James hunt

[Clueless_Anorak]

This seems to be the most appropriate thread for something that was prompted by the debate about whether Nico is a lucky or a deserving champion. If you look for them, you can find lots of debates with titles like "who is F1's most unworthy champion" - when you read them a lot of them are just full of subjective opinion, sometimes of downright rubbish, and often from people who've never seen the people they are condemning drive. Given my age, that last disqualification applies to me too.

So I gave some thought to an objective way of assessing this, a formula that took into account the impact of bad luck - DNF's, absences, etc. (but not, for example, cocked up starts) - on championship standings.

This isn't about driver ability, real or perceived (there are some great drivers who have won lucky championships), it's just about whether, in a given season, a championship win owed more to another driver's misfortune than to the performances of the eventual champion.

Perhaps appropriately, the formula came up with 13 championships where one driver's bad luck was arguably the deciding factor in who won. So here, in order of luckiness, are those 13 champions and the unlucky "moral victors":

1. Mike Hawthorn 1958 (Sterling Moss)
2. Jack Brabham (!!!) 1959 (Sterling Moss)
3. Nelson Piquet 1981 (Alain Prost)
4. Farina 1950 (Fangio)
5. Denny Hulme 1967 (Jim Clark)
6. Alain Prost 1989 (Ayrton Senna)
7. James Hunt 1976 (Niki Lauda) *
8. Niki Lauda 1984 (Alain Prost)
9. Keke Rosberg 1982 (Didier Peroni)
10. Lewis Hamilton 2008 (Felipe Massa)
11. John Surtees 1964 (Jim Clark)
12. Nelson Piquet 1987 (Nigel Mansell)
13. Nico Rosberg 2016 (Lewis Hamilton)

• James Hunt should probabably be higher up the list than he is, but the formula I used can't take into account the fact that Lauda's performances that season post-Nurburgring were clearly affected by his injuries and that Hunt was the major beneficiary of this.

As for Nico this year, well, yes he was slightly lucky, but it was marginal and he's by no means the luckiest world champion ever.

Edited by Clueless_Anorak on Monday 28th November 13:21

[heebeegeetee]

Lewis's bad starts are what probably cost him most in this championship.

[anonymous-user]

heebeegeetee said:

Lewis's bad starts are what probably cost him most in this championship.

Certainly if we're talking about things that can be relatively easily avoided.

[anonymous-user]

Clueless_Anorak said:

This seems to be the most appropriate thread for something that was prompted by the debate about whether Nico is a lucky or a deserving champion. If you look for them, you can find lots of debates with titles like "who is F1's most unworthy champion" - when you read them a lot of them are just full of subjective opinion, sometimes of downright rubbish, and often from people who've never seen the people they are condemning drive. Given my age, that last disqualification applies to me too.

So I gave some thought to an objective way of assessing this, a formula that took into account the impact of bad luck - DNF's, absences, etc. (but not, for example, cocked up starts) - on championship standings.

This isn't about driver ability, real or perceived (there are some great drivers who have won lucky championships), it's just about whether, in a given season, a championship win owed more to another driver's misfortune than to the performances of the eventual champion.

Perhaps appropriately, the formula came up with 13 championships where one driver's bad luck was arguably the deciding factor in who won. So here, in order of luckiness, are those 13 champions and the unlucky "moral victors":

1. Mike Hawthorn 1958 (Sterling Moss)
2. Jack Brabham (!!!) 1959 (Sterling Moss)
3. Nelson Piquet 1981 (Alain Prost)
4. Farina 1950 (Fangio)
5. Denny Hulme 1967 (Jim Clark)
6. Alain Prost 1989 (Ayrton Senna)
7. James Hunt 1976 (Niki Lauda) *
8. Niki Lauda 1984 (Alain Prost)
9. Keke Rosberg 1982 (Didier Peroni)
10. Lewis Hamilton 2008 (Felipe Massa)
11. John Surtees 1964 (Jim Clark)
12. Nelson Piquet 1987 (Nigel Mansell)
13. Nico Rosberg 2016 (Lewis Hamilton)

• James Hunt should probabably be higher up the list than he is, but the formula I used can't take into account the fact that Lauda's performances that season post-Nurburgring were clearly affected by his injuries and that Hunt was the major beneficiary of this.

As for Nico this year, well, yes he was slightly lucky, but it was marginal and he's by no means the luckiest world champion ever.

Edited by anonymous-user on Monday 28th November 13:21

Completely without merit. You've arbitrarily included some factors and equally arbitrarily omitted some. No more objective than any other opinion.

...and it's Stirling, not Sterling. At least get the names right.

[Trabi601]

REALIST123 said:

Completely without merit. You've arbitrarily included some factors and equally arbitrarily omitted some. No more objective than any other opinion.

...and it's Stirling, not Sterling. At least get the names right.

And also missed out the 1986 title, which Mansell lost due to a puncture half way through the last race of the season, having gone into it leading the championship.

[Eric Mc]

REALIST123 said:

Completely without merit. You've arbitrarily included some factors and equally arbitrarily omitted some. No more objective than any other opinion.

...and it's Stirling, not Sterling. At least get the names right.

Not to mention Pironi (Peroni is a beer).

[Clueless_Anorak]

REALIST123 said:

Completely without merit. You've arbitrarily included some factors and equally arbitrarily omitted some. No more objective than any other opinion.

...and it's Stirling, not Sterling. At least get the names right.

Hands up on the spelling mistakes, although I like to think they are typing errors - I'm quite literate really.

But I'm pleading not guilty to the other charges. For a start, I quailified everything with the word "arguable", which any list like this always is. Secondly, I didn't arbitrarily include or omit anything at all, not consciously anyway. I just made up a mathematical formula, grounded in some kind of rationality, and applied it slavishly; I didn't exercise any subjective judgement or opinion at all. The formula wasn't sophisticated, it just took the drivers best finishes in fifty percent of the races (or slightly over 50% where there were an odd number of races) and considered the championship order if that had been reflected over the whole season. It is actually slightly weighted in favour of the actual championship winner; for instance the three wins that Hunt managed after Lauda's Nurburgring accident aren't discounted because Lauda would probably have beaten him more often than not if he had been in the races concerned or fully fit to drive.

If there was something arbitrary about the formula, it was how many points I gave for places; I used the old 9-6-4-3-2-1 system (showing my age ). It's why Prost/Mansell in '86 isn't in the list. In the formula they came out equal (which I actually think is about right for that season). Yes, Mansell was incredibly unlucky in the last race, but over the season there wasn't anything to choose between them - and the formula is just looking at the season's results as a whole, not at specific events in individual races.

Anyway, it was just intended as a harmless bit of fun, to trigger a bit of debate maybe. It's a shame that some people's standard mode of debate on the internet is just to nit-pick and/or brow-beat.

And, as I said in the original posting, it had nothing to do with driver's ability, just about the part played by luck in any given season.

If it was about ability, or lack of it, and I allowed myself to express an opinion, then Farina, Hawthorn, Keke Rosberg and James Hunt would probably top my list as the least able/luckiest drivers to win a championship, with honourable mentions for Denny Hulme and Phil Hill - although my opinion on the really old boys is influenced by what I've read as well as the stats.

Edited by Clueless_Anorak on Thursday 1st December 22:27

[coppice]

And if Giancarlo Baghetti had retired after his first Grand Prix nobody would ever have come close to his record.....

Like most grown ups I don't really buy the deserving or undeserving label- if you win the championship you have earned it .

Hunt ? Saw him race in F3 , F2 and F1 - like some other drivers he was unremarkable in lower formulae but bloody mesmerising to watch in a GP car. Saw him win his first F1 race from trackside , and that was a brilliant day if not as unforgettable as Brands 76 where the atmosphere was unlike anything I have ever experienced at a motor race

[Clueless_Anorak]

coppice said:

Like most grown ups I don't really buy the deserving or undeserving label- if you win the championship you have earned it .

Wise words, and I tend to agree - although it's hard to make a case for Keke Rosberg or Mike Hawthorn.

[coppice]

Not at all - Keke won in a bitterly fought season with 11 winners and just like Hawthorn he got more points than the rest . It really is that simple and I cannot buy the 'but if only ' arguments. If Chris Amon had stayed with Ferrari he would have been champion in at least 74 , 75 and 76,Lauda would have retired after BRM went bust and I'd have won the lottery last week!

[heebeegeetee]

coppice said:

Not at all - Keke won in a bitterly fought season with 11 winners and just like Hawthorn he got more points than the rest . It really is that simple and I cannot buy the 'but if only ' arguments. If Chris Amon had stayed with Ferrari he would have been champion in at least 74 , 75 and 76,Lauda would have retired after BRM went bust and I'd have won the lottery last week!

I was going to say, Keke won in an incredibly competitive year, in which nobody won more than two races.

From Motorsport magazine:

>>Incredibly Keke had just six world championship points to his name when he joined Williams for 1982 as the surprise replacement for its beloved Alan Jones.

Despite having the gear knob come off in his hand, he promptly added two more to that tally – when points, 9-6-4-3-2-1, were harder to come by – in South Africa, where high altitude exacerbated his car’s deficit to the turbos.

The six points he scored in Brazil were erased by a disqualification that had nothing to do with him, but the six he earned in Long Beach, behind a victorious Mr Lauda, he was allowed to keep.

In Belgium, driving a brand new model – F1 had yet to become evolutionary – he came within a few mm of rear tread and two laps of a maiden GP win. A disappointment put into context the next day when he passed a track deserted except for his dear departed friend Gilles Villeneuve’s helicopter....

"If F1 wasn’t better then, it was most assuredly different, with 11 winning drivers – nine different in nine consecutive GPs – and seven winning teams in a single season.<<

http://www.motorsportmagazine.com/opinion/f1/rosbe...

[Smollet]

coppice said:

Not at all - Keke won in a bitterly fought season with 11 winners and just like Hawthorn he got more points than the rest . It really is that simple and I cannot buy the 'but if only ' arguments. If Chris Amon had stayed with Ferrari he would have been champion in at least 74 , 75 and 76,Lauda would have retired after BRM went bust and I'd have won the lottery last week!

I think if you asked F1 fans rather than F1 fanboys who was the better racer Keko or Nico then Keke would come out on top even though he won far fewer races.

[Jammez]

Surely people are confusing things here. The WDC is not a measure of who the greatest/best/worthy driver is in a season it's merely the result of adding up some numbers during a season. Those numbers come from consistently finishing races in the points which is influenced by a very complex set of factors, driver, car, team, weather, tyres, engine, luck etc... Sometimes those combinations work and sometimes they don't, sometimes a car just works with a driver and sometimes it doesn't.

I guess the greatest/best/worthy drivers would be those that can consistently score points when all those factors are changing. So who has done that? Won with multiple manufacturers, cars, engine suppliers, conditions etc.

I don't know the answer and it's probably so complex your head will explode trying to figure it out! Just putting it out there!

[paua]

Those who have won in more than one team include : Fangio, Brabham, G Hill,Fittipaldi ,Lauda, Piquet, Prost, Schumacher, Hamilton...you might wish to add Stewart, but team structure remained even though name changed. Any additions welcome.

[Eric Mc]

Jammez said:

Surely people are confusing things here. The WDC is not a measure of who the greatest/best/worthy driver is in a season it's merely the result of adding up some numbers during a season. Those numbers come from consistently finishing races in the points which is influenced by a very complex set of factors, driver, car, team, weather, tyres, engine, luck etc... Sometimes those combinations work and sometimes they don't, sometimes a car just works with a driver and sometimes it doesn't.

I guess the greatest/best/worthy drivers would be those that can consistently score points when all those factors are changing. So who has done that? Won with multiple manufacturers, cars, engine suppliers, conditions etc.

I don't know the answer and it's probably so complex your head will explode trying to figure it out! Just putting it out there!

The words of the great Nigel Roebuck, I assume.

I only have to read that to realise what we have lost.

[kimducati]

paua said:

Those who have won in more than one team include : Fangio, Brabham, G Hill,Fittipaldi ,Lauda, Piquet, Prost, Schumacher, Hamilton...you might wish to add Stewart, but team structure remained even though name changed. Any additions welcome.

Mansell, Button, Raikonnen, Vettel etc,
It's not a particularly exclusive club. And I may be wrong, but I thought that Stewart won in a BRM, Matra and Tyrrell so three - now that may be a smaller group - him & Fangio are all I can think of.
Kim
p.s. And Moss
eta and Hunt (for the double) of course
eta Just realised you mean championships, so scrub all that - doh!!

Edited by kimducati on Monday 5th December 00:11

[Halmyre]

kimducati said:

paua said:

Those who have won in more than one team include : Fangio, Brabham, G Hill,Fittipaldi ,Lauda, Piquet, Prost, Schumacher, Hamilton...you might wish to add Stewart, but team structure remained even though name changed. Any additions welcome.

Mansell, Button, Raikonnen, Vettel etc,
It's not a particularly exclusive club. And I may be wrong, but I thought that Stewart won in a BRM, Matra and Tyrrell so three - now that may be a smaller group - him & Fangio are all I can think of.
Kim
p.s. And Moss
eta and Hunt (for the double) of course
eta Just realised you mean championships, so scrub all that - doh!!

Edited by kimducati on Monday 5th December 00:11

Stewart won in a BRM, Matra, March and Tyrrell, although the last three were all under the 'Tyrrell Racing' banner. Regardless of the team name, neither Matra, March nor Tyrrell had competed in a F1 WC race beforehand. (Caveat: Matra had run F2 cars in F1 events to make up the numbers, and Chris Amon gave March its first F1 win at a non-championship event).

Graham Hill also won a couple of non-championship F1 events in a Brabham to add to his Lotus and BRM drives.