Who do you think is or was an unfulfilled talent in Motorsports and why?
I'm thinking Jaques Villenueve. Well that's explainable.
Winning Indy and F1 doesn't really qualify as unfufilled. Villeneuve simply struggled to do anything competative after leaving Williams. (I personally think he did well in 1998 all things considered.)
Senior wasn't terribly good at anything but snowmobiling (although he got one lucky win in CART back in '85), and Junior did win a World Championship (albeit in the best car on the grid).
Still, watching the Nationwide race at
Circuit Gilles Villeneuve last year showed all the promise and skill of his former self, and as expected, he tossed it away with a foolish move. Not a risky move, an unlucky move, or even a daring move, or a brave-but-pointless move...a
stupid move because he'd made a tactical error under caution, and barged into the car that was passing him for the lead. That's right,
he pulled a
where's-Jerez? on Marcos Ambrose that would have made Michael Schumacher cry.
Too short a career to really know.
And I hear Ivan Capelli was, but why?
Okay, Ivan was the guy who drove machinery that varied from good to terrible, and even passed the Mighty MP4/4 McLaren-Hondas at Suzuka in his March. This was 1988. And yes, passing...the McLaren of Alain Prost for the
lead (although only through the front straight, and was out-braked into turn one). That was the move we'd all (well, most of us) hoped Sergio Perez was going to pull on Alonso at Sepang. The March was a hot ticket, and things were looking good for Capelli into the following year...but the CG891 was a pig that couldn't fly straight. The 1990 car found some mysterious mid-season form by virture of tire conservation...and in 1990, the Marches nearly foiled Ferrari on Prost's home turf, but even Goodyears don't last forever, so two laps from the end, Capelli had to give way. Switching to untested V10 Ilmor power (yes, the basis of McLaren's return to form, go look it up!) wasn't helpful, but Ferrari saw a talent that didn't give up, and drove cleanly.
The twin-floor F92A disaster (also, easily Ferrari's least involving F1 car designation) was something Jean Alesi managed to put on the podium a few times, and Capelli more often than not spun. While I'm a big Alesi fan, Ferrari has never been particulaly good at making more than one of their cars work at any given season; whether it's engineering, testing, set-up, team orders, or questionable second driver, the Number Two Ferrari has long been nothing more than a rolling spare car that collects valuable data for the top dog, which reciprocates into piss-poor results when applied towards whichever driver is more foul than flier at the Scuderia.
Never mind that an actual Italian Ferrari driver suffers more media and press wounds than bringing a spoon to a gunfight.
So, a move way down to the downright disappointing Jordan for 1993; wrecks it once, fails to qualify the second time, and both Eddie Jordan questioned his ability to drive in F1. And form there, the story came a very abrupt halt. At the next race, some rookie chap named Rubens Barrichello managed to do quite well with that Jordan.
MazdaPrice
From the few motorsports I watch religiously, I'd argue for Jean Alesi, Gilles Villeneuve, Jochen Rindt, ... Stirling Moss. Oh, and Francois Cevert.
Gilles Villeneuve is one of those drivers that will always be a "what if"?
If he had a level head all season he could have done it: 1979 was his most trouble-free year, but Jody Scheckter was able to bring the same car home with less mistakes. The year before was a learning year, and 1980 was a waste with a car that didn't keep up with ground-effect technology (the 312T5 wasn't one), and 1981 was a developmental year with that brutish 126C turbo car, for which Gilles hoisted some decent hardware on tight circuits and luck (Monaco featured goofs by Jones, Reutemann, and Piquet) and some
fierce blocking "judicial wideness" (at Jarama) that might have people angered to no end 'twere it today's racing.
So what about 1982? Well...F1 cars weren't all that reliable (and this is pretty much across the board from Ferrari to Osella, McLaren to Toleman), the cars were hard to keep on the track with ground effects and accidents reaching all-time lows and highs, and many cars were competitive with one another. There weren't many run-away events: 11 different winners in 7 makes. It's hard to tell if all the tricks that teams used to "abridge" the rulebook would have aided Ferrari either for or against.
So whether Villeneuve or Pironi might have won the title would have depended a lot on whether Ferrari would have been able to put up the good fight to the end, and based on Tambay and Andretti's speed to the end of the year, then
yes...a Ferrari driver could have won the driver's title that year. It's hard to say whether it might have been Villeneuve or Pironi, since sadly, neither saw out the year.
If Gilles could have survived into future seasons, 1983 would have been his only chance. He would have required a reliable and fairly-quick Ferrari (realistically, that wouldn't happen at Ferrari again until 1988)
and he would have had to temper the excitement about one-third, which is what made Gilles so lovable in the first place.
Alesi just wound up with the wrong machinery...he impressed at the slower track with that Tyrrell, but if he'd picked Williams in 1990 and not Ferrari, then yes; the Williams-Renault was quite the car to have from mid-1991 to the end of 1997. The problem was that Williams was very Mansell-centric*, although that would have left him at Ferrari or McLaren; I think Ron Dennis preferred the harmony that the Berger was to Senna, unlike every other driver of any talent, and wasn't terribly keen on disrupting that.
He signed more contracts in that year than he'd see F1 wins in his entire career, sadly. I didn't get to Gilles Villeneuve but I got to see all of Alesi's 200-race career, though. The Sauber, the Prost, the Jordan. Some good stuff and bad, suffering with a Ferrari was third-rate during the beginning of the Schumacher-era, but never backed down from the good fight, and played fair and lost fair when inevitably having to give up the lead or park it. People talk about Senna's first lap at Donnington in 1993...but don't forget that Alesi also went from
5th to first at the first corner, when green lights lit at Estoril that year, too.
What might have been...Hard to tell if he would have put together a consistent season; because he was over driving the car - quite a bit at times - but recall that in 2001, he nearly became the first driver since Richie Ginther in 1964 to
finish every race in a season. A big spin at Suzuka and meeting up with Raikkonen for some tossed tires was the end of the road.
* (And you thought Senna/Prost was fireworks...can you imagine a Senna/Mansell pairing at McLaren in 1990!?! That would have either been insane or self-destructive, not sure which, since they hated each other.)
Would he have though? I know the special stories, but did he have the speed for a championship? He was beaten comprehensively by Reutemann and then was evenly matched with Scheckter (who won the title as his teammate) and Pironi
Reutemann had been competing in F1 for over 5 years, and Gilles had 3 F1 races under his belt by the end of the 1977 season. Yes, Gilles was woefully inconsistent in 1978, but Reutemann didn't like anyone in the pits, anyhow. And there's another lost talent: He threw away a lot of races because he just seemed to not care. How did he lose the 1981 title? We'll never know; his later form just looked like someone who stopped caring, for some reason.
Now Pironi was quite talented, but I think he just never liked all the attention Gilles got, for some reason. I don't really know; Looking at his results in the Ligier, I think Pironi wasn't the cut-and-thrust master, but a driver that was smooth, and preferred to be in control, not fight for the lead. He was a bit of a polar opposite to Gilles in terms of driving style. Going back to the reliability of the Ferrari in 1982, he had a serious chance...but also, the 1982 season was one of those odd title fights in which the winning driver won one race, and scored 44 points. 11 drivers won races, nobody more than 2 victories, nobody was reliable for long, and the cars were all bad-mannered and comparatively unsafe.
MazdaPrice
But the big one is Tommy Byrne.
The problem is that you're only as good as your last race in F1. The Theodore just wasn't the best way to do it, although it did launch the career of Patrick Tambay (an F1 career that nearly vanished and did a Mika Salo...also at Hockenhiem, no less!)
The problem is that if you plumb the depths of other racing series, you'd better pull a Romain Grosjean or Timo Glock and ice your competition to the point of no return. If you get beaten by the up-and-comers, your career is over in the big leagues of any sport.
Speaking of Finns, Mika Salo perhaps? We all know how well he did in 1999 but never really got a crack at the top and this is despite consistent performances for Tyrrell (5th place at Monaco when Tyrrell were really at the back) and Arrows. I was surprised he was dropped by Toyota.
I think F1 teams were getting more set in their ways, longer contracts, the need to "oh-please-can-somebody-beat-Schumacher", at someone like Salo kind of fell between the seat cushions and was forgotten about. Quite talented, and (see above) at least got a break in a really good car. I think people were expecting more from his Ferrari days, but no such luck.
Toyota just never followed through. I think doing both the engine and car bit wore them down financially, and talent-wise. Ferrari wasn't a winner overnight, it took at least three years to twist the rules in their favor in the 1950s!
Lehto did surprisingly well for Dallara/Scuderia Italia and Sauber, but it's his time with Benetton that were grossly underwhelming.
Verstappen did what Lehto couldn't: And Lehto rarely delivered on his talent; going for Onyx seemed promising, but the team's backing disappeared (if it was actually there in the first place?) and he began the spiral down, helped Sauber test impressively, but was hot-shoed by Frentzen. Jos was another lost talent of sorts, after Benetton, he never got anything better than an Arrows team that was averaged about 10 led laps per decade.
A nice guy for sure, but you just can't go from IMSA prototypes (an admittedly glorious second-rate series with some interesting machinery and drop-out F1/WEC talent) to F1 overnight. It
was an Andrea Moda; and boy was his story ever a good one. Probably deserved more, but I think he was much more of an
"accidental F1 driver" more than an
"F1 driver who causes accidents". F1 doesn't really have room for any of those stories anymore, for better and for worse, but I think Perry he had a chance that even he wasn't really expecting to get.
Mark Martin, one of the best drivers to never win anything really in NASCAR.
I think he's probably the fairest driver and nicest guy in the NASCAR paddock. Why not an entire 2007 season? So close in 1990? And a few more times? Dale Earnhardt, that's why. Mind you, Mark Martin and Rusty Wallace were the two road circuit masters in Winston Cup (hired guns, who needs 'em?), and MArk was always in the think of it. Can anyone remember a time someone pointed at Mark and said, "he hit me" or "he held me up"? Yeah, never. To me, I always thought Mark Martin had another calling in circuit racing, but enjoyed the ovals too much with the good 'ol boys. Not a wasted career, not at all a lost talent, but he's just the Stirling Moss of NASCAR.
Another, in the same way as Magnussen's "brilliant in lower formulae, crap higher up" mould, was JJ Lehto.
I think people praised Barrichello a little highly for finishing about three races in 1997, while it was Jan's first season. He didn't really impress in 1998, but Rubens at least did marginally better. Not a bad sports-car career; paired with Emmanuele Pirro and McNish, and you had a pretty good lost-F1-talent brigade that I'd pick for my endurance-racing team...oh wait, Audi got them first.
Jarno Trulli/Toyota in general - could have won races, maybe even a championship, never did.
I just think he was never the same after that mammoth shunt in the 2004 British GP. Almost won a race in that Ligier-Prost. When it was no longer a Ligier, his career fizzled a bit. Briatore lifted and deflated his career, kind of like Fisichella (another driver who started out promising around the same time in F1).
He did win an endurance title, did amazing things in an either underdog car, or illegal car (depending on your point of view). Too short a career for us to ever really know...
Better driver than racer.
I don't think the Williams was that good a car, and his "tennis injuries" pissed off Ron Dennis. Or did he just have different priorities, like family and stuff? Glad he's enjoying his time in the Sprint Cup.
Really short career. Wasn't really all that in F3000, although there was plenty of great talent at the time (Herbert, Alesi, Martini, Gachot, Foitek [never mind]). What if he had his chance a year later or a year earlier? And what in the hell was that Lotus made of? It's amazing he didn't lose his life in that ghastly accident at Jerez.
Speaking of Foitek (small world?), he's the one who put paid Johnny's hopes in F3000 for 1988. And Herbert started off good in F1, petered out, got dealt to Tyrrell, eventually and out of a job after a promising half-season. Poor Donnelly is injured, and Herbert finds himslef back in F1, clinging to the Lotus team. The Lotus is a horrible car, and it appears his career is going to disappear once more.
Schumacher to the rescue?!? And somehow, he hangs on to win a couple of GPs at Benetton, when Hill and Mickey are hitting each other with handbags. And somehow gets a win for Stewart, instantly increasing the value of Stewart so that Ford could dump a lot of money to the team in a way only matched by Toyota, and somehow some fizzy lifting drink manufacturer who borrowed an idea from a Thai nightclub could make it work (well, didn't work for Sauber) It begs the question...nah. And what if Sauber hadn't really eased up on the relationship with Mercedes-Benz? I think I'm getting off track...
A bit of an old timer like myself has to go with guys like Clay Regazzoni, Carlos Reutemann, Michele Alboreto, Elio de Angelis and Ronnie Peterson.
Clay was the fall guy, a pity Niki Lauda was so talented. Lauda liked Clay better than Reutemann, anyhow. Clay was a racer for racing's sake, one of the last of his kind...that's how you have a chance, and if you're not racing, well...I suppose you're doing something else. I don't know, making an album. So Regazzoni was okay with jumping into that Ensign or Theodore (Yes...2 Teddy Yip references in one post!) just because he liked to race. The 1974 Ferrari 312B3 just wasn't reliable enough (that would be next year, but not his chance).
Elio was occasionally fast...I think he just managed to be more reliable than his teammates, and he never had the best of machinery at his disposal. Come on, he drove for Shadow and ATS, and still worked a bit of magic every so often with a hand of deuces and threes. Credit where it's due, he was a pretty good fit at Lotus, save that pesky Ayrton guy who was really quick.
Ronnie Peterson sometimes had a pretty good car; but Fittipaldi was almost always more reliable. But he tried his best with some half-assed mounts (you won where, with a March?) and seemed to play second fiddle to Andretti at Lotus. He had a contract for McLaren for 1979, but it all went sour when Hunt moved over on Patrese...
Until Michele Alboreto came along, Ludovico Scarfiotti was
still the last Italian to win in a Ferrari (see Ivan Capelli). Too nice a guy to win the world title! As for Alboreto, he had one good car, but the Ferrari F156 turbo car collapsed in 1985 for mysterious reasons. There were many retirements in the second half of the season (including 5 straight DNFs for Alboreto at the end of the year).
My guess is that they couldn't compete with the Porsche/TAG motors, and upped the turbo boost ante without any care for what happened to the engines...win or go home at all costs. 1986 was a wash for Ferrari, and Berger was faster in 1987 (although Michele had his share of unreliability: 10 straight DNFs). Ferraris were notoriously unreliable F1 cars (for a top team) throughout the 1980s.
And like Regazzoni, he was one of the last of the race-for-the-hell-of-it-drivers: F1, drove Lancia's sports-cars during the 1980s, some IndyCars, then Ferrari sports-cars, and doing the hard work behind the scenes for Audi's sports-car program when it suddenly all went wrong.
My favorite all time racing quote comes from Michele Alboreto. When discussing practice for the 1988 Detroit Grand Prix, he said:
"It's not kissing the wall I'm worried about, it's making love to it that I'm worried about."
I'll leave my post at that.
Its just awkward to read I reckon? I have to get myself a copy of that book. He was the first American to win he Can-Am championship. I think he was still going to win a bit more. Why did he leave Mclaren for Shadow?
