Couldn't agree more. LH did 20,000 km before strapping in for 2007, Alonso spent a year as a test driver, Vettel did as well, etc.
Vito Brambilla underrated for a good reason! {But I suspect this is not the definitioni of underrated you are looking for...}
Martin Brundle. Never really got a top car did he? Bellof is a good one but we never got to see what he could really do. Perry McCarthy gets my vote for most unlucky. I also liked Sandro Nannini. I thought he was pretty good as well.
Ms got in a f1 car with no test deal at all and by lap 5 Gary Anderson a guy thats seen a few good driver's said call Eddie and tell him we got a star. They packed the car off to spa and he had never seen the track before and put in 7th on grid .to bad for Eddie that Michael couldn't read English poor banker he needed to call bernie and get a finder fee . So my pick for most underrated driver ms is and close 2nd is vettel most overrated lawyer ldm he still a hack and a clown and joke who says every year the team needs to win world championship what a clown
Kubi was always rated high. Just unfulfilled. A WDC for sure in the right car. Bianchi.. Dont know about that. Bottas would be my current pick now that everyone has "discovered" Hulk and Grosjean.
Michael was extremely rare, no knowledge of the cars or even the spa circuit, but does enough to shine. It's noted, though, that even he had lots of testing miles in his first year to really get a hold on the car, before making his title runs. Not many new prospects are able to make such a first impression
Two careers cut short before greatness, particularly Bellof. Even though Rindt still won the WDC, I suspect that given his talent, that would have been the first of several.
I think Both Rindt and Siffert were well recgonized as winners. Rindt was most likely looking towards retirement after 1970- he felt he was lucky to survive - he'd had several accidents - Montjuich - Zandvoort etc.. so he was counting his lucky stars- but ran out He was also very wary of Lotus and Champman - told Stewart and others that he was running out of trust for Chapman and reliablity - as in the car breaking. Siffert was a master at endurance driving - and had he been with a better team than BRM he could have been a real contender - Siffert is also the one responsible for brining Heuer watches into F-1. He holds one of the fastes ever laps / race records on the old Spa circuit in a Porsche 917... awsome driver.
Jackie Ickx was almost 1970 WDC champion... and he was up there for a while but I think the politics got to him.... at Ferrari it ground him down, Lotus he just was not up to all the changing ways in F-1. Sports cars - he went on until the late 80's as probabbly the best sports car driver ever...Seeing him at Monza in a 956 - amazingly fast. He may be underrated in F-1 but really he was very very good. Patrick Tamby is my underrated driver... I think Ferrari gave him the boot when they should have rid themselvs of Arnoux... Tamby is classy - fast driver - just never had the timing right with a top team. His best chance was Renault in 84-85 - but they were on their way out... he had spectacular drives.... just poor reliablity.
I don't think Bellof is underrated, he's more under-known. If you ask "Do you know Stefan Bellof?", the answer is either "Stefan who?" or "Yes, he was a fantastic driver", but not "Yes, but he sucked."
From that era, one of the most underrated driver must be Pedro Rodriguez (Siffert's rival at BRM and Porsche), who was very fast, but rarely raced full seasons, or for a work team. After years of one-off drives for Lotus or Ferrari, he was signed by Cooper-Maserati where he was faster than Rindt. He won a GP there. Later, he did several seasons at BRM and won there as well. Pedro raced mostly in endurance for NART, the US Ferrari importer. Most of the time he was quicker than the works drivers (Surtess, Bandini, Scarfiotti, Parkes, Vacarella), but reliability wasn't on his side. Chinettius Ferrari were always one year behind the work team When Wyer recruited him to replace Ickx at Le Mans,he won. Rodriguez is mostly remembered for his two years with the Gulf-Porsche in endurance, where he won 9 races and outclassed his team mates, Siffert among them. Pedro won the BOAC 1000 at Brands Hatch in the rain, lapping the rest of the field ..5 times (!), after having been black-flagged for a stop-go penalty at the start of the race. On that day, nobody could hold him a candle, in what can be remembered as an epic race. He won at Zwelteg in similar circumstances, after a stop to change the battery. Rodriguez lost in life in an Interseries race in Germany, an event his BRM contract forbade him to attend.
It is not a surprise that no one has mentioned Peter Collins who would have been World Champion for Ferrari in 1956 had he not voluntarily handed his Ferrari over to Juan Fangio. Had he not done so he would have been WDC ahead of Stirling Moss and Fangio would have been 3d. He perished while driving another Ferrari during the 1958 German Grand Prix at the Nurbugring the following a crash at the Pflantzgarten.
Great mention. He drove the TR's too. They wanted to make a movie based on Mon Ami Mate, the book that tells the story of the friendship between Peter Collins and Mike Hawthorn. Too bad it never happened. Maybe Ron Howard wants to do a sequel to Rush.
Both Rodriguez brothers' talent was well known back in the day. They died too young, but they are definitely well known. If anything Ricardo is more underrated than Pedro.
Did you know Porsche was so afraid of Enzo Ferrari's offers for Siffert to join his team that they actually paid BRM to take him on as a driver in F1? That's how much they valued his driving talent.
Many at Porsche Racing Management in the late 60's and early 70's considered Siffert the best driver they ever had.
