It is difficult to dispute that he is the best driver out there right now and has been since Senna's death. Clearly he was a phenom when he first appeared at Spa in a Jordan and won his first race there a year later, but as the esteemed Mr Mallet has pointed out in another thread:
Quote:
Originally posted by Peter Mallett
I think the point may be that these indescretions(?) have tarnished his career in the eyes of some including me. However he is the best of his era.
Don't think we should start to compare him with previous drivers because that just wouldn't be valid.
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Throughout his career in F1 he has lacked consistently strong competition, and he has been able to get his teams to focus on him alone to the detriment of his teammates. I would contend that he didn't need to, but he did, and for that reason his reputation to my eyes, is tainted. Great? Perhaps. Greatest ever? No way.
There is a long line in front of him. Let us also not forget that he has raced during a relatively safe period in the sport; perhaps his injury at Silverstone in '99 would have been fatal in earlier years and we all would have been left mourning what might have been.
When you consider the records of Clark and Moss, both of whom had their careers cut short, Fangio who didn't even arrive in Europe to race until he was 39, Stewart who called it quits before his 100th GP, and consider that the F1 season until the eighties had far fewer races making it statistically difficult to match Schuey's starting record, you can see that he had advantages to help him reach these milestones past drivers did not enjoy.
An finally, recall that this is the man who after driving an early 80's Ferrari Turbo GP car of the ilk upon which Senna and Prost cut their teeth, that the experience scared him and he said he wouldn't want to race such a car.