Michael Schumacher the best racing driver in the world?
Very recently my friends and I had a debate on this. One of my friends profoundly and truly believe, at present Michael Schumacher is the best driver amongst all, giving his much questionable justifications of the fact that he is involved in the highest level of sheer speed one seated racing - FI and not least, the highest paid racing driver, a theory which I find it hard to comprehend.
For this matter, I gave out an analogy, David Beckham got himself in the best league in the world - Real Madrid in La Liga and made himself the highest earnings player, two or threefold more than the whole Real Madrid squad combined altogether. Does that make him the best footballer in the world when you compare the overall skills with the accolade player like Ronaldinho, the mastermind architect player like Zinedine Zidane, the top-notch and clinical finisher player of Ronaldo, the prowess player every defender fears - Therry Henry and the like, and the list endlessly goes on, and all I can say is by and large, he is nothing compare to them and I feel David Beckham will not even make it to the top 10 lists if the highest pay and a status of a galactico club are what all about and can determine, as one argue, how good a player is. This goes the same to a professional snooker player, he can be all to the good for the world but he may not be the best pool or billiard player in the world.
As genious as another friend of mine is, he gave out a better analogy. He said if for some reasons, some billionaires wanted to make Alex Yong - the driver symbol and therefore is made the highest pay driver, and then asked again if he would he be considered the best driver still, to which my friend's perception again, agree he will be, giving his much disputable theory that firstly he's involved in the highest level of racing F1, and secondly he's the highest pay driver in F1. That theory he made of course brought down the whole house. How would someone who is a lovey-dovey F1 audience and claimed had a vast amount of knowledge in F1 can come out with such an unsensible theory is really beyond me. Im still baffled as yet.
Im absolutely of the opinion that, noone can ever tell, who is the best driver in F1, let alone be the best driver in the world as we have ice racing, touring car racing, drag racing, rally racing, hill-climbing racing, sports car racing, off-road racing, etc. As a matter of fact, the single seated racing ( F1 ) result you see each time doesn't accurately reflect how good a driver is even if he recurrently, come out as the fastest lap driver or even the race winner. why? Because the result of his winning are massively helped by his teammates ( mechinal engineer, software engineers, the race architect and his strategies, etc ), the cutting-edge technologies used over other drivers' car, or even better someone's mishap - engine explosion, car accident, other cars' obstruction and the list endlessly goes on. I was told and I also understand F1 is a team game, and for this reason alone, it is enough to say it all, that if a driver wins a race or come out the last of the race, it doesn't have any bearings on how good or bad the driver is because the results are driven from - 50% contributions from the driver, and the rest are from the team, technologies used or probably other drivers' misfortune or rhetorically speaking, should I even say, not even 50% contributions are coming from the driver??
Due to F1's nature of racing, it is always hard to determine who the best driver is, for instance, you may have a driver XYZ who can only drive at his top capability and peak level of 8 instead of 10 but the car driven is technologically advance or has abit more cutting edge over driver ABC's car who gives nothing less than 110%, who play out his skin with his driving capability of 10 out of 10, who you personally think he deserves to win the race as he fully knows how to efficiently drive his car's capability to the fullest and an optimised way. It is a possible scenario where one can think of is that for every lap running, driver XYZ can finish off quicker by -0.025 miliseconds or more than driver ABC can, even though ABC is a better driver overall in terms of positioning, coordination, optimized turning and all. Does this fact of XYZ's car technologically more advanced in this case and hence finished off the race quicker than ABC makes him the better driver? There are a lot more permutations scenario you can come out with, all these can only tell you - winning or coming out the second best of the race doesn't give a true barometer how good or bad a driver is, with the exception of those drivers out of top 10 of course. and if one can discern how good a driver is by merely basing on pay and league reasonings, I will understand why, it's either one is being biased or one has gone out of his mind. :)
With all due respect of his knowledge in F1, but I feel it's either my friend has a blind spot for or he failed to see the forest for the trees as far as to who is the best driver in the world is concerned. :)
For this matter, I gave out an analogy, David Beckham got himself in the best league in the world - Real Madrid in La Liga and made himself the highest earnings player, two or threefold more than the whole Real Madrid squad combined altogether. Does that make him the best footballer in the world when you compare the overall skills with the accolade player like Ronaldinho, the mastermind architect player like Zinedine Zidane, the top-notch and clinical finisher player of Ronaldo, the prowess player every defender fears - Therry Henry and the like, and the list endlessly goes on, and all I can say is by and large, he is nothing compare to them and I feel David Beckham will not even make it to the top 10 lists if the highest pay and a status of a galactico club are what all about and can determine, as one argue, how good a player is. This goes the same to a professional snooker player, he can be all to the good for the world but he may not be the best pool or billiard player in the world.
As genious as another friend of mine is, he gave out a better analogy. He said if for some reasons, some billionaires wanted to make Alex Yong - the driver symbol and therefore is made the highest pay driver, and then asked again if he would he be considered the best driver still, to which my friend's perception again, agree he will be, giving his much disputable theory that firstly he's involved in the highest level of racing F1, and secondly he's the highest pay driver in F1. That theory he made of course brought down the whole house. How would someone who is a lovey-dovey F1 audience and claimed had a vast amount of knowledge in F1 can come out with such an unsensible theory is really beyond me. Im still baffled as yet.
Im absolutely of the opinion that, noone can ever tell, who is the best driver in F1, let alone be the best driver in the world as we have ice racing, touring car racing, drag racing, rally racing, hill-climbing racing, sports car racing, off-road racing, etc. As a matter of fact, the single seated racing ( F1 ) result you see each time doesn't accurately reflect how good a driver is even if he recurrently, come out as the fastest lap driver or even the race winner. why? Because the result of his winning are massively helped by his teammates ( mechinal engineer, software engineers, the race architect and his strategies, etc ), the cutting-edge technologies used over other drivers' car, or even better someone's mishap - engine explosion, car accident, other cars' obstruction and the list endlessly goes on. I was told and I also understand F1 is a team game, and for this reason alone, it is enough to say it all, that if a driver wins a race or come out the last of the race, it doesn't have any bearings on how good or bad the driver is because the results are driven from - 50% contributions from the driver, and the rest are from the team, technologies used or probably other drivers' misfortune or rhetorically speaking, should I even say, not even 50% contributions are coming from the driver??
Due to F1's nature of racing, it is always hard to determine who the best driver is, for instance, you may have a driver XYZ who can only drive at his top capability and peak level of 8 instead of 10 but the car driven is technologically advance or has abit more cutting edge over driver ABC's car who gives nothing less than 110%, who play out his skin with his driving capability of 10 out of 10, who you personally think he deserves to win the race as he fully knows how to efficiently drive his car's capability to the fullest and an optimised way. It is a possible scenario where one can think of is that for every lap running, driver XYZ can finish off quicker by -0.025 miliseconds or more than driver ABC can, even though ABC is a better driver overall in terms of positioning, coordination, optimized turning and all. Does this fact of XYZ's car technologically more advanced in this case and hence finished off the race quicker than ABC makes him the better driver? There are a lot more permutations scenario you can come out with, all these can only tell you - winning or coming out the second best of the race doesn't give a true barometer how good or bad a driver is, with the exception of those drivers out of top 10 of course. and if one can discern how good a driver is by merely basing on pay and league reasonings, I will understand why, it's either one is being biased or one has gone out of his mind. :)
With all due respect of his knowledge in F1, but I feel it's either my friend has a blind spot for or he failed to see the forest for the trees as far as to who is the best driver in the world is concerned. :)
posted by ifoneday at 3:40 AM
