Is F1 actually more about the driver than the car after all?

[timbob]

I know the generally accepted concensus of opinion is that in F1, the car is everything. Give a crap driver a great car and he will win, but put a great driver in a rubbish car, and he'll still make no progress at all.

Yet, looking at the McLaren this year, I'm firmly of the opinion that they have built an upper-midfield car (at best) and both LH and JB are punching above the car's weight, to a relatively equal extent.

Petrov is a great driver, did very well in GP2 and we've had some flashes of form from him this year, yet Kubica is way up and consistently at the front in (again) a very midfield Renault - he's outdriving where that car should be, by a fair margin.

The problem (for the rest of the field) comes when you have a very good Red Bull car driven by 2 great drivers MW (points in a Minardi!) and SV (winning in a Torro Rosso) - I don't believe the car is carrying the drivers at all. Put a Kovalainen/Petrov/Massa (on a normal day) in that Red Bull, and I expect they'd be regular top 6 runners, but not running away with things like Red Bull are at the moment.

[belleair302]

No it is all about the driver and the car. A poor driver will never get the best out of a top car and a top driver can only get so much out of middle order chassis. Quite simply the driver needs to articulate how the car handles to his requirements back to his engineers and mechanics. They then set up the chassis and the driver then tries again to get the bst out of the car.

Tyres, air temperature, fuel loads and track temperature all contribute to how a car perfroms. The driver is a vital ingredient but if none of the components work in unison then each individual part is wasted.

Some drivers styles extract more out of a car than others. Some cars will go beyond the capabilities of the drivers and sometimes everything falls into place.

This years Mclaren will come good, the Red Bull is fragile as are all Adrian Newey cars. Ferrari and Mercedes are struggling, Renault have a decent engine and certainly one driver who is able to extract the bst from the car. The Force India cars are off the pace and need to up their game and Williams are dreadful.

[heebeegeetee]

timbob said:

I know the generally accepted concensus of opinion is that in F1, the car is everything. Give a crap driver a great car and he will win, but put a great driver in a rubbish car, and he'll still make no progress at all.

Hmm, I'm not sure about that. A great driver might scrape the odd win but no more than that, and it will still be pretty clear he's crap. He'll have a team mate who's beating him also.

Conversely a driver can still shine in a crap car, throughout the season. Hamilton did alright with McL last year, after producing a dog. They made forward progress throughout the season, even finishing as the highest scorer in the second half of the season.

I can remember how Senna did with the Toleman all those years ago. And, with the possible exception of Robert Kubica (who will get there eventually) I honestly don't think a driver's career has ever been harmed by the car he's driving, nor has a great driver been prevented from getting into the best cars - the great drivers will always get themselves into the best cars.

For me F1 hasn't been just about car or driver or team - it's about being the best, and the best drivers will be in the best cars and best teams.

I suppose it could be said that Button has been an exception, and there might be some truth in that, but he also has to take the blame for some very poor decisions he took in the past. I understand he has always had quite an 'entourage' around him, and maybe he has chosen unwisely there too and been influenced into some poor decisions, who knows.

I really don't think there have been any crap champions though.

[Jungles]

It's a bit of both, but the car is the dominant factor. But drivers can still show themselves well in bad cars (eg. Lewis in McLaren 2009, Alonso in Renault 2008, Vettel in Toro Rosso 2008, and this year Kubica in Renault and Kovalainen in Lotus).

[rdjohn]

I think something that Martin Brundle wrote last year sums this up perfectly.

“In F1, the best drivers will gravitate towards the best cars”

[TheArchitect]

heebeegeetee said:

stuff

I agree, and jenson is down to poor decision making, but since his contract farse i feel he probably made a good decision in sticking to one team for a few years and they certainly had the budget to make it work, just the wrong company ethos.