Worst Driver Pairing?
- This topic has 13 replies, 13 voices, and was last updated 8 years, 5 months ago by
.
- Posts
I got to thinking, who would be your absolute craziest team pairing for an F1 team. Think past and present drivers.
- Pastor Maldonado
- Michael Andretti
I’m not sure what the stats are, but that would be a team from hell in my eyes, the mechanics would be kept very busy.
We all know of Maldonado’s exploits, but Michael Andretti wasn’t as successful in F1 as his father Mario, as Michael retired 7 out of 13 races in 1993 before the McLaren team ousted him in favour of Mika Hakkinen.
My worst pairing would be Al Pease and Yuji Ide. The former remains the only driver in F1 history to be have been disqualified for driving too slowly (I believe that at the time he was disqualified from the 1969 Canadian GP having completed less than half of the number of laps the leaders had managed), the latter will perhaps harshly (he hardly had any time to adapt to the car or the circuits) almost certainly forever be remembered for having his Super license revoked after just four races.
Pease passed away last year so if I am restricted to drivers who are currently alive, then I’m tempted to go for Narain Karthikeyan, who never impressed me at all and caused a couple of incidents while front runners attempted to lap him (both Vettel and Rosberg crashed trying to do this in the 2012 season). Taki Inoue and Giovanni Lavaggi were also both pretty bad!
Just to make things even harder for Ide and his team mate (or if you prefer, to make certain they never actually qualify for a race) give them a 1997 MasterCard Lola to drive…
I will be the first to admit that Maldonado is rather frustrating, but there is no way I could include a grand prix winner in my worst line up. He may have been somewhat fortunate to be promoted to pole after Hamilton was excluded from qualifying, but he didn’t put a foot wrong in the race and it was a fantastic day for him and the Williams team. ‘De Crasheris’ also had some decent races, although from what I’ve seen of him I’d tend to agree that like Maldonado most of the time, his peaks were too rare to make up for the bad and/or frustrating races.
Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosley. Not in charge, but in the drivers seat, where they started.. !
Funnily enough, Ecclestone was driving F3 in 1949, so he was literally driving pre-F1 and also just as Fangio established himself in Europe, following on from the pre-war greats Wimille, Varzi, Nuvolari, Chiron etc. !
Putting Bernie in a modern F1 car might actually finish him off, Can you imagine Bernie’s head going around Turn 7/8 in Turkey, I’d imagine it’d be something like a bobble head.
Of all the F1 drivers from the past 10 years, without doubt it would be Karun Chandhok and Yuji Ide.
My worst pairing would be Al Pease and Yuji Ide. The former remains the only driver in F1 history to be have been disqualified for driving too slowly (I believe that at the time he was disqualified from the 1969 Canadian GP having completed less than half of the number of laps the leaders had managed),
If you actually look at the context of Al Pease’s F1 entries I think you’ll find it’s a bit harsh to call one of Canada’s most decorated racing drivers one of the worst F1 drivers of all time. In 1969 he was driving a three-year-old car without the aerodynamic appendages that F1 cars boasted at that time. Jim Clark couldn’t have been anywhere near on the pace in that machine. It’s a miracle he managed to qualify anywhere other than last place, yet he was 17th out of 20 cars.
Hamilton and Senna. Both equally fast, and both would crash into the other before they’d let them through. Would never finish.
Also, I would probably pick two drivers of tepid mediocrity such as Jacques Villeneuve for being over hyped and Eddie Irvine who despite driving for Ferrari, couldn’t win a title despite team orders helping him out.Paul di Resta and Adrian Sutil… nah they were just mediocre.
As a nightmare lineup, I would pick Narain and Maldo.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.