540 replies to this topic

[HistoryFan]

With Pierre Gasly really struggling against Verstappen: Who were the worst driver in top teams ever?

 

I remember Badoer and Fisichella struggling at Ferrari in 2009.

Capelli also was very disappointing at Ferrari in the early 90s.

 

Trevor Taylor scored just 1 point with Lotus in 1963 with Jim Clark winning the world championship title.

 

Even worse was Dave Walker in 1972 with 0 points. Lotus team mate Emerson Fittipaldi was champion.

 

Eddie Irvine was struggling for Ferrari in the first 3 seasons.

 

Derek Daly also was very bad at Williams in 1982 with team mate Rosberg winning the title.

[SenorSjon]

McLaren brass vs Mclaren?

[TomNokoe]

Mark Webber 2013

[Atreiu]

Irvine

[f1paul]

JJ Lehto and Jos Verstappen at Benneton alongside Schumacher. 

[NixxxoN]

Maybe not quite a top team but Johnny Dumfries was appalling in the 1986 Lotus while Senna challenged for the WDC

[masa90]

From recent times stuff that comes to my mind Kovalainen on McLaren (sadly I have to say it), and Badoer in Ferrari. Gasly is still not that bad.

[noikeee]

Hector Rebaque and Ricardo Zunino deserve a mention.

I guess not really their fault, but Bernie's fault for selling a top seat to the highest bidder.

[noikeee]

From recent times stuff that comes to my mind Kovalainen on McLaren (sadly I have to say it), and Badoer in Ferrari. Gasly is still not that bad.

Kovalainen was definitely a disappointment at Mclaren but not as bad as Gasly this year, he could give Lewis a serious fight on a qualifying lap.

[MikeTekRacing]

Kovalainen was definitely a disappointment at Mclaren but not as bad as Gasly this year, he could give Lewis a serious fight on a qualifying lap.

Kovalainen didn't manage to take 1 point away from Lewis the whole year. That was really, really bad. 

It helped Lewis win the title, though.

[statman]

Andretti at McLaren?

[sopa]

Kovalainen didn't manage to take 1 point away from Lewis the whole year. That was really, really bad. 

It helped Lewis win the title, though.

 

I think in 2008 Malaysia Kovalainen finished 3rd, and Hamilton was 5th.

In 2009 China Kovalainen 5th, Hamilton 6th.

 

There were odd races, where Heikki was ahead.

[johnwilliamdavies]

Andretti at McLaren?

 

Damn beat me to it. So bad he gave up.

 

And Irvine was decent at Ferrari, whenever the car managed to finish a race. 

[kernel]

Luca Badoer's return to F1 in 2009 was quite miserable. Fisichella's stint at Ferrari in 2009 was quite bad as well.

[noriaki]

Kovalainen didn't manage to take 1 point away from Lewis the whole year. That was really, really bad.
It helped Lewis win the title, though.

Thought it couldn't be true so I checked it. In races where both of them finished, Lewis was ahead 8 times and Kovy 5 times...

--

The discussion is *ever* so we're probably looking at one of the hapless Maserati or Ferrari drivers of the 50's who were tens of seconds off the pace of their team-mates.

Johnny Claes, the record holder of most laps spent on the last place to give one quick example. One start with the works Maserati, 20 seconds off Fangio on his home track at Spa...

[phrank]

Did Irvine not almost became champion but got screwed by Schumacher in Japan?

[pacificquay]

 

Eddie Irvine was struggling for Ferrari in the first 3 seasons.

 

 

These things are all relative - but EI outqualified MS on their Ferrari debut

[MikeTekRacing]

Did Irvine not almost became champion but got screwed by Schumacher in Japan?

Irvine was let 2 times through in Malaysia by Schumacher.

He couldn't actually drive the car car for Irvine (if that meant getting screwed by...)

[BuddyHolly]

Andretti McLaren in 1993, that was so bad it was painful.

[Radoye]

Andretti at McLaren?

 

Damn beat me to it. So bad he gave up.

 

Andretti McLaren in 1993, that was so bad it was painful.

 

I can do better (or rather worse) - Mansell at McLaren, so bad he couldn't even fit into the car, and when they finally made the cockpit wide enough for him he refused to drive.

[Fisico54]

Hesnault at Brabham, Nakajima at Lotus, Dumfries at Lotus and Capelli in the Ferrari spring to mind. Though for the Brabhams and Lotus drivers were there cars in any way close to the team leaders car?

[Atreiu]

Irvine got screwed by being slow and incompetent.

 

McLaren, Hakkinen, Coulthard, Schumacher and Salo did all they could to help him and it still wasn't enough.

 

Heck, his 99 Japanese GP sums it up. 1,1 second behind Hakkinen and 1,5 from pole. 95 seconds behind Hakkinen in the race, 90 seconds form his teammate. On a motherfvcking God damn title decider, that's the best he could do.

 

Gasly risks getting the boot for being half as bad as that.

[sopa]

I'm not sure, how much Ferrari qualifies as a top team, when Capelli was there. For some reason I don't think he was as horrible as some of the other no-hopers mentioned here.

[MikeTekRacing]

 

 

Gasly risks getting the boot for being half as bad as that.

Today's F1 is a lot closer between team mates. Maybe more balanced talent, or more tools available to see what the other driver is doing, or cars that are a bit easier to drive (or all of them)...but gaps tend to be smaller today....

[Spillage]

There were surely plenty of them in the 1960s and 1970s. Dave Walker is the obvious choice but he was hardly the only #2 driver to be thrashed by a teammate at Lotus.

I'd actually argue that during the 1950s most of the driver in top cars weren't much good. The teams would have their leaders - Fangio, Moss, Ascari etc - a capable number 2 like Behra or Collins and then a couple more guys who didn't really offer much at all, like Hermann Lang, who made a couple of guest appearances in the 1950s despite being 15-20 years past his best.

I guess more recent examples of bad drivers in good cars would include Dumfries and Nakajima at Lotus, Massa towards the end of his Ferrari tenure (particularly 2011), Kovalainen at McLaren and maybe Lehto/Verstappen at Benetton. I don't think any of them were rubbish really, just average midfielders in way over their heads.

[PlatenGlass]

There's a massive difference between drivers who were supposed to be good but disappointed (Gasly, Kovalainen, even Andretti) and drivers who never had any credentials to begin with and were predictably awful (Nakajima, Rebaque etc.) It's a different league.

[PlatenGlass]

Also some of these drivers might have been quite good really but were put in the second car in a one-driver team - e.g. all of Schumacher's team-mates, Dumfries (who was a British F3 champion and there's no way he was as bad as his results suggest).

Edited by PlatenGlass, 05 August 2019 - 16:37.

[Tsarwash]

Not his fault but Perry Mcarthy's 1992 Monaco qualifying attempt was literally thirteen times slower than his teammates. I can't remember why this was. 

[Izzyeviel]

Maybe not quite a top team but Johnny Dumfries was appalling in the 1986 Lotus while Senna challenged for the WDC

 

Yes, but he wasn't hired because he was good, he was hired because he wasn't good.

 

You can't really compare guys like Dumfries/Irvine who were signed to be solid number 2's with guys like Andretti/Capelli who were signed with high hopes & flopped miserably. 

 

Grosjean -the 2009 version was probably one of the worst - thankfully he got better when he went away for a bit.

 

Andretti

Capelli

Grosjean

Frentzen

Alesi

 

My top five. Good drivers in smaller teams/other series, but when you look at their results when they drove for the top teams, you would say they never did come close to matching expectations.

[Izzyeviel]

Not his fault but Perry Mcarthy's 1992 Monaco qualifying attempt was literally thirteen times slower than his teammates. I can't remember why this was. 

 I think he did like 5 laps in a broken car with no seat or something like that.

[noriaki]

Not his fault but Perry Mcarthy's 1992 Monaco qualifying attempt was literally thirteen times slower than his teammates. I can't remember why this was. 

 

Andrea Moda was hardly a top team though 

[Tsarwash]

Andrea Moda was hardly a top team though 

Hardly a back marker team, truth be told. 

[sopa]

Andrea Moda was hardly a top team though 

 

Top from the back, only bettered by Life.

[LucaP]

It's not really fair to answer Badoer given the circumstances, isn't it

[messy]

Rebaque was the one that came to mind.

More recently though, Giancarlo Fisichella was a wet fart with Renault and so consistently way behind him (except at Indianapolis, oddly) that it really made Renault labour to constructor’s crowns. But at least they did win them. Kovalainen was pretty promising for his first half season with McLaren then really, really bad after that. Kimi Raikkonen is worth a shout too for 2014/15, two years in which he barely put a foot right - but he redeemed himself after that far more than I think anybody expected.

Eddie Irvine gets my vote though. What happens if you put a really underwhelming midfield driver in his thirties into a Ferrari alongside the best driver of his generation? He’s routinely three quarters of a second a lap off the pace, finishes half a minute behind his team-mate over a race distance, is barely more than a midfield runner in 1996 and 1997 and then ends his time there missing the biggest Championship open goal in F1’s history despite having everybody working for him.

And yet...circa late 90s F1’s, if I remember rightly nobody criticised him or thought he was doing anything other than the perfect number two job? Why? He was sh*t and Barrichello was an enormous, instant upgrade who pushed Ferrari onto greater things. People even expected Irvine to be able to stand on his own two feet and deliver glory to Jaguar, against all logic and all evidence.

[Clatter]

Andretti at McLaren?

Even he was better than Mansell at McLaren.

[Lights]

Quite some good examples in here.. but I still don't think any of them are as bad as the situation for Gasly at Red Bull now, given that he didn't join the team mid-season, and that in modern F1 the gaps are simply smaller than they used to be in the 90's etc.

 

Gasly's situation is so bad that I never thought it was possible anymore nowadays for 2 drivers to be so far apart, in any team, let alone in a top team in a car that can't be that bad to drive.

Edited by Lights, 05 August 2019 - 17:28.

[garoidb]

Eddie Irvine gets my vote though. What happens if you put a really underwhelming midfield driver in his thirties into a Ferrari alongside the best driver of his generation? He’s routinely three quarters of a second a lap off the pace, finishes half a minute behind his team-mate over a race distance, is barely more than a midfield runner in 1996 and 1997 and then ends his time there missing the biggest Championship open goal in F1’s history despite having everybody working for him.

And yet...circa late 90s F1’s, if I remember rightly nobody criticised him or thought he was doing anything other than the perfect number two job? Why? He was sh*t and Barrichello was an enormous, instant upgrade who pushed Ferrari onto greater things. People even expected Irvine to be able to stand on his own two feet and deliver glory to Jaguar, against all logic and all evidence.

 

Didn't they pay him an eye watering salary too? 

[Celloman]

Irvine was average, but so were Barrichello, Coulthard and Fisichella. Back in the days it wasn't unusual to see the "second" driver getting beaten by nearly a second in qualifying, that happened regularly with Schumacher vs Verstappen/Herbert/Irvine/Barrichello, Hakkinen/Raikkonen vs Coulthard and Alonso vs Fisichella.

Edited by Celloman, 05 August 2019 - 17:33.

[messy]

Couthard at least used to beat Hakkinen on merit 5 or 6 times a season, much I suppose as Bottas does to Hamilton now.

[SophieB]

It's not really fair to answer Badoer given the circumstances, isn't it

No. Racing with very little notice in a traumatised team, he did his best in the most trying of circumstances.

[DutchQuicksilver]

Kovalainen didn't manage to take 1 point away from Lewis the whole year. That was really, really bad.
It helped Lewis win the title, though.

In his defense though, Kovalainen was always given the worse strategy (heavier car) which made him start behind Hamilton nearly every race.

[MKSixer]

In his defense though, Kovalainen was always given the worse strategy (heavier car) which made him start behind Hamilton nearly every race.

He also wasn't fit enough to handle the car, as well.  Fitness was a big challenge for him in the first season at McLaren.

[Kalmake]

Kovalainen didn't manage to take 1 point away from Lewis the whole year. That was really, really bad. 

That's not true. He finished ahead a few times.

[derstatic]

Gasly is doing bad no doubt. Kovalainen wasn't great at McLaren either as has been suggested, but at least he got a win so that alone puts him in a quite elite group of drivers. As I recall he was also frequently put on a worse strategy what compromised his races, but that can be my memory failing. The one (two) that comes to mind for me as most painful to watch are Badoer and Fisichella at Ferrari in 2009. The car was bad, sure, but Räikkönen scored one win, two podiums, one 4th and one 6th from 7 races. Not to score a single point is unacceptable. 10 years later I still remember the disappointment because even as sad it was that Massa got badly injured it was a dream for both Badoer and Fisichella to race in red. I liked them both and to see them fail hurt.

[Fivestripes]

Richard Robarts (who!!) alongside Carlos Reutemann for Brabham 1974

[tormave]

He also wasn't fit enough to handle the car, as well.  Fitness was a big challenge for him in the first season at McLaren.

 

Source? I find this pretty difficult to believe. Kovalainen was a test driver for Renault in 2006 when testing was still unlimited and drove over 28,000km of tests. That should put some strength in your neck... He then got a race seat in Renault after Alonso vacated it in 2007, and the same thing happened next year in McLaren. Kovalainen also finished the New York Marathon in 3:37 in 2007, which, while not super fast, is decent pace for a motorsports athlete.

[Ultraviolet]

Yes, but he wasn't hired because he was good, he was hired because he wasn't good.

 

You can't really compare guys like Dumfries/Irvine who were signed to be solid number 2's with guys like Andretti/Capelli who were signed with high hopes & flopped miserably. 

 

Grosjean -the 2009 version was probably one of the worst - thankfully he got better when he went away for a bit.

 

Andretti

Capelli

Grosjean

Frentzen

Alesi

 

My top five. Good drivers in smaller teams/other series, but when you look at their results when they drove for the top teams, you would say they never did come close to matching expectations.

 

Frentzen, and Fisichella whom others have mentioned, always struck me as being fantastic drivers in a different respect: they were brilliant at getting the absolute maximum from a mediocre car. But give them a really good car, and they couldn't get the best from it.

 

it's a valuable skill, and one worthy of being applauded, but it is not going to win any championships.

 

That's why I would rate them well ahead of those like Capelli and Andretti, who turned out simply not to be very good, or Alesi who I do think was very good, but just not quite good enough.

[Imateria]

Gasly is doing bad no doubt. Kovalainen wasn't great at McLaren either as has been suggested, but at least he got a win so that alone puts him in a quite elite group of drivers. As I recall he was also frequently put on a worse strategy what compromised his races, but that can be my memory failing. The one (two) that comes to mind for me as most painful to watch are Badoer and Fisichella at Ferrari in 2009. The car was bad, sure, but Räikkönen scored one win, two podiums, one 4th and one 6th from 7 races. Not to score a single point is unacceptable. 10 years later I still remember the disappointment because even as sad it was that Massa got badly injured it was a dream for both Badoer and Fisichella to race in red. I liked them both and to see them fail hurt.

Should also be remembered that Kovalainen was closing in on the lead and was set to take a win in Japan in 2008, well ahead of Massa and Hamilton who had conspired to mess up each other races early on, before his car failed.

 

Hector Rebaque and Ricardo Zunino deserve a mention.

I guess not really their fault, but Bernie's fault for selling a top seat to the highest bidder.

These were exactly the names I was thinking of when I saw this thread, Zunino even DNQ'd in a BT49 at Monaco.

[PayasYouRace]

I'm not sure guys like Andretti or Mansell at McLaren are really what the OP was after. They were great drivers and for whatever reasons it didn't work out for them in that particular instance.