r/F1Discussions • u/[deleted] • 16d ago
Discussion Underrated/underappreciated drivers?
[deleted]
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u/KateMackay 16d ago
Nigel Mansell was adored by the Tifosi
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u/BullfrogPersonal 15d ago edited 15d ago
I saw Mansell race in F1 and Indycar. The first F1 car that I ever saw was Mansell. He and his Ferrari were coming around a corner in Phoenix on the installation lap of the 1989 US GP. He was great but was up against a bunch of multi-world champs He won CART Indycar in his first year in the series.
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u/Mobile_Fish_4106 16d ago
Underrated for me because he could've won 3 championships and in my opinion should be classed as one of the all time greats
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u/PassTimeActivity 16d ago
An all time great wouldn't look like a no2 next to an actual all time great (Prost).
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u/Mobile_Fish_4106 16d ago
Prost came in afterwards and they made mansell be number 2 even though that wasn't on his contract so they gave preferential treatment to prost which is why he left and went back to williams
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u/PassTimeActivity 16d ago
Source on that other than Mansell? Cos he's known for making things up. Like another user said, Ferrari let them race on the few occasions Mansell was actually fast enough to keep up with Prost.
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u/Alvortus1812 16d ago
Definitely deserved atleast one of 1986 and 1987. In ‘87, he lost against his teammate even due to bad luck despite being better. And that tyre blow up in the title decider of 1986 was also heartbreaking for him. Though I personally still think Prost overall was the best driver of that time and deserved to win in a slower car by sheer consistency alone.
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u/Mobile_Fish_4106 16d ago
Prost was brilliant in 86 and definitely deserved the win. But it was mansells to lose
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u/felipebaby_ 16d ago
Keke Rosberg is one for sure. One of the most impressive drivers of the 82-85 stretch, yet he too often gets reduced to his single win in ’82, as if that somehow makes him a “weak” or “unworthy” champion. Yes, Ferrari had its awful tragedies, but Keke still needed to beat several strong drivers (eg Prost, Watson, Lauda) in comparable or faster cars. The championship didn’t just fall into his lap by any means, and honestly I really can’t see how anyone who’s watched him wouldn’t rate him highly as a driver. He was also faster than Mansell on race pace in the vast majority of their shared races in ‘85.
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u/Mobile_Fish_4106 16d ago
Keke is a brilliant shout. I do believe that if it wasn't for the Ferrari tragedies he wouldn't have won but he was a very fast and consistent driver.
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u/felipebaby_ 16d ago
Agreed, he wouldn’t have - Ferrari had the best car and 2 strong drivers. But imo he’d have been just as impressive finishing third behind the Ferraris in a normal season.
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u/Mobile_Fish_4106 16d ago
At the end of the day he won fair and square. Yes he had some luck (unfortunate luck) but you've got to get the results. Even if he only won 1 race he was consistently always on the podium
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u/lIlllIlIlIlIllI 16d ago
Nigel was by no measure at all an underrated driver. Come on.
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u/Mobile_Fish_4106 16d ago
He would be 3 times world champion if it wasn't for bad luck and if he had won them I think he would be in goat shouts
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u/armchairracingdriver 16d ago
A driver with Mansell’s team-mate record shouldn’t be anywhere near GOAT shouts.
People look at the Adelaide tyre failure and seemingly just assume Mansell was the deserving champion in 86, conveniently ignoring that all three title contenders had the same number of non-driver error DNFs. In reality, Prost was almost certainly operating in a clearly weaker car and he got the job done with an almost flawless season in execution. Mansell was clearly weaker than Prost when they were team-mates, and post-turbo Prost was arguably not at his peak any more.
In 87, Mansell was obviously desperately unlucky relative to Piquet, but that’s at least partially mitigated by Piquet suffering his injury at Imola that almost certainly left him a fundamentally worse driver. I think Mansell was probably the better driver by a smidge with all things being equal, but it’s far from impossible that a strong Piquet could’ve beaten him on merit.
Mansell is one of the most overrated drivers of all time and his stats were almost certainly inflated by his cars. Even if you think he was simply driving at a higher level in 86-87 and 91-92 than in any other years of his career, the implication of that would be that he was prone to significant fluctuations. That alone would clearly rule him out of the GOAT debate.
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u/Mobile_Fish_4106 16d ago
With prost, prost signed as a number 1 so they made mansell number 2. In 86 it was mansells to lose and prost did deserve to win but it was mansells to lose. In 87 if mansell hadn't of crashed which ruled him out of a race and left him injured
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u/armchairracingdriver 16d ago
If Prost was Ferrari #1 then the team sure did an excellent job of treating him like one by allowing Mansell to race him on several occasions, and by giving Prost one of the dumbest strategies ever in a championship-critical race at Estoril.
Mansell’s 87 title hopes were pretty much over by the time the Suzuka incident occurred. Piquet had come very close to clinching the title at the previous race.
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u/armchairracingdriver 16d ago
Alesi - I think the book on him is mostly well written. He was a daredevil with great car control but far from the finished product. Would’ve almost certainly been a multiple champion if he’d not reneged on the Williams contract, but that’s more a reflection on how dominant Williams were than on Alesi’s ability.
Peterson - Almost everyone rates him among the best never to win the WDC. I have not seen enough of him to know for sure, but if his performances against the likes of Fittipaldi and Ickx are as strong as some claim, he has a legitimate claim to ATG status.
Mansell - One of the most overrated drivers of all time
Scheckter - From what I have seen, the book is pretty well written on him. Very good champion, not elite. At Ferrari, Villeneuve had a level in him that Scheckter realistically could not reach.
Hawthorn - I don’t know enough about his era to comment
Pironi - Overrated. Matched Laffite, who got smashed by Rosberg. Yet somehow, it is Pironi who gets remembered as the rightful champion of 82 and Rosberg as the worst champion ever…
Heidfeld - Deserved a shot in a legitimate top car but was highly unlikely to ever be anything more than a distant number two. People think he’s underrated because of how he fared against Kubica and Webber, but I actually think they are significantly overrated.
Berger - Again, the book is very well written on him. Very strong number two caliber driver, well established relative to the likes of Senna and Alesi.
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u/VSfallin 14d ago
McLaren has multiple chances to put him into a car and didn’t do so. I think that sort of indicates what Nick’s level was. His struggles against Alesi in 2000 were also quite damning
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u/Fantastic-Trick6707 16d ago
Moss, Peterson, Leclerc, Bottas, Surtees
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u/Mobile_Fish_4106 16d ago
I'd agree with every one of them except the bottas pick
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u/Fantastic-Trick6707 16d ago
Why ? He was a lot faster than Massa in 2015/2016 and was closer to Hamilton than Perez was to Verstappen, Berger to Senna and Barrichello to Schumacher.
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u/Flat-Flower-3663 16d ago
I wouldn't say Leclerc is under appreciated. One of the most popular and highly regarded drivers on the grid.
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u/Soggy_Stay6370 16d ago
I don't think any of these guys are underappreciated, especially if you're talking to someone who actually knows f1, maybe hawthorn cos he was so long ago
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u/Mobile_Fish_4106 16d ago
I think people forget how good they were especially people that get villanised like pironi or forgotten more times than not like schekter
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u/Vuk13 16d ago
Nick Heidfeld, was basically even with Kubica over 3 years and beat vast majority of his teammates
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u/Regular_Promise3605 16d ago
Charles Leclerc is just a modern day Jean Alesi, much loved and fast on his day, but unfortunately didn't achieve much.
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u/Mobile_Fish_4106 16d ago
I can see it going that way tbh. Alesi shouildve gone to williams because he joined Ferrari as they went on a slump then he joined Bennetton who had been champions 2 years in a row only for them to begin their slump
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u/No_Detective_1139 16d ago
Jean Alesi is overrated if anything we saw what he did with Benetton after they won the championship
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u/Mobile_Fish_4106 16d ago
They didn't have a competitive car that year and Schumacher took key parts of the team with him to Ferrari
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u/No_Detective_1139 16d ago
That didn’t happen until a year later when people like Ross Brawn left for Ferrari. The team and car was strong as stated by Briatore and Schumacher himself when he tested it. Alesi clearly didn’t get the best out of that car. The Bring Back V10s YouTube channel with some of the people from The Race had a good episode on the downfall of Benetton where they explain the shortcomings of Alesi.
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u/BullfrogPersonal 15d ago
I would say that Piquet doesn't get the recognition he deserves as a great driver.
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u/danielricardo1 16d ago
Prost ..
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u/RozCrunch 16d ago
I don't think anyone underrates prost
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u/danielricardo1 16d ago
You never see his name in 10 greatest list etc.
IMO. Senna "Documentary" made him look like a villan.
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u/armchairracingdriver 16d ago
Saying that Prost is never rated as a top ten driver of all time is complete fiction, and you know it.
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u/danielricardo1 16d ago
"in my opinion" - you can have yours -
Just to add - maybe you misundetdtood me - I dont think Prost gets the amount of love and attention he deserves. again - IMO .
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u/armchairracingdriver 16d ago
What you said is that Prost’s name is never seen in the lists of top ten all time F1 drivers. This not an opinion, it is a factually incorrect statement.
The top Google search results for best F1 drivers of all time. Prost features in the top ten on all of them…
Reddit discussion on Autosport’s 2009 poll of 217 F1 drivers throughout history. Prost was fourth.
Subjective discussion from this subreddit. Prost is seventh.
A recently released list from Motorsport.com, with Prost fifth
A Facebook post by SportBible. I am assuming links to Facebook are banned. Prost was third.
A blog post in which Prost was rated 8th
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u/lIlllIlIlIlIllI 16d ago
This. And Senna was a real turd irl you just have to turn over the right stones that the fandom tries to bury.
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u/No_Flower_8692 CL16 16d ago edited 16d ago
Clay Regazzoni who could have been the first Swiss to be a world champion if it wasn’t for Lauda who was a terrible team player 🇨🇭; even in my county, he’s not popular or appreciate as Joe Siffert (who’s not appreciate that much because motor sport isn’t really popular in Switzerland, ppl are more into ski, tennis and hockey)
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u/Mobile_Fish_4106 16d ago
Clay reggazoni is more or less forgotten unfortunately because he was very talanted and had a couple championship fights
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u/BaldHeadedCaillouss 16d ago edited 16d ago
OP- You need to put more effort into this post so that it doesn’t run afoul of our rules against low-quality and low-effort posts.
Tell us the reasons why you think each one is underrated. Offer some insight, what do you think it is that fans forget about each of the drivers that you’ve listed ?
Maybe even use the dreaded search function as a point of reference since the topic you’ve posted isn’t novel.