The brief was simple. An email to all the journalists on Autocar: pick your favourite racing driver of all time.
What we didn’t expect was quite the repertoire of answers that came back. Covering most eras and a vast spectrum of the sport - from Formula 1 to club racing - it just goes to show how varied motorsport and its followers are. For once, there are no wrong answers: it has led to many discussions and a fair amount of incredulity but, in the end, it’s all about personal choice.
Do you agree with us? Would you go for someone different? Let us know in the comments below.
Lewis Hamilton
Growing up, I was never a fan of one particular motor racing team or one particular racing driver. With other sports, sure, I’d support ‘my’ team. But with racing teams and drivers, I wasn’t so fussed.
If they were nice, that helped, and if they were British, better still. But I just liked people who were fast and fair and smiled a bit. After all, having different winners always made the racing more interesting.
Then Damon Hill arrived, and all of that changed for me. Here was somebody I wanted to win every time he climbed into a car. After his retirement, I fell back into those old, neutral ways. Until, that is, Lewis Hamilton climbed into a McLaren and started beating people. I haven’t wanted him to stop since.
Routinely, I watch the Australian Supercars championship. It costs about £35 a season to stream it in the UK and I devour every practice, qualifying session and race. I like all of the drivers; they’re good, honest, relaxed, funny, and fair racers. But I never want any of them to absolutely dominate the sport.
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Citytiger, seriously? Hamilton is merely good and has no real competition, you say. Everyone is, of course, entitled to an opinion, but imo that's just absurd. The he-has-the-best-car excuse is just that, an excuse. Senna usually was in the best car too, and often by a large margin. And Senna, great driver though he was, exhibited rather poor sportsmanship at times, whereas Lewis, well, doesn't.
Ah yes, Mr Hamilton nearly won the F1 championship in his rookie year except for a bit of "general misjugement", then won it in a Mclaren the following year after he went to Mercedes and people questioned that decision, despite that he went to Mercedes after all and told the engineers a few things about their car to make it work a little bit better despite them previously enticing the 7 times ex world champion out of retirement to do the same thing.
A great driver who has won at 2 different racing teams and essentially brought his current team to the position they rightly occupy at the moment.