Ayrton Senna or Nelson Piquet Sr.?

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Ayrton Senna or Nelson Piquet Sr.?

I will go with Piquet. Ayrton was faster and it was all about his hard work and great passion.

Piquet was a natural talent though, with massive knowledge of engineering and great self-control, a virtue Ayrton did not possesed.
 
Nelson Piquet was a talent in his own right when he tackled Europe in the mid-1970s; but after a few years he took on the "just-score-lots-of-points" mentality to bag world championships. Let's face it, he was fast, but I think the media was a bit "tricked" by appearing to be as fast (or faster than) a demotivated Niki Lauda at Brabham in 1979. To be fair, if he had a slightly more reliable in car in 1980, he would have claimed the world championship then.

The ground-effect cars were really to his liking, and Williams was in self-destruct-mode in 1981. Brabham and Gordon Murray rose to the challnege when skirts were made illegal. A superior-styled, lighter car with a potentially illegal fuel grade aided that second world championship in 1983. And in 1987, he scored umpteen second places with his 3 wins, while teammate Mansell had about as unlucky a season any living driver could have played out...in retrospect, an improperly installed wheel nut at Hungary decided the championship.

Much has been already said about Senna, one of handful of extremely talented drivers that we see in a century. But it took a little time to mature, and reliable machinery aided his cause, like all world champions.

I think what is forgotten is that with respect to the media and other drivers, Nelson Piquet was a lot more fun to be around out of the cockpit than the mostly reclusive Ayrton Senna ever was.
 
Piquet has a bad reputation thanks to the British press but he was a damn good driver.
However, I don't think its entirely fair to compare him to Senna, who never saw the end of his career.

Although some of his bad rep is thanks to the media, Piquet didn't do many favours with the various comments in public about other drivers. So I guess I'd need a more specific question, why am I picking one over the other?

I'd stuggle to decide on pure skill but personality wise its always Senna, I'd take his tendencey to lose control but strong motivation anyday over Piquet's dirty words but cool head. Ignore the avatar, thats more my support for the return of the Lotus name than Senna worship.

If this was Mansell versus Piquet, I'll take Red 5 everytime :p
 
This is a tricky one because Senna was so much more popular.

Piquet was the kind of driver who's not as exciting to watch as someone like Mansell, he always spoke whatever crap he thought at the moment without thinking about the consequences, and his actions would make him look cynical. Even in Brazil he wasn't liked very much.

Senna on the other hand had a very aggressive style which everyone likes to watch, but most of all, his charisma was unmatched. Whenever you hear him speak about racing on the limit, it's a surreal experience. The time he helped Komas after the crash in 92 and his reaction to Roland's death made him look somewhat more human than other drivers. And his subsequent death elevated him to a hero position.

It's a bit hard to forget those things when making a comparison, so I'll try my best to detach from them. I watched the other day a documentary on Piquet, and how much he struggled throughout his career to get in F1. He went to Europe very much on his own, with no help from his family, and after very few years he made it to F1 when he was 30. During his career what set him apart from the rest was his ability to develop the car and set it up for the race. Things like the water brake are a testament of his ingenuity. As a driver he might not have been as fun and aggressive as others, but his overtaking on Senna in Hungary shows how good of a driver he was. And his unorthodox psichological fight against Mansell shows how mentally balanced he was.

Senna on the other hand was massively fast with an astonishing raw speed, but in his first years he would have lots of ups and downs, with a lot of crashes, and many aggressive maneuvers that made other drivers in the grid not like him so much. During races, he would rely much more on his raw speed than on having a conservative approach of saving the car and the tires. But as he grew older he started avoiding those early silly mistakes, and became a much more cerebral driver. The problem is that when he reached maturity, he had an uncompetitive McLaren to race with. It's a shame he died, because we couldn't really appreciate what he could do with a top car at his peak performance.

After all, Piquet was a more complete driver, but Senna had the upper hand on speed.
 
wow...there are people out there that thinks Piquet is faster than Senna?...I am boggled...Senna was easily one of the fastest drivers in history. by a mile. Monaco '88, Donnington '93, Monaco '84, qualifying record, etc, etc. Senna wasn't a slouch in setting up a car, either. he knew his stuff.



Joseph.
 
Drift260Z
wow...there are people out there that thinks Piquet is faster than Senna?...I am boggled...Senna was easily one of the fastest drivers in history. by a mile. Monaco '88, Donnington '93, Monaco '84, qualifying record, etc, etc. Senna wasn't a slouch in setting up a car, either. he knew his stuff.

Joseph.
Click to expand...

No one is saying Senna was slow - we are saying that Piquet was fast. Whether or not one was better than the other is the debate, not "is Senna rubbish".

Senna early in his career could be too aggressive, he was constantly beaten especially by Prost because of this.
 
I never said you guys were saying Senna was rubbish. nothing of the like. I'm just boggled that some people think that Piquet was faster than Senna.
 
Drift260Z
I never said you guys were saying Senna was rubbish. nothing of the like. I'm just boggled that some people think that Piquet was faster than Senna.
Click to expand...

I don't think they are saying Piquet was faster, but maybe Piquet was a better all around racer.

Personally I don't think this could ever be settled because of Senna's death.
 
Drift260Z
I never said you guys were saying Senna was rubbish. nothing of the like. I'm just boggled that some people think that Piquet was faster than Senna.
Click to expand...

Well he was a quick driver, but it isn't as obvious because he was more measured in his approach and its something that wasn't really praised much thanks to his mouth in the media and the media's love of portraying him as the bad man.
Ask anyone who was around to see Piquet's era with Brabham and they nearly always are full of praise and, yes, for his speed.

I'd have a hard time saying that Piquet was definitively faster than Senna though, for reasons previously stated.
 
My favourite Piquet story is the one where he is in the Brabham pit and he finds a camera belonging to a female photographer. He borrows the camera, takes it to the nearest room, and takes a close up photo of his manhood. He returns the camera to where it was and runs away laughing as she'll never know who it was.

Unfortunately, Nelson has forgotten that he has his name sewn into the waistband of his driving overalls....
 
I think his quote on winning the Canadian Grand Prix when Mansell managed to switch his engine off on the last lap sums Piquet up best.
When asked if he felt sorry for Mansell's embarrasement: "I don't feel sorry for anybody!"
 

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