- 31 Oct 08, 23:00#77128
Ayrton Senna: WDC 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991
McLaren: WCC 1974, 1984, 1985, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1998, 1999, 2007
McLaren: WDC 1974, 1976, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1998, 1999, 2008
From autosport.com:
So, we still don't have a world champion. Regardless of who wins this championship, the fight has had an unusual element in that the two title contenders have blown many more points than any title winner has ever done.
In any normal season the errors of Lewis Hamilton or Felipe Massa and their teams would not have allowed a successful title assault. When searching for the underlying reasons behind this, a fascinating picture of driver/team dynamics emerges.
New kids on the block
Although both Hamilton and Massa have long relationships with their respective teams, their status within them this year is new - and the importance of that cannot be underestimated. Regardless of the size and experience of a team, it's still led by the lead driver, a responsibility that Hamilton has only come to feel for the first time this year.
A team's whole tenor, attitude, energy and morale come, to a very large extent, from the man on the faster side of the garage. Decisions he's making on driving preferences lead a car development process, determine its direction.
But, much as Hamilton has gelled the team and excited it, he's still not fully annealed, hasn't had the fault lines eased out of him by the seasons. In the right circumstances he's absolutely the best driver out there. But there's a neurotic quality about his efforts that, when they get in phase with those of his team, only seem to be amplified.
Massa's situation is similar, in that this has turned out to be the first time the team has looked to him for its lead, although this has really only been the case since Kimi Raikkonen's failure to live up to this role in the second half of the season.
So Massa's stepped forward into the limelight and, impressively for someone in his seventh season, continued to grow, aided immeasurably by his race engineer. Massa's not made as many errors as Hamilton; he messed up in Australia, Malaysia and at Silverstone, Lewis did so in Bahrain, Canada, France, Monza qualifying and at Fuji - and was doubly lucky that his error at Monaco not only did not put him out on the spot but ironically got him onto the perfect strategy for the circumstances that then played out.
Massa has suffered more points loss than Hamilton through things outside of his control - the Hungary win lost to a conrod failure, the team error in the Singapore pitstop and, in general, the Ferrari pit operation does not look as sure-footed as it did in the Schumacher years.
Is there a missing link?
Both camps seem to be missing those whose names must never be mentioned - Nigel Stepney at Ferrari, Fernando Alonso at McLaren. Alonso, had paranoia not ruinedhis relationship with McLaren, could have given it the surety it sometimes lacks.
The contrast between Alonso's and Hamilton's drive at Fuji was instructive. But that's not a fair comparison; we could easily have made Hockenheim the comparison where Hamilton was quite sublime in negating the naffness of his team in a high-pressure moment, whereas Alonso drove like a bull in a china shop. But at Fuji Alonso was perfect, multi-dimensional in a way it's difficult to envisage Raikkonen, Massa or Hamilton being.
There was an unusual situation at Fuji in that the tyre degradation was offsetting the fuel effect almost perfectly, meaning there was no longer the usual positional advantage of staying out longer until a stop than your rival.
As Alonso was asking his crew to short fuel him if necessary in order to get him out of the first stops ahead of Kubica, there was discussion about how that would put him at a disadvantage into the final stops. But Alonso had already registered through the weekend that that wasn't the case here. Doesn't matter, he told them, just get me out ahead here, I can do the rest. Directing his own strategy from the cockpit he was clear, direct - and right. There have been times this season that McLaren could have done with this - but there was never going to be room in that team for both him and Hamilton.
Alonso's got back into the programme these last few races. The petulance that saw him not turning up for debriefs after a race had gone badly has been switched off - and he looks once more like a great champion. His weekend at Fuji, right from how he calculated his pace through Q1 and Q2 and how he peaked, squeezing it all in Q3, way ahead of par, looked brilliantly complete.
But even Alonso has not driven a champion's season - a champion in the sense of his performance given the available equipment. There is only one guy this year who has: Robert Kubica. He's not quite as multi-dimensional as Alonso, his approach while sharing Alonso's native cunning lacks his overview.
Binary is the word that keeps coming back. But there has been absolutely no let up, no backing off and yet no mistakes either - unless you count aquaplaning off at Silverstone a mistake.
He was still in title contention in a BMW after Kimi Raikkonen had dropped out of it. And that says it all.
So, we still don't have a world champion. Regardless of who wins this championship, the fight has had an unusual element in that the two title contenders have blown many more points than any title winner has ever done.
In any normal season the errors of Lewis Hamilton or Felipe Massa and their teams would not have allowed a successful title assault. When searching for the underlying reasons behind this, a fascinating picture of driver/team dynamics emerges.
New kids on the block
Although both Hamilton and Massa have long relationships with their respective teams, their status within them this year is new - and the importance of that cannot be underestimated. Regardless of the size and experience of a team, it's still led by the lead driver, a responsibility that Hamilton has only come to feel for the first time this year.
A team's whole tenor, attitude, energy and morale come, to a very large extent, from the man on the faster side of the garage. Decisions he's making on driving preferences lead a car development process, determine its direction.
But, much as Hamilton has gelled the team and excited it, he's still not fully annealed, hasn't had the fault lines eased out of him by the seasons. In the right circumstances he's absolutely the best driver out there. But there's a neurotic quality about his efforts that, when they get in phase with those of his team, only seem to be amplified.
Massa's situation is similar, in that this has turned out to be the first time the team has looked to him for its lead, although this has really only been the case since Kimi Raikkonen's failure to live up to this role in the second half of the season.
So Massa's stepped forward into the limelight and, impressively for someone in his seventh season, continued to grow, aided immeasurably by his race engineer. Massa's not made as many errors as Hamilton; he messed up in Australia, Malaysia and at Silverstone, Lewis did so in Bahrain, Canada, France, Monza qualifying and at Fuji - and was doubly lucky that his error at Monaco not only did not put him out on the spot but ironically got him onto the perfect strategy for the circumstances that then played out.
Massa has suffered more points loss than Hamilton through things outside of his control - the Hungary win lost to a conrod failure, the team error in the Singapore pitstop and, in general, the Ferrari pit operation does not look as sure-footed as it did in the Schumacher years.
Is there a missing link?
Both camps seem to be missing those whose names must never be mentioned - Nigel Stepney at Ferrari, Fernando Alonso at McLaren. Alonso, had paranoia not ruinedhis relationship with McLaren, could have given it the surety it sometimes lacks.
The contrast between Alonso's and Hamilton's drive at Fuji was instructive. But that's not a fair comparison; we could easily have made Hockenheim the comparison where Hamilton was quite sublime in negating the naffness of his team in a high-pressure moment, whereas Alonso drove like a bull in a china shop. But at Fuji Alonso was perfect, multi-dimensional in a way it's difficult to envisage Raikkonen, Massa or Hamilton being.
There was an unusual situation at Fuji in that the tyre degradation was offsetting the fuel effect almost perfectly, meaning there was no longer the usual positional advantage of staying out longer until a stop than your rival.
As Alonso was asking his crew to short fuel him if necessary in order to get him out of the first stops ahead of Kubica, there was discussion about how that would put him at a disadvantage into the final stops. But Alonso had already registered through the weekend that that wasn't the case here. Doesn't matter, he told them, just get me out ahead here, I can do the rest. Directing his own strategy from the cockpit he was clear, direct - and right. There have been times this season that McLaren could have done with this - but there was never going to be room in that team for both him and Hamilton.
Alonso's got back into the programme these last few races. The petulance that saw him not turning up for debriefs after a race had gone badly has been switched off - and he looks once more like a great champion. His weekend at Fuji, right from how he calculated his pace through Q1 and Q2 and how he peaked, squeezing it all in Q3, way ahead of par, looked brilliantly complete.
But even Alonso has not driven a champion's season - a champion in the sense of his performance given the available equipment. There is only one guy this year who has: Robert Kubica. He's not quite as multi-dimensional as Alonso, his approach while sharing Alonso's native cunning lacks his overview.
Binary is the word that keeps coming back. But there has been absolutely no let up, no backing off and yet no mistakes either - unless you count aquaplaning off at Silverstone a mistake.
He was still in title contention in a BMW after Kimi Raikkonen had dropped out of it. And that says it all.
Ayrton Senna: WDC 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991
McLaren: WCC 1974, 1984, 1985, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1998, 1999, 2007
McLaren: WDC 1974, 1976, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1998, 1999, 2008
).