who will be first to surpass senna in race wins? Vettel or hamilton?

You must be joking...

 

Obviously

 

From Motorsports "database";

Draw your own conclusions.

Cheers,
Ian
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At times Seb seems to be having rather more fun than Senna did.

 

Firstly, good to have you back! I know I've missed your (occasional ) pearls of wisdom......

I dunno about "fun"; Sure, Ayrton was super intense & serious about the whole thing - he wanted to be the best ever. The first to really "train" for the job. The first to really analyze what was going on.

Was he having fun? I think in his own way, very much so. He maybe didn't show it the way Seb does, but I suspect few things can compare with winning a GP, even if he didn't like the BS (His "battles" with JMB come to mind.)

Cheers,
Ian

 

If Senna's average start position is 3.3 and his average finish position is 3, then how can his average places gained be -0.2? Similarly, if Vettel's average start position is 5.2 and average finish position is 4.1, then how can his average places gained be 0.7?

It seems like they're factoring DNFs into part of these calculations and not into others. Senna has more DNFs so his average places gained calculation is further out of sense.

All the best,
Andrew.

 

Umm Vettel has only raced 152 times. 159 includes the events he entered as Test Driver with BMW Sauber.

 

Senna needed a more dependable set of wheels. To have that many poles and retirements is a telling stat.

How many wins would he have had with better reliability? Unfortunately, it's part of his history. Guys like Ham and Vettel are driving in an era when car reliability is significantly better than during Senna's time.

 

Yap, that's why we can't really use stats to compare drivers...something that Elton fans don't seem to understand......

 

Exactly, and this is the reason neither of them can match Senna (at least at the moment) even if they have the same amount of wins...

 

On the subject of retirements. Vettel has only retired 21 times/13.82% and Lewis only 20 times/12.42%.








Pastor *cough* 27times/30.00%.


edit: that stats thing fast_ian posted is completely wrong for Vettel stats as it includes his TD events and ummm I dunno where it got 33 retirements from.

 

Context matters, because stats alone can be twisted to say whatever you want them to. We don't truly know how drivers of yesteryear would fare on today's grid, but given that they were able to thrive in a much more challenging environment leads me to believe the cream would always rise to the top.

 

Done
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The reliability issue was brought up on the BBC preview podcast, James Allen shared that Senna had 3 times the number of mechanical failures that let him down than Lewis simply because the cars so much more reliable now.

An interesting statistic to look at is laps in the lead over a career and Senna is significantly ahead of everyone except Micahel Schumacher in that respect with 2,986 versus Vettel with 2,615 and Lewis at 2,275. Schumacher is in another league than all others at 5,114 (he did have 306 race starts versus 161 for Senna and Hamilton and 152 for Vettel).

 

Similarly, Senna's rivals would have also suffered mechanical failures at the comparatively higher rates of the times, so it balances out.

All the best,
Andrew.

 

Neuro----your PM box is full.

 

This might be true for the time he was at McLaren, but the Lotus-Renault was one of the least reliable cars and he was often leading when the car (usually Renault engine) failed which allowed the McLarens and Williams to pick up the wins are during the turbo era as the Honda and Porsche/TAG engines were much more reliable than the Renault.

 

Oops, thanks!

All the best,
Andrew.

 

There's absolutely no question cars of Senna's era were much more challenging to drive, due to their manual transmission and lack of coaching/telemetry alone. But even more so before any adjustable suspensions, electronics, and aero wings started showing up. The cars had more power, much worse tires than today, etc. We'll never know if today's drivers could have adapted to yesteryear cars at the same levels of top drivers like Senna. But it's safe to assume the other way around would have been a cakewalk by comparison IMO. But you never know. I thought Vettel would cream Ricciardo, but that wasn't the case. He just couldn't adapt to new car changes. And that doesn't make him the great driver he was supposed to be IMO. He can still get there, and he's proving himself with Ferrari. But he wasn't that great just because he won 4 consecutive titles. Bottom line is we'll never know, plus there's no way to extrapolate that. End of discussion. He he.

 

I believe drivers today would most certainly have been able to adapt had they had to drive cars from an earlier era - why would they not? In any sport you care to think of I'm pretty sure the levels of performance today are as good as, and in most cases better than, they were in years gone by. Kids start younger, get better training, and are generally more professional than their counterparts of a few decades ago, and that's true in motor sport as much as in any other.

 

Oh well.

 

oh well...nice try

 

I hope you didn't

 

Good going, guys!

 

Exactly. There is a larger talent pool today than 10 or 20 or 30 years ago. The athletes are better trained in terms of nutrition, data, etc. The teams are larger, they have more resources, etc.

Name one sport in which the athletes have become worse over time? I can't think of one.