102 replies to this topic

[Marklar]

Eh, questionable as usual https://www.autospor...drivers-of-2020

[Ultraviolet]

Eh, questionable as usual https://www.autospor...drivers-of-2020

Bottas, Kimi and Kvyat in there, ahead of 8 other (regular) F1 drivers who aren't? Gasly ahead of Leclerc? Nyck de Vries from Formula E? Are they on drugs?

[kosmos]

Bottas 12th, for doing what exactly?.

[Taxi]

Felix da Costa 3rd. Yey! Happy for that   [obviouly great talent but they are putting FE champion so high for "political" reasons]. Ogier is far down deserves at least a top 5.

[NixxxoN]

Lol Bottas 12th, and then Russell 15th... Just LOL. No words necessary.

Edited by NixxxoN, 19 December 2020 - 09:29.

[FTB]

Gasly overrated. Ogier underrated.

[Burtros]

The persistent refusal of the motorsport journalists to call out Bottas is very tiresome.

12th? Utter joke. He’s no place in the top half of that list and despite 2 GP wins I would question if he’s top 50. He was well beaten this season and it’s a devastating blow to the competitive integrity of 2021 that he remains in the best car on the grid.

Other than that, it’s nice too see personal favourites like Ash Sutton and Colton Herta well placed.

[TheAviator]

Gasly is heavily overrated. Think its because of RB snub, but Kvyat without F1 seat next year is no benchmark - and he still looked better on track then score says.

[Requiem84]

Bottas shouldnt be at the top 50 driver list this year all.

[Victor_RO]

Of the non-F1 drivers in the top 10, I would swap Ogier out and put McLaughlin in.

[Cliff]

Lol Bottas 12th, and then Russell 15th... Just LOL. No words necessary.

I think both of them should be way lower, somewhere in the 30’s

[Victor_RO]

Bottas 12th, for doing what exactly?.

 

And right ahead of a driver who utterly DOMINATED a super-competitive series down in Australia (as in - points system designed to stop runaway title wins, still wins it with a race weekend to spare), and then, 5 days after the last race of the season, jumped straight into an Indycar on a street track and acquitted himself quite well for his first race weekend in competitive single-seaters in years.

[JRodrigues]

I just have to point out 2 more drivers that should be placed higher (in my view): Elvans, for taking the fight until the last round, and Filipe Albuquerque, who won ELMS, WEC and Le Mans in LMP2.

[Victor_RO]

I just have to point out 2 more drivers that should be placed higher (in my view): Elvans, for taking the fight until the last round, and Filipe Albuquerque, who won ELMS, WEC and Le Mans in LMP2.

 

Albuquerque's season was insane. Best driver in LMP2 every time he got into one of those cars, literally on another level. Should have been top 20 on this list, yeah.

[messy]

I always like to see which 74 year old Bolivian club racer they’ve put in at #48 but no such thing this year.

I don’t think it’s bad tbh.

[Lerdes]

As an example - Scott Dixon too far down the list. And why is Bottas even on that list?

Edited by Lerdes, 19 December 2020 - 11:30.

[Silberpfeil]

As I wrote in the Rallying thread, Neuville’s ranking compared to Evans & Tänak is hilariously bad (EDIT: …or, come to think of it, hilariously good). Other than that, I don’t particularly care which arbitrary criteria were used to determine and cross-reference the quality of drivers from a dozen different disciplines… EDIT 2: Upon further thought, another casual observation: The 20 place difference between Evans in Ogier is… let’s say “interesting” as well, considering a pretty big chunk of Ogier’s title hopes came down to Evans stuffing it AND then warning Ogier about the approaching danger on the same corner.

Edited by Silberpfeil, 19 December 2020 - 12:04.

[Anderis]

People complaining about Bottas completely forget why pro-F1 bias exists in these rankings. And I can't even see how one would argue there's too much of it when F1 reject Antonio Felix da Costa is classified ahead of 18 of 20 F1 drivers. Put him in Bottas' seat and I guarantee you the comparison to Hamilton will make some of you shout he doesn't even deserve to be in the top50 .

 

 

These are Bottas' pre F1 achievements. How many drivers who are below him in the rankings have demonstrated better consistency and results at this level?

Then this man was promoted to F1 and prior to joining Mercedes, he outqualified and outscored his F1 team-mates on 4 out of 4 occasions.

 

In 2020, he took a pretty close qualifying battle to the man who is had taken 30 pole positions more than anyone in F1 history. It was the 4th closest qualifying battle on the grid and, in fact, the smallest average gap between Hamilton and Bottas out of their 4 years together at Mercedes. He beat Hamilton a few times on merit in races too.

 

If you think there are 20, 30, 40 or more drivers in the world who would easily do better in his shoes, I think you've got carried away. The reason Hamilton makes it look easy is because of his amazing consistency- he has very few bad days during which Bottas could beat him and make himself look better in the races. And Mercedes is so far ahead of everyone that it's just easier for Hamilton to control every variable than if they were in the midfield. The average gap between the two is not that big. And don't forget who Hamilton is.

 

And then there was Russell who made himself look good against Bottas because Russell's pre F1 record is among 10 most impressive in the XXI century and I bet you he'll make top10 of the ranking many times in the future if he gets the right car.

It's sort of difficult to gauge F1 against WRC, Indy Car and NASCAR but pretty much everything else consists of drivers who haven't done enough to be in F1. And then you have Bottas who is in a top seat because he's done enough to get picked when he himself was in the midfield, which is something some 80% of midfield drivers ever cannot say. And then when you compare Bottas this season to his other seasons against Hamilton, he hasn't performed considerably worse. Why would you think his position in the ranking is not about right? I guarantee you there are very few drivers in the world who would make their battle against Hamilton exciting in any way in these circumstances.

[Marklar]

Bottas being seen as the 7th best F1 driver of the season shouldnt be that extremely controversial. Almost everyone has him in the top 10. The F1 bias is indeed the bigger problem, but when hasnt it been?

Gasly being seen as the 3rd best F1 driver of the season should raise way more eyebrows to me.

And indeed, the order of the Rallye guys is ridiculous.

[P123]

Gasly does seem to be the biggest outlier on that list.  Bottas is too high, but those saying he doesn't belong in the top 50 are running with the emotion of him not being a challenge to a driver they dislike (who incidentally was No.1 on the list).

[Lerdes]

Gasly does seem to be the biggest outlier on that list. Bottas is too high, but those saying he doesn't belong in the top 50 are running with the emotion of him not being a challenge to a driver they dislike (who incidentally was No.1 on the list).

Nothing to do with Lewis. Bottas is just that annoyingly bad.

[Ultraviolet]

People complaining about Bottas completely forget why pro-F1 bias exists in these rankings. And I can't even see how one would argue there's too much of it when F1 reject Antonio Felix da Costa is classified ahead of 18 of 20 F1 drivers. Put him in Bottas' seat and I guarantee you the comparison to Hamilton will make some of you shout he doesn't even deserve to be in the top50 .

 

 

These are Bottas' pre F1 achievements. How many drivers who are below him in the rankings have demonstrated better consistency and results at this level?

Then this man was promoted to F1 and prior to joining Mercedes, he outqualified and outscored his F1 team-mates on 4 out of 4 occasions.

 

In 2020, he took a pretty close qualifying battle to the man who is had taken 30 pole positions more than anyone in F1 history. It was the 4th closest qualifying battle on the grid and, in fact, the smallest average gap between Hamilton and Bottas out of their 4 years together at Mercedes. He beat Hamilton a few times on merit in races too.

 

If you think there are 20, 30, 40 or more drivers in the world who would easily do better in his shoes, I think you've got carried away. The reason Hamilton makes it look easy is because of his amazing consistency- he has very few bad days during which Bottas could beat him and make himself look better in the races. And Mercedes is so far ahead of everyone that it's just easier for Hamilton to control every variable than if they were in the midfield. The average gap between the two is not that big. And don't forget who Hamilton is.

 

And then there was Russell who made himself look good against Bottas because Russell's pre F1 record is among 10 most impressive in the XXI century and I bet you he'll make top10 of the ranking many times in the future if he gets the right car.

It's sort of difficult to gauge F1 against WRC, Indy Car and NASCAR but pretty much everything else consists of drivers who haven't done enough to be in F1. And then you have Bottas who is in a top seat because he's done enough to get picked when he himself was in the midfield, which is something some 80% of midfield drivers ever cannot say. And then when you compare Bottas this season to his other seasons against Hamilton, he hasn't performed considerably worse. Why would you think his position in the ranking is not about right? I guarantee you there are very few drivers in the world who would make their battle against Hamilton exciting in any way in these circumstances.

For the purposes of this discussion, I don't give a damn about Bottas's history.

 

These are rankings for this year. And this year, Bottas has been frankly woeful.

 

I say that as someone who was delighted when he was promoted to the Merc team. I thought he thoroughly deserved it. Up until this year, I thought he did a good job of keeping Lewis honest, without ever quite being on his level. I considered him in the top 5 in F1.

 

This year, in a car that was absolutely dominant in almost every race, he managed to finish lower than the second place which should generally have been a given in over half the races. Now sure, in some of those races, there were reasons for that other than Bottas performing poorly; but conversely, some of his second places were pretty poor, and there would have been more drivers between him and Lewis had other teams been a bit closer to Mercedes.

 

I do take your point about the pro-F1 bias. It is supposed to be the absolute pinnacle of motorsport, so even an average F1 driver should be better than most others in most disciplines. Conversely, I can see an argument that different forms of motorsport require different skills, and who is to say that those required in F1 are more "worthy" than those required in other sports? For example, I am also a fan of FE, where skill in robust wheel to wheel fighting, and the ability to keep very precisely accurate every lap, is far more valuable than it is in F1 with its limited scope for overtaking and its usually ample run-off areas.

 

On similar reasoning as to why the F1 bias is legitimate, I can't help but question whether drivers from the feeder series, who are effectively "talented learner drivers" rather than the cream of the crop, should feature in a list like this at all. It seems to me that they perhaps deserve a separate list of "ones to watch" rather than featuring in the main list.

[as65p]

Gasly does seem to be the biggest outlier on that list.  Bottas is too high, but those saying he doesn't belong in the top 50 are running with the emotion of him not being a challenge to a driver they dislike (who incidentally was No.1 on the list).

 

Of course. No other reasons are even remotely thinkable.

[mikerally]

I really want to know how this guys came up with this ranking. Why is Hamilton better than another champion from another discipline when he has the best car and no competition? Why is Evans who fought for the WRC until the last round worse than Bottas( by 27 positions) who didn't fight for anything? Why is Ogier just 9th but Antonio Felix da Costa 3rd? Why is Albuquerque 36th? On what is this based? Half of the top 5 is made out of F1 drivers while winners of other competitions are below. WHY? 

 

Please someone explain.

 

Bottas being seen as the 7th best F1 driver of the season shouldnt be that extremely controversial. Almost everyone has him in the top 10. The F1 bias is indeed the bigger problem, but when hasnt it been?

Gasly being seen as the 3rd best F1 driver of the season should raise way more eyebrows to me.

And indeed, the order of the Rallye guys is ridiculous.

 

Ridiculous that the guys who really have it difficult are barely rated while F1 drivers are gods because they go around tracks with miles of asphalt run-offs. SUCH A ****ing JOKE.

[ArnageWRC]

It's the usual 'bizarre' list, massively favouring F1 drivers......

[juicy sushi]

It's sort of difficult to gauge F1 against WRC, Indy Car and NASCAR but pretty much everything else consists of drivers who haven't done enough to be in F1.

Ok, this is flat out factually incorrect. An awful lot of the non-F1 drivers never had an opportunity to be in F1, save, in some cases, for the vague promise of pushing a backmarker around for a colossal pay cut. After they had become established in their own series.

[Lights]

This concept is just as dumb as comparing different generations.

[JHSingo]

Gasly does seem to be the biggest outlier on that list.  Bottas is too high, but those saying he doesn't belong in the top 50 are running with the emotion of him not being a challenge to a driver they dislike (who incidentally was No.1 on the list).

Take Hamilton out the equation. Would you say that a guy who only won two races all season, and barely managed to finish second in the championship in a dominant car that won 11 races in the hands of his team mate, was seriously the 12th best driver in all of motorsport for that season? Really? It's a genuine question.

Edited by JHSingo, 19 December 2020 - 14:29.

[Marklar]

Depends on where you rank his team mate and how much biased towards F1 you are I'd say

[Ultraviolet]

Ok, this is flat out factually incorrect. An awful lot of the non-F1 drivers never had an opportunity to be in F1, save, in some cases, for the vague promise of pushing a backmarker around for a colossal pay cut. After they had become established in their own series.

Added to which, a growing number of F1 seats are getting allocated based more on the money the driver can bring into the team than on talent. Given that there are only 20 seats to start with, that is an awful lot of damn good drivers never getting a shot at it.

[Ultraviolet]

[On judging Bottas]

 

Depends on where you rank his team mate and how much biased towards F1 you are I'd say

That's when you look at the fact that in more than half the races, he didn't even manage to finish second to his team-mate.

 

Had he finished second almost every time Lewis won, I'd agree you had a point. But even allowing for the times things happened that meant the result was not his fault, he wasn't quick enough, he wasn't sufficiently strong in overtaking and he wasn't kind enough to his tires. In short, he failed to show many of the key attributes needed to deserve a place on this list.

[TheWilliamzer]

I believe Colton Herta should be in the top 10. And where the hell is Mehdi Bennani?   

[Atreiu]

They should call it top 50 racers and include guys from bikes.

 

It's Autosport, not CarSport.

 

The list itself is bonkers enough that I don't feel like dissecting it. Bottas ahead of so many others... Whatever. They got a few clicks from me, they must be happy.

[SenorSjon]

I would trade Nyck de Vries (11th in FE... really?) for Veekay (IndyCar rookie of the year).

[Requiem84]

Gasly does seem to be the biggest outlier on that list. Bottas is too high, but those saying he doesn't belong in the top 50 are running with the emotion of him not being a challenge to a driver they dislike (who incidentally was No.1 on the list).

He lost out many races to a car which evidently was slower and he didnt show up for a number of races (err, Turkey), was losing out to Russell and got annihilated by his team mate.

He doesn’t even belong in the top 75 list of drivers for this year.

[messy]

In truth I don’t understand at all how Gasly - ranked sixth to eighth in just about every F1 top ten - is up that high. Does that mean Autosport are going to rank him third in their F1 top ten as well? Surely not.

But that’s really the only one I think is a serious outlier. Oh, and De Vries too probably.

[William Hunt]

There are quite a bit of strange choices in the list imho, I also think that Dixon & Pourchaire should be higher. But I don't think Gasly is out of place at all this high in the list. What some people don't seem to realise is that this list doesn't rank drivers according to talent but according to their performance. Gasly maximised the performance of his car, outclassed his team mate and he won an F1 Grand Prix in a car that in theory wasn't a race winning car at all so based on those factors he deserves to be up this high yes.

 

I also think it's quite difficult to include NASCAR drivers in such a list, not saying they don't deserve to be in it, but it's just such a different kind of racing and the series is also purely American focussed (the nationality of the drivers I mean), it's completely impossible to even compare them to other classes.

Edited by William Hunt, 19 December 2020 - 18:54.

[PlatenGlass]

This whole thing is about comparing apples with oranges. Nothing to get worked up about.

That said, where's Takuma?

[Atreiu]

This whole thing is about comparing apples with oranges. Nothing to get worked up about.

That said, where's Takuma?

 

I know, right?

[messy]

There are quite a bit of strange choices in the list imho, I also think that Dixon & Pourchaire should be higher. But I don't think Gasly is out of place at all this high in the list. What some people don't seem to realise is that this list doesn't rank drivers according to talent but according to their performance. Gasly maximised the performance of his car, outclassed his team mate and he won an F1 Grand Prix in a car that in theory wasn't a race winning car at all so based on those factors he deserves to be up this high yes.

I also think it's quite difficult to include NASCAR drivers in such a list, not saying they don't deserve to be in it, but it's just such a different kind of racing and the series is also purely American focussed (the nationality of the drivers I mean), it's completely impossible to even compare them to other classes.

I think NASCAR is maybe comparable with Australian V8s to a degree and Indycar to a (different) one. Even the BTCC is extremely British driver-centric so it’s not completely unique in that. It’s very much it’s own thing but it’s a high level championship and I think the top drivers from that deserve a place up there. I’d argue the WRC is even harder to compare.

Bluntly, it’s a strange concept that Autosport have made a tradition of, and despite myself I always enjoy reading it much as some of their selections can be rather strange. I don’t understand though, now they cover it, why MotoGP riders aren’t included.

Edited by messy, 19 December 2020 - 22:32.

[HP]

This whole thing is about comparing apples with oranges. Nothing to get worked up about.

That said, where's Takuma?

Distant memory it seems. I mean it's so lang back that he won his 2nd Indy500. Right? 

 

Anyhow, no list ever does justice to the reality that racing is so diverse. IMO anyone that comes out on top of the top tier series, should be an automatic candidate for the list. And sometimes exceptional talents in lower series should be added too. Even though the latter is already quickly becoming muddy water for such a lofty list.

[NixxxoN]

People complaining about Bottas completely forget why pro-F1 bias exists in these rankings. And I can't even see how one would argue there's too much of it when F1 reject Antonio Felix da Costa is classified ahead of 18 of 20 F1 drivers. Put him in Bottas' seat and I guarantee you the comparison to Hamilton will make some of you shout he doesn't even deserve to be in the top50 .

 

 

These are Bottas' pre F1 achievements. How many drivers who are below him in the rankings have demonstrated better consistency and results at this level?

Then this man was promoted to F1 and prior to joining Mercedes, he outqualified and outscored his F1 team-mates on 4 out of 4 occasions.

 

In 2020, he took a pretty close qualifying battle to the man who is had taken 30 pole positions more than anyone in F1 history. It was the 4th closest qualifying battle on the grid and, in fact, the smallest average gap between Hamilton and Bottas out of their 4 years together at Mercedes. He beat Hamilton a few times on merit in races too.

 

If you think there are 20, 30, 40 or more drivers in the world who would easily do better in his shoes, I think you've got carried away. The reason Hamilton makes it look easy is because of his amazing consistency- he has very few bad days during which Bottas could beat him and make himself look better in the races. And Mercedes is so far ahead of everyone that it's just easier for Hamilton to control every variable than if they were in the midfield. The average gap between the two is not that big. And don't forget who Hamilton is.

 

And then there was Russell who made himself look good against Bottas because Russell's pre F1 record is among 10 most impressive in the XXI century and I bet you he'll make top10 of the ranking many times in the future if he gets the right car.

It's sort of difficult to gauge F1 against WRC, Indy Car and NASCAR but pretty much everything else consists of drivers who haven't done enough to be in F1. And then you have Bottas who is in a top seat because he's done enough to get picked when he himself was in the midfield, which is something some 80% of midfield drivers ever cannot say. And then when you compare Bottas this season to his other seasons against Hamilton, he hasn't performed considerably worse. Why would you think his position in the ranking is not about right? I guarantee you there are very few drivers in the world who would make their battle against Hamilton exciting in any way in these circumstances.

Yeah, good achievements, until he got into F1, the top class

[Dolph]

Yeah, good achievements, until he got into F1, the top class

 

Yeah, in F1 Valtteri totally sucks. No achievements to speak of. He finished 2nd in the World this year and last year, 3rd in 2017. This is totally subpar. What is even worse is that he has 56 podiums - he is firmly outside the top ten of all time there sitting in 13th. If he keeps this up next year, he will be 9th all time. Total waste of career, if you ask me. He should retire now, when he is still one podium behind Nico Rosberg.

Edited by Dolph, 20 December 2020 - 05:08.

[NixxxoN]

Yeah, in F1 Valtteri totally sucks. No achievements to speak of. He finished 2nd in the World this year and last year, 3rd in 2017. This is totally subpar. What is even worse is that he has 56 podiums - he is firmly outside the top ten of all time there sitting in 13th. If he keeps this up next year, he will be 9th all time. Total waste of career, if you ask me. He should retire now, when he is still one podium behind Nico Rosberg.

Lol

Considering the cars he's got, hes a clear underachiever

[PlayboyRacer]

Lol
Considering the cars he's got, hes a clear underachiever

You make it sound like he's the only one driving a Mercedes these past 4 seasons lol.

Edited by PlayboyRacer, 20 December 2020 - 06:11.

[jjcale]

The extreme hate for VB is just weird ... even being a no 2 in a top F1 seat is an achievement in career terms and something most drivers in F1 would give up a nut for - much less the ones not in F1, most of whom started out with the hope of getting to F1.... an yet there are people arguing in earnest that he is not even top 50   ... or that he should be behind someone who is, say, second in some random lower formulae. 

 

To stay in a top seat even as a no 2 for 4 years is no mean feat... some folks need to take a deep breath and process that. 

 

In terms of pay - which is the ultimate indicator of value - he is reportedly the 6th best paid driver on the grid (which interestingly is about where he is in terms of F1 drivers on the list) .....Its the same as with LH - why pay him so much when there are supposedly others out there who are so much better and cheaper? obviously those doing the paying dont agree with the premise of the question.      

[Requiem84]

Mercedes doesnt want a faster #2 driver, they want exactly what Valterri is doing. So as he’s doing what they require, they pay him nicely.

Vettel also was paid nicely by Ferrari, probably #2nd on the grid. Does that make him the 2nd best driver?

[Ultraviolet]

You make it sound like he's the only one driving a Mercedes these past 4 seasons lol.

And you make it sound like there was no one but Hamilton beating him this year.

[jjcale]

My quibble with the list is why is 4th in Superformula 38th and 1st in Superformula 33rd but 2nd and 3rd in Superformula dont make the list?

 

If you rate super formula high enough to put the current leader 33rd, how much good fortune do you think 2nd and 3rd have received to be in their positions to not make the list at all, given that 4th is 38th (assuming that 4th would be second if not for misfortune).

[jjcale]

Mercedes doesnt want a faster #2 driver, they want exactly what Valterri is doing. So as he’s doing what they require, they pay him nicely.

Vettel also was paid nicely by Ferrari, probably #2nd on the grid. Does that make him the 2nd best driver?

 

That is an indicator that SV is a top quality driver... and he is the second best driver on the grid in terms of career stats. 

 

Edit re VB - But why pay him - if he is as average as you think, then lots of others could do the same job .... and surely being the water carrier at Merc is a better job than being in the midfield? so there should be lots of takers ... and so the laws of demand and supply mean that Merc should be able to find someone cheaper ..... or is Merc the only company in the world that does not care about money? 

Edited by jjcale, 20 December 2020 - 08:24.