A twist on the "The best driver of all time ..." thread. What driver won the F1/GP championship not because of their talent, but despite their talent? Twisting Jack-the-lad's words: "If I were an owner, what championship driver would I NOT want on my team?" My two rules: 1) they had to win a F1/GP championship. 2) you have to say your reason.
Keke Rosberg springs to mind. Not tremendously succesful in junior serious, same goes for all his time in F1....that many years, so few wins? I'm sure people will put up Raikkonen and Button before long....will strongly disagree with both!
Mike Hawthorn (Ferrari) won the 1958 championship with 42 points and just 1 GP win. Stirling Moss 'Vanwall) finished 2nd with 41 points and 4 wins. Even Tony Brooks (Vanwall) who finished 3rd had 2 wins. The irony was that Mike Hawthorn was originally disqualified from the Moroccan GP for having driven against the direction of the course after a spin, to finish 2nd with 6 points. Stirling Moss who won the race supported Hawthorn's appeal and had him reinstated, to later lose the championship by 1 single point !!! It was a rare case of sportmanship, like you would never see now. Hawthorn retired at the end of the season, only to die in a road accident 3 months later. Hawthorn only won 3 GPs in his career, but was WDC. Moss won 16 GPs but never was champion.
Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve. They both had the good fortune of plopping into the best seat at the time. One could say Kimi was both the luckiest and the unluckiest. He had the good luck to take advantage of the McLaren shenanigans in 2007 between Hamilton and Alonso and come out World Champion. But, when he was with McLaren himself, the car let him down so many times . . . .
Keke Hunt--as per Jack. The year of Niki's accident and he just won by a whisker. Damon, Jacques, Nico and Hamilton--all in dominant cars. RtR!
I will defend Hill to my dying day. First of all he's really a two time WDC. In 94 he had to pull the team back together after Senna's death. Then Schumacher had an (admittedly and proven) cheater car, yet he still had to drive Hill off the track to steal it. I love Keke as a person/driver, but 1982 was described as the title no one wanted to win. We lost Villeneuve to his terrible fetal accident and Pironi to a career ending accident.
Every F1 team bends the rules - including Mercedes. Damon disagrees with you. He has since admitted steaming into an ever-decreasing-gap. Rookie mistake.
This is easily Nico Rosberg in my adult life. Nico should be self explanatory.... Unreliability with Hamilton's car and still only won by a few points.
Would disagree on Hamilton simply because in 2018 the Ferrari was capable of winning the title and Seb ruined that... Honestly believe if you had switched the cars from that sole year Lewis would've still beaten Seb at that point in their careers and or if Leclerc at his current capability was in the Ferrari, the title would have at least went to the last race. VB was 5th that year.
Damon Hill and Jenson Button. The first only won because he had the best car on the grid, the second because Barrichello was using different (inferior) brakes until the mid-season.
I would vote Damon Hill as one of the most underrated drivers of all time. Pironi should have won in 82, but he was a broken man after Villeneuve's death.
I guess Jacques was lucky at Indy, and the 95 CART Championship as well. Not too many other drivers have been lucky enough to accomplish this.
Agree with the Williams pair....especially Jacques. I was never a fan of Damon the driver but he has done some stellar performances in his time so he is excused for me. Kimi...I can kind of agree with your analogy. He wasn't driving the fastest car in 2007 yet won the title, but this is helped with Ron outright supporting Lewis from quite early on. CAPABLE of winning...yes. Doesn't mean it was the fastest car. It needed a perfect season to win the title. Judging by your other post it's clear who you really support so hardly going to make sense talking to you much. See regarding Button, I'll jump to his defence. He made a move to Mclaren after it and everyone said that Button would be annihilated by Lewis, and it would simply mean his title was won by having the best car and that's that. Yet at Mclaren....he convincingly beat Lewis and Lewis even left the team because of it (...and thought he'd at least be beating Rosberg convincingly....as he surely should have....but it was far from convincing except 2015!)
Fair enough, I don't dispute that Button was a good driver, but for me Barrichello would have beaten him if they had started with the same equipment.
I think barrichello was a vastly underrated driver. His performances pre-ferrari where often mindblowing, yet also forgotten (either due to a late retirement due to his car, or other factors such as another drive from a more popular driver). He always maintained it as never written in his contract that he had to play 2nd fiddle to Schumacher, and I believe it...however I don't doubt for a second he was asked the few times to ''kindly do move over or you'll find a horses head in your bed''. To me those years just showed how good Schumacher really was, as Barrichello was no slouch (nor was Massa for that matter, when you look back on Massa's career it really only declined after being mentally destroyed by Alonso after 2010 and Ferrari producing some bad chassis).
