Hall of Fame

In a pub discussion recently, someone expressed the opinion that Michael Schumacher was, without doubt, the greatest racing driver who has ever lived. I took issue with that, and threw in a few other names I thought worthy of consideration, one of which was that of Ayrton Senna. I won't say the fellow looked at me blankly, but clearly he was wandering into unfamiliar territory. "Never saw him," he said, as if that were reason enough to dismiss Senna from the reckoning.

Ayrton has been gone only five years, so on that basis there seemed little point in talking up the case of, say, Jimmy Clark, let alone Stirling Moss, Juan Manuel Fangio, Tazio Nuvolari or the aforementioned Caracciola. Obviously, all that I mattered was now.

This is a tedious viewpoint, but one which is becoming ever more prevalent. In a newspaper recently, there was a story called, 'The Greatest Band Ever: Oasis or the Beatles?' Initially, I assumed it had to be a joke, as if comparing Giancarlo Fisichella with Alberto Ascari, but no, the author was deadly serious. Deadly.

The temptation, when considering racing's greatest figures, is immediately to think of those who have won the most, be it races or world titles or whatever, but it seems to me the requirements for inclusion in a Hall of Fame are rather more subtle, rather less rigid. All manner of people should be in such a thing for what they have brought to the sport, rather than merely to themselves.

If I were to consider, for example, the most exciting racing drivers I have ever seen, automatic choices would be Jochen Rindt, Ronnie Peterson and Gilles Villeneuve, yet they have but one world championship and 22 Grand Prix wins between them, statistics which are all but equalled by, say, Damon Hill alone.

Talk to anyone who saw those three, though, anyone who ventured out to a particular corner in qualifying simply to watch them through it, and not too many would argue about their greatness. I don't understand anyone who ever got misty-eyed about statistics.

In my Hall of Fame would instantly go pre-war drivers Nuvolari (who could do the impossible), Bernd Rosemeyer (who often did the impossible), and Caracciola (unsurpassed in the wet, with matchless delicacy of throttle control), and then Fangio (the defining figure of the 1950s), and Ascari (who won every world championship GP between June '52 and June'53).

Next I would have Moss (in my book the best racer there has ever been), Clark (for many the greatest, pure and simple), Jackie Stewart (the dominant force in his era), Alain Prost (51 GP wins, and fewer mistakes than any driver before or since), Senna (flawed, perhaps, but a true genius) and Schumacher (ditto Ayrton, minus the charisma).

That's a very obvious 'A' list, based on weight of achievement, but, as far I'm concerned, there are others who belong in that company, and for diverse reasons. Achille Varzi (the Prost to Nuvolari's Senna) was phenomenally gifted, but tragically squandered himself to morphine addiction, and Hermann Lang, unquestionably the best in '39, lost his greatest years to the war.

Jean-Pierre Wimille, perhaps the most enigmatic and underdocumented great driver in the sport's history, was far and away the best of the immediate post-war years, and would surely have been the first world champion, had he not been killed in '49, the year before the inception of the title.

Then we have Tony Brooks, to some degree in Moss' shadow during the late '50s, yet one to whom GP driving came absurdly easy, not least at circuits like the original Spa-Francorchamps and the 'proper' Nurburgring. Today, Stirling says that if he were running a Formula 1 team, and could have any two drivers from history, they would be Clark and Brooks. That will do for me.

Dan Gurney is here, too; in the course of an extraordinarily unlucky career, he may have won only four GPs, but he was the only driver feared by Clark, and you need to know nothing more than that. And while we're on that side of the water, I must include Mario Andretti, who won everything there was to win, in every kind of car, and had about him more sheer presence and personality than the entire '99 grid.

I would also pick Niki Lauda, as intelligent a man as ever sat in a racing car, one who thought his way to three world championships, who gave straight answers to questions, who feared no one, who made me laugh.

And, of course, Jochen, Ronnie and Gilles are there, because I can remember watching all of them as if it were yesterday, can recall the sheer elation of seeing a wayward, sliding racing car, trying - and usually failing - to get the better of its driver. There are many doors into a Hall of Fame, just as there are many defeats more glorious than victory. Statistics alone don't do it for me; then again, I've never been an Arsenal fan.