mikeyg123 wrote:
F1 Racer wrote:
mcdo wrote:
F1 Racer wrote:
No, top tier drivers do show their class pretty much immediately, there is no 'potential' there, they are already delivering on it.
There is a long list of world champions that don't fit thisI recently had a debate with someone over Lewis Hamilton's impact on the sport. What had he actually changed from a driver point of view? I argued that he changed how new drivers are judged when they enter F1. Every new driver since 2007 has had a tougher time of it because Hamilton raised the bar astronomically high for rookies
Your statement above - nobody used to think like this before Lewis Hamilton.
That's why world champions like Kimi Raikkonen, Jenson Button and Nico Rosberg didn't tear up the form book when they arrived on the scene. Every one of them got beaten by their teammate in their rookie season (and none of those teammates ever went on to win a title themselves). But the signs were there that in the right environment they could deliver. And now each one of them has his place in the F1 history books forever. IMO Esteban Ocon fits this bill - put him in the right environment and he could do the job, the potential is there
Wow. You are assuming that every world champion is a top tier driver, this is despite me mentioning the likes of Mika Hakkinen, Nico Rosberg and Jenson Button being second tier drivers earlier in this thread...
Were Jacques Villeneuve and Damon Hill top tier drivers? Absolutely not. Damon was second tier at best and JV maybe third tier and possibly second tier. JV is a strange driver to evaluate as he spent a lot of his career being slow in my opinion, and even in 1996 and 1997, he had a few races where he was exceptionally fast but then quite a few races where he was flat out terrible.
But they all had value to F1. The sport was better for their presence. They weren't a total, boring waste of time.
Yeah, and those were tier two drivers.
Ocon doesn't even appear to be that.
I go back to the Herbert example, were there other drivers in and around his ability from say 1988 to 1992 that ended up getting dumped by the sport and as a result they didn't get to carve out an F1 career like Johnny? There were probably a fair few, and those were the 'Ocon's' from that period. They got dumped too, probably for being in the wrong place at the wrong time compared to Herbert who was in the right place at the right time to capitalise and stay in the sport despite being mediocre.
Now were there any drivers in and around the ability of Senna and Prost from 1988 to 1992 that got dumped by the sport after demonstrating high potential in a handful or races? To my knowledge there was certainly a driver called Schumacher that demonstrated a high level potential and he got rewarded with a long career in F1, but I doubt there were others that showed this elite potential that then got randomly dumped by the sport in that period. To my knowledge all drivers of this level were kept by the sport, (i.e. there was only one of them during this time).
So the F1/Team Principal system or rationale of keeping drivers works. All elite potential is kept and given as much chance as possible to deliver on that potential. Tier two drivers are usually the drivers that were thought of as elite but they didn't quite deliver on this potential; they get a long career in the sport too. Now the tier three drivers will carve out a long career if they are lucky and in the right place at the right time, (Perez, Hulkenberg, Fisichella etc.), and the other tier three drivers that are unlucky and in the wrong place at the wrong time will not get to carve out a long career in the sport, (Ocon, Vandoorne, perhaps Jean Eric Vergne etc.). Tier four drivers and below, (Yuji Ide (5), Marcus Ericsson (4), Brendon Hartley (5) etc.), will not be able to carve out a long career in F1 even if they are lucky and in the right places at the right times, as their talent is not enough for them to keep a seat.
So there is no need to get upset or bothered by the unlucky tier three drivers missing out, it is totally fine and the sport does not need them, even if some tier three drivers do get lucky and are able to stay and make the numbers up. F1 has always functioned like this and I don't see the issue as there are only a limited number of seats. So long as
all of the top talent is given a long term opportunity, (which I believe currently they do), then things are working fine.