1064 replies to this topic

[Snapshot]

Any decent driver in this series that could make it in F1?

[stewie]

Snapshot, on 04 Jun 2018 - 08:52, said:

Any decent driver in this series that could make it in F1?

Plenty.

Rossi
Pagenaud
Bourdais
Dixon
Wickens
Newgarden
Power

Would be my first suggestions, anyway. They are all unlikely to head over/back to F1 but they'd be the best bets. Helio Castroneves too but he's part time / sports cars now.

Edited by stewie, 04 June 2018 - 11:03.

[potmotr]

Dixon would have been a really solid F1 driver.

 

He's got the speed, consistency and temperament. 

 

His two tests with Williams in 2004 probably came a bit too soon.

[sblick]

Have to say, and it has been said by many probably, bye bye ABC.  Thanks for the good years it is to bad it isn't the 70s and 80s anymore.  GOOD RIDDANCE!!!

 

Yeah NBC, please don't screw it up

[Rinehart]

potmotr, on 04 Jun 2018 - 11:05, said:

Dixon would have been a really solid F1 driver.

 

He's got the speed, consistency and temperament. 

 

His two tests with Williams in 2004 probably came a bit too soon.

Agree - I think its all but a certainty that Dixon could have thrived in the right car. And then all you need to do is weigh Dixon up against his Indycar competitors and its clear there are a bunch of drivers that could probably cut it. For me the one that really got away was Dario - he'd have been brilliant in F1! 

[potmotr]

Rinehart, on 04 Jun 2018 - 11:56, said:

Agree - I think its all but a certainty that Dixon could have thrived in the right car. And then all you need to do is weigh Dixon up against his Indycar competitors and its clear there are a bunch of drivers that could probably cut it. For me the one that really got away was Dario - he'd have been brilliant in F1! 

 

Yeah, agreed.

 

Both Franchitti and Dixon had pretty terrible F1 testing experiences by all accounts!

[Dmitriy_Guller]

I don't think any driver would cut it in F1, and the long streak of drivers who tried and failed support that conclusion.  In the last three decades, only Montoya and Villeneuve ever had any F1 success, but they went through Indycar quickly as if it ever a step ladder series.  Competition is a relative thing, the top dog in the series always looks like a prodigy while a midfielder in another series looks like a wanker, so you have to try to look at absolute skills.  The strengths that make Dixon a top talent in Indycar are the minimum requirements expected of any competent F1 driver.

[Dolph]

noriaki, on 04 Jun 2018 - 06:35, said:

I think this was Ed's intention precisely when he hired King

 

 

But King was 12th in his first year in GP2, 7th in his second year of GP2.  He had some good results in sprint races, but feature race best results over 2 seasons are: 2nd, 4th, 5th, and the many 6th place finishes. Not really a driver with great potential...

[Risil]

stewie, on 04 Jun 2018 - 11:02, said:

Plenty.

Rossi
Pagenaud
Bourdais
Dixon
Wickens
Newgarden
Power

Would be my first suggestions, anyway. They are all unlikely to head over/back to F1 but they'd be the best bets. Helio Castroneves too but he's part time / sports cars now.

 

Bourdais didn't look out of place in F1, but he didn't excel either. Some, but by no means all of that, was the result of him being the gooseberry in a Toro Rosso team built around Vettel.

 

When I look at Rossi and Wickens' careers I see no reason why they couldn't have performed at the level of, say, a Valtteri Bottas or Nick Hulkenberg. But then I'd have said that before they started winning Indycar races too.

 

Unsure about the others. Newgarden probably would've done OK in F1. When I think about drivers like Power and Pagenaud -- even Dixon to some extent -- I try to remember that if almost any F1 driver had a season as bad as Pagenaud's 2015 at Penske, their career would've been terminated there and then.

 

Obviously we can get too hung up whether Indycar drivers could do well in F1, as if that validates our choice to pay attention to Indycar. Nobody would've won the Monaco Grand Prix aged 48 with a chassis that had recently seen service decorating a car dealership, but it is not to Indycar's discredit that Al Unser won the 1987 Indy 500.

 

How do the skills of F1 and Indycar's safety car drivers compare? I think that's a valid line of enqiury too.

[Dmitriy_Guller]

I don't undrestand why that's a relevant discussion.  On the engineering side, engineers have become really good at consistency and reliability, the two things they're paid good money to be really good at.  Unfortunately that's an anathema for exciting racing, so for quite a while now we have been engineering inconsistency into the technical package, such as with tire compounds.  Same applies to drivers. 

 

Drivers like Bottas may seem mediocre because they're utterly boring and unremarkable, but in fact being boring and unremarkable is the end stage of supreme competence.  I watch Indycar because drivers do things like burn their front tires all the way through when under pressure, which is something that F1-class drivers are highly unlikely to do.  That made for a more interesting race compared to a procession of two competent drivers that don't make a mistake.

[Afterburner]

I think if Alonso comes to Indycar we’ll get a good idea of the talent level. I think those writing off the field are in for a surprise. The gap in car performance in F1 exaggerates the abilities of its top drivers.

[Dmitriy_Guller]

Afterburner, on 04 Jun 2018 - 13:34, said:

I think if Alonso comes to Indycar we’ll get a good idea of the talent level. I think those writing off the field are in for a surprise. The gap in car performance in F1 exaggerates the abilities of its top drivers.

I think it's the opposite.  I think the sterile environment of F1, because so many things are done to perfection, makes it easy to not realize how competent the professional drivers there are.  Competence is boring, inconsistency is exciting.

[Rinehart]

Dmitriy_Guller, on 04 Jun 2018 - 12:57, said:

I don't think any driver would cut it in F1, and the long streak of drivers who tried and failed support that conclusion.  In the last three decades, only Montoya and Villeneuve ever had any F1 success, but they went through Indycar quickly as if it ever a step ladder series.  Competition is a relative thing, the top dog in the series always looks like a prodigy while a midfielder in another series looks like a wanker, so you have to try to look at absolute skills.  The strengths that make Dixon a top talent in Indycar are the minimum requirements expected of any competent F1 driver.

There are quite a few drivers who have travelled in the opposite direction and haven't exactly set Indycar alight... so I don't think this is the way to judge.

Since in F1 the car is so important and not many have gone from a Indycar to a TOP car in F1 (except the 2 examples you gave) the picture isn't clear.

[Rinehart]

Dmitriy_Guller, on 04 Jun 2018 - 13:25, said:

I don't undrestand why that's a relevant discussion.  On the engineering side, engineers have become really good at consistency and reliability, the two things they're paid good money to be really good at.  Unfortunately that's an anathema for exciting racing, so for quite a while now we have been engineering inconsistency into the technical package, such as with tire compounds.  Same applies to drivers. 

 

Drivers like Bottas may seem mediocre because they're utterly boring and unremarkable, but in fact being boring and unremarkable is the end stage of supreme competence.  I watch Indycar because drivers do things like burn their front tires all the way through when under pressure, which is something that F1-class drivers are highly unlikely to do.  That made for a more interesting race compared to a procession of two competent drivers that don't make a mistake.

 

Now I think your looking at F1 through extremely rose tinted glasses. The heir-apparent next Senna has been ramming into anything and everything all season. Extreme competence, my arse! Lets remember that some of the drivers in F1 are only in F1 because of their daddies money. How is Max Chilton doing in Indycar? If Dixon isn't better than Stroll - I give up! 

[Frood]

Hang on, since when did F1 drivers not make mistakes? The front runners in both F1 and IndyCar this year have made mistakes. Rossi has tangled with Wickens; Verstappen has tangled with Hamilton and Vettel. Rossi locked his brakes and threw away a race win; Vettel locked his brakes and threw away a race win. Newgarden has hit the wall and spun in races, Ricciardo has hit the wall and spun in races. All are supremely competent drivers, not just the F1 drivers.

[noriaki]

The "competence" is just an impression created by the forgiving tilkedromes. While a quarter of Indycar consists of St Pete, Toronto, Detroit and Long Beach, nowadays F1 has got one(-and-a-half) street tracks where proper wheel to wheel racing is a possibility - and oh look what happens to the "perfection" of F1 drivers when they are put to race at Baku (or Singapore). 

[jonpollak]

What the hell thread did I click on...?

ANYWAY...

 

STEWIE BABY !!

http://fantasy.indyc...11027/standings

 

Your OVERALL

Masner-gforce-pchop 

Disgrace-Stewie-Afterburner

 

http://fantasy.indyc...gs?race=overall

 

Jp

[Muppetmad]

Those who think IndyCar drivers are more accident-prone than F1 drivers need only look at what happened in Baku - which still isn't as bumpy as Detroit, to take just one example. Difficult circuits can make even the best drivers look like amateurs sometimes, and IndyCar circuits are among the most difficult you'll find out there.

[Nonesuch]

jonpollak, on 04 Jun 2018 - 15:53, said:

Your OVERALL

Masner-gforce-pchop 

Disgrace-Stewie-Afterburner

 

Detroit definitely didn't do My Fake Team any favours.

 

Thanks Rossi!

[Risil]

I am tumbling down the rankings. Still don't know what happened in Race 2 but it can't have been good.

[paulb]

Risil, on 04 Jun 2018 - 16:41, said:

I am tumbling down the rankings. Still don't know what happened in Race 2 but it can't have been good.

 

I'll meet you at the bottom of the hill!

[Dr. Austin]

Rinehart, on 04 Jun 2018 - 14:03, said:

Now I think your looking at F1 through extremely rose tinted glasses.

 

Plenty of that going around.

 

Rinehart, on 04 Jun 2018 - 14:03, said:

The heir-apparent next Senna has been ramming into anything and everything all season.

 

A far as the heir apparent, you can't really blame him for emulating the "heros"and "legends" he grew up idolizing. Senna set the stage for all the dirty chopping, blocking and swerving we see every race from nearly every driver on the grid. Schumacher simply perfected it, and now dirty tricks is simply how it's done in Formula One.

 

This kind of thing has gone on for so long at it is now established common practice. It's hysterical to see Formula One drivers held up as any kind of "superior" when they can hardly drive down a wide, straight piece of road without crashing into each other.

[sopa]

Watched the fast forward highlights of both races.

 

One thing that I noticed is that the amount of retirements is surprisingly low. I remember it used to be more on street circuits? With very few hiccups this reminds F1. 

 

Also thanks to such clean racing safety cars almost didn't mess up the field, so those, who deserved it and were fast, ended up at the front.

[SlipLtd]

Rinehart, on 04 Jun 2018 - 14:03, said:

Now I think your looking at F1 through extremely rose tinted glasses. The heir-apparent next Senna has been ramming into anything and everything all season. Extreme competence, my arse!

He sure is exciting though.

[prommer]

If the question is, how many Indycar drivers can reasonably slot in somewhere between the World Class F1 drivers such Hamilton, Vettel, et al. and the World Cla$$ F1 drivers, the likes we've seen of Maldonado, Gutierrez, Palmer, etc., then I daresay Stewie's list is conservative.

 

F1 is not all gold, and Indycar is not all merde, as some would have it. There's plenty of both to go around.

[king_crud]

I get sick of these discussions. Just enjoy IndyCar as its own series

[jonpollak]

Hear Hear Crud

[Frood]

...but he started it!

 

I'll finish it. Sorry sir.

[OvDrone]

Ok, so I'm getting all my things ready for the OP tomorrow. Expect it to appear on the forums by evening UK time.

 

Just bringing this up as a headsup to not get mixed up if any of y'all had any OP ideas. Cheers <3

[paulb]

king_crud, on 04 Jun 2018 - 20:30, said:

I get sick of these discussions. Just enjoy IndyCar as its own series

Thank-you for saying this.

[teejay]

Gotta feel for Rossi. 

[Peat]

Afterburner, on 04 Jun 2018 - 13:34, said:

I think if Alonso comes to Indycar we’ll get a good idea of the talent level. I think those writing off the field are in for a surprise. The gap in car performance in F1 exaggerates the abilities of its top drivers.

 

Exactly. Due to the incredibly compressed nature of the field currently in IndyCar, Nando will have plenty more 15th place finishes, but only because others got it right on the day, not due to car performance. 

[sopa]

Afterburner, on 04 Jun 2018 - 13:34, said:

I think if Alonso comes to Indycar we’ll get a good idea of the talent level. I think those writing off the field are in for a surprise. The gap in car performance in F1 exaggerates the abilities of its top drivers.

 

IndyCar is a different kind of racing, so irrespective of how Alonso performs there wouldn't tell a definite answer about F1. I mean Barrichello came to IndyCar in 2012 and was a mere midfielder only.

As for the other way around - I doubt anyone in Indy would be a top dog in F1, though several of them could be solid midfielders. 

[sopa]

Snapshot, on 04 Jun 2018 - 08:52, said:

Any decent driver in this series that could make it in F1?

 

You mean what by "could make it"? If you mean fighting for the championship, then none. But in midfield - yes.

 

As for looking at specific cases.

 

Dixon has always striked me as a kind of driver, who usually wins out on rock-solid consistency rather than speed. And hasn't he in his career often been better on ovals than on standard circuits? Hence I question how he would have fit into F1.

 

As for Power. Before going to America he was racing in Europe and IIRC didn't set the world on fire in feeder categories. Personally I think American racing suits his style better. Something to do with the cars. Throughout his career he has often been the fastest guy on street/road courses in IndyCar.

[FLB]

And Mansell dominated... when he came with a dominant team (Michael Andetti won the title in 1991 and only *just* lost to Rahal in 1992).

[sopa]

About Detroit - I wonder if Penske had some sort of a setup problem? They were strangely off pace all weekend. And for some reason I'm inclined to think Power had a stunner of a race on Sunday, because his advantage over quality drivers/team-mates like Pagenaud and Newgarden was huge.

 

By the way, Pagenaud has been having a shocker of a season. Nothing has worked out for him so far. I'm afraid he is out of the title fight for this year.

[PayasYouRace]

sopa, on 05 Jun 2018 - 10:10, said:

You mean what by "could make it"? If you mean fighting for the championship, then none. But in midfield - yes.
 
As for looking at specific cases.
 
Dixon has always striked me as a kind of driver, who usually wins out on rock-solid consistency rather than speed. And hasn't he in his career often been better on ovals than on standard circuits? Hence I question how he would have fit into F1.
 
As for Power. Before going to America he was racing in Europe and IIRC didn't set the world on fire in feeder categories. Personally I think American racing suits his style better. Something to do with the cars. Throughout his career he has often been the fastest guy on street/road courses in IndyCar.

I think you’re thinking of a different Dixon. Scott is very fast, but races smart so he doesn’t always seem to be outright fast. His record on conventional circuits speaks for itself. Watkins Glen, Mid-Ohio, Toronto and Sonoma have all been happy hunting grounds for him.

Drivers of his standard would be capable of fighting for the WDC. As with any driver of their standard, they need to be in the right car. You cannot rule them out like you’ve done in your first sentence. They could easily race alongside champions like Kimi Raikkonen or Jenson Button.

[sopa]

PayasYouRace, on 05 Jun 2018 - 11:04, said:

I think you’re thinking of a different Dixon. Scott is very fast, but races smart so he doesn’t always seem to be outright fast. His record on conventional circuits speaks for itself. Watkins Glen, Mid-Ohio, Toronto and Sonoma have all been happy hunting grounds for him.

Drivers of his standard would be capable of fighting for the WDC. As with any driver of their standard, they need to be in the right car. You cannot rule them out like you’ve done in your first sentence. They could easily race alongside champions like Kimi Raikkonen or Jenson Button.

 

Considering that Irvine fought for the championship, then you may have a point that anything can happen.

 

But generally F1 racing is different to Indy racing. There isn't that much of a strategical element to it, which Dixon strives in. And the amount of Indy stars, who have struggled in F1, kind of prove the point.

[Afterburner]

sopa, on 05 Jun 2018 - 11:30, said:

Considering that Irvine fought for the championship, then you may have a point that anything can happen.

But generally F1 racing is different to Indy racing. There isn't that much of a strategical element to it, which Dixon strives in. And the amount of Indy stars, who have struggled in F1, kind of prove the point.

Love reading your posts, mate, but ya lost me on this one.

[sopa]

Afterburner, on 05 Jun 2018 - 11:59, said:

Love reading your posts, mate, but ya lost me on this one.

 

Well, for starters you can see, how topsy-turvy IndyCar races are compared to F1, with cautions and everything turning the field upside-down.

 

I have heard commentators saying a lot of times Dixon is the best in fuel mileage. Yeah, I know nowadays in F1 you need to save fuel too, but it's not that dramatic. That whether you save one lap or not is critical whether you can make one less pitstop or extend your stint to the chequered flag.

 

The way F1 cars are designed is more about 'peaky speed'. You need the kind of raw pace like Hamilton or M.Verstappen to get the last tenths out of the cars. In IndyCars that doesn't that much, neither does qualifying matter that much. In F1 it matters a lot.

[paulb]

sopa, on 05 Jun 2018 - 12:08, said:

Well, for starters you can see, how topsy-turvy IndyCar races are compared to F1, with cautions and everything turning the field upside-down.

 

I have heard commentators saying a lot of times Dixon is the best in fuel mileage. Yeah, I know nowadays in F1 you need to save fuel too, but it's not that dramatic. That whether you save one lap or not is critical whether you can make one less pitstop or extend your stint to the chequered flag.

 

The way F1 cars are designed is more about 'peaky speed'. You need the kind of raw pace like Hamilton or M.Verstappen to get the last tenths out of the cars. In IndyCars that doesn't that much, neither does qualifying matter that much. In F1 it matters a lot.

 

.... because safety cars and VSCs never have an impact in an F1 race.

 

Ask Mike Hull or Tim Cindric or Roger Penske or Dale Coyne if success in Indycar is not dependent on good strategy. How can Indycar not be strategy driven when the cars are essentially the same?

[maximilian]

May I suggest we split this discussion off into a separate IndyCar vs. F1 thread?

[Frood]

maximilian, on 05 Jun 2018 - 12:35, said:

May I suggest we split this discussion off into a separate IndyCar vs. F1 thread?

 

I think the generic IndyCar 2018 thread would be fine. Having a versus thread sounds like a recipe for disaster.

[PayasYouRace]

We could but there isn't really much left to discuss about Detroit, and the discussion will die down regarding F1, as people get educated or bored.

[Vielleicht]

Haven't seen this posted (?) but Rossi has pretty much accepted the mistake now

 

https://www.autospor...g-detroit-error

[Pete_f1]

I don't want to add petrol to the fire, but I would love to see IndyCar cars running around Europe's top tracks like Silverstone, Spa, Imola, Monza, Magny Cours, Jerez, Hockenheimring, Lausitz and Rockingham (Corby, UK)

[jonpollak]

Oh hell yeah Pete !!

[SlipLtd]

With the season ending in early September, I guess it would be possible to cross the Atlantic and run a mini european championship. By then F1 is almost done with the Euro tracks and by starting in the north and traveling south to stay ahead of autumn weather setting in they could race well into November.

Probably can’t be done profitably but I can dream damn it!

[Disgrace]

IndyCar at Baku please.

[SlipLtd]

Never has such a high concentration of potential carnage and chaos ever been found in one place. I’m afraid it could cause a universe collapsing singularity.

- Some CERN Boffin.