It's been nearly two years
since I last made entries into this blog, and in that time the list for the Top
100 F1 Drivers has changed. For those of you who weren't there when it started,
this is a statistical analysis of every driver in Formula One, with different
achievements amalgamated into a homemade formula that gives each participant a
score. While the idea of 'Best Driver' is one is down to highly subjective
criteria, I like to think of this formula as a process to find the most successful
drivers of all time. That way, I can hide from the fact that Gilles Villeneuve
appears below Heinz-Harald Frentzen...
The scoring system is as
follows:
Drivers Championship - 120
points
Race Win - 18 points
Second Place Finish - 7 points
Third Place - 5 points
Fourth Place - 2.5 points
Fifth Place - 2 points
Sixth Place - 1.5 points
Seventh Place - 1 point
Eighth Place - 0.5 points
Pole Position - 2 points
Fastest Lap - 1 point
Race Start - -0.1 point
Subtracting a point for race
starts is an attempt to neutralize the effects of what I call "Massive
career syndrome", which is where a driver appears extremely high on the
list purely because they have over 200 races under their belt. It hasn't quite
worked perfectly, but somewhat comedically it does leave Charles Pic at the
bottom of the list (in P757) with -3.9 points...
So with all that said, let's
do the list... again! A lot of these will be pulled from the original article,
but there are already some new entries to the list ahead...
100. Jean-Pierre Jabouille
(France) 49 Starts, 2 Race Wins, 46.1 F-Points
Jean-Pierre Jabouille's
racing career was uncharacteristically slow and steady. He took up the sport
aged 22, made it to Formula 2 aged 27, and didn't secure a permanent F1 seat
until he was 35. He was lucky enough to dabble in a Tyrrell seat for one race
in 1975, but it wasn't until he won the F2 Championship at his seventh attempt
in 1976 that he started to establish himself in Formula One.
Having been brought in to
help develop Renault's new turbo engines, Jabouille began to display impressive
form with a few standout qualifying performances. The car itself was extremely
unreliable based on the untested concept of the vehicle, but Jabouille pulled
out a Fourth place in 1978.
Jabouille booked himself a
place in F1 history in 1979 by leading the Renault to victory at his home Grand
Prix in Dijon. This marked the first occasion on which a turbocharged car had
won a Grand Prix. The car remained very unreliable and rarely finished a race,
but Jabouille was able to achieve his second race victory in 1980 by taking the
chequered flag in Austria ahead of Alan Jones by less than a second.
He had planned a move to
Ligier in 1981, but a broken leg sustained in the Canadian Grand Prix badly
affected his preparations. He missed the first two races and struggled upon his
return. He was dropped and never made a return to Formula One. He now runs his
own team in the FIA Sportscar Championship.
99. Luigi Fagioli (Italy)
7 Starts, 1 Race Win, 50.3 F-Points
With just seven race starts
in World Championship Formula One events, Fagioli has the least Grands Prix
under his belt of anyone on this list. However, this statistic does not do justice
to a driver who played a significant role in the European Championships of the
1930s, racing for early incarnations of Alfa Romeo, Maserati and Mercedes. He
won numerous races, but his attitude proved to be an issue with some of his
teams. He was ordered to move over for his team-mate in the first race of 1934,
and retaliated by parking the car and abandoning the race. He continued to race
up until 1937, when severe rheumatism meant he was no longer in any condition
for the rigours of the sport.
After the war, Fagioli's
health improved and he returned to racing for the inception of the official
Formula One World Championship. Driving for Alfa Romeo, Fagioli scored five
podium finishes in his six races of the 1950 season, finishing a very credible
third in the championship. In 1951, Fagioli only entered one Grand Prix in
which he shared an Alfa Romeo with Juan Manuel Fangio. They were victorious,
and aged 53 he became the oldest driver to win a Formula One grand prix, a
record he unsurprisingly still holds today.
Fagioli died in 1952 after
crashing a touring car at the Monaco circuit.
98. Piero Taruffi (Italy)
18 Starts, 1 Race Win, 55.2 F-Points
Piero Taruffi is perhaps more
notable for his careers in motorcycles and sports cars, but his 18 appearances
in Grand Prix racing gives him a well-earned place on this list. With a long
and impressive motorcycling career in the 1920s and 30s (including the
land-speed record on a motorcycle, which he clinched in 1937), Taruffi entered
numerous events in the 50s with only one eye focussed on F1.
His most successful year in
the sport was undoubtedly 1952 in which Taruffi, driving for Ferrari, scored
his first race win at Switzerland. Another two podiums that season gave Taruffi
a third placed finish in the Championship, which was to be the best classification
he would achieve in F1. Sporadic appearances for Ferrari and Mercedes yielded
him a few more good results, but Taruffi had so many pursuits that he never
gave himself a true chance to establish a proper F1 title challenge.
He retired from motorsport
after the terrible crash in the 1957 Mille Miglia, in which 14 people were
killed. He went on to write an acclaimed book named The Technique of
Motor Racing, and passed away in 1988 aged 81.
97. Innes Ireland (Great
Britain) 50 Starts, 1 Race Win, 55.5 F-Points
Innes Ireland is the first of
20 Brits who have made this list, and perhaps one of the most colourful. Known
for his uncompromising and outlandish nature, especially on track, Ireland was
a popular figure in the paddock. Having taken up motor-racing as a career in
1957, Ireland found himself in a Lotus in 1959, a seat which he held for three
years. During that time Ireland managed four podiums, including his only race
victory at the 1961 USA Grand Prix at Watkins Glen. He admitted his victory was
lucky, and showed his appreciation for the mechanic that fixed his car three
times over the weekend by tipping him £25.
Despite this success, Ireland
found himself out of favour with team boss Colin Chapman, who instead hired Jim
Clark to drive for Lotus. Ireland dabbled with the BRP and BRM teams, but could
only manage a few more points finishes before his career ended in 1967. He
continued to work as a journalist, and was briefly the president of the BRDC
before dying of cancer in 1993, aged 63.
96. Andrea de Cesaris
(Italy) 208 Starts, 0 Race Wins, 57.7 F-Points
Andrea de Cesaris holds
something of a dubious distinction in that he has started the most F1 Grands
Prix without a single race victory. Despite his inability to hit the top step
of the podium, de Cesaris had a long career in the sport, racing for ten
different teams over fifteen seasons.
Andrea came to Formula One
with a bit of a reputation for causing crashes. He had already been involved in
an incident in which Nigel Mansell broke his neck, and in only his second start
in F1 he threw his Alfa Romeo into catch fencing at Watkins Glen. Despite this,
he managed to land a seat in the McLaren team in 1981. This didn't lead to
anything more than a single points finish for de Cesaris, before he moved back
to Alfa Romeo.
The Italian took his first
podium in a breathless Monaco Grand Prix in 1982, in which almost every car ran
out of fuel. Things improved even further for de Cesaris in 1983, when he took
two second-placed finishes in Germany and South Africa to place eighth in the
World Championship. He also came close to taking his maiden win in Spa, leading
for much of the race before a bad pit-stop spoiled his champagne moment.
His moves to Ligier and
Minardi did not give de Cesaris much cause to celebrate, but a season at
Brabham saw him stand on the podium for a fourth time at the 1987 Belgian Grand
Prix. He then spent a couple of years at the promising but ultimately
disappointing Dallara team, before moves to Jordan, Tyrrell and Sauber capped
off his career in F1. His final podium came at Canada in 1989, but the elusive
race victory was never found.
Andrea de Cesaris is now a
currency trader, but makes appearances at Grand Prix Masters events.
95. Luigi Villoresi
(Italy) 31 Starts, 0 Race Wins, 58.9 F-Points
Luigi Villoresi is another
Italian who was racing in Formula before the sport had officially established
its World Championship. Appearing in a Maserati in 1938 and 1939, Villoresi's
career was interrupted by the war before he returned and spent three more years
with the team. He then moved to Ferrari, driving for them between 1949 and
1953. Though he recorded a race win in his first season for Ferrari, the
statistics do not count races pre-1950.
Villoresi managed to score
eight podiums after the establishment of the Championship, coming fifth place
in the standings twice. Despite having a fair amount of success with Ferrari,
he moved to Lancia in 1954 alongside Alberto Ascari, who had beaten him on both
his second placed finishes. Villoresi was unable to replicate the kind of form
he managed in the Ferrari for Lancia, and following Ascari's fatal crash
decided to retire from the sport. Villoresi died in 1997, aged 88.
94. Jo Bonnier (Sweden)
104 Starts, 1 Race Win, 60.1 F-Points
Jo Bonnier was a true
journeyman. Between 1956 and 1971, the Swede raced for eleven different teams
and rarely completed a full season in just one race seat. He began his career
at Maserati, spending three years at the team and suffering a crash that very
nearly killed him at a non-championship race in Imola. He then moved to BRM
where he scored his one and only race victory at the 1959 Dutch Grand Prix. It
was a result that put him second in the Championship, but he failed to
capitalise on the position as the car wasn't strong enough to pursue a title
fight.
Despite his CV listing an
absurd amount of teams, Bonnier specialised in scraping out a few
points-scoring results regardless of what team he drove for. He scored points
for BRM, Porsche, Cooper, Brabham, McLaren and Honda, failing only at his first
team Maserati and his self-run team Ecurie Bonnier. Though he continued to
drive for his team on occasion, Bonnier's time in F1 was clearly up and he
raced his final race at Watkins Glen in 1971.
He was killed at Le Mans in
1972 after a collision with another car.
93. Valtteri Bottas
(Finnish) 47 Starts, 0 Race Wins, 61.8 F-Points
Valtteri Bottas is the most
recent driver to have broken his way into our top 100, continuing the recent
tradition of flying Finns soaring to success in Formula One. He began karting
in 1995, aged 6, and he continued to race throughout his childhood. In 2005 he
finished eighth in the Karting World Cup, and his impressive form propelled him
into the higher echelons of motorsport.
2008 proved to be something
of a breakthrough year for Bottas, as he won his first title: The Formula
Renault Eurocup. A move to Formula Three, and another strong season with two
pole positions, saw Williams snap Bottas up as their test driver, replacing
Nico Hulkenberg. Bottas continued to race in GP3, and won the championship in
2011. He then made the unusual move of choosing to focus solely on test driving
for Williams in 2012, a decision he feels gave him the best preparation for F1 possible.
Bottas lurked in the shadows
of the underwhelming Bruno Senna, taking his car in every practice session that
year. His enthusiasm and willingness to get involved in various departments of
Williams saw him land a race seat for 2013. Unfortunately for the Finn,
Williams suffered one of their worst seasons, and Bottas had little opportunity
to impress. Despite this, he did make waves by qualifying in third for the
Canadian Grand Prix, and scored his first points by finishing eighth late in
the season at the American Grand Prix.
Williams changed engine
supplier to Mercedes for 2014, and Bottas was able to utilise the potential of
his new machinery. Bottas only failed to score points in two races throughout
the season, and outshone his experienced teammate Felipe Massa. The Finn
secured his first podium by finishing third in the Austrian Grand Prix, and
took second place in the following two races. The most impressive of these was
his drive at Silverstone, where he came from 14th on the grid and held off a
charging Lewis Hamilton to keep hold of second place.
Bottas finished a
remarkable fourth-place in the Drivers Championship, and has carried on his
good form in 2015. Rumours of a move to Ferrari don't flatter Bottas, as his
future in F1 seems extremely bright. There is little doubt that he will
continue to climb this list.
92. Romain Grosjean
(French) 74 Starts, 0 Race Wins, 62.1 F-Points
It may be something of a
surprise to see Romain Grosjean in this list, considering his bubbling
reputation as a somewhat clumsy driver. However, this is harshly derisive of a
driver who has, when given the opportunity, demonstrated class and skill.
Grosjean began karting aged 14, and despite starting relatively late was able
to make enough of an impact to move to Formula Renault within three years.
His first season in the Swiss
Formula Renault Championship saw him win all 10 rounds. 10 victories would also
secure him the French Formula Renault Championship in 2005, and Renault
themselves were inspired by Grosjean's progress enough to sign him up to their
Driver Development programme.
Grosjean continued his
penchant for winning lower series by taking titles in the Formula Three Renault
and GP2 Asia championships. He was made Renault F1's test driver in 2008, and
following the Crashgate controversy he replaced Nelson Piquet Jr. for the
second half of the 2009 season in a race seat. It was a tumultuous beginning to
F1 for Grosjean, who struggled to match the form of his teammate Fernando
Alonso and failed to score a point. Despite a difficult period, Grosjean says
he learned a huge amount from Alonso.
Grosjean was replaced by
Vitaly Petrov, and changed to Auto GP for 2010. He marked it down as another
Championship victory, and returned to GP2 in 2011. It was this season which
reignited his F1 career, as he pulled ahead of rivals Jules Bianchi and Giedo
van der Garde to take both the GP2 and GP2 Asia titles. Following an impressive
few years away from F1, Lotus decided it was time for Romain to have a second
crack at the big leagues. He was signed to partner Kimi Raikkonen for 2012.
Lotus enjoyed a successful
year in 2012, and while Grosjean was clearly the support act to a reinvigorated
Kimi Raikkonen, the Frenchman certainly justified the team's faith in his
ability. He scored his first podium (and the first for a Frenchman in nearly 14
years) when he came third in the Bahrain Grand Prix, securing a 2-3 finish for
his team. Just a few races later, he topped this performance in Canada,
overtaking his former team-mate Alonso to finish second.
Despite these impressive
results, Grosjean struggled towards the end of the season. He put himself in an
invidious position after causing a dangerous collision in Spa which resulted in
a one-race ban. From there, he found it difficult to regain the form he had
shown earlier in the season, while his team-mate Raikkonen drove his Lotus to
their first race victory as a new outfit.
Nevertheless, Grosjean was
retained for 2013 and managed to pull himself out of the slump. Six podium
finishes meant he was a lot closer to Raikkonen in terms of performance.
Grosjean took seventh in the Championship (his best finish so far) and was
entrusted to lead the team into 2014 alongside new team-mate Pastor Maldonado.
However, Lotus struggled to deal with new specifications and both drivers found
it difficult to score points. Grosjean's misery was compounded by a slightly
embarrassing incident in which he crashed behind the safety car in Hungary.
Lotus' turbulent season
continues into 2015, but Grosjean has been able to score a handful of points
this year, and is comfortably outperforming Maldonado. With the right kit, it
seems Grosjean can show real talent and potential.
91. Jean Behra (France) 53
Starts, 0 Race Wins, 65.2 F-Points
Short and stocky, French
driver Jean Behra was a consistently strong figure in F1 during the 1950s.
Having begun his career in motorcycle racing before the second world war, Behra
moved to car racing in 1952, making his Formula One debut in that year's Swiss
Grand Prix and finishing on the podium. Behra spent his first three years in a
Gordini, but the car was unreliable and often didn't make it to the finish
line. Despite this, Behra pulled off a handful of victories in non-championship
events, including a triumph over the much fancied Ferraris in the 1952 Grand
Prix of Reims.
Behra enjoyed his most
competitive seasons as part of the Maserati line-up between 1955 and 1958. In
this time, he recorded seven podium finishes and a fourth-place finish in the
1956 Championship. However, the Frenchman never managed to win an official
Formula One Grand Prix, hiding behind the limelight of his teammates Stirling
Moss and Juan Manuel Fangio. Regardless, Behra drew much respect from the
paddock for his reputation as a driver with great flair and ability.
He moved to Porsche, and then
Ferrari. Midway through the 1959 season, he suffered a crash in a sports car
race before the German Grand Prix. He was thrown from the car and died of his
injuries aged 38. His funeral drew 3000 mourners in his hometown of Nice.
Numbers 90-81 follow tomorrow!
Wednesday, 29 July 2015
Tuesday, 28 July 2015
F1's Conflicted Self-Pondering: Pulling apart the GPDA survey
Are fans still in love with F1?
Wasn't the Hungarian Grand Prix a blast? The Battle of
Budapest cooked up an unusually enthralling storm, which gave analysts a
convenient hook for predictable "Who says F1 is boring?" comments.
While there is no denying that the last two races, and indeed the 2015
Championship battle, have been entertaining, this seems like a simplification
of the more severe underlying problems that F1 is going through. This great
branch of motorsport is trying to answer some tough questions about its future,
but how can anyone be sure of the direction it needs to take?
The GPDA (Grand Prix Drivers Association) attempted to find
some clarity by conducting an enormous survey into fans' opinions of the state
of Formula One. The amount of responses received is admittedly impressive, with
over 200,000 people from 194 countries taking part. The results are summarised
in a slick document available on the GPDA website, which gives basic data for
each questions. By dissecting this further, I think it's possible to find some
very interesting information that stretches beyond what the organisation were
looking for.
Crowds continue to turn up in droves for the British GP.
Before looking at the audience which took part, there are
some results that are immediately striking. Page 12 details a list of
attributes fans associate with F1, both in 2010 and 2015. The top 3 descriptors
for F1 in 2010 are 'Competitive, technological and exciting', whereas in 2015
they are 'Expensive, technological and boring'. This is not just a damning
verdict on Formula One today, but also a somewhat surprising one. The 2010
season saw a total of 547 overtakes during the entire season (lower than the
four following seasons) and, despite a memorable Championship fight, failed to
produce any real classic Grands Prix. It's
very odd that fans would be so fond of this period of Grand Prix racing, but
clearly there is a feeling that the quality has dropped dramatically.
Sure enough, less than 10% of those surveyed believe that
Formula One is healthier than it was 5 years ago. "Healthier" leans
more towards the suggestion of F1's current financial state and its future. It
makes a lot more sense that fans would have a pessimistic outlook on the sport.
In 2010, we had the arrival of Caterham, Virgin and Hispania, as well
as Mercedes taking over Ross Brawn's team. It was a counter-boom to the world's
troubled economy. Since then, the cracks have slowly covered the stoic face of
the sport, with Marussia clinging on as the only surviving member of the new-fangled
trio, as well as other teams flirting with the idea of ditching F1. It's only
natural to feel an impending sense of dread about F1's next few years as it struggles to compete with its own unsustainable model.
A less 'healthy' F1 has seen smaller teams struggle to stay in existence.
Now, it's difficult to talk about the rest of the survey
without analysing the audience that took part. While it would
seem fair to assume that most people answering a questionnaire about F1 on the internet
are hardcore Formula One fans, page 8 of the document actually throws some
fascinating curveballs. Less than one-in-four people who answered the survey
regard Formula One as their favourite sport, and an ambiguous-but-discouraging
"over half" watch at least 12 races a season in some form. These results suggest that the survey wasn't
just completed by staunch F1 followers, but quite a few casual fans as well.
That's not to say that these are passing fans though, as some of the questions
involved do require a base knowledge of the more technical aspects of
F1.
Further to this, the average age of those who responded to
the survey is 37. Bearing in mind that this survey was exclusively online, this
number is quite high. Is it the case that Formula One has very little appeal
to younger fans? Or is this more to do with the sort of person who
will complete a survey in general? Either way, these facts should be kept strongly in mind when viewing the
rest of the results. These are not all staunch F1 fans, and typically, are the
opinions of a low-middle-aged sample.
F1 - A sport for hardcore and casual fans?
Having evaluated the audience, there are some results that
speak volumes. 85% believe that Formula One needs to recruit new fans. This may
seem obvious, but compare that to 64% of people believing the same in 2010. Why
were we so passive about new fans before? What's changed now? A lot of this
probably comes down to the 'health' of the sport being seen as poorer than
before, and part of that feeling could be to do with falling viewer numbers.
'Recruiting more fans' is the obvious solution, but how?
Reading further on in the survey gives us an insight into
what fans feel needs to be done to help this recruitment process. The top
suggestion of what's important to current fans, with 74% 'agreeing', is that
rules should be relaxed to allow a great diversity of technology and cars.
Other factors seen as important include "the sound of engines",
"the power of engines" and "the size and type of engines".
Going back to our audience data, it seems worthy to make some sort of amendment
here. The audience we're looking at is a mix of hardcore and casuals, but it
seems fair to suggest there is a tendency towards technical fanatics when it comes to
this particular sample.
Maybe that's not fair. Maybe there really is mass appeal
when it comes to the engines and technology, but is this really what we can
imagine the prospective casual fan that we are looking to recruit enthusing
about while watching a race? Perhaps when attending a Grand Prix, we can
envisage casual fans being wowed by the roar of the Formula One engine as a car
sweeps past the grandstand, but it seems more likely that a potential F1 viewer
is going to watch a few races on TV before shelling out for a race-day ticket.
For hardcore fans, this matters. Of course it does. And if
F1 is looking to recruit more 'hardcore' fans then this is fair. But that's the
decision the sport has to make. The benefits of coming to such a conclusion
would be that F1 can aim to please its most fanatic viewers, thereby ensuring a
core support of devoted fans. However, a sport that has historically thrived on
the financial gain of advertising huge brands and reaching big viewer numbers is
going to struggle to make that transition and continue to be the pinnacle of
motorsport, which 60% of fans currently believe is the case.
Would bringing in another tyre company improve the sport?
In fairness to those surveyed, the choices given in the
'What's important to you' section of the survey seem pitifully off the mark.
There is nothing regarding competition, overtaking, accessibility or driver
aids. With these involved in the survey here, this table might have been more
reflective of what you would expect to see F1 fans say. Going back to page 13,
a section titled "Your Views on F1", 89% of fans answered that they
feel Formula One needs to be more competitive. This doesn't really communicate
much information though, as it's hard to imagine the fan who doesn't think F1 should be more
competitive.
So what else does this survey indicate that fans want? 80%
believe that there should be more than one tyre supplier in Formula One. There
is a logic behind this being the most desired change, although it is flawed in
some respects. A lot of fans are understandably fed up with Pirelli tyres and
want a tyre-war to add another aspect of competition. If we could be sure that
this would definitely increase overtaking and general race drama, then this
would be a very agreeable concept. However, overtaking was poorest during the
tyre-war between Bridgestone and Michelin, and the level of competition during
quite a few of those seasons was exceptionally poor.
Some will argue that allowing companies to develop the best
tyres possible will increase the ability for drivers to race at full speed. Is
this important to fans? I think so, perhaps a survey question would have helped
here, but again none of the survey focussed on an issue that has been discussed
quite a lot recently, which is whether or not F1 cars should be going faster.
However, considering that fans feel engine specifications are important, and a
surprising 60% of fans also backed the reintroduction of refuelling, it seems
that a lot of these results are aiming towards an F1 where the cars are faster,
which is of course what has been planned. Will a tyre war help along the way?
Perhaps it will, but if 89% of fans think F1 should be more competitive, isn't
that what we should aim for first?
Wheel-to-wheel racing: The bread and butter of this great sport.
I'll try to summarise what feels like a mash of ideas. I
think this survey gives us a lot of interesting thoughts, but from the very
premise missed out on what could have been some more fundamental insights into
what makes a Formula One fan tick. I really would like to know whether F1 fans
prefer speed or competition, as this seems to be the crossroads we're starting
to head towards. Currently we have neither, and of course we want both. But if
F1 really does need to recruit new fans, it needs to know what makes those fans
interested in the first place. This survey suggests that fans want more speed,
faster cars, better engines.
I've always enjoyed watching British Touring Cars as a casual
viewer. I don't watch it for the speed, the cars or the engines. I watch it
because it's bloody good fun, and it keeps me coming back. I think that is what
F1 needs to be looking for if it's ever going to appeal to the casual viewer in
a way that will improve the 'health' of the sport, but there is always the
possibility to focus on the hardcore fans. Maybe that is the question that F1
needs to ask itself first: What sort of fans do we want?
You can view the GPDA survey results here.
You can view the GPDA survey results here.
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