240 replies to this topic

[Dratini]

But just by looking at his statistics vs. teammates he does not really look elite to me.

lol please. How can you honestly expect to have any sort of constructive discussion on a driver's ability if your only point of reference for how you rate them is a points tally?
 

[Anuity]

Rubens just didn't cut it. His time against Irvine was an early warning of his shortcomings. He's in the same bracket with the likes of Coulthard, Webber, Frentzen, Fisichella etc.

And it’s not a bad company to be in. After all, all these were good drivers.
Similarly, I see no drama with Ric being in this company either.

[messy]

On Hakkinen.....I think he was mentally as strong as anyone personally. I mean he clearly responded better to high pressure title finales than Schumacher - 1998 and 1999, both times he just shrugged off any pressure and delivered lights to flag demo runs. He wasn't perfect, and had a couple of unforced errors in 1999 while he was miles ahead at Imola and Monza, but those were such high profile errors for that very reason and every single driver who has such a long career will be able to point to just as many I reckon. 

 

I think quite a lot of drivers who come to their success late tend to struggle with things a lot more than the Alonso or Lewis-like prodigies who start winning early. Because I suppose if you're already 30-ish when you start being successful, you've already got rather more going on in the back of your mind with kids, wives, years of struggling in poor cars etc. I think Heinz Harald Frentzen and Giancarlo Fisichella are the best examples of that, maybe add Damon Hill to the list too. Damon less of the 'years struggling' but was already well past his 30th birthday when he started his F1 career and maybe struggled with the pressure a bit at times. Fisichella and Frentzen totally failed to make the most of a golden ticket given to them relatively late in their careers. Mika is the opposite for me, he had all those years plugging away with Lotus and McLaren, nearly died in one of those cars, he was long highlighted as a great driver in waiting, then when Newey gave him an MP4/13 for Christmas he never looked back. 

[jcbc3]

'Cars' guys. We are talking cars here.....

[Alfisti]

And it’s not a bad company to be in. After all, all these were good drivers.
Similarly, I see no drama with Ric being in this company either.

 

 

I have Daniel slightly ahead of that group, especially racing in close quarters. All those you mention sort of found ways to lose at times and Daniel has found ways to win when it has looked unlikely. 

[Touchdown]

I think Daniel is far closer to the elite guys than he is to the Barrichello/Coulthard group to be honest - I can’t imagine Rubens or DC ever putting in a season like Ricciardo did in 2014, 2016, or 2018.

[jcbc3]

Hmmmm, maybe I didn't make myself clear.

 

THIS THREAD IS FOR THE DISCUSSION OF: cars-that-you-think-may-have-been-better-than-they-looked

 

Henceforth, discussion of driver merits will be summarily shot down.

[Anuity]

What about Williams in 1999.
Ralf had a very strong season and he scored all of the team’s points that year. Eventually they ended up only 5th behind Jordan and Stewart.
It seems that the car was better than the previous year.

[ensign14]

Wee bit before my time but I find it very hard to believe that Brabham was dominant.

Very open season, Fittipaldi won the title with fewer race wins than Reutemann.  The BT44 was good enough to finish 2nd in the constructors' title the next year, when it was a year old.

 

Then Brabham swapped out the Cossie for an Alfa engine.  That car was definitely better than its engine.

[Burai]

Button looked, or sounded, pretty wobbly at times in 2009.

 

I'm not sure we've ever seen a situation like Button had to cope with at Brawn, certainly not in the modern era.

 

Once those first few dominant races were over. It was very much a team looking to survive rather than a team looking to win a championship. By mid-season they had the third or fourth best car, they'd laid off a third of their staff and had no money and a reduced talent pool to develop the car. I don't know of many great drivers who wouldn't be on edge seeing how quickly Red Bull were eating into that lead.

[Risil]

What about Williams in 1999.
Ralf had a very strong season and he scored all of the team’s points that year. Eventually they ended up only 5th behind Jordan and Stewart.
It seems that the car was better than the previous year.

 

Yeah, Zanardi was really struggling in 1999. Strange really because Alex beat most of the same drivers that Villeneuve had in 1995 and then Montoya would in 1999 and (kinda, if the Lola-Toyota's reliability was up to it) 2000. As Chuck Berry said, you never can tell.

 

Presumably having customer Renault engines didn't help the car's competitiveness, although how different was the Supertec's relationship to the Renault engine from the Mugen's relationship to the original Honda V10? Genuine question, I can never get straight in my head exactly what the Mugen V10 was.
 

[Anuity]

In beyond the grid both Ralf and Alex talk about 1999 season and why Zanardi performed so poorly.
I don’t see that car as necessarily winning races, but I think it could be a more frequent podium visitor and perhaps challenge Jordan for 3rd.

Mugen is interesting indeed, as I Understand they continued to develop the engines by themselves after Honda left in 1992. Kind of what Red Bull is going to do.
In 2000 they were actually competing against each other, Honda supplying BAR and Mugen supplying Jordan.

[Burai]

What about Williams in 1999.
Ralf had a very strong season and he scored all of the team’s points that year. Eventually they ended up only 5th behind Jordan and Stewart.
It seems that the car was better than the previous year.

 

The '98 FW20 was effectively the FW19 but with a narrow track. A properly half-baked design whilst they got their post-Newey design team sorted. Anything was likely to be better than that.

 

The FW21 was let down by the ancient Supertec engine and, as bad as Hill was in the second Jordan, he still scored 7 points compared to Zanardi's 0. With a bit more luck and a better team mate for Ralf, I reckon they could have easily finished third.

[M66R]

The one that popped into my mind was the Skoda Fabia WRC from the mid 2000s.

It didn't help having nearly a dozen drivers sharing the second seat (including Colin McRae) and Armin Schwarz in the other seat.

Given how Skoda have won pretty much everything in WRC 2 it's a shame its exploits in WRC haven't come to much.

[MattK9]

The 2007 & 2008 Ferrari was clearly a much better car than the results it achieved.

 

Yes,in that time it won a WDC (very lucky to do so) and 2 WCC (technically once McL had all their WCC points removed in 2007).

But, frankly what we know about the relative driver performances of Kimi and Massa vs Alonso and also the comparison of Massa vs Bottas vs Ham, means that the driver pairing of Alonso and Hamilton was considerably stronger than Kimi or Massa and therefore the Ferrari car was considerably stronger than McLarens effort in those years

[Anuity]

The 2007 & 2008 Ferrari was clearly a much better car than the results it achieved.

Yes,in that time it won a WDC (very lucky to do so) and 2 WCC (technically once McL had all their WCC points removed in 2007).
But, frankly what we know about the relative driver performances of Kimi and Massa vs Alonso and also the comparison of Massa vs Bottas vs Ham, means that the driver pairing of Alonso and Hamilton was considerably stronger than Kimi or Massa and therefore the Ferrari car was considerably stronger than McLarens effort in those years

Yeah, as much as I like Kimi it does look like those Ferraris were really really good. It’s probably overlooked because they had the job done nearly 100% percent.

Another one I was wondering about is Arrows in 2000.
Surely the team did not have a big budget and ran an old engine.but I remember Jos having some great races that year. I think he even came close to podium finish a couple of times.
Was it him finally showing some brilliance and talent that he had in him? Or was that car capable of more?

[messy]

The one that popped into my mind was the Skoda Fabia WRC from the mid 2000s.

It didn't help having nearly a dozen drivers sharing the second seat (including Colin McRae) and Armin Schwarz in the other seat.

Given how Skoda have won pretty much everything in WRC 2 it's a shame its exploits in WRC haven't come to much.

 

Great call. That was such a nice little car and Colin McRae was instantly able to run second in Australia even if he was advantaged by the running order. Armin Schwarz and Toni Gardemeister weren't remotely top drawer were they. 

[Spillage]

If we can go off-topic for a second, somebody at Benetton at the time (Pat Symonds maybe?) suggested that the mistake with the drivers wasn't so much hiring Alesi or Berger but hiring both of them. I think there's something to that, but who should Benetton have hired instead? They obviously couldn't have Michael Schumacher and I don't think Herbert was a better choice than the 1996 pair. I wonder if they shouldn't have tried a bit harder to secure Paul Tracy's services.

Yeah, this is a fair point. Alesi and Berger were two experienced and highly talented drivers, so it's hard to see who could have done much better. Schumacher certainly, Hill probably and perhaps Hakkinen as well, but those drivers weren't really available.

 

I definitely think the Fisichella/Wurz partnership underachieved in 1998 though. Fisi should have won in Canada at the very least.

Edited by Spillage, 22 March 2021 - 16:10.

[Spillage]

The 2007 & 2008 Ferrari was clearly a much better car than the results it achieved.

 

Yes,in that time it won a WDC (very lucky to do so) and 2 WCC (technically once McL had all their WCC points removed in 2007).

But, frankly what we know about the relative driver performances of Kimi and Massa vs Alonso and also the comparison of Massa vs Bottas vs Ham, means that the driver pairing of Alonso and Hamilton was considerably stronger than Kimi or Massa and therefore the Ferrari car was considerably stronger than McLarens effort in those years

I think in 2008 you have to bear a few things in mind though - the car/team were much less reliable than the Mclaren.Without that engine failure in Hungary and the pitstop in Singapore Massa would have won the title pretty easily. By contrast I don't think Hamilton had a mechanical issue all season. Massa also had a stronger teammate than Lewis did - I'd argue that if Kovalainen had been in the second Ferrari and Kimi in the second Mclaren then Massa would have won the title.

 

So yeah, the '08 Ferrari should have won the title but it was a weird season in which both title protagonists had scruffy, error-strewn seasons. The Ferrari was a bit quicker but also less reliable and the team was less operationally slick. The team and drivers did not maximise all of their opportunities but neither did Hamilton and Mclaren.

[Anuity]

I think in 2008 you have to bear a few things in mind though - the car/team were much less reliable than the Mclaren.Without that engine failure in Hungary and the pitstop in Singapore Massa would have won the title pretty easily. By contrast I don't think Hamilton had a mechanical issue all season. Massa also had a stronger teammate than Lewis did - I'd argue that if Kovalainen had been in the second Ferrari and Kimi in the second Mclaren then Massa would have won the title.

 

So yeah, the '08 Ferrari should have won the title but it was a weird season in which both title protagonists had scruffy, error-strewn seasons. The Ferrari was a bit quicker but also less reliable and the team was less operationally slick. The team and drivers did not maximise all of their opportunities but neither did Hamilton and Mclaren.

 

I think it's a good observation. 

It seemed like that season both Ferrrari and Mclaren drivers were competing trying "not to win the championship".

 

Kimi was apparently still having hangover after winning the title in 2007. He did look very quick though, especially in the first half of 2008. It seems that losing it in Canada, France put him off and after that he started to make mistakes and losing to Massa like in Spa and Singapore.

Hamilton was also having a pretty bad year by his standards. It's probably his least deserved title, especially coming from 2007 season that he put together.

I would say that in perfect circumstances both Mclaren and Ferrari were not used up to its full potential that year. Imagine Lewis of today driving that Mclaren, or Michael driving that Ferrari.

 

That season was a bit like 2006. When Ferrari was marginally quicker, but Renault was more consistent. Except that the drivers in 2008 didn't deliver as consistently as they did in 2006. Still 2008 is one of the best seasons for me personally.

[dierome87]

Ahh ok I see what you and PBR mean, I agree with you! What i would give to have seen 99 JV in a McLaren...

Back on subject i saw someone mention 03 Williams, i think if MSC is in that car it walks to the title

 

Not sure the FW25 was that good. The best car that year was unquestionably the F-2003GA. It was in fact Michael who underperformed that year. It shouldn't have been that close with Kimi and JPM.

[Anuity]

I think FW25 delivered pretty much what it had. Perhaps, it could do a bit more.

But Michael that year performed pretty poorly. I think it was his worst year in his first career (1991-2006). He had a Kimi/Lewis year like they did in 2008. Super quick on occasions, but then nowhere sometimes and making mistakes. He was lucky to win it that year. Perhaps he was just taking it too easy after 2000/2001/2002 successes. I think you could argue that Ferrari had more in it than they delivered in 2003.

 

For me it only gets a pass because he won 5 races, compared to Kimi's one.

Edited by Anuity, 22 March 2021 - 17:01.

[Risil]

I think performing at the level Michael was between 2000-2002 is going to take it out of you (I go with the view from upthread that the 2001 Ferrari was less dominant, and the season harder going, than it looks in the record books). But Michael scored six wins and got enough points finishes elsewhere to eke out a championship. So in its own way, pretty impressive.

 

I don't recall if there were specific problems with the 2003 Ferrari. There was that one race in Hungary where it looked like an also-ran, but was that a Bridgestone thing?

[Cornholio]

Presumably having customer Renault engines didn't help the car's competitiveness, although how different was the Supertec's relationship to the Renault engine from the Mugen's relationship to the original Honda V10? Genuine question, I can never get straight in my head exactly what the Mugen V10 was.

 

 

I think yeah the initial Mugen V10s were based off the 1990 McLaren engine, ran by Tyrrell in 1991 with full Honda badging before passing to Footwork and being known as a Mugen from then on. I would *guess* that formed the basis of their engine till-mid 1994 which that by that point was struggling in the Lotus despite being a decent midfield unit with the Footwork previous years. But then they did have that brand new much lighter engine that Herbert famously stuck 4th on the grid at Monza before being punted out at the first corner.

 

Although all of that is probably moot though as the engine formula changed from 3.5L to 3.0L from 1995 on anyway, so I would guess it was a brand new engine from that point on if not from Monza '94, I guess the question is what level of unofficial works Honda input it had over the next 4 years or so.

[messy]

I think performing at the level Michael was between 2000-2002 is going to take it out of you (I go with the view from upthread that the 2001 Ferrari was less dominant, and the season harder going, than it looks in the record books). But Michael scored six wins and got enough points finishes elsewhere to eke out a championship. So in its own way, pretty impressive.

I don't recall if there were specific problems with the 2003 Ferrari. There was that one race in Hungary where it looked like an also-ran, but was that a Bridgestone thing?

The thing with the F2001 was that it wasn’t a dominant car, but Michael was so good he makes it look like one in the record books. Forever now, people will look at the 2001 points table and think that it was the first dominant Ferrari, but it wasn’t was it? Not at all. It was probably fairly similar compared to the cars around it as it had been in 2000 - but Schumacher was just operating on a different level. Maybe reliability came into it too in truth. On a bad day McLaren or Williams came back empty handed after a double DNF. On a bad day Schumacher was second. He was insanely good. He walked the championship because he was the only driver at the top of his game even though Ferrari were genuinely the quickest car probably a third of the time at best? Early in the year McLaren were capable of looking just as strong as previous years - only this time it was up to Coulthard as Hakkinen was clearly off-colour. Williams then started to hit their stride and were quickest over and over again, but how often did they actually make the end? On the low downforce tracks nobody saw which way Williams went.

Not saying the F2001 wasn’t a good car, but I think it’s the absolute opposite of others in the thread, made to look statistically dominant despite not even being clearly the fastest car of the season. Williams unreliability and Montoya being a rookie held them back, Hakkinen being so totally off colour most of the year left Coulthard to lead the McLaren challenge. He did his best, but he wasn’t Mika.

Edited by messy, 22 March 2021 - 20:21.

[midgrid]

I think the main thing in 2001 was that McLaren and Williams were simply less consistent than Ferrari, and less reliable to boot.  If you aggregate Coulthard and Ralf Schumacher's best results over all the races, this produces a more respectable championship total of 96 compared to Michael on 123.

 

Having watched 2001 live, I remember it being an interesting season because although it was obvious that Michael was going to win the championship well before its end, form was unpredictable on a race-by-race basis: it's just that the form balance was something like Ferrari 50%, McLaren 25%, Williams 25%, instead of Ferrari 50%, McLaren 50%, as it had been in 2000.  There were only three races (Hungary, Spa and Suzuka) where Michael ran away with it without being seriously challenged, four including Monaco (where Coulthard started on pole but had to start from the back).

[Myrvold]

Great call. That was such a nice little car and Colin McRae was instantly able to run second in Australia even if he was advantaged by the running order. Armin Schwarz and Toni Gardemeister weren't remotely top drawer were they. 

 

I'm going to defend Gardemeister a bit here. He was in his third year of rallying and only 23 or 24 when he got his first outing in the Seat Cordoba, and got a podium, Seat's first podium in WRC, and solidly outpacing the more experienced Rovanperä in the other Seat in the vast majority of the rallies they both drove that season, even though Rovanperä had been driving the car the whole year. That's the reason why Seat kept Gardemeister and not Rovanperä for 2000. He also started 2000 with outpacing Didier Auriol at Monte Carlo, Auriol who after all looked like he had a real shot at the title in 99. He was often a bit faster than Auriol as well, but crashed in a couple of crucial rallies for himself, and had technical issues in others. But he generally was quicker than the man who fought for the world title the year before.
He had good rallies as a privateer, proper privateer in Monte Carlo and Sweden as well, scoring good points. His Mitsubishi outings in 01 was poor pace-wise. But something were going on there. I know Mitsubishi were on the end of their dispensation for using the Gr.A car, but they went from a car that won Safari outright on pace, and were a point-scorer in the gravel rallies previously, to being nowhere in Finland and NZ. Gardemeister was well outside the top 10 when he made an error in NZ, but he was ahead on Tommi Mäkinen, on pace! 

He was the fastest Skoda-driver in 02, though Eriksson was well over the top then. He beat Auriol convincingly again in 03, still with the big, heavy Octavia. Was just part-time with Skoda in 04, but he was on pace with Hirvonen in the 2nd Subaru, though Hirvonen was woefully inexperienced then.
When Gardemeister finally(?) got his chance in a fairly big team, with Ford. That was the year that Ford went with cheap/pay-drivers, and ran last years car, in an effort to spend more time on the 2006 car. So in the car that Märtin took to 3rd in 04, Gardemeister brought to 4th in 05, a car with no development, while the other top teams brought new/upgraded cars. But still lost out to Hirvonen for the 06 seat.
He did some privateer rallies in 06 and 07 in 05-cars, but scored points in all but two events. Yes, I'm a bit of a Gardemeister-fan.

So, with the OT-done.

 

The Fabia WRC 05 was a lot better than it looked. Granted, The Kopecky-team did do some development work on the Fabia after Skoda pulled out. But he wasn't a Skoda-driver at that point. So the Skoda Fabia WRC that P-G Andersson and Andreas Mikkelsen used in 2009 were basically the 2005 Fabia WRC. Andersson won a couple of stages and was 6th before he had to retire from Rally Norway in 2009, while Mikkelsen actually were solidly in the top 5 in Poland, even outpacing Ogier in the C4 until the engine gave up. Both cars were run by a slightly rich Norwegian.
Just imagine what that Fabia could've done with proper drivers in 05, or even 06. What if Red Bull could've backed the official Skoda team, instead of the private team that ran the Skodas in 06. McRae full-time in one car. Rovanperä and Panizzi sharing the other. That would've been so much better than Schwarz and whoever Skoda could drag in to the second car like they did in 05!

[MortenF1]

The MP4/16 was nowhere near the Ferrari! DC drove his nuts off all year. Sutton, the gearbox-guru joined McLaren from Ferrari and said the 2000 Ferrari produced more DF than the MP4/15 did, and it was said that the Ferrari had just a few more HP than the Illmor-Mercedes. There should be no doubt the 2001 Ferrari was a lot better than the McLaren. And on a different but related note, DC beat Barrichello far too often driving a lesser car, so clearly he was the better of the two.

The 2004 Sauber was better than the results it got. It eas probably Fisichellas best year, but still.

Very little info and few rumours came out of Schumacher testing the ‘97 Sauber! Peter Sauber wanted a second opinion and a gauge on what was actually in the car, feeling that Herbert and Larini left too much on the table.

The ‘97 Jordan was also a great car but two rookies drove it. There was a win in that car had for instance Schumacher, DC, Häkkinen or Villeneuve driven for Jordan.

[PlayboyRacer]

The ‘97 Jordan was also a great car but two rookies drove it. There was a win in that car had for instance Schumacher, DC, Häkkinen or Villeneuve driven for Jordan.

I'd add Hill to that quartet, though I am a touch skeptical on DC. But on his day you're probably right.

[Anderis]

Crazy that we can all go back 25 years like it was yesterday and remember races, drivers, and politics of teams so clearly.... To me the races in the 90's are clearer in my memory than the races in the 2000's for some reason....

 

It makes this a really great thread to read, it could have been a driver bashfest but instead there's some great nuggets of trivia being raised...

I started watching F1 regularly in 2007 and I remember a lot from 2007-2009, then a bit less from 2010-2013 and the hybrid era has become a complete mesh in my memory.

 

I guess the reasons for that are 3:

1. Novelty: it's easier to remember things at the beginning of my F1 interest because these were new things to me and everything seemed more impressive and emotional before I got used to it.

2. Predictability: the increasing level in the sport has brought a more controlled version of F1 with stable pecking order, fewer reliability problems and mistakes etc. The races and seasons have got much more similar to each other than in the past so it' more difficult to distinguish between them.

3. When I was younger, I was much more emotionally engaged I would say. I remember as a teenager, before I started following F1, I had watched a lot of football (soccer) and in pretty much every single match there was a team I cheered for against another. I didn't feel indifferent towards anyone. Every single team, no matter how little I knew about them, I ended up wanting them to win or to lose. This somehow carried on at the beginning of my F1 interest, when I was much quicker to develop a liking or disliking for a driver or a team. I just can't imagine being so quick to form emotional attitude towards every single team or sportsman I watch nowadays. In fact, I have not developed a strong liking or disliking towards any driver that had a debut in F1 later than 2012, maybe apart from Sirotkin who is no longer here.
 

[Anuity]

I don’t agree about Sauber in 2004.
Fisichella delivered a great season, his finest probably which earned him that Renault seat.
Besides what better could it be for Sauber?
They finished 6th that season. McLaren and Williams were 4th and 5th, but each won a race. I cannot see that Sauber winning a race or outscoring Mclaren or Williams even with Schumacher.

[messy]

The 2004 Sauber was a copy and paste Ferrari F2003 wasn't it? I remember it being highly controversial at launch because it looked exactly like the Ferrari, not unlike the Tracing Point stuff last season. This in an era where Sauber and Ferrari openly shared quite a bit still; not least their reserve driver. It was a big step up from 2003 because of that I reckon. But as is usually the case when there's a bit of a question of a smaller team copying the design of their big brother (see also Racing Point 2020, Haas 2018), it didn't magically launch them to the front but it certainly gave them a much more competitive season of regular points. Fisichella was good that year, it was one of his only seasons in his career where he ended it as strong as he started it. But I do think the car, while not a potential frontrunner, found quite a cosy position towards the front of the midfield that year in what was quite a static picture in terms of the competitive order. 

 

I find cars like the Jordan 197, or the Toyota TF109 a bit more interesting because they went one step further than that and actually flashed genuine race winning speed on occasion. 

[taran]

 And on a different but related note, DC beat Barrichello far too often driving a lesser car, so clearly he was the better of the two.

I have to disagree here. In a situation where one driver is favoured to a massive degree by management, the #2 should not be compared to the favoured driver. Psychologically and materially, he won't be at the same level.

 

Barrichello, the #1b at Ferrari, was always an afterthought and would even have to give up his chassis if he was ever faster than Schumacher, so DC, having equal status at McLaren, beating the Ferrari #2 (or more accurately #4 as Schumacher typically had 3 chassis reserved for him at races) is not indicative of Barrichello's abilities.
 

[MortenF1]

Mmm, I can’t accept that as a sticking argument, least not because DC was not McLaren’s (Ron Dennis’) blue-eyed boy. That was Häkkinen.

[Taxi]

1993 Mclaren. Not as good as the williams but not the crap Senna used to say it was. Active suspention, and a very decent chassis. Only the engine was down to the Renault. By the end of the year Senna and Mika were pretty much going wheel to wheel with both Williams in races.  

[SpeedRacer`]

1993 Mclaren. Not as good as the williams but not the crap Senna used to say it was. Active suspention, and a very decent chassis. Only the engine was down to the Renault. By the end of the year Senna and Mika were pretty much going wheel to wheel with both Williams in races.  

 

By the end of the season yes, Prost test drove it in '94 and said the active was better than Williams.

 

 

I think yeah the initial Mugen V10s were based off the 1990 McLaren engine, ran by Tyrrell in 1991 with full Honda badging before passing to Footwork and being known as a Mugen from then on. I would *guess* that formed the basis of their engine till-mid 1994 which that by that point was struggling in the Lotus despite being a decent midfield unit with the Footwork previous years. But then they did have that brand new much lighter engine that Herbert famously stuck 4th on the grid at Monza before being punted out at the first corner.

 

Although all of that is probably moot though as the engine formula changed from 3.5L to 3.0L from 1995 on anyway, so I would guess it was a brand new engine from that point on if not from Monza '94, I guess the question is what level of unofficial works Honda input it had over the next 4 years or so.

 

Herbert explained recently on the excellent "Bring back V10's" podcast that the engine was only slightly responsible for that, if mainly due to far more efficent low downforce aero parts.

 

They were still slow at other tracks after Monza with that engine. They tried the low downforce parts from Monza at Estoril, and went about 1.5 seconds quicker!

Edited by SpeedRacer`, 23 March 2021 - 10:46.

[Spillage]

The thing with the F2001 was that it wasn’t a dominant car, but Michael was so good he makes it look like one in the record books. Forever now, people will look at the 2001 points table and think that it was the first dominant Ferrari, but it wasn’t was it? Not at all. It was probably fairly similar compared to the cars around it as it had been in 2000 - but Schumacher was just operating on a different level. Maybe reliability came into it too in truth. On a bad day McLaren or Williams came back empty handed after a double DNF. On a bad day Schumacher was second. He was insanely good. He walked the championship because he was the only driver at the top of his game even though Ferrari were genuinely the quickest car probably a third of the time at best? Early in the year McLaren were capable of looking just as strong as previous years - only this time it was up to Coulthard as Hakkinen was clearly off-colour. Williams then started to hit their stride and were quickest over and over again, but how often did they actually make the end? On the low downforce tracks nobody saw which way Williams went.

Not saying the F2001 wasn’t a good car, but I think it’s the absolute opposite of others in the thread, made to look statistically dominant despite not even being clearly the fastest car of the season. Williams unreliability and Montoya being a rookie held them back, Hakkinen being so totally off colour most of the year left Coulthard to lead the McLaren challenge. He did his best, but he wasn’t Mika.

I think 2001 was a weird season, a bit like 2019 where one car doesn't dominate but is consistently quick whilst its rivals are maddeningly inconsistent. DC had a strong season but I don't know if he actually drove any better in 2001 than he did from 1998-2000. Hakkinen looked burned out but did produce three dominant performances (had he won in Spain he would have beaten Coulthard 3-2 on race victories). So I think the McLaren was probably a little better than it looked but Coulthard wasn't quite up to it and Hakkinen was exhausted (though atrocious reliability didn't help him either!)

As for Williams... well, I have my doubts that JPM and Ralf every really got the best out of the Williams BMWs but this was particularly pronounced in 2001 when Montoya was a rookie. Ralf was driving well but I don't know if he was ever good enough for a serious title challenge. Williams also suffered a lot of unreliability.

Looking back at the final championship standings I was amazed to see Schumacher would have won the WCC on his own. Ferrari had the fasrest car but it wasn't that much better than the competition. I think the margin was a combination of things - not only Schumacher at his peak but also Hakkinen not quite on it, Montoya being inexperienced, Ralf and DC being not quite good enough and McLaren and Williams both having serious reliability issues.

Edited by Spillage, 23 March 2021 - 11:56.

[PayasYouRace]

Williams were the only top team on Michelin in 2001, so their form was always going to fluctuate with the new tyre war.

[Jops14]

I think yeah the initial Mugen V10s were based off the 1990 McLaren engine, ran by Tyrrell in 1991 with full Honda badging before passing to Footwork and being known as a Mugen from then on. I would *guess* that formed the basis of their engine till-mid 1994 which that by that point was struggling in the Lotus despite being a decent midfield unit with the Footwork previous years. But then they did have that brand new much lighter engine that Herbert famously stuck 4th on the grid at Monza before being punted out at the first corner.

Although all of that is probably moot though as the engine formula changed from 3.5L to 3.0L from 1995 on anyway, so I would guess it was a brand new engine from that point on if not from Monza '94, I guess the question is what level of unofficial works Honda input it had over the next 4 years or so.

Yeah interesting because although Hirotoshi Honda founded mugen and is the biggest shareholder in Honda, they are completely separate companies, supposedly their engines in 00 were completely different. Imagine if he Mugen was always based off that initial Honda engine

Always recommend reading any Gary Anderson article on The Race, he gives some amazing insight, said that Fisi was very mentally fragile, believe Button also said Fisi was the greatest driver of bad cars there was. Just when he got a good car and pressure was on he couldnt deal with it.

[PlayboyRacer]

Always recommend reading any Gary Anderson article on The Race, he gives some amazing insight, said that Fisi was very mentally fragile, believe Button also said Fisi was the greatest driver of bad cars there was. Just when he got a good car and pressure was on he couldnt deal with it.

I'd expect Button to say that given what transpired in 2001 lol. But yeah Gary Anderson is right on Fisichella.

Alain Prost said years back that a high percentage of a drivers performance is psychological. Said it was subjective of course but he believed it to be 70-80%.

[Ben24]

it's not like Rubens was mega over 1 lap either.

In fact one could say the same about him: "a very clever driver on a race day".

Pretty strange take considering Barrichello's qualifying record compared to his record in races. In his entire 19 year career outqualified every single team mate he had except Schumacher and Irvine (who despite his reputation also outqualified every team mate he had except for Schumacher). That same advantage in pace over his team mates seem to always there on Sundays for Rubens.

 

 

As for the cars themselves I agree with those saying the '01 and '03 Williams. Throughout the whole Ralf and Montoya period it so often felt that either one or the other of the 2 drivers was quick but not both. I'm not sure if it was just that both were inconsistent or if they wanted different things from the car. Ralf had a similar situation with Trulli at Toyota where it always seemed 1 of the drivers was competitive and the other was nowhere so I'm inclined to believe he needed certain things from the car to be quick. Maybe if Williams had focused solely on either one of their drivers they could have achieved more in those years