Did Schumacher get forceful in view of Senna?

[zanewiller]

Simply observing some early film of Schumacher in the early Benetton years and astounded to perceive how fair a driver he was the point at which he previously showed up on the scene.

He never truly went for unsafe surpasses and didn't actually utilize the Schumi hack by any stretch of the imagination. I realize he had a couple of occurrences with Senna and can review him grumbling about the Brazilians hazardous driving.

I think he gleaned some useful knowledge from Senna and likely got his merciless streak from the Brazilian, contemplations?

[Sevach]

I recently found a youtube channel that focusses on 80s F1 (https://www.youtube.com/user/bigzeddie76) and i'm astounded at how little resistence drivers often put in defense of their positions.

The attitude/tolerance towards blocking, sudden changes of direction and double moves(defending the inside then crowding the guy on the outside) was very different back then.
Senna was, for the most part no different to the rest of the drivers, though sometimes he would test the boundaries, but mostly rather tame compared to what we saw in the 2000s (intentionally crashing Prost excepted).

Imo while Senna would sometimes(not that often) dip his toes into "thou shall not pass", Michael was the one who made it his religion, he can't blame anyone else.
And yeah MS took a while to grow into how most remember him.

[Just_a_fan]

The thing about being very hard in defence is it's basically safe these days. With the hugely strong tubs, the head protection from halo, etc., the drivers are pretty much as safe as it possible to be.

Back in the day, however, that wasn't the case. Drivers that were too forceful would end up in accidents that could be extremely serious / fatal. If the worst outcome of your move is your boss shouting at you about damaging the car, you're going to be less circumspect than if the worst outcome is your funeral.

[Andres125sx]

Indeed Just a Fan. That´s exactly what I´ve always think about Max. When cars and tracks are as safe as nowadays, drivers will always assume much higher risks, because they´re not assuming any serious risk actually. It´s people who have watched F1 for decades who think that´s risky, when in reality today that´s not any serious risk.

His crash in Monaco (st devote) is a good example, he went out of the car with no injuries or pain after crashing perpendicular with a wall at quite high speed. Few decades back he could have died in that accident, but today he didn´t even had a scratch.

Young drivers have not watched F1 decades ago for obvious reasons, so they don´t have that feeling of danger. They´ve watched very serious crashes with no consequences since they were kids (few years back), so they think they´re very safe into the cockpit so they assume risks wich would be extremelly dangerous 2-3 decades back. But they´re not today.


This is not something valid for this decade, in the 70´s it was the same, those cars were much safer than the cars from the 50´s and 60´s. Same in the 80´s, much safer than previous decades. And same today.

There´s a reason young people is more prone to changes, they´re not conditioned by their previous experience, because they don´t have any previous experience :p

[Jolle]

Safety is a big aspect, but not all. The dynamics of F1 shift over the years. Senna was, at the time of Schumachers arrival well know that he had no problem crashing with you if you gave him any room to do so. Passing him would have been very clean (bit like how you have to attack Vertappen now). Senna's direct rivals were quite the gentlemen on track (Mansell, Prost in some extent) and were following the dynamic set by drivers like Lauda.
During the years before Piquet, Prost and (his second stint) Lauda, you had a whole other dynamic which is much more like today. Guys like Villeneuve who were convinced they were immortal behind the wheel and would to rubbing tires without a second thought.

Before the arrival of Verstappen we had more of this gentleman's racing as well, with Hamilton, Vettel to some extent, Raikkonen and Alonso, where racing was hard but fair. There is a brilliant quote from Leclerc after that first race they had in Austria: "so this is how we race now, ok, I'll change my approach"

[adrianjordan]

Indeed Just a Fan. That´s exactly what I´ve always think about Max. When cars and tracks are as safe as nowadays, drivers will always assume much higher risks, because they´re not assuming any serious risk actually. It´s people who have watched F1 for decades who think that´s risky, when in reality today that´s not any serious risk.

His crash in Monaco (st devote) is a good example, he went out of the car with no injuries or pain after crashing perpendicular with a wall at quite high speed. Few decades back he could have died in that accident, but today he didn´t even had a scratch.

Young drivers have not watched F1 decades ago for obvious reasons, so they don´t have that feeling of danger. They´ve watched very serious crashes with no consequences since they were kids (few years back), so they think they´re very safe into the cockpit so they assume risks wich would be extremelly dangerous 2-3 decades back. But they´re not today.


This is not something valid for this decade, in the 70´s it was the same, those cars were much safer than the cars from the 50´s and 60´s. Same in the 80´s, much safer than previous decades. And same today.

There´s a reason young people is more prone to changes, they´re not conditioned by their previous experience, because they don´t have any previous experience :p

Since you bring up Max, it's a shame someone forgot to tell Horner how safe the cars are at The-race-that-shall-not-be-named..... After all, he thinks a crash into a tyre wall at an angle the cars are designed to protect the driver in can kill....

[Andres125sx]

Wait... you took something said by Horner seriously?