Is MS comeback bad for older drivers?

[CHT]

When the 7 times won champion with 91 career wins decided to come out of retirement, everyone was expecting him to dominate at MGP. 2 years on and that didnt happened. In fact Rosberg was the one who are constantly qualifying faster than MS and scoring more points in both seasons.

Am I am sure the most likely explanation will be MS is too old for the sports, and I think there is no better person to validate that than a 7 x world champion.

Given what that has happened to MS, are we expecting to see the average age of F1 drivers to come down, and drivers like MS, Ruben, Jarno etc to make way for younger drivers.

[Giblet]

Pedro De La Rosa says no, thanks for the contract. Rubens is out there beating most youngsters they put him with. The skill never goes away and reaction time is proven to not vary that much between the ages of 30-40.

Prost was much the senior to Senna by age and with his Championships. It was not Senna's youth that beat him, it was *Senna* that beat him.

I think a better explanation is this:

"Yes, Nico Rosberg is just that good"

[Tyler]

The skill never goes away and reaction time is proven to not vary that much between the ages of 30-40.

Maybe so but Rosberg is 26 and Schumacher is 43.

[LionKing]

I don't think it will affect any adversely at all.

Micheal and Nico are like 8-11 in races finishes. There are other drivers: Webber 3-16 and Massa 3-16 compared to their teammates and they are still being employed by their teams on a year by year extension basis.

[marcush.]

Is reactiontime a decisive factor for scoring well in Formula 1 and racing? I think the youth hype is what it is: a hype.
same goes for experience in formula 1:there are examples galore -Hamilton ,Schumacher,Trulli etc etc who came into F1 with a bang and matched their much more experienced teammates from the word go.
The real asset you got with Schumacher is his determination and will to do whatever is needed to suceed -I´d guess youthz has no real influence there but most people just lose the hunger after some time .

[Shrieker]

Schumacher -theoretically- could've been Rosberg's father. You're telling me him being 43 has no adverse effect ? Oh come on... If he's the same driver (which I don't think he is) what made him so successful pre-retirement ? Was it special tyres ? We all know there were times he was clearly driving an inferior car beating others who had better equipment. As much as I dislike the guy, he was a BEAST back in the day. Not so much anymore, while he still has the ability to compete in F1, not nearly as cutting edge as he used to be. He has changed, that's all. Will happen to all of us who are lucky enough to reach that age. When a Ferrari comeback was on the cards, even he himself admitted he didn't have the mental sharpness required at this level. I was a bit puzzled to see him sign with Mercedes after that comment tbh.

[Raptor22]

Schumacher has more often that not been faster than Rosberg in race trim.
he has also been involved in the most incidents between the two due to lower grid placings.
He has stated his qualifying troubles stem largely from the he and the tyres not being the best of friends. He cannot switch them on quickly enough nd once he has he needs to manage the heat in them more carefully.
Thats his problem this year.
Last year his issues was simply a car designed for Jenson and 3 yrs away form driving an F1 car.

[db__]

I seem to recall from a pre-race feature on F1 drivers' reaction times (it was a few years ago so can't recall the exact details but I think it was on the BBC) that MSC never had particularly good reaction times. In general their reaction times didn't correlate to performance although Kubica was fastest.

[Mandrake]

The way I see it MSC drove a very solid season! Great performance at the race starts, great overview, he seems to be better integrated into the team and more the development guy than Rosberg, also better behaved than Rosberg.

He did have some stupid moments where he drove into other guys....but he showed more impressive performances than Rosberg, especially Canada! Spa had a strong opening for Rosberg, but it was very shortlived.

MSC was never THE QUALIFIER...he did well in good cars, that's about it. This is where Rosberg is way better, race pace and race craft wise he is on par if not better. And Rosberg is one of the best drivers on the grid in my book!

[tathan]

I seem to recall from a pre-race feature on F1 drivers' reaction times (it was a few years ago so can't recall the exact details but I think it was on the BBC) that MSC never had particularly good reaction times. In general their reaction times didn't correlate to performance although Kubica was fastest.

Coulthard said the same thing only a couple of races ago during commentary - something along the lines of "Michael's scores in the reaction tests were never amazing" but that wasn't why he was so fast.

[beelsebob]

I seem to recall from a pre-race feature on F1 drivers' reaction times (it was a few years ago so can't recall the exact details but I think it was on the BBC) that MSC never had particularly good reaction times. In general their reaction times didn't correlate to performance although Kubica was fastest.

Coulthard said the same thing only a couple of races ago during commentary - something along the lines of "Michael's scores in the reaction tests were never amazing" but that wasn't why he was so fast.

Indeed, I seem to remember them showing some data that showed MS was quick because he was better at judging exactly how much he needed to break into a corner – that while his team mate (Barichello was his team mate at the time the data was taken from IIRC) would break very hard slightly later than MS, he would because of this slow more, and then be accelerating from the apex. MS's traces by comparison looked much more smooth – he didn't slow as much for the corner and would maintain a higher speed through it. Basically, he had a better feel for what the absolute limit was, and could reliably get on it, while his team mate had to go a bit under it, and then work back up again.

[Ferraripilot]

Chew on this for a moment gents. Nico is the qualifier of the team, but Schu maintains race pace gaps larger than any other teammate pairing in F1 racing at the moment. It's not uncommon seeing Schu half a second to nearly a full second quicker than Nico given similar tire conditions. This previous race weekend is a great example of this. The final 20 or so laps Michael lapped amazingly quicker than Nico. To me, for a 4th place team these stats are more important than qualifying and points as points can be very circumstantial at times as can qualy but not as often. Schu's excuse for qualy this year is specific to W02 being such a terribly different car with fuel and I believe Schu setup for race pace.

Nico has been unable to hold off faster cars as has he been passed by only marginally quicker or slower cars. He is also not able to fight his way through the field or drive in rain like Schu. Nico has clearly proven to me his points advantage lies with his qualy ability, but in general he is a very vanilla driver compared to Schu's racing prowess.

[marcush.]

I remember very well Schumacher in his golden years.
Qualy was not his strength ,the ultimate Qualyfier was Ayerton Senna no doubt.
Schumacher was also very prone to silly mishaps ,small offs etc and he had incidents when fighting wheel to wheel if i remember correctly...

The difference is simply the quality of cars and drivers these days .Hamilton and alonso are really a match for MS in absolute speed and determination.Button has the ability to really read races and score maximum ,Rosberg has that 1 lap talent combined with a low rate of driving errors ,and Vettel seems to have found the right environment to grow his talent into expertise.
Back then ,Ferrari was the single team producing 100%reliability and speed at the same time....they pulled all stops and that surely helped .

But all in all Schumacher may have lost a bit of edge as well but he still is clearly one of the top drivers and far away from an outdated old fart.

The rate of incidents is simply owed to a very racy approach by Schumacher ,he is today a very opportunistic racer ,hard but fair when he was on the wrong side of racing hard in his first career ..but that was simply because he neeeded to win so urgently.

[Shrieker]

I remember races from '96, and '97 where Ferrari wasn't even close to being the 2nd fastest car and Schumi was constantly driving faster than actually the car would ever go. I remember him thrashing other drivers who had better cars without a doubt, especially when it rained. One particular example I recall very lucidly was spa '97, where he was going to lap the enitre f...ing field had the track not dried. He certainly kept his mojo in '98 '99 and '00 too, after that he never again had to drive a far inferior car (apart from 2005).

Schumi just isn't the same with those days guys. So no, the real Schumi wasn't the driver he was because he had the most reliable, fastest car or the best pit crew etc. He was Schumi, cause he was Schumi. If you had a time machine and put the 28 y.o. Schumi in the MGP W02, he'd have scored podiums, and probably a win too.

[jamsbong]

Schumacher still holds the best start this year. He has manage to overtake more drivers than all the young guns out there. I'm sure if Hamilton, Vettel were in a bad start position, they would have excel as well.

another point is that Schumacher has improved a lot since 2010. The way I see it, Rosberg remain the same (2010 and 2011). I believe (optimistically) that Schumi could overtake Rosberg next year.

One thing Schumi has that Rosbery don't is the hunger/driven to win attitude.