Veteran drivers replacing? Trivia about races started.

[Schummy]

[This is not a poll (at least currently!), but opinions about it are welcome]
[Neither this is statistics, just simple old counting with fingers ]

There are 5 currently active drivers who have started many more races than any other in (present grid) F1. Those are

Barrichello     234 ***********************
Coulthard       213 ********************
Fisichella      179 *****************
Trulli          166 ****************
Ralf Schumacher 165 ****************

A question would be: who of those drivers you would replace with another one not currently in F1, if decision were exclusively yours? A posible answer (probably mine) is: none of them, they deserve to go on in F1

Posibly you would want to replace another driver not included in that list, but it would be another question, we are just looking at (posible) replacements of veteran drivers. Those five are good drivers, otherwise they would not have so many races in the top series in the world! But perhaps, for some of them, the time for retirement has come?

Just for trivia, the next 6 drivers are:

Button          120 ************
Heidfeld        117 ************
Raikkonen       105 ***********
Alonso           88 *********
Webber           88 *********
Massa            72 *******

They are the 11 most veteran drivers in F1 (the half of the grid most experienced). I found some of those names surprising! They are pretty young!

The fact that decades ago the number of races by season was relatively short, makes for some interesting comparisons.

• Button has raced almost the same number of races as Brabham(126) or Peterson(123). Of course, Sir Jack has a little advantage over Jenson in titles, wins, even in making his own car (pulling the leg)
• Heidfeld has run more races then Ickx(114), Keke Rosberg(114) or Hulme(112). They all look as old veterans in F1, and Nick somewhat looks as a relative newcomer.
• Young Iceman Kimi is more experienced races wise than... McLaren(100), Stewart(99), Siffert(96) or Amon(96).
• Massa has raced the same number of GPs than Jim Clark, and more than Stirling Moss(66).
• Wurz(55) has more races than Pedro Rodriguez(54) or that guy Fangio(51).

As I said, they are (apparent) strange situations caused by the large number of races per season in modern times, in comparison with the old times.

[BootsOntheSide]

Today's drivers generally do more GPs than those in the past for three reasons. More races (usually 18 or 19 a year, compared to 16 since the late 60s and less before that), lower chance of drivers missing races through injury, and the bigger emphasis on karting and more organised junior championships allowing them to reach F1 more quickly. Stewart for example started in 1965 and retired in 1973 due largely to safety concerns, missing races in at least 2 of those 9 seasons.

[Born Racer]

I think Schumacher gets unfair stick. He seems fairly level with Trulli who we know is pretty solid. Perhaps the criticism comes because neither of these two drivers are at their potential limit most of the time. We know Trulli has to be at least fairly good because he often had the measure of Alonso at Renault.

And Schumacher was quicker than Montoya at times at Williams. And we know Montoya's good because he was often the equal of Raikkonen.

[Snrub]

Another possible factor, weren't there fewer "big" teams or heavily factory supported teams in a lot of the sport's history? That means that there were fewer people to beat.

The other factor: Ferrari. In recent years Ferrari and MS won everything. It's pretty hard to fault a lot of the more modern F1 drivers for not winning more.

It's odd to think that Fangio only had 52 races (in 8 years!), won 24 and finished on the podium 31 times. Equally strang is thinking of 5 championships with so few wins.

[Schummy]

Another oddity with Fangio is he arrived to international racing at an age of 37-38. Next year F1 was created and he was 2nd. In the next season he ended with his first title at 40! His last title was at 46! Even for his epoch he was a rare case of late arriving to world class competition.

In my very subjective view, he was the greatest talent. But it cannot be shown merely by numbers.

[Rob29]

Originally Posted by Snrub

Another possible factor, weren't there fewer "big" teams or heavily factory supported teams in a lot of the sport's history? That means that there were fewer people to beat.

The other factor: Ferrari. In recent years Ferrari and MS won everything. It's pretty hard to fault a lot of the more modern F1 drivers for not winning more.

It's odd to think that Fangio only had 52 races (in 8 years!), won 24 and finished on the podium 31 times. Equally strang is thinking of 5 championships with so few wins.

As mentioned in previous post there were fewer championship races in Fangio era.6-8 in 1950-57.I think non-championship races should be taken into account when comparing drivers careers?

[Schummy]

Non-championship races had a inequal level of atendance bith in drivers and in cars. Moreover, their significance for drivers is difficult to estimate, so I prefer to have less data than more unreliable data.

Direct comparisons are not posible, anyway, becuase of the big differences in every department. But indirect ones can cautiously be done by mean of percentages to account for the changing number of GP.

So, the supposed leadership of MS in poles is pretty useless in comparison with figures from Senna or Fangio. If in 2020 they do a GP every week, it would be rather easy to surpass Fangio's number of wins or poles!

[Rob29]

Originally Posted by Schummy

Non-championship races had a inequal level of atendance bith in drivers and in cars.

This was not always thecase.For instance the Reims GP had a better entry than the championship French GP the weekend before in 1957.Also the Argentine GP 1953-60 was always followed by a Libre race a week or 2 later in which the entire F1 entry took part.Then there was the Intercontinental races of 1961 -this had everyone bar Ferrai? Also the Tasman series contained most of the leading drivers. The likes of Stirling Moss & Jim Clark did more races per season than the current lot.

[Schummy]

That's the reason I said they were not homogeneous! Some of them very strong, some others incomplete, some others were lesser ones. Without a consistent standard it's difficult to choose what to include and what not.

[cos]

Forgot that Heidfeld has done so many races! For the last couple of seasons there was so much commotion about Button having competed in 100 races and not scoring a win, yet Heidfeld is just as experienced in F1 terms and has yet to stand on the top step. If Nick has a couple more points-scoring races he'll soon take the record for most points without an F1 victory!

[Schummy]

Other famous winless racers were Amon (3 seconds and 11 podiums) and Johansson (4 seconds and 12 podiums). Nick has 2 seconds and 5 podiums, so, at least in this regard, he has some time to breath

[Yannick]

Dave Richards told the press that the ProDrive driver pairing will consist of an expierienced driver and a youngster. Gary Paffett is rumoured to be the youngster. Who do you think the experienced driver will be? Maybe one of the five? Or Pedro Dela Rosa?
Fact is, that with so many car manufacturer works efforts, there are no teams anymore on the grid who would give those experienced drivers, whose contract wasn't renewed with the manufacturer, a chance for a career prolongation or resurgence. Remember: Damon Hill went to Arrows and Jordan, Fisico went to Sauber and Jordan, Alesi went to Benetton and Prost, Irvine went to Jaguar, Villeneuve went to Sauber, Coulthard and Webber are both at RBR now, but RBR might want to promote one of their youngsters from Toro Rosso into the "factory seat" next year.

[Schummy]

A good point.

About ProDrive, I think Pedro would be a nice choice. He is vastly experienced and he is not slow; a good racer in fact, as we saw when he had to replace some driver. Another thing is if Rosa is interested for the package.

[deejay]

Ralf is in trouble. Seems this years Toyota favours Trulli initially. I can't see any reason for Toyota to keep Ralf on after this year if he can't beat Jarno, they may as well try some new blood.

The only thing in Ralf's favour right now is that Toyota might not be able to line anyone better up. I'd be shocked to see Heidfeld leave BMW for Toyota, and I don't see any of the other top drivers going there either. They don't really have any rookies lined up either do they?

Maybe Bourdias could end up there if he's not too locked into Red Bull? How about one of the Williams drivers, perhaps Wurz moving there with Piquet coming into the Williams seat.