Lewis Hamilton

[Mr Larrington]

Quite a lot of the BSB regulars also do the TT, NW 200 and similar silliness.  The Moto GP chaps won't go near such things.  One reason while Valentino Rossi, for all his talent, will never be the GOAT in my book.

And athletics, eh?  All you've got to be able to do is run, jump or throw things.  Where's the skill in that?

[Jakob]

The whole 'working class' thing is a frigging joke. His dad was an IT manager and made enough to support his karting..your average working class parent can definitely not afford that. Further, he's been mollycuddled by McLaren since he was 13. In the first year of F1, the whole British press was fawning around him and even Brundle left him alone on his gridwalks, as 'to not disturb him'.
 He's had a more privileged motorsport upbringing than most other top drivers.
Further, he buggered off to Switzerland the moment he realized the he could save a lot of tax by doing so, threatened to quit when he got caught cheating (Trulli-gate), threatened to quit when the press dared to criticize him when he rear-ended Raikkonnen and is in general being a moaning little prick when things don't go his way. Remember the whining when he though Button had 'unfollowed' him on Twitter?...Button never followed him the first place.

He is undeniably one of the top F1 drivers and should be lauded for that, but his 'personality' is not worth celebrating.

[ferret]

aarr yes it was the moto gp lot I was on about, sorry my mistake, actually considering just how dangerous the road racing is there are very few people killed, and generally speaking those that have nasty offs admit they were doing something they knew would be a bit iffy or they just plain got it wrong, there are miles of interviews from the racers going over this very fact. It's nothing about riders getting killed, it is a true skill to be able to ride on basically normal roads at the sort of speeds they ride at, Any one who rides a bike will know your more alert than when driving a car, it tends to save your life, and another apology, sorry but sitting in a car being told how to drive it is not a talent, F1 is won in the pits or from the pits, and as you bring athletics into it, running isn't a skill is it, we can all run it's just some do it better than others, the skill is being accurate whilst throwing things in the right direction. Back to moto gp why won't they ?? possibly because all they can do is ride around tracks, any one done a "track day" the first few times it's difficult to get used to riding using the full width of tarmac but if you do it often enough it becomes easier and given the right set up and tyres and enough practice you soon get your knee scrapping the floor, and when they come off it's quite often because the bike just slips away from them and the rider will slide a few hundred meters and stop, no worries no kerbs, lamp posts, parked cars etc to brake your neck on.
Track cyclists why bring them into it, personally I think there is quite a skill/talent to that, not that I've ever done it 

ok one question what skill or talent do you need to drive F1, given that you are an F1 driver?

[Mr Larrington]

Hand-eye-foot-seat of the pants coordination
Better than average reaction time
Physical strength and stamina
Ability to suspend disbelief that a car actually will go round a corner that fast

Did you see that episode of "Top Gear" when Richard Hammond attempted to drive Alonso's championship-winning Renault?  He couldn't get it going fast enough to bring the brakes or tyres even close to their effective operating temperatures.  If it was easy everyone would be doing it.  Well, I would.  Well, I would twenty-five years ago.  If I was eight inches shorter.

If you put the technology back to the 1970s the same drivers would more than likely be the quickest (once they'd learned how to use a Hewland anyway)

The TT and similar races haven't been part of the world championship for a long time, partly because of the risk, partly because long tracks are very difficult to televise and marshal and partly because it's very difficult to make spectators pay to get in.

[mattc]

Yeah, at least at the IoM TT people get killed.

:like:

(I would post a smiley,  except they all seem in rather bad taste  in this context  ...)

[LEE]

aarr yes it was the moto gp lot I was on about,

To quote you, on riding a Grand Prix motorcycle - "no skill at all".

You actually said that riding a Grand Prix motorcycle requires "no skill at all".(Naturally I assume you mean "..at Grand Prix speeds" because I could physically ride one, just nowhere near the speeds required to win anything).

That pretty much makes your opinion on any motorsport topic worthless unless you were being sarcastic.

In any sport, from Darts to Marathon running, there is an immense difference between Joe Public and the world's best.

Lewis Hamilton, Sebastian Vettel and co. are the best of the best of the best when it comes to driving the most advanced cars in the world around a track.
Most people couldn't even get an F1 car around 1 lap, they wouldn't have the guts to drive it fast enough into a corner to acquire the downforce required to get it around the corner.

As for GP Motorcycles, you think Rossi has "no skill at all"? I'd suggest he is amongst the best of the best of the best and has skills that we don't even realise you need to race those things.

215mph and 250BHP on a motorcycle that weighs 150kg.  There's no way mere mortals can tell if it requires skill or not because mere mortals have never ridden something like that.
Plus I don't see any TT riders earning the big money riding GP1.  Why's that?  Because they aren't good enough to ride in a GP.

The reason GP riders don't ride the TT isn;t because they aren't good enough, it's because they aren't brave enough, and it requires 2-3 years to learn the track, time which they can spend earning millions on the GP circuit.

But really? "No skill at all"?

Sorry but the best in the world are superhumans, at whatever discipline you care to mention. Don't believe me?  Try to jump over a horizontal stick, 8 feet off the ground.

[TimC]

[snip]Load of crap[/snip]

ok one question what skill or talent do you need to drive F1, given that you are an F1 driver?

Huge amounts of skill, and huge amounts of talent. The fact that the drivers have a pit crew analysing the car takes nothing away from the skill of the driver; it simply makes the team tactics that bit more complex and interesting. Removing an element of guesswork from the management of car and team is not removing skill. The top F1 drivers would probably be there or thereabouts in almost any motorsport (as would the top rallyists, MotoGP riders, etc etc) and you and I would be nowhere in any of them. I know; I tried!

Snetterton, March 1996, my last ever 250 ICE Superkart race: