Hidden, like the real intention of your posting that i was looking for ..... Maybe it was warped out of this time line.
What an unfortunate expression of opinion. I hope you'll forgive my objection PMC but when I read stuff like this, I lose sight of who is being spoken about. As I write at this very instant, I genuinely have forgotten who you are referring to because my attention is focussed upon your words alone, rather than the sentiment.
When you two have finished flirting, why not mosey on over to the the sweepstakes thread and pick a letter to get a team to cheer on in the European GP? You never know, you might even get free points out of it.
To the original question. For those who didnt see mansell, he was better than his one title suggests. He was a match for Senna, Prost and Piquet and was undone on many occasions by bad luck and reliability. Some people say Hamilton is the new Senna. This is bollocks as he drives nothing like him. He Is more the new Mansell who hounds the drivers in front of him!
If theoretically Mansell in his prime could be pitted against the cream of the current crop of drivers, the next question would be what car would you do it in, an 80's F1 car or a modern one. In Monaco there was the VT of Coulthard in the Red Bull simulator, and he really struggled with having to use KERS and DRS on top of everything else, I'd imagine Mansell would be exactly the same, the car would be completely alien. However I would imagine the current drivers would find 80's cars comparatively easier to get to grips with.
This is an interesting point DHCanary. It is also probably true and it raises a further logical point: One wonders how far back present day drivers could go until they found the machinery too alien? Double-declutching and rev-matching with an engine that expires the first time it's over-revved (with no rev-limiter); pedals the wrong way around; wooden tyres; high centre of mass; giant steering wheels and all manner of other unfamiliar gubbins… But really, my point is that these comparisons are ultimately a waste of mental energy, leading absolutely nowhere. For this reason, it really is time that Mansell learned to reign in his ego and accept that time moves on and the whole sport evolves. Unfortunately, he seems incapable of this and is living in his own world where he belittles the accomplishments of 'the kids of today'. He even does it with his own children! - It's a shame he's never learned to give out genuine praise to another driver without including some caveat or clause designed to elevate his own standing. By example, he should look at some other British 'greats': Sir Stirling Moss; Sir Jackie Stewart; Sir (if he'd survived) Jim Clark; Sir (if he'd survived) Graham Hill, etc. etc.
Schumi drove in the the days of Mansell and seems to have know problems in driving the modern f1 car and using there gadgets. I think using DC's experiences on a simulator is not quite the same as driving the car constantly and in time surely he would be come accustomed with kers and drs.
Today's cars are extremely uncomfortable, although the seats themselves are now a precise fit to the driver's body. The G-forces of a modern car is the thing that makes it so uncomfortable. The only G-force which was equivalent with cars from the 80s is the relatively minor force experienced during acceleration; but cornering and particularly braking forces experienced in modern-day F1 have gone up exponentially, with cockpits getting hotter than before due to a smaller space and extreme aerodynamics which prevent the influx of 'fresh-air', thus confining the air in the cockpit to a tiny, very hot capsule.
So you wouldn't let Mansell have a practice to get himself used to the car before the big test? If Coulthard had had a few hours to get used to the new bits on the car he would have been well on top of it, as would any driver with a few hours to spare to practice on it. If the test was in 80s cars, Mansell would destroy any of today's lot. Today's drivers simply do not have the experience at driving monstrously powerful cars with not much downforce.
Manual gear changing and no power steering are some things modern F1 drivers would need to come to grips with. KERs DRS Engine settings etc etc by the touch of a button is what 80's era drivers would need to know. Also the mentality in a Modern F1 car is if you crash you will have a strong chance you will be ok but in the 80's car you could die or really hurt yourself
So you criticise me for not giving Mansell enough time to adapt, and then your argument for Mansell being better is that the current drivers couldn't adapt? I'm sure with sufficient practice they could. In lower formulae (formula's?) the downforce available is significantly less than in an F1 car, if I recall correctly, DC made a comment along the lines of, "Driving an F1 car in the wet is like driving a massively powerful GP2 or Formula Ford car in the dry" because the downforce becomes the limiting factor. The higher cornering speeds I think would give the current drivers the edge, they wouldn't be able to push so much in the corners in an 80's car, so they'd be more within the limits of their reflexes, whilst Mansell et al would have to push themselves to carry more speed through corners than they have ever needed to before, which I would imagine takes great courage. I don't think I'm explaining this too well... Overall, you simply can't compare. The drivers currently at the top are the ones who can use the technology available, the ones from the 80's or whenever could do the best job in their era too.
I think this is a little over-stated Basil. All professional race drivers have an innate sense of adhesion and are able to sense each individual tyre's grip instinctively, whether it be an F1 car or some reasonably priced car from Top Gear. To put it another way, it only takes a few laps for any race driver to be very close to the optimum performance of any car. This surely puts paid to any idea that one driver may "destroy" today's lot (or vice versa). However, it is the nature of these types of debate to remain inconclusive, ultimately leaving very few opinions altered.
