Fine. I have quibbles with the whole "God" "Demi God" "Great" tier system that seems to permeate racing boards but for argument's sake, I'd have Schumacher up there.
>GOD TIER
Prost
Fangio
G. Hill
Moss
Stewart
Fine enough. Prost, Stewart and Fangio are rightly three of the greatest ever.
Dotini has commented before that Graham Hill was impossibly brilliant but fantastically boring. Tough to know where that would put him on a "best" drivers list. I'd say there were some names missing from this section though.
Moss drove some tough cars in a tough area and was undoubtedly a top driver but is he as good as some of these drivers listed below?
>GREAT TIER
Senna
Hakkinen
Vettel
Hamilton
Piquet
Fittipaldi
Clark
Lauda
Mansell
Alonso
Ascari
Brabham
Reutemann
Ickx
Senna is behind Moss? Interesting choice.
Clark definitely should be further up the list.
A portion of this seems to be lumping in some drivers from a long 20 year period whose careers overlapped in some way' Brabham > Fittipaldi > Lauda > Piquet > Mansell. It can be a blur looking back in retrospect and thinking the late 1960s and the late 1970s are roughly comparable but they're not. Either that or there are simply too many people.
Häkkinen was a superb driver, probably slots somewhere in the upper-mid, fine.
Ickx is an interesting one and related to a point I made earlier which no-one answered. He is without question one of the very best motorsport drivers who has ever sat in a cockpit but is he one of the very best
F1 drivers ever? His intermittent career would lead me to say no.
Vettel, Alonso and Hamilton are all still racing; I'd rather pass comment on them once they have retired and their careers have aged some more.
Alonso is one of the new millennium's best though.
>NICE TIER
Hunt
Both Villeneuves
D. Hill
Farina
Hawthorn
P. Hill
Hulme
Surtees
Rindt
N. Rosberg
Button
Raikkonen
Again, Button, Rosberg and Räikkönen you couldn't say.
I personally would have Surtees much higher up.
Even mentioning Jacques and Gilles Villeneuve in the same sentence is worthy of a gaol sentence.
Now Hunt is an interesting one. I might be on my own here but I'd have him down as more of a 'meh' driver. That's not to say that he wasn't good but he had a brief two year shine (Hesketh 1975 and McLaren 1976) but never really did much else (even if the cars were guff, I know) and seemed very uninterested by the time he retired as a driver. His legend seems to come more from his commentary career, which was backed up in credibility by him being a world champion.
Damon Hill is criminally underrated in my opinion.
>MEH TIER
Sheckter
Jones
K. Rosberg
Three champions from the same time period. Not a lot to be said, eh?
Like I said, there's probably too many to list. You can't really start ranking so many drivers and not carry on; all the world champions are there but is that out of necessity? I don't think a list of the greatest drivers needs to have
all the world champions.
Just to round things off, let's take a look at the last two sections:
>RUINED CAREER (life is unfair)
Barrichello
Coulthard
Di Resta
Fisichella
Berger
Alesi
Heidfeld
Barrichello is my all time #1.
Of course he had a ruined career which could have been so much more but objectively, he's probably still one of the what ifs. It's unfortunate that his move to a big team coincided with his teammate dominating the sport at a then unprecedented level. His early drivers for Jordan and Stewart, which were utterly sublime given the machinery, have largely been overshadowed by his time as Schumacher's official back up.
Berger probably got where he would have but maybe he had the same problem as Barrichello; he was Senna's #2 when he got the jump to McLaren and his Ferrari days were during the company's down periods.
Alesi definitely could have been so much more. His heart took him to Ferrari when his head should have taken him to Williams. He would have been a multiple champion had he signed for Williams, make no mistake.
Fisichella, Coulthard and Heidfeld got what they deserved.
di Resta? Are you kidding?
>DED/INJURY (but could reach great or god tier)
Kubica
Bianchi
Cevert
Pironi
Revson
Massa
Ifs, buts and maybes. Again, you can't list some but not others. Bianchi and Kubica shouldn't be on this list.
But hey, it's your opinion and I'm happy you shared it with us. Always makes for an interesting discussion.
