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[McLaren]

Michael Andretti was a good Indycar driver but he was pretty woeful in his short time with McLaren.

He was unlucky in that when he arrived at McLaren,the car was terrible.Add to that his team mate was a bit good.Probably made him look worse than he was .

[elfinitty]

Can we decide something like that?I guess not because no circumstances,technology,rules are the same.We can call one bad but cant decide whether worst or not,i think.

[IceCube]

Luca Badoer!

I definitely have to agree with you.

[madbrad]

Michael Andretti was hamstrung from the start. I have said it before. Don't be superficial, people. You must dig deeper to get to the real factors. No test time, and ZERO support from Ron Dennis. Michael has said that Senna was a generous helper in terms of how to get to grips with this Mclaren, and setup stuff, and technique in an F1 car or on an F1 track, but there are 2 teams in an F1 team, and Senna drove for Ron Dennis' team. Michael's team competed against that team and there was no data sharing. Micheal made a bad decision to keep his home base in America which meant that he had to travel far for every event, and that affected his performance, but that does not mean he didn't have the skill. Ron never liked him to begin with.
Luca Badoer? PLEASE! a simple minded and predictable response to the question if ever I saw one.
Luca Badoer showed very poorly in the couple of races he subbed for Massa but that is not an indication of his ability. To call him the worst just because of that shows everyone you have no idea how to make use of the grey matter between your ears. It also shows that you have not read any of the previos posts. If I have offended anyone by saying this, I want you to know that you're too sensitive. Fisi did just as poorly. Howcome no one has said Fisi's the worst? Well, you say, Fisi has poled and won a few times so we forgive him his poor showing subbing for Massa. Why do we not take similar considerations for Badoer? He hasn't won in F1, but he does have a record of some kind. He did not suddenly pop into existence after Massa's accident and get in the car. If you don't know the car, you're lucky to get it round the first corner without stalling it for the first 300 miles of experience in it. I don't care if you're MS or Senna or Prost or Hammy or Alonso, you won't perform if it's not setup for your style. They got zero test time. Look at Badoer's record. He's as good as or better than any we consider "middling" among today's field or the field in the old days when he was a regular. Hell, I could name reams of men and women that have turned a wheel in anger in F1 that are worse than Luca Badoer. So many I wouln't know where to begin. I have named a few in this thread but that just takes us back to the topic of not reading previous posts before posting.
Plus, I agree with elfinitty.

[smokin]

Michael Andretti was hamstrung from the start. I have said it before. Don't be superficial, people. You must dig deeper to get to the real factors. No test time, and ZERO support from Ron Dennis. Michael has said that Senna was a generous helper in terms of how to get to grips with this Mclaren, and setup stuff, and technique in an F1 car or on an F1 track, but there are 2 teams in an F1 team, and Senna drove for Ron Dennis' team. Michael's team competed against that team and there was no data sharing. Micheal made a bad decision to keep his home base in America which meant that he had to travel far for every event, and that affected his performance, but that does not mean he didn't have the skill. Ron never liked him to begin with.
Luca Badoer? PLEASE! a simple minded and predictable response to the question if ever I saw one.
Luca Badoer showed very poorly in the couple of races he subbed for Massa but that is not an indication of his ability. To call him the worst just because of that shows everyone you have no idea how to make use of the grey matter between your ears. It also shows that you have not read any of the previos posts. If I have offended anyone by saying this, I want you to know that you're too sensitive. Fisi did just as poorly. Howcome no one has said Fisi's the worst? Well, you say, Fisi has poled and won a few times so we forgive him his poor showing subbing for Massa. Why do we not take similar considerations for Badoer? He hasn't won in F1, but he does have a record of some kind. He did not suddenly pop into existence after Massa's accident and get in the car. If you don't know the car, you're lucky to get it round the first corner without stalling it for the first 300 miles of experience in it. I don't care if you're MS or Senna or Prost or Hammy or Alonso, you won't perform if it's not setup for your style. They got zero test time. Look at Badoer's record. He's as good as or better than any we consider "middling" among today's field or the field in the old days when he was a regular. Hell, I could name reams of men and women that have turned a wheel in anger in F1 that are worse than Luca Badoer. So many I wouln't know where to begin. I have named a few in this thread but that just takes us back to the topic of not reading previous posts before posting.
Plus, I agree with elfinitty.

Confused by your reasoning on Luca Badoer's performance. Wasn't he the Ferrari test driver before assuming the race seat? He would have been more than familiar with the car.

[andrew]

Confused by your reasoning on Luca Badoer's performance. Wasn't he the Ferrari test driver before assuming the race seat? He would have been more than familiar with the car.

Granted, but spanking a car round an empty track replicating various test scenarios for 10 years is a different kettle of fish to driving in a race situation.

[zurich_allan]

Michael Andretti was hamstrung from the start. I have said it before. Don't be superficial, people. You must dig deeper to get to the real factors. No test time, and ZERO support from Ron Dennis. Michael has said that Senna was a generous helper in terms of how to get to grips with this Mclaren, and setup stuff, and technique in an F1 car or on an F1 track, but there are 2 teams in an F1 team, and Senna drove for Ron Dennis' team. Michael's team competed against that team and there was no data sharing. Micheal made a bad decision to keep his home base in America which meant that he had to travel far for every event, and that affected his performance, but that does not mean he didn't have the skill. Ron never liked him to begin with.
Luca Badoer? PLEASE! a simple minded and predictable response to the question if ever I saw one.
Luca Badoer showed very poorly in the couple of races he subbed for Massa but that is not an indication of his ability. To call him the worst just because of that shows everyone you have no idea how to make use of the grey matter between your ears. It also shows that you have not read any of the previos posts. If I have offended anyone by saying this, I want you to know that you're too sensitive. Fisi did just as poorly. Howcome no one has said Fisi's the worst? Well, you say, Fisi has poled and won a few times so we forgive him his poor showing subbing for Massa. Why do we not take similar considerations for Badoer? He hasn't won in F1, but he does have a record of some kind. He did not suddenly pop into existence after Massa's accident and get in the car. If you don't know the car, you're lucky to get it round the first corner without stalling it for the first 300 miles of experience in it. I don't care if you're MS or Senna or Prost or Hammy or Alonso, you won't perform if it's not setup for your style. They got zero test time. Look at Badoer's record. He's as good as or better than any we consider "middling" among today's field or the field in the old days when he was a regular. Hell, I could name reams of men and women that have turned a wheel in anger in F1 that are worse than Luca Badoer. So many I wouln't know where to begin. I have named a few in this thread but that just takes us back to the topic of not reading previous posts before posting.
Plus, I agree with elfinitty.

Confused by your reasoning on Luca Badoer's performance. Wasn't he the Ferrari test driver before assuming the race seat? He would have been more than familiar with the car.

I think the reasoning is fairly simple. This was when the in-season testing ban was already in place and thus any hand Badoer would have had developing the car would have been very much pre-season. By mid-season the car would have had so many updates it would barely be the same car.

Also, the fact he had been off the grid for a decade (racing is so hugely different to testing on an empty track it's ridiculous.), and the fact that it was probably the poorest car Ferrari had developed since 1993 made it a rather challenging environment and set of circumstances overall.

Badoer was a decent competitive racer in his original F1 racing career. Had Badoer been racing under today's points system he would have had eleven points finishes. Unfortunately he raced in an era when it was only points for top 6.

In other words - nobody who knows anything about F1 would say that Badoer is the worst F1 driver ever. It's not even a possibility.

[smokin]

Confused by your reasoning on Luca Badoer's performance. Wasn't he the Ferrari test driver before assuming the race seat? He would have been more than familiar with the car.

Granted, but spanking a car round an empty track replicating various test scenarios for 10 years is a different kettle of fish to driving in a race situation.

Indeed it is but madbrad appears to be suggesting that Luca's poor performance was because he didn't know the car.

[andrew]

Confused by your reasoning on Luca Badoer's performance. Wasn't he the Ferrari test driver before assuming the race seat? He would have been more than familiar with the car.

Granted, but spanking a car round an empty track replicating various test scenarios for 10 years is a different kettle of fish to driving in a race situation.

Indeed it is but madbrad appears to be suggesting that Luca's poor performance was because he didn't know the car.

Given the lack of opportunity to practice it's hardly surprising that Badoer struggled. The poor guy was screwed even before he started his first race weekend for Ferrari.

My candidate for the Worst F1 driver is Al Pease - the only F1 driver to have been black falgged for going too slow!

[smokin]

Confused by your reasoning on Luca Badoer's performance. Wasn't he the Ferrari test driver before assuming the race seat? He would have been more than familiar with the car.

Granted, but spanking a car round an empty track replicating various test scenarios for 10 years is a different kettle of fish to driving in a race situation.

Indeed it is but madbrad appears to be suggesting that Luca's poor performance was because he didn't know the car.

Given the lack of opportunity to practice it's hardly surprising that Badoer struggled. The poor guy was screwed even before he started his first race weekend for Ferrari.

My candidate for the Worst F1 driver is Al Pease - the only F1 driver to have been black falgged for going too slow!

As a test driver, Luca probably did more laps in the Ferrari that Kimi and Felipe combined.

Agree about Al Pease, though.

[madbrad]

I didn't say that Luca was unfamiliar with the car. Familiarity with it is irrelevant though. What good is it being the test driver when testing is not allowed?
As said, he hadn't sat in it since the winter testing and it had gone through many changes since. Changes guided by and for Massa and Alonso. But mainly it is the tires that one cannot come to terms with.
Ferrari were very pleased with Luca's and Fisi's performances in the races, even if the viewers, who really don't know what they're talking about, weren't.

[scotty]

Badoer dragged a Minardi, then the worst car by some margin, up to 4th position in one race until his gearbox went. It wasn't entirely due to others dropping out either. That isn't the mark of the worst driver ever, simple as and end of. Sick of seeing his name in this thread.

[madbrad]

me too.

[andrew]

Badoer dragged a Minardi, then the worst car by some margin, up to 4th position in one race until his gearbox went. It wasn't entirely due to others dropping out either. That isn't the mark of the worst driver ever, simple as and end of. Sick of seeing his name in this thread.

Indeed. He gets a bad press based on 2 races and all of his previous performances are forgotten.

[australia99]

i still claim Riccardo Rosset.