Wallio wrote:My gripe with drivers comparing themselves to other past champions, is that with the exception of Kimi, who went so far as to enter a rallye as James Hunt once, no driver goes beyond Prost, Senna, or Mansell. Where's the love for Fangio? Or Schumi? or even Lauda?
Why are drivers from the 80's so revered?
I think it's because F1 had only really become mass-broadcasted at this period of time across the world, and tons of "iconic" Youtube clips of Senna wrestling a manual-gearbox McLaren around Monaco are freely available. Furthermore, there's the films that have been released in the last few years; Rush glamourised James Hunt's lifestyle at the time, whilst Senna painted a, well, very pro-Senna picture. And then there's the rivalries; Prost exists as a calculating, percentage-playing antithesis to Senna's exuberance in the eyes of many, and Mansell joins that time period as the apple of the British media's eye at that point in time.
A lot of people at this current time have experienced Schumacher at this point in time first-hand, and so his exploits in F1 are less glamourous since rose-tinted glasses don't usually extend to the 1990s. That's not to say that his time in F1 won't ever be as revered as Senna/Prost/Mansell, but I think he was involved too recently. For Lauda, I'm not sure; I think perhaps the names of Hunt and Prost overshadow his own, but with Rush being released, I think Lauda's being talked about a lot more. I think the likes of Fangio, Clark, Hill, and other icons from that time perhaps came a bit too early; we don't really have any real video footage of them racing or much else to go on. Jackie Stewart's book perhaps coloured a lot in of what it was like to race in those times, but again, it's hard to be a modern-day icon when no real footage of your racing exploits exist in the mainstream media.
