ENGINE TUNER wrote: ↑25 Jun 2020, 00:36
Jolle wrote: ↑25 Jun 2020, 00:19
I don’t think Hamilton is a good reference point, he is truly something different, he’s the exemption. If you look at other WC in their years before they took the crown, all of them at their first real possibility, they were loose cannons. Senna, Schumacher, Hakkinen... especially Senna (who had a very special sitting down by Stewart) and Hakkinen (who even got race bans).
Senna by the way, now hailed as the greatest of all time, was considered cocky, dangerous and immature before and during 1988.
HAM is the reference point because that is who VER will need to beat. The topic is VER winning the championship, he will mostly like will have to beat HAM to do so.
The criticism of Senna was nonsense, when did he cause collisions? He hit a couple back markers in 88 and after, but before that he was mostly clean. Mansell hit homa couple times, one of which was famous because Hunt blamed Senna nonstop and then had to retract and apologize. Senna's big mistake was Monaco 88. Prost crashed into him in Japan 89, and caused the collision again in Japan 90. Before 88 Senna was highly aggressive in defense, but didn't cause collisions.
Only biased people thought those things do Senna, there was no proof on track for them to do so.
In his lotus days, when he was driving a fast, but not superior car, he crashed quite often. 3-4 retirement at year for collisions. His whole attitude was beating everybody at all costs. Famous of course is his line "if you don't go for a gap, you are not longer a racing driver (of something along those lines) and his famous BMW procare race. The comment of Martin Brundle "he would let it up to you if you had a crash or not" said something about his attitude. Which, we now all admire.
I remember coaching a young racing driver and he almost took off a rival in the first corner of the first race. When I asked him, why didn't you just back out? he said: next time we come to a corner like that, he will know I won't back down. Thats the spirit you want and need.
And with all of the touches over the year, he only once didn't finish a race because of a first corner incident, of which you could even say that it was Raikkonen who drove like a rookie, trying to take the apex from the outside like at the first corner of the GP.
One DNF due to a crash is a very good setup for a titel challenge. Only beaten by Hamilton with zero (if you don't count Germany)
