RE: The Pressure Of Being A Formula One Driver
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I must confess that in the last few years I have totally lost interest in F1. During the 90s and into the 2000s I was a huge fan but it just seems that the technology has taken over and turned it into little more than a computer game.
I'm not saying these guys don't have balls of steel, or that they're not amazing drivers but it all comes across as being rather sterile where technology is more of a deciding factor on the result than raw human skill is!
In some ways, because of this, I'm not sure that Hamilton will ever get the credit he deserves. He is hardly 'personality of the year' but even so, from an outsiders perspective, I feel that even if he keeps winning titles until he's 80, his name will never be whispered in awe such as Schumacher, Senna and Lauda's are!
I tend to agree with you on this as so much is an external influence today. Car settings for example like fuel flow are changed via the drivers chief engineer during the race. This is all data driven and the driver is the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle. Bit like an airline pilot who takes the controls for take off and landings otherwise it just does it automatically. The drivers still have loads to do however and that is the difference between the Hamiltons and Verstappens over the rest of the drivers. I do think there is a big gulf in quality on the grid and these guys are the best of what is out there. How would they compare to what was out there 20 years ago I don't know. Senna and Schumacher drove to the cars limits and past them which others couldn't do.