Hooniverse Asks- Who Should be Considered the Better F1 Drivers, Past or Present?

Jim Clark

Over the weekend I was watching some footage from last year’s F1 season – a lot of in-car cam action and tire to tire racing – and I got to thinking that modern F1 drivers have had a lot of the burden of driving the cars removed from their control. If you think about it, not only are the shift mechanisms automated, requiring nothing more that press of one or another button, but partially so has the throttle, auto-blipping to match revs. Sure, putting a foot down is still required and the brakes continue to be completely at the behest of the driver, but this is still a far cry from the era when drivers had to clutch and shift, and throttle and steer, and make do with poor aerodynamics and skinny tires. That all got me to wondering, what generation of drivers should really be considered the most accomplished.

There’s a funny PS in the back of one of my old Road & Track magazines in which an older racer looks disparagingly at the wide slick on a then-current car. The caption reads something along the lines of I liked it better when the tires were skinny and the drivers were fat. Back then there was a far more mechanical, even physical, connection between man and machine. I’m not saying that there isn’t today, but computers have taken a lot of that aspect away. Of course that also means that cars are tons faster today, and as that is the case, drivers need to have even faster reflexes and enhanced decision making skills. The thing of it is, faster doesn’t necessarily equate to better as previous generation’s drivers had to go almost as fast with far more rudimentary tools.

Do you think there’s a difference in how much drivers of yore had to push in contrast to those of today? One thing is for certain, a lot more of them – a LOT more of them – died in the attempt than do so than do today. Which do you think had or have the greatest challenge behind the wheel, F1 drivers of the past, or those of the present?

Image sources: Jim Clark, Sebastian Vettel

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