final drive - Mundo Motorizado

what’s on…
Your guide to the week ahead, including TV listings and online – plus opinion columns
The ERC season
continues in Latvia
82 autosport.com January 31 2013
EUROPEAN RALLY
CHAMPIONSHIP
Rd 2/13
Rally Liepaja-
Ventspils, Latvia
February 1-3
fiaerc.com
TOYOTA RACING
SERIES
Rd 4/5
Hampton Downs,
New Zealand
February 2-3
toyotaracing.co.nz
soapbox
It’s the big question, so how do you pick the greatest driver? By KEVIN TURNER
The British Legends issues have
raised that classic question in the
AUTOSpORT office about who is
the greatest driver.
First of all, defining what is ‘great’ is
difficult and tends to vary depending on
who you ask. That’s why there are such a
variety of answers: if you have different
criteria – different qualities – you admire,
you will come up with different names.
check any dictionary and you’ll see
‘legend’ carries a certain level of mystique
or unknown about it. Wiki says “a majority
of legends operate within the realm of
uncertainty, never being entirely believed
by the participants, but also never being
resolutely doubted”.
In racing terms, some people feel
‘great’ tends to carry a similar feeling to it.
Legends or greats are those who could
achieve something special, add some
excitement, perhaps in dubious
machinery. It often doesn’t even matter if
those drivers never cracked the code of
winning regularly. Ronnie peterson and
Gilles Villeneuve are rightly considered
legends, but won no world titles and only
16 Gps between them.
For others, it’s about how charismatic
or otherwise a driver is outside the car.
They are effectively judging the driver
based on the man (or woman) they are,
which is surely not the same thing.
Moss in full flow, but
is he the greatest?
Someone could be a total bore or unbearably
arrogant outside the car, but when judging
where they slot in the all-time great drivers
list, surely they need to be judged by
on-track efforts?
Yet more people see ‘greatest’ as more
akin to the best, which in theory is more factbased.
Of course, given the complexities of
the sport and the fact it’s hard to compare
drivers across teams and categories, never
mind eras, there is no right answer.
When it comes to the best, I like to start
with the people who define their eras, by
their level of success and/or how their peers
regarded them. Taking the post-war
drivers this way, you get the following list:
Fangio, Moss, clark, Stewart, prost, Senna,
Schumacher. The two missing eras are the
1970s, for which it’s difficult for anyone to
agree on who was the best (though Lauda is
statistically ahead), and now because we are
enjoying an incredible period at the top of
F1. AUTOSpORT had Fernando Alonso and
Lewis Hamilton ahead of Sebastian Vettel
in our top 50 2012 drivers, but it is the
German who is a triple champion...
ANDROS TROPHY
Rd 7/7
Super Besse, France
February 2
tropheeandros.com
Even with that list, where you position
them depends on what you value. Do you
like your drivers to be all-rounders, able
to race anything? Do you prefer them to
be amazing in the wet? Is winning with
different teams important? Are their
on-track ethics a big deal? Did they prove
they could win in underdog cars? could
they make the most of dominant ones?
Does anyone tick all these boxes?
As I said, there is no right answer.
But, just between you and me, it’s
Sir Stirling Moss.
pIcS: LAT, LENNON, THOMpSON/GETTY