Vettelswonmeover wrote: ↑30 Oct 2017, 12:55
A question which I have been wanting to ask for long. Where do you think do Lewis and Vettel rank among the greats of F1? Compared to the likes of Senna, Schumacher, Prost, Fangio, etc.
From my point of view, both Vettel and Lewis have always had a great car or a car that is in contention of wins in their title winning years. They have not had to be at a team and build a car. Schu stayed at Ferrari for 4 years before winning the title. Senna won in a Lotus. Senna and Prost helped develop that astonishing McLaren Honda in their fighting years. Whereas Vettel had an all-conquering Red Bull for 4 years and Lewis landed straight in a race-winning McLaren and suffered a bit in his first year at Merc before getting 3 severely dominant cars.
Its wrong to draw conclusions from such a weak set arguments, especially as those arguments on their own are somewhat inaccurate.
Firstly, no F1 championship (drivers or constructors) has been won in a poor car. It is always a combination of car and driver. The best drivers always get the best cars (Alonso is almost a singular aberration, but that's through his own choices).
Secondly, drivers cannot build cars - it is an immensely complicated job. They only provide feedback to the engineers, so lets not take credit away from numerous brains in the organisation that backs the driver. Indeed, many F1 employees come from a fighter jet background eg Martin Whitmarsh (former McLaren Technical Director) who used to be Manufacturing Director in charger of Hawk trainer and Harrier Jump Jet air frame production (for BAE), ever before stepping into F1.
There are several F1 firms that provide precision services for the military too, check this link for instance:
http://www.army-technology.com/features ... ront-line/
What would any driver be able to teach such infernally skilled types about building an F1 car?
Vettel didn't just land in a championship winning car either. He cut his teeth at Sauber. Vettel later joined Torro Rosso where he set a couple of F1 records - no mean feat.
Lewis joined McLaren in 2007 beside not just anybody, but the then reigning world champion, Fernando Alonso, and beat him - not many can beat a world champion in their rookie year. It isn't just that McLaren discovered Lewis either, at age 10 (emphasis 10) he approached Ron Dennis, asking to drive for him one day and got the reply that he still had some growing to do, nevertheless, three years later, McLaren signed him up on their driver development programme.
The long and short of the above is that F1 WDC's (especially multiple WDC's) are not random, everyday people, neither are F1 teams.