Which F1 drivers could consistently challenge for a world title in inferior cars? My wife and I can only come up with four: Ayrton Senna, Michael Schumacher, Fernando Alonso and Max Verstappen. Do you agree? – Martin
It’s very hard to challenge for a title in an inferior car, and the number of drivers who can do it are limited as a result. Essentially, it is only the very best.
At first glance, your list looks decent, but you have left out two huge names – Lewis Hamilton and Alain Prost.
Prost’s most exceptional season was in 1986, when he beat the two Williams drivers – Nigel Mansell and Nelson Piquet – to win his second world title in what was clearly an inferior McLaren.
There is also a very strong case that Hamilton did not have the best car with McLaren in 2008 (or he and Alonso in 2007), given what was learned subsequently about the relative performance of Ferrari drivers Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen when they were team-mates to Alonso.
The point being that Hamilton and Alonso were extremely closely matched, while Alonso comfortably beat both Massa and Raikkonen, so if Ferrari could compete for a title against McLaren in those years, it could only be because their car was better.
Even in 2017 and 2018, when Hamilton won, the Ferrari was the better car for a large part of both those seasons before Mercedes hit their stride.
The stand-out year relevant to this question is 2012, when Alonso drove his best season and took the title fight to the final race in what was statistically the fourth quickest car.
That was an absolutely extraordinary achievement, and it is rightly celebrated. Even more so when you realise that had only one of two incidents for which Alonso was entirely blameless not happened, he would not have lost out to Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel.
That’s a reference, of course, to Alonso being taken out at the start of the Belgian and Japanese Grands Prix by collisions with Lotus drivers – Romain Grosjean in Spa and Raikkonen in Suzuka.
Alonso also arguably won in 2005 in an inferior car, but then it depends what “inferior” means. The Renault was not as fast as Raikkonen’s McLaren on balance, but it was certainly more reliable.
As for the rest, no argument with Max Verstappen after coming so close against Lando Norris and McLaren last season, which was Alonso 2012-esque.
Senna won the title in 1991 in a McLaren that was inferior to the Williams FW14 being driven by Nigel Mansell, although the Williams suffered significant reliability problems that helped him.
And he also probably did it in 1990 – in his McLaren compared to Prost’s Ferrari – given Senna’s pace advantage over Prost when they were McLaren team-mates in 1988 and 1989.
Schumacher? Arguably the Benetton was an inferior car to the Williams in 1995, but then he was consistently a superior driver to Damon Hill and David Coulthard, both of whom made a bit of a hash of that season.
Williams also probably had an advantage for the second half of 1994, once they had got on top of the aerodynamic problems that thwarted the start to their season.
But would Schumacher have beaten Senna in 1994 had the Brazilian not been killed at Imola? Unlikely.
And it’s hard to argue any of his Ferrari titles were won in an inferior car.
Beyond that, there are not many obvious cases when the champion did not have the best car.
Exceptions would be years massively skewed by circumstance.
One example is the tragic 1982 season, when it was a toss-up between Ferrari and Renault for the best car. After Gilles Villeneuve died and team-mate Didier Pironi suffered horrendous injuries, and with Renault afflicted by reliability issues, Keke Rosberg came through to take the title for Williams despite winning only one race.
Or 1979, when the championship scoring system was a bizarre split calculation when only the best four scores from the two half-seasons could be counted, and the Williams FW07 made its debut too late for Alan Jones to challenge Jody Scheckter and Villeneuve in the generally inferior Ferrari 312 T4.
Leonardo Fornaroli looks like another Russell/Leclerc/Piastri calibre driver based on his F3 and F2 performances. If he was to land an F1 seat, where is the most likely place he would end up? – Harry
Fornaroli is the reigning F2 champion, and won F3 the previous season. He has been a member of the McLaren driver development programme since the end of last year.
The Italian has done two practice sessions for McLaren – in Barcelona and Austria this year – as well as two what are known as ‘TPC’ tests – in older cars – for McLaren in Portimao, and Haas in Jerez.
There are not that many seats up for grabs next year and the driver market is on hold for a large part until it becomes clear whether Max Verstappen is going to leave Red Bull.
If Fornaroli is to get a seat, though, it seems most likely it would be at Haas, where Esteban Ocon’s place is under threat.
Haas, however, already have Toyota-contracted Ryo Hirakawa and former Alpine driver Jack Doohan on their books.
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