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

Mercedes were already using their rear suspension system to its best at COTA and Mexico, and so the dramatic rise in speed at Brazil had nothing to do with that. If anything Brazil should've been less conducive to the Mercedes cars advantages than COTA and Mexico, but out of nowhere they had straight line speeds that were ungodly, where we saw Lewis flying by people on the front straight in Brazil, and picking up slip streams far back without DRS. I've never heard or seen of anything like that Mercedes cars dramatic speed discovery in F1. I

Something with the rear wing is a natural suspect, and the fact that it failed post tech, had scores marks, and appeared to deform in images supports the theory that part of Mercedes advantage was the use of knowingly illegal wing.

The new engine gave Lewis a tenth or so no doubt, but it also served as a cover explanation for the rest of the dramatic performance enhancement we saw from Mercedes at Brazil and Qatar, and it's telling that as soon as RBR detailed how they believed Mercedes might be cheating with their rear wing, their speed advantage relaxed back down to only 1-2 tenths over the RB's.

Mercedes are brilliant, but it's obvious what was up.

Also telling is the fact that the FIA impounded the rear wing, even though they allegedly bought Mercedes "oops" story publicly. They clearly suspected Mercedes were doing something illegal with the rear wing, and just couldn't figure out the mechanism or how they hid the trick.

 

The greatest drivers came from the 50's-70s. They raced with no safety and nowhere near the driving comfort todays grid has the luxury of having.

Piquet, Prost, Schumacher, Alonso Senna, and Hakkinen are legends, but one can't compare them to the likes of Fangio, Ascari, Graham Hill, Lauda, Stewart, Clark, and Fittipaldi, who raced on the old Spa, Monza, Nürburgring, Mont-Tremblant, Watkins Glen, Osterreichring and Brand Hatch, in a time where every race was life and death.

 

I think you can, actually. They are the dominant drivers of their times (including Hamilton, who you left off...somewhat predictably). In some cases, 'dominance' simply meant survival. In others, it meant ruthlessness. Reliability is another critical element.

There's no telling what would happen if you stuck Senna in to go elbows out against Clark. Generally, though, I think the modern driver has the benefit of learning from the pioneers and growing...another advantage that makes it difficult to compare. Let them be great in their respective eras....

 

I also left out Vettel, so it's not just a Hamilton thing.

Indeed, one can make a comparison. In the 80's Brabham, Williams, Renault, Ferrari, and McLaren all created championship level cars. the 90's Williams, Benneton, Ferrari and McLaren produced a championship level car. The 2000's, McLaren, Ferrari, Williams, and Renault did.

The thing about Vettel's dominance at RBR is that only Ferrari even had a chance at the title in 10' and 12', and that was only because of Alonso's amazing race craft, or the show might have been even worse. Vettel only had to compete with Webber as a teammate. When we come to Vettel's dominance it's the same issue. Only Ferrari produced a car between 14-20 that was even on the map of the Mercedes, and that was really only for one full season in 17'. To be fair, Hamilton had a tougher teammate in Rosberg, but then this era of dominance lasted even long than RB's.

The fact remains that Vettel's 4 in a row and Hamilton 6 out of 7 looked much easier than even Schumacher's 5 in a row era of dominance for a reason: it was. The rest of the constructors simply weren't even in the same galaxy as the cars they were in. Further, Vettel post RBR performance and Hamilton's era between his first championship and the start of the hybrid era at Mercedes were ... not compelling. Alonso was more impressive in a ****box Ferrari.

Rules changes brought about the Red Bull and Mercedes iron clad dominance, and moronic constraints that killed in season testing and how and when development on the engines and chassis could be done, seriously held the competition back. It became a simulation crap shoot to try and catch up to Red Bull and later Mercedes.

Yes, all the teams agreed to the idiotic constraints (thinking they'd be the ones to benefit) and both Vettel and Hamilton won their titles fair and square.

 

Senna's Mclaren was 3 seconds faster than the 5th place car at times. Do you think the rest of the constructors were "in the same galaxy"?

 

To be honest, the McLaren was truly superior only in 1988; in 1989, it was mainly the Honda engine, but Ferrari's chassis (or Barnard's) was better than the McLaren's; and after that, the McLaren chassis was clearly not on par with the best: in 1990, the Ferrari clearly had a better chassis, but a slightly weaker engine; in 1991 the Williams package was already better: chassis and engine, and only reliability problems in the first half of the season hindered Mansell's challenge.
Senna's titles in 1990 and 1991 were not due to a superior car, but to the pilot and the Honda engine.

Rgds

 

and to some ramming!

 

I made a video to compare the two 7x world champs. Lewis vs Michael. Using empirical data and trying to remove opinion as much as possible.

 

Excellent video. Must say I chuckled at the ultimate conclusion. hehe.

 

Very nice job, well done and a lot of work put into it.....but i'm gonna tell you a secret, you just had to watch a few races from both of them...the diference is obvious!

 

It made me laugh also. Good video overall. I think the circumstances were very different between the two and their eras. I'm good with keeping them as pivotal figures in their respective times. No need to rank because everything is different.

 

Hamilton: very good at making some believe he’s a clean driver, LOL. This is funny:

https://www.reddit.com/r/formuladank/comments/ov0rx4/not_that_innochent/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x

Quite clearly his go-to move.

 

I certainly wouldn't call Lewis a dirty driver, but he clearly has his share of driving mistakes that wrecked other people's races.

 

He learned the move—and the excuse—from watching his hero:

 

Hmmmm...slow news day.

 

Hahahaha.

No offense taken my friend!!

All in good fun!!!

 

I disagree with you - Mclaren was superior in 84 - 85 as well, Prost and Lauda at the time won more races in 84 than any other marque in a season safe for Ferrari in the early 50's.... Prost again was pretty much the class of the field in 85 and even in 86.... the 80's were Mclarens golden age... 88 is the standout season for sure.

 

Mostly agree, but 86 the William's was the class of the field. Piquet and Mansell would've won the title had it not been for Prost's being masterful at always thinking about the big picture.

 

In fairness to Hamilton, what Senna did was clearly deliberate and premediated. Senna is lying when he says that Prost closed the door on him. He didn't even try to steer into the corner, and his intention was to clearly crash into Prost, in what is, IMHO, the dirties foul play in F1 history. Yes, even worse than Schumi at Jerez 97'.

Hamilton's moves are just desperate foolishness for the most part. He's not a dirty driver, but a reckless one that just doesn't care if he causes a collision .

 

Excellent video!

Hamilton won a title with the second fastest car one time in 08', then took the second fastest car to the Abu Dhabi finale in 10'. He took an equal car to the Ferrari into the Brazil finale in 07'.

Schumacher won in a Benetton that was slower than the Williams in 94', after also being kicked out of 4 races, dominated in equal cars in 95', took that dog of a Ferrari to the championship finale in 97' (yes, he punted Villeneuve), was 4 points behind Mika going into Japan in 98', won 9 races in equal cars to the McLaren in 00', won the title in a year where nobody really had a dominate car in 03', and was tied on points with Alonso with two races to go in 06'.

Schumi was on another level, doesn't matter what one thinks of his driving ethics at times.

 

The part you miss is driving an inferior car is not the only way to be great. I'll add that the lowest team Schumacher drove for was Bennetton, the 4th best team before he joined. The lowest team Hamilton drove for was Mercedes. 5th best team before he joined.

 

I agree. Williams did a horrible job of supporting one or the other driver... had there been coordination in the team either of them could have been champion in 86 and 87. However - what Prost learned from Lauda is to be champion means you have to be there in the end at every race... that is what all the great F1 drivers have done... all of them focused on finishing vs. going for the win or nothing. Senna's issue was ( in my opinion) he felt inferior to Prost, which made him super emotional and volatile - it made him do crazy stuff... like running people off the road.... and same with Schumacher in 94 - in Senna's eyes - he had to obliterate the competition - he was so caught up in his own myth. Had he been more Prost-like, I think Senna could be alive today. Schumacher was another one who could not accept not being the star at all times... and it made him make bad decisions - The Monaco stall in qualifying...

Again in my opinion the truly Great Drivers don't do the dirty stuff. They game out the race in advance... Senna could - but when it called for him to be behind he just could not take that ... Schumacher was a bit like that - but he also had the right people around him that helped control all that aggression. Senna did not.

 

Schumacher drove for Jordan first. then Benetton/ Renault, then Ferrari, and finally Mercedes Benz.

Eddie Jordan recounted Schumacher's test - when they told him to just get used to the car -and then on only 3 laps started to set faster times than any of the current drivers - and then started to go faster than other cars at the test. Gary Anderson and team called him in and started to scream at him he's going to fast, he'll crash and all Schumacher said was " I'm not even pushing". Motorsport has that story in one of its articles and I think a Pod Cast. Jochen Mass told the story as well... mostly on how Schumacher could not handle the Mercedes Group C car for long periods of time - but that he was so much faster than Mass ... so Mass got him into weight training... and Schumacher showed him how he drove the track ... but Mass said he could not work with so much oversteer.

 

That is not correct. The 2013 Mercedes Mercedes was the 2nd best car. The worst car Hamilton ever drove was the first version of the 2009 McLaren when it would float around 15th place. Then mid season, by some miracle, his McLaren got 1 second faster and was faster than the Championship winning Brawn GP car.

The problem with always being in the fastest car is you never really know how great a driver really is. If Lewis wasn't around, people would be talking about how Rosberg or Bottas was one of the best since either of them would have won 5 or 6 championships in the 2014-2021 Mercedes.