Is Lewis Hamilton the greatest of all time, why or why not?

winningest

 

Another worthless thread.

 

LOL! You landed the big one!

 

No. He isn't Senna. Next question.

 

I don’t think this has ever been discussed before. It’s about time there was a Hamilton the goat thread!

 

Well ..I actually played at the Super Bowl ! I never heard of this Brady bloke ...





I scored 124 points




Including a couple of strikes and a few spares.Sure im not a GOAT but not bad i guess?

 

Were Ferrari the team that got special treatment by the FIA in the early 2000's? Yep. Are they now? Nope. That honor belongs to Mercedes, who were given a huge technical head start for the hybrid era, did illegal tire tests with Pirelli, had clearly illegal systems like DAS allowed, open indications of DAS 2 being used after the FIA banned it and Mercedes admitted developing it despite the ban, the plenum system, the flexy wings, etc.

That sudden net six tenth awakening of the Mercedes, where Hamilton just drove people like he had DRS? Yeah, um, not just anew engines. They clearly found a way to reduce drag on the straights, and that rear wing was as illegal as cocaine.

Wanna compare Schumi and Ham?

Schumacher was thrown out of 4 races and was still 1 point ahead of Hill going into Adelaide. He was in an inferior Ferrari vs the Williams in 97' and went into Jerez ahead of Villeneuve. He took the fight to the final race against Häkkinen in equal cars in 98'. We'll never know how he'd have done in 99's because of his broken leg, but his speed in Malaysia gave us a hint. He was in equal cars to Hakkinen again in 00' and turned up the awesome sauce in the final four races to take the title. 01', 02', and 04' Schumacher had only Barrichello to contend with and bested him every time by a country mile. 03' was a year where Ferrari, Williams, McLaren and even Renault were all close on pace, and he won the title over the young guns. 05' he was nowhere because of the title rules, but he came back in 06' to be equal on points with Alonso up to Japan.

Now lets do Hamilton.

07' Hamilton had a fraud car and so don't even get me started on that. 08' he barely beat Massa in equal cars, despite the latter's engine failures and Crashgate altering the championship. Hamilton put up a very good fight against the Red Bulls 10' to go into the finale with a chance at the title. 14' he only just beat Rosberg and had defend to the final race. 15' he had only Rosberg as competition. 16' Rosberg beat him in equal cars. 17, 18', 19', and 20' Hamilton had only Vettel, who was only to barely compete against him in 17'. 21', well obviously Verstappen beat him despite having equal cars for most of the season, and Hamilton having a huge advantage in the final 4 races car wise.

Sorry, Hamilton's titles are just not that compelling. Great driver? Yeah, but skill wise he's on par with Vettel, and has simply had the fortune of having the killer car for a much longer period of time, and if the roles were reverse and Vettel had the Mercedes, he'd have broken all of Schumi's records.

PS. Schumi ain't the best either. Prost, Clark, and Fangio were all better than him, and even said as much.

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in 8 seasons Juan Fangio won 5 titles in four cars, finished runner up the two times, won 44% of the races he entered, only finished off the podium in races he finished 3 times, didn't get himself killed in racing in the 50's, then just retired because he got bored doing all that.

Alain Prost finished 3 points behind Nelson Piquet 83', half a point behind Lauda in 84, won the most points 5 times, won 4 official titles, finished runner up 3 times, had to be crashed and robbed of one title by Senna, and had to compete against Piquet, Senna, Mansell, Lauda, and Hill in equal cars

Prost and Fangio were on a whole other level of badass.

 

Google is useful huh? smh

 

What? You didn't know this **** on your own without Google?

 

Fangio is a bit before my time, the rest i have seen racing live ,many many times, but hey carry on educating us ignorant F1 fans.

 

Um, you were the one implying something about Google, not me.

Watched since the early 90's. If your history goes back further, goodie for you.

 

Well Joe, when you live three miles from the border, you end up being annexed by the neighbor at the slightest provocation. Not occupied, but annexed; so they told you you were French but now you actually are German, put you their uniform on and send you to fight their wars on the russian front (when you do not exactly make friends with the Russians...and some didn't came back). That happended twice in the last 150 years.
Nowadays I do have a lot of friends in Germany, still speaks german, but somehow I remain slightly wary; forgiven, but not forgotten.
So: german steamrollers? No thanks; neither in industry, nor in Formula One.
As my Grand'uncle used to say when looking at that border, "nothing good ever came for us from that side".

Rgds

 

Well, your question is not a folly at all: it is a Ferrari board of course, but in Formula One, one should always see some "relativity" here and there in certain matters. For instance, the Mercedes technical team has employed with great success some former Ferrari technicians at key jobs these lats seasons, such as James Allison or Aldo Costa; and "Mercedes F1" is actually mostly staffed by British people and based in the U.K; except for one or two key people, and the shareholder, it's not a german team at all, so things are probably a bit "soft at the edges". But yes, we are mostly Ferrari fans and some of us are also Ferrari owners.

I don't think there is any true "anti-Hamilton" sentiment here; just a slight distance taken by some of us regarding his achievements, which are "notable indeed", but a bit tainted to the eyes of some here by the fact that he was at the wheel of the best car of the last 8 years, that the technical rules for that period made it very difficult for other teams to fight back Mercedes, and that he had no real competition from his team-mate except with Nico Rosberg (and that, in his former team, when he had competiton from his team mate, he was not always up to the challenge).
So there is a feeling that he has accrued a large palmares considering the numbers, but that he had it rather easy, without any real competition. Not his fault of course, plus the fact that he tend to act like a prima donna makes many of us doubt his Greatness.
Look at a guy like Prost for instance: he had Niki Lauda, Keke Rosberg, Ayrton Senna, Nigel Mansell and Damon Hill (to a certain extent) as team mates: probably the highest oppostion possible, at the wheel of the same car, from the inside. Since 2017, Lewis insist on a subservant team-mate, so has no competition and no trouble from that side. A bit lame for many of us...I think many here would have liked him to leave Mercedes and start anew at another team, just to see what part he had in their success.
I'm still of the opinion that his best year was the first (at McLaren in 2007).
Great driver, yes indeed, no doubt about it. Will he leave the same print on his time than guys like Fangio, Moss, Clark, Stewart, Rindt, Lauda, Piquet, Prost, Senna, Schumacher did in their time? I have my doubts; superiority is not a matter of numbers only.

Rgds

 

Agree with you RE Hamilton.

My point with the Ferrari International Assistance cheap quip is because it's, well, cheap. There very clearly was a bias when the FIA gave Alonso a complete BS penalty for ''blocking'' another driver in quali in Monza 2006 I believe, despite him being miles ahead. Also when Bourdais got a BS penalty for tangling with Massa in Fuji 2008 (?).

Though Beryllium ban was seen as "Ferrari International Assistance", it really wasn't. Beryllium dust is nasty as hell and you really wouldn't want to be breathing in the dust if/when an engine blew (which they tended to do a lot more back then, often in spectacular fashion).

The same goes for the Renault's Mass damper system. People often say it was banned because Ferrari was behind, but that wasn't the reason it was banned: Teams did actually use the system once they knew what Renault where doing. Mclaren initially led the charge to get it banned, and failed. Then pretty much all teams developed their own system, but not as successfully as Renault of course. Teams went back to the FIA. In the meantime, Renault patented the system. Flavio told the teams if they want to use the system, and have it working immediately, they can buy it off him.

And then it got banned. It was Flavio's arrogance/politics that did the trick.

"Ferrari International Assistance" is a cheap insult that gets used every single time anything happens that slightly favours Ferrari. It suggest that Schumacher only won the Ferrari titles because of "Ferrari International Assistance", which anyone serious would know is absolute bs.

FIA did quite a lot to slow down Ferrari in this period, far more than they ever did Mercedes (in fact, that's where the FIA earned their much more appropriate moniker MaFIA), even though Ferrari only really dominated 2 seasons in that time.

 

You're a heretic....you should burn in the stake....
Just a joke...no ned to ban me.....

 

They did so much that they. Basically paid Ferrari to can the f2004 and allow to change tyre rules for 2005...and Luca accepted, because he believed despite all he would be able to win....but he was wrong....if not for that 2005 would have been a walk in the park for Shumi

 

Must admit that is impressive ...you watching F1 before you could even walk ....

 

Um, first title I remember as a child was 96 and Damon, soooo? Is there a point to this? Are ad hominem attacks all you have for this discussion, or do you actually have something productive to add?

BTW, there were these amazing things called tapes which people like my father would use to record races with all season, then save them for the winter off season. The FIA used to put out full season reviews that were multiple hours long on them, too!

 

Lucky young man...-when I started to really follow Formula One, at the beginning of the 1970's, one could not "watch" Formula One, because it was not aired on T.V, except for the Monaco G.P and the French G.P (in France); and that was all.
Be remembered also that there were no tape recorder at the time, so if you missed the airing at the time of the race, well too bad...you would never see it again.
(Actually your truly cheated somewhat, as he was living on the french-german-Luxembourg border at the time, so managed to watch also the German G.P on the german T.V; on the Nürburgring Nordschleife, no less...)
Tape video recorders started to appear during the 1970's; the first I saw was in 1974 but was only for professional use and big as a washing machine, but I remember clearly how impressed I was.
Formule One airing and videotape recording began more frequent only in the 1980's.
Before that, you had either the radio or the morning newspapers, such as "L'Equpe" in France. But even if you couldn't WATCH Jim Clark race in the sixties, his legend was growing without TV.

...and when you were caught speeding during the sixties in France, more often than not the "Gendarmes" asked you "alors Monsieur, on se prend pour Fangio?" (So Mister, you think you are Fangio?") whereas today, they never ask the driver if he thinks he is Lewis Hamilton, so this is the proof: Fangio's legend is greater.


Rgds

 

The Ferrari bias thing comes from the fact that the FIA didn't ban Schumacher completely after Jerez 97', and Schumacher was allowed to keep driving in exchange for admitting his guilt and publicly apologizing. There were also a few incidents in 02' and 03' that got the Ferrari bias accusations really going, namely Montoya's two BS drive thru penalties for contact with Schumacher and Barrichello, along with the ruling changes impacting Michelin runners in 03'.

Ferrari certainly felt the wrath of the FIA after Austria 02', and then of course the stupid no tire stops was blatantly done to hit Ferrari.

 

The same accusation used to be made againt Giacomo Agostini, the Italian rider, 15 times Motorcycle World Champion.
He spent most of his career with MV Agusta and gathered many GP wins (123 in total)) benefiting from technical superiority and lack of real opposition.
Manufacturers like Norton, Moto-Guzzi, Benelli or NSU had withdraw from international racing.
Only MV Agusta was left, and Agostini raced for years against private teams, dominating the championship and getting the best of his team mates.
Because of this, some started questionning Agostini's achievement.

Towards the end of Ago's career, the Japanese manufacturers entered racing,to challenge MV's domination.
Agostini did the unthinkable: he left MV Agusta, the team he had grown with, and joined the opposition!
Ago signed for Yamaha, to race their unsorted and fragile 2-stroke bikes. In terms of challenge, it was a mountain to climb.
2-stroke were powerful but brutal, and unreliable. The Japanese didn't make good frames; the Yamaha was a bucking bronco compared to a MV.
Yet, Agostini who had never raced a 2-stroke, won the first first race of the season with Yamaha, the Daytona 200.
For the next 2 seasons he was World Champion, demonstrating that he could adapt to different machines, and proving his detractors wrong!

I do not expect Hamilton to follow the same path.

 

Correct on the Montoya drive throughs as well. Forgot about them.

But no complete ban for Schumacher after Jerez? I mean Senna intentionally crashed into Prost to win a title and the F1 media practically shrugged at the time. To then even contemplate a total ban for Schumacher for a racing incident reeks of British media bias.

With the testing ban, engine limitations, tyre changes, point system changes...all made to limit Ferrari dominance (ironically I do believe the point system changed actually helped them win 2003 IIRC, though I could be wrong recalling it). That's why I think the Ferrari Assistance moniker is thrown around way too loosely.

 

One thing people go on a lot about is how dirty Schumacher was as opposed to Hamilton. People forget that after Jerez 97', every driver realized that onboard footage would always be there for study by the stewards, and would always reveal an aggressively deliberate act. So it was off the table as even an option after that.

What Hamilton does is different. While Schumi copied the Senna wall push and taking out a title rival, Hamilton copied Senna's chrome horn style of "passing", and putting his rival in a situation where they have to yield if they want to avoid him running into them. Ham's done it his whole career.

It's interesting that people that had no problem with Senna's many wall pushes and punting drivers off, had a problem when Schumacher began to do it himself in following the precedent. Now the same people that praise Hamilton's "yield or we crash" style are livid that Max does it right back to Hamilton.

The British press are just that way. Hell, think about how they roasted Rosberg in 16' as dirty, even though it was Hamilton that ran into him twice, threw tons of chop blocks, and then ignored team orders in Abu Dhabi to back Rosberg up, hoping he'd take the bait and an incident would happen. Last year he ran into Verstappen twice, cut the course on multiple occasions to take 'evasive action'(uh huh). And when Max dived inside of him on the final lap at Abu Dhabi, Hamilton tried to cut the wheel back to the inside with the Max already beside him, something everyone missed.. Clownish driving.

No, not saying Ham was doing anything deliberately. Just that when things go wrong, he flips out behind the wheel and does stupid **** that leads to incidents.