[Anonymous]

Anyone have any thoughts of ‘classic’ driver pairings at any team over the years? Either for the success they had, or how they worked well together, or built up team spirit? Conversely, any that were a disaster – both in how they negatively affected a team, or a pay-driver line-up that squandered a good car?

My choices:

Best –
A.Senna/Berger – McLaren
Lauda/Regazzoni – Ferrari
Alesi/Berger – Ferrari/Benetton
Button/Hamilton – McLaren
Brundle/Bellof – Tyrrell

Worst –
Takagi/Rosset – Tyrrell
Bruni/Baumgartner – Minardi
Papis/Inoue – Arrows
Alonso/Hamilton – McLaren
B.Senna/Maldonado – Williams
Piquet Sr/Mansell – Williams

[GeeMac]

Surely we have to mention Hakkinen/Coulthard in the “Best” category? In the worst I would have to put Sutil/Gutierrez, I don’t recall there ever having been a less exciting driver line up.

[Anonymous]

Massa-Raikkonen and, definitely, Sheckter-Villeneuve in the best section. And the all-conquering Three Fs of Alfa: Fagioli, Farina, Fangio.

[George]

Best – Moss/Fangio
Worst – Chandhok/Yamamoto (just for one race for HRT in 2010)

Thinking of bad combos is somewhat harder than good ones :P

[VMaxMuffin]

Debate: Was Senna/Prost a good combo or a bad combo?

[George]

@vmaxmuffin
Good for all involved I think. Their rivalry might have cost the team a few points, but from a marketing standpoint both for the team and the sport it was a huge bonus, and the fans got to see two of the greats go at it in equal machinery. Plus they won every championship while they were together so taking points off each other didn’t allow a rival to take the championship like Raikkonen in ’07.

[Strontium]

Hamilton and Button was, of course, one of the best in recent history.

Gutierrez and Sutil comes to mind immediately as one of the worst in recent times.

Also, don’t discount Massa and Alonso, given the amazing teamwork and collaboration which went on.

[Nick]

For best, I’d suggest Schumacher/Barrichello at Ferrari from 2000-2005. Not at the top of all time, that would probably be Prost/Senna, but I’d definitely add them into the discussion. It was at the peak of Ferrari’s powers at the start of the decade, Barrichello – as much as he might not have wanted to – played the wingman to perfection, and Schumacher was all but untouchable during that period. Certainly controversial at times, but their success can’t really be ignored.

As for worst, I’d definitely agree with Sutil/Gutierrez, from the most recent number of seasons or so. Can’t really think of a more dull pairing than that. Could suggest Alesi/Mazzacane in the Prosts at the beginning of 2001, at a stretch. Mazzacane was pretty terrible (rightly, I feel, dumped four races into the season), but despite Alesi being somewhat over the hill, he still had the capability to challenge for a meaningful result, so I think that alone would be enough to keep them out of the running.

[PorscheF1]

Debate: Was Senna/Prost a good combo or a bad combo?

I don’t think there ever was a better one…?

[Anonymous]

My thought was that Prost/Senna was the worst pairing. They got on dreadfully, crashed into each other costing the team points, and Prost felt he was driven out of the team he had been at for five years. They even had separate end-of-year team photos!

[PorscheF1]

How about Alonso/Massa if you want to look at the off track things of F1.

[ForzaAlanRabbit]

Sutil/Gutierrez was definitely one the worst lineups of recent years and none of the HRT lineups were ever slightly interesting.

[Scottie]

How can I contribute to this thread… Agree with MOST good and Bad pairings, particularly Senna/Prost, Hakkinen/Coulthard, Schumacher/Barrichello. Hamilton/Alonso was bad for McLaren, as it lost them the drivers, but gave them the Constructors!

Alex Zanardi and Ralf Schumacher were pretty bad in 1999 at Williams… but then the Williams wasn’t the best of cars.

Andrea de Chesaris needs to feature here somewhere? Surely!
Perhaps with John Watson at Mclaren in ’81?
Or maybe with whichever driver he was paired with at Jordan in ’91?

[David-A]

@scottie -Ralf Schumacher was actually quite good in 1999, but saddled with a teammate that failed to score points for Williams, like Rosberg with Nakajima in 2009. Also Alonso & Spygate cost Mclaren even the constructors.

[Anonymous]

Best: Fernando Alonso & Giancarlo Fisichella at Renault.
They got on well with each other, Fisichella was a strong number two to the team leader Alonso and they had a 100% success rate in both the drivers and constructors championships in their two years together.

Worst: Tiago Monteiro & Christijan Albers at Midland F1.
Twice they collided with each other on the first lap in races in Monaco and Canada, they scored zero points for Midland F1 in a car that was worthy of a few points with some good drivers in it.

[Author]

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