 

I notice in simracing that for instance, one driver will beat others nearly 100% of the time unless there is some pretty major error, you have guys that are clearly a step ahead, but you don't see that in real motorsport that much. All the generally highly rated drivers still trade results. Which is actually quite incredible, because you'd assume it would be fairly possible for one driver to nearly always be better than another as team mates but you rarely see that.

 

Even when you see highly rated drivers with not so highly rated drivers, they still trade results. Maybe not as often, but its very rarely one driver ahead 90-100% of the time.

Edited by RPM40, 01 December 2017 - 11:33.

[barzini]

Maybe F1 cars are too easy to drive, that’s why the competition is so close.

[Kalmake]

Depends on the car.

On a more serious note, if you take a sport like speed skating for example, it's pretty obvious the level isn't that high when you get the same two or three men and women dividing all the long-distance titles (with one or two exceptions) over the course of an entire decade. Same in athletics, where even at the World Championships in London this year, the women's 10.000 meters was won by a massive 45 seconds to the number two. In only a 30 minute race.

 

In F1, it's still the case that drivers who win a lot also get beaten regularly. There don't seem to be a lot of these massive gaps that exist in quite a few other sports. Even when drivers are clearly better than their team-mates, they don't come out on top in races all the time, suggesting the gaps between them aren't that big. This isn't necessarily obvious, because if you look at the F2 or F3 field, there are some genuinely hopeless goofballs on those grids. There is actually quite a lot of filtering that goes on before drivers end up in F1. Not always, but probably most of the time that holds true.

 

I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who would be better drivers than Vettel or Hamilton, but who just don't care for racing, or who never came into contact with the typical ladder-to-F1 style of racing (another huge filter, the US and Brazil have pretty big but domestic-focussed racing scenes), or who just didn't have the funds or ability to find their way into a junior scheme like, for example, Vettel and Hamilton.

Skating and running have a lot less variables than motorsport. The best athletes get to realize their advantage more consistently. 10k top seed isn't going to struggle with her shoe setup or crash out in qualifying too often.

[Nonesuch]

Skating and running have a lot less variables than motorsport.

Right, and in those sports pretty much all the variables are directly related to the athlete. In F1 it's almost the opposite.
 
So even if the cars are not necessarily too easy to drive, the room for making a difference is still, relatively speaking, quite small.

[Sterzo]

I’ve always been a tad skeptical of the claims by the commentary team how superior the current drivers are due to natural talent, and no doubt they are due to having the shot, but I feel the relatively small entry pool into karting and progression means that realistically, there are likely drivers who tower over Senna that we’ll never see jump in a kart.

Of course it could be said of any sport, but due to the barriers of entry compared to kicking a ball or picking up a cricket bat, I think it’s particularly rampant in F1.

 

I think that's always been true, but over time has become less so.  The opportunities to take part in karting have mushroomed from nothing (in the fifties) to being available to those committed enough to buy a kart in certain countries only (in the eighties), to the widespread availability of hire karting in many countries today. There's no way of gauging how the skill levels of the very top drivers compare with those of other eras, but I'm pretty convinced the average level in F1 is much higher than it used to be. And I suspect that after eras in which we had one Fangio or one Clark, we now have several at that level.