On 10/06/2021 1:11 pm, Alan Baker wrote:
> On 2021-06-09 6:04 p.m., geoff wrote:
>> On 10/06/2021 3:46 am, Alan Baker wrote:
>>> On 2021-06-08 10:55 p.m., Sir Tim wrote:
>>>> geoff <geoff@nospamgeoffwood.org> wrote:
>>>>> On 9/06/2021 9:53 am, Alan Baker wrote:
>>>>>> On 2021-06-08 9:39 a.m., Sir Tim wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Trying to designate a driver as the “greatest of all time” is a
>>>>>>> pointless
>>>>>>> exercise and largely subjective anyway. All one can do is to say
>>>>>>> that
>>>>>>> certain drivers are “amongst the greatest of all time” or,
>>>>>>> possibly, “the
>>>>>>> best of their generation”.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I'm not sure I agree.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> There are certain drivers that other drivers acknowledge as being the
>>>>>> very, very best. Senna was one. Jim Clark another. I don't hear
>>>>>> the same
>>>>>> opinions about Hamilton being voiced by his peers.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Is he among the very best out there today? Beyond a doubt. I think
>>>>>> there
>>>>>> might be 3 or 4 others who could match him given the same car, but
>>>>>> not
>>>>>> more.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> But it still remains that if Hamilton is among the very great,
>>>>>> then so
>>>>>> is Bottas and so is Rosberg
>>>>>
>>>>> If winning the odd race, or one Championship in the case of Rosberg
>>>>> (helped by lots of bad 'luck' of his teammate) is the criteria.
>>>>>
>>>>> It isn't.
>>>>>
>>>> +1
>>>>
>>>
>>> Except you never account for the fact that Hamilton was the number 1
>>> driver on the team, and F1 teams almost always give preference to
>>> their number 1.
>>
>> And that is, it seems, your only justification ...
>>
>> geoff
>
> Because the only justification for Hamilton's alleged "greatness" is
> that he's won a lot of races.

And for the others who you accept as having been 'great' ? Did they
achieve that status by losing a lot of races , or what ?

geoff

On 2021-06-09 10:23 p.m., geoff wrote:
> On 10/06/2021 1:11 pm, Alan Baker wrote:
>> On 2021-06-09 6:04 p.m., geoff wrote:
>>> On 10/06/2021 3:46 am, Alan Baker wrote:
>>>> On 2021-06-08 10:55 p.m., Sir Tim wrote:
>>>>> geoff <geoff@nospamgeoffwood.org> wrote:
>>>>>> On 9/06/2021 9:53 am, Alan Baker wrote:
>>>>>>> On 2021-06-08 9:39 a.m., Sir Tim wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Trying to designate a driver as the “greatest of all time” is a
>>>>>>>> pointless
>>>>>>>> exercise and largely subjective anyway. All one can do is to say
>>>>>>>> that
>>>>>>>> certain drivers are “amongst the greatest of all time” or,
>>>>>>>> possibly, “the
>>>>>>>> best of their generation”.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I'm not sure I agree.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> There are certain drivers that other drivers acknowledge as being
>>>>>>> the
>>>>>>> very, very best. Senna was one. Jim Clark another. I don't hear
>>>>>>> the same
>>>>>>> opinions about Hamilton being voiced by his peers.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Is he among the very best out there today? Beyond a doubt. I
>>>>>>> think there
>>>>>>> might be 3 or 4 others who could match him given the same car,
>>>>>>> but not
>>>>>>> more.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> But it still remains that if Hamilton is among the very great,
>>>>>>> then so
>>>>>>> is Bottas and so is Rosberg
>>>>>>
>>>>>> If winning the odd race, or one Championship in the case of Rosberg
>>>>>> (helped by lots of bad 'luck' of his teammate) is the criteria.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> It isn't.
>>>>>>
>>>>> +1
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Except you never account for the fact that Hamilton was the number 1
>>>> driver on the team, and F1 teams almost always give preference to
>>>> their number 1.
>>>
>>> And that is, it seems, your only justification ...
>>>
>>> geoff
>>
>> Because the only justification for Hamilton's alleged "greatness" is
>> that he's won a lot of races.
>
>
> And for the others who you accept as having been 'great' ?  Did they
> achieve that status by losing a lot of races , or what ?

You really don't get it.

If the ONLY metric is "he won a lot of races", and you haven't
considered what the car was capable of, then you're on the wrong track.

Senna took podiums... ...in a TOLEMAN.

He went from 13th to 2nd in Monaco in a Toleman and was catching Alain
Prost at 4 seconds a lap when the race was stopped.

He literally ended up hitting a wall...

....because the wall had moved by a few millimetres:

'The car was reasonably competitive there, so we expected to have a good
race, but Ayrton spun early in the race. He then found his way back
through the field in a quite effective way and we were looking for a
pretty good finish, but then he hit the wall, damaged the rear wheel and
the driveshaft and retired, which was a real shame. The real
significance of that was that when he came back to the pits he told me
what happened and said "I'm sure that the wall moved!" And even though
I've heard every excuse every driver has ever made, I certainly hadn't
heard of that one! But Ayrton being Ayrton, with his incredible belief
in himself, the absolute conviction, he then talked me into going with
him after the race to have a look at the place where he had crashed. And
he was absolutely right, which was the amazing thing! Dallas being a
street circuit, the track was surrounded by concrete blocks and what had
happened – we could see it from the tyre marks – was that someone had
hit at the far end of the concrete block and that made it swivel
slightly, so that the leading edge of the block was standing out by a
few millimetres. And he was driving with such precision that those few
millimetres were the difference between hitting the wall and not hitting
the wall. While I had been, at first, annoyed that we had retired from
the race through a driver error, when I saw what had happened, when I
saw how he had been driving, that increased my respect for the guy by
quite a lot.'

On Sunday, June 6, 2021 at 10:00:53 PM UTC-7, XYXPDQ wrote:
> So was Baku Perez's statement race?
>
> He seemed to struggle a lot with the car in the earlier races but this whole weekend everything just clicked along.
>
> If this is an indication of the rest of the season it will really put the pressure on Merc. They won't be able to do the undercut/overcut dance with impunity. And with Bottas being so inconsistent I think it puts both the drivers and constructors championship in play.

I think France GP makes that answer a yes.