Most underrated F1 drivers

supremenovice

I came across this article while browsing and got me thinking about guys that I really thought were good and never got the credit or more importantly, the car to show it.
http://www.redbull.com/gb-en/who-is-the-most-underrated-f1-driver


Heres a couple that Id add to the list:
Heinz-Harald Frentzen
The man rated by no less than Ayrton Senna back in 1994 when he debuted in the competitive Sauber, Frentzen was largely the dominant driver against his well-regarded team-mates across his career, including Karl Wendlinger, Damon Hill and the legendary Jean-Christophe Boullion :rolleyes:. He was asked by Frank to replace the great man at Williams upon his death at Imola but said no (what a mistake!!).
He later got his move to the mighty Williams team in 1997 but only showed his magic a handful of times that season and was unhappy with the authoritarian control of Patrick Head and the childish mind-games from Villeneuve.
He fared better against Villeneuve in 1998 without sparkling at all but Williams were on the decline that they have never really recovered from and he legged it to Jordan in 1999, where the arm-around-the-shoulder leadership of Eddie Jordan suited him perfectly and he drove stylishly to two brilliant wins at Magny Cours and Monza. Remarkably, he was legitimately in the title hunt with a few races to go (a wide open championship after the injury to Schumacher) when his car failed while leading at the Nurburgring after a brilliant pole position.
2000 was a less fruitful year in a mid-grid Jordan against the quick Jarno Trulli and he fell out with Eddie Jordan mid-2001 and got a rebound job driving for Prost for the rest of the season. Incredibly, he put the bus-like Prost on 4th on the grid at Spa in what he described as the best lap of his life.
The rest of his F1 career was floundering in poor Saubers and Arrows until 2003. But, its his 1999 season which highlights his true speed and balls with brilliant drives throughout the year, not to mention the hammering of 1996 world champion Damon Hill. Give him the car, AND the right management, and he was class.

Kamui Kobayashi
Unfairly christened 'KobayBASHY' by Jenson Button, this ace Japanese driver was I'd say the quickest Asian F1 driver ever. He outscored his quick team mates in 2010 and 2011 (beat Sergio Perez 30pts-14pts in 2011). He qualified a brilliant 2nd at the 'drivers circuit' that is Spa in 2012 and scored his maiden and only podium finish at Suzuka in a brilliant drive later that year.
Id love to have seen him in a Red Bull or Ferrari to see what he could do.
(He crashed a Ferrari F1 car at a demo run in Russia a couple years ago )

Arthur Daley

Gilles Villeneuve. Nearly always had to operate with a truck, probably would have sauntered to the 1982 title but for that fateful day at Zolder.

Spudman_20000

Interesting article. Would agree that Prost was underrated, especially when you consider the high caliber of drivers he was competing against. It's probably in part due to his clashes on and off the track with Senna and playing politics better than any other driver. Always struck me as not the most naturally gifted driver, but someone who worked to perfect everything else.

Wouldn't agree with Alesi or Hill. Alesi always looked to be happy with his lot and never seemed capable of reaching the next level. Hill barely beat his rookie teammate Villeneuve to the title.

I'd agree with you assessment of Frentzen. Similar to Hulkenberg, would have been great to seem them in a car capable of winning a title.

Burial.

Nick Heidfeld. Reliable driver who was pacey and had a fine driving style.

donspeekinglesh

I'd agree on Kobayashi - he's fantastic in an LMP1 car.
Hill and Frentzen, like Button and Kimi blew too hot and cold.

Piquet Sr is very underrated - 3 titles and hardly ever gets a mention.

Robbo

That there's one person out there who thinks Villeneuve is underrated will only embolden Nigel Roebuck to keep writing the same column he's been churning out for decades now.

Harika

I think Prost is seen as underrated as Senna is overshadowing this era. Amongst the great of this time were also Piquet and Mansell and both are hardly remembered as F1 greatest. Without him, Gerhard Berger would also appear in a different light, although he himself said, he didn't have the speed of Senna.
Amongst the most underrated F1 drivers, you could name Tom Kristenssen, who failed to score results in ****ty F1 cars and became record LeMans Winner. Or Hans Joachim Stuck, Bernd Schneider and Joachim Maas: All no biggies in F1, but became heroes for DTM and GT1.

meeeeh

Harika wrote: »

I think Prost is seen as underrated as Senna is overshadowing this era. Amongst the great of this time were also Piquet and Mansell and both are hardly remembered as F1 greatest. Without him, Gerhard Berger would also appear in a different light, although he himself said, he didn't have the speed of Senna.
Amongst the most underrated F1 drivers, you could name Tom Kristenssen, who failed to score results in ****ty F1 cars and became record LeMans Winner. Or Hans Joachim Stuck, Bernd Schneider and Joachim Maas: All no biggies in F1, but became heroes for DTM and GT1.

But that doesn't mean they were underrated in F1. Many drivers can shine in one category and disappoint in another. Most drivers winning in American series find it hard in F1 for example.

Anyway for me it would be Ralf Schumacher. Not because he was that great but because he was not as bad as those creating hype around Columbian Messiah would make you think. He was more or less on par with Montoya.

donspeekinglesh

Harika wrote: »

I think Prost is seen as underrated as Senna is overshadowing this era. Amongst the great of this time were also Piquet and Mansell and both are hardly remembered as F1 greatest. Without him, Gerhard Berger would also appear in a different light, although he himself said, he didn't have the speed of Senna.
Amongst the most underrated F1 drivers, you could name Tom Kristenssen, who failed to score results in ****ty F1 cars and became record LeMans Winner. Or Hans Joachim Stuck, Bernd Schneider and Joachim Maas: All no biggies in F1, but became heroes for DTM and GT1.

TK never raced in F1, was a test driver. Plenly of other great drivers never got the chance at all in F1, like Dario Franchitti

kksaints

For a three time champion Piquet is quite under-rated particularly as he won two of those championships in the early 80s when the cars with the ground effect and sliding skirts were death traps. In the 90s I thought that Mika Salo was somewhat underrated albeit not championship material but he did a good job in some (very) poor cars. Currently I would think that Sainz is somewaht underrated.

davo10

I can't remember which driver it was, possibly Giles Villeneaux, but I was watching a documentary a few years ago where it mentioned an F1 driver whose gear stick broke and he jammed the palm of his hand down onto the stick and drove the rest of the race with his hand stuck on it. That deserves respect.

chicorytip

Harika wrote:

I think Prost is seen as underrated as Senna is overshadowing this era. Amongst the great of this time were also Piquet and Mansell and both are hardly remembered as F1 greatest. Without him, Gerhard Berger would also appear in a different light, although he himself said, he didn't have the speed of Senna. Amongst the most underrated F1 drivers, you could name Tom Kristenssen, who failed to score results in ****ty F1 cars and became record LeMans Winner. Or Hans Joachim Stuck, Bernd Schneider and Joachim Maas: All no biggies in F1, but became heroes for DTM and GT1.

Did Messrs. Stuck, Schneider and Mass even score a single point between them let alone get to stand on a podium?

kksaints

chicorytip wrote: »

Did Messrs. Stuck, Schneider and Mass even score a single point between them let alone get to stand on a podium?

Mass won the 1975 Spanish Grand Prix. A very controversial and tragic grand prix.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Spanish_Grand_Prix

H3llR4iser

Spudman_20000 wrote: »

Interesting article. Would agree that Prost was underrated, especially when you consider the high caliber of drivers he was competing against. It's probably in part due to his clashes on and off the track with Senna and playing politics better than any other driver. Always struck me as not the most naturally gifted driver, but someone who worked to perfect everything else.

Prost is a curious case - anybody within F1 or even with any decent knowledge of the sport knows all too well he's up there in the absolute pantheon of the sport. He was the top dog racing against guys such as Piquet, Mansell and Lauda, and when Senna came around he was more than up for the challenge; What he didn't have in terms of one-lap pace for qualifying, usually made up in the race - he had both Senna and Mansell as teammates and outscored them both.

"The Professor" also possessed an unique level of mechanical empathy in an F1 era when it was extremely important and influential on the results; His "starting slow then coming back when everyone else was nursing some car malady" races became a staple, to the point other drivers would be worried about it and make mistakes - ask Berger about Estoril 1987 for a "study case".

To the general public, however, he's overshadowed by the Senna-star, and was largely painted as some sort of villain by the pro-Senna media; Anyone who's old enough to have been following F1 at the time will remember how it was made to sound like a "class war", with Prost being the "aristocrat" and Senna pictured as almost being the "kid from the favela achieving his dream". Funny fact, the opposite was true - Prost came from a regular background and had to work to finance his career (like many drivers at the time, e.g Mansell) while Senna, whose actual name was Da Silva, was the heir of a wealthy Brazilian family business...

Spudman_20000 wrote: »

Wouldn't agree with Alesi or Hill. Alesi always looked to be happy with his lot and never seemed capable of reaching the next level. Hill barely beat his rookie teammate Villeneuve to the title.

Alesi's career has been quite unique in terms of always being "up there" but never, ever once having been in the position to capitalize on it; He seemed to have an innate ability for being in the wrong team at the wrong moment (hello, Alonso!). While it's often being ascribed to his mercurial and passionate personality, it's not necessarily the case - his shunning of a signed Williams contract in order to drive for Ferrari in 1991 was a bad choice and one that's been described as "emotional", but it wasn't such - Ferrari came off a 1990 season where they barely missed on the driver's championship and won 6 races, while Williams picked up the scraps; More of the same was expected for 1991 and nobody could predict the Groove-based team would become the pacesetters by mid-season.

Every driver that races near the front for years will have at least a brief moment of dominance - even if it's just a race every now and then; Alesi quite never had the car to grab it - if the performance was there, the reliability wasn't (e.g. Monza 1994, Spa 1995); If the reliability wasn't an issue, the pit crew would screw up (Monza 1997). It's quite telling that he has, to my knowledge, the highest podiums:victories ratio of any F1 race winner - 32 podium, of which only 1 is a win. To put things into perspective, Ricciardo has 22 podiums with 5 wins to pick a random one.

Spudman_20000 wrote: »

I'd agree with you assessment of Frentzen. Similar to Hulkenberg, would have been great to seem them in a car capable of winning a title.

Yet, I'd say the most deeply underrated driver in current F1 is Sergio Perez, and by some margin. Sure, the recent tangles with Ocon don't help, but he's got unlikely cars on the podiums, nearly won a race in a Sauber and beat highly-rated Hulkenberg last year. That terrible year at McLaren (before Honda came along, just sayin') really did wonders for him - in the wrong direction!

Faugheen

H3llR4iser wrote: »

Prost is a curious case - anybody within F1 or even with any decent knowledge of the sport knows all too well he's up there in the absolute pantheon of the sport. He was the top dog racing against guys such as Piquet, Mansell and Lauda, and when Senna came around he was more than up for the challenge; What he didn't have in terms of one-lap pace for qualifying, usually made up in the race - he had both Senna and Mansell as teammates and outscored them both.

"The Professor" also possessed an unique level of mechanical empathy in an F1 era when it was extremely important and influential on the results; His "starting slow then coming back when everyone else was nursing some car malady" races became a staple, to the point other drivers would be worried about it and make mistakes - ask Berger about Estoril 1987 for a "study case".

To the general public, however, he's overshadowed by the Senna-star, and was largely painted as some sort of villain by the pro-Senna media; Anyone who's old enough to have been following F1 at the time will remember how it was made to sound like a "class war", with Prost being the "aristocrat" and Senna pictured as almost being the "kid from the favela achieving his dream". Funny fact, the opposite was true - Prost came from a regular background and had to work to finance his career (like many drivers at the time, e.g Mansell) while Senna, whose actual name was Da Silva, was the heir of a wealthy Brazilian family business...



Alesi's career has been quite unique in terms of always being "up there" but never, ever once having been in the position to capitalize on it; He seemed to have an innate ability for being in the wrong team at the wrong moment (hello, Alonso!). While it's often being ascribed to his mercurial and passionate personality, it's not necessarily the case - his shunning of a signed Williams contract in order to drive for Ferrari in 1991 was a bad choice and one that's been described as "emotional", but it wasn't such - Ferrari came off a 1990 season where they barely missed on the driver's championship and won 6 races, while Williams picked up the scraps; More of the same was expected for 1991 and nobody could predict the Groove-based team would become the pacesetters by mid-season.

Every driver that races near the front for years will have at least a brief moment of dominance - even if it's just a race every now and then; Alesi quite never had the car to grab it - if the performance was there, the reliability wasn't (e.g. Monza 1994, Spa 1995); If the reliability wasn't an issue, the pit crew would screw up (Monza 1997). It's quite telling that he has, to my knowledge, the highest podiums:victories ratio of any F1 race winner - 32 podium, of which only 1 is a win. To put things into perspective, Ricciardo has 22 podiums with 5 wins to pick a random one.



Yet, I'd say the most deeply underrated driver in current F1 is Sergio Perez, and by some margin. Sure, the recent tangles with Ocon don't help, but he's got unlikely cars on the podiums, nearly won a race in a Sauber and beat highly-rated Hulkenberg last year. That terrible year at McLaren (before Honda came along, just sayin') really did wonders for him - in the wrong direction!

I was just about to say re: Perez that he got his chance at a big team and flattered to deceive.

He's the type of driver every upper midfield team would want, but at the moment he's being outshone by his (relative) rookie team-mate.

Hulkenberg, you could argue, drove the highly rated Paul Di Resta out of F1 and has gotten better and better with every season. That Renault is an absolute pig of a car but yet he's getting into Q3 and scoring consistent points with it.

I remember the Brazilian GP in 2012 where he was battling it out with the McLarens at the front of the pack on raw pace in a Force India. You could never say that about his team-mates.

He's by far the unluckiest driver on the grid (career-spanning). I've lost count the number of times he's been in a great position, pits, then the mechanics make an arse of it, or send him out into traffic, or when they get it perfectly, a safety car comes out or mechanical failures.

supremenovice

Faugheen wrote: »

Hulkenberg, you could argue, drove the highly rated Paul Di Resta out of F1 and has gotten better and better with every season...
He's by far the unluckiest driver on the grid (career-spanning).

Hulkenberg will hold the unenviable record of Most Grand Prix without a podium after the Singapore Grand Prix in September (current record of 128 held by Adrian Sutil), assuming he isnt on the podium in the next three races.

Charlie-Bravo

That's some achievement if he makes it, and something tells me Spa might break his duck. If, big if, Renault's new floor through Eau Rouge does the business, and then plenty of speed down the straight, along with some hiccups for other teams, throw in some rain, he has a great chance if he stays out of trouble!