All-purpose open-wheel (F1, IRL) racing thread

I'd vote for no, mostly because Mercedes has done so much better than the field in the turbo-hybrid era that it's really impossible to make a fair comparison. I mean, Vettel was comparably dominant in the Red Bull in the generation previous.

 

The difference from car to car absolutely makes it hard to compare drivers fairly.

Still, I think Lewis has established himself as a cut above the rest. Just as an example: his rookie year for McLaren he was on the podium for his first nine races, won four, finished one point off the championship, and out-qualified his teammate 10-7... and that teammate was two time world champion Fernando Alonso. Lewis is special.

 

He is, and he’s one of my favorite drivers. Man’s got swag for days. I’m just not sure if, could we conjure 20 Mercedes who among current drivers and the greats would win. I suspect Schumacher, though Senna is excluded from this question for he sole reason that he had as much viable competition as any great driver ever.

 

Schumacher is the toughest one for me to judge. He was incredibly dominant. He also had even more advantages than Hamilton -- top car, top engine, top engineers, unlimited test time, and tires that were built absolutely to his specifications.

 

The fact that Schumacher won at Benetton when it’d not had much recent success is in the plus column.

 

It absolutely is.

And Vettel was fast as hell in a Toro Rosso before moving into the dominant Red Bull... but has looked flat-out bad since leaving.

None of it is easy to judge.

 

The show is entirely responsible for getting me back into it for the first time since the late '90s, as I've mentioned previously on this thread. No doubt this has been its worst season. Previously, it seemed like they touched on several teams per episode and built storylines throughout the season while generally following the linear timeline of the race schedule. This year, it seems like they mostly contain each storyline into one episode, which is a detriment, I think.

That said, I just watched the ninth (?) episode, Man on Fire, about Bahrain when Romain Grosjean went into the wall and, holy hell, it's one of the best episodes of television I've ever watched. I choked up several times while watching, and I knew what was going to happen. It really was an emotional episode. Seeing the teams react to the crash, hearing the radio chatter, seeing the interviews with Romain and his wife ... it was gripping.

Also, Netflix had a camera directly across from where the crash occurred, so in addition to the footage we had already seen during the race, there was that incredible new footage. Romain's return to the paddock the following week was tear-jerking as well.

 

The infield urinals at the Speedway were the Ritz-Carlton compared to some backwoods dirt ovals I've had the pleasure of stumbling across. One had a "men's" sign, and when you turned the corner of the building, there was another concrete block wall with a drain cover running along the bottom. Pee right on the wall. Spray water on it for easy cleanup, I guess. Very Euro-peeing in design.

 

This sounds interesting.



Wonder what it is?