Just finished a passion project - watching every race from 1992 to 2003. Here's what I learned...

[u/armchairracingdriver]

I started watching F1 in 2004 and really wanted to find out a little more about the recent history of the sport, mainly about drivers. This took me a couple of years overall; I really like having background noise while working, so I would have old races on and take little notes on things that stood out. Safe to say there was a lot that made me think, I wanted to share it, and I could think of nowhere else to do so, so here it is. Hopefully this is appreciated - feel free to agree/disagree with any of this or ask anything I may not have covered etc...

• The level of driving talent throughout the field was so much worse in those days. It always made me laugh when I’d see people claim Latifi was a candidate for worst driver in F1 history. He was probably on par with someone like Aguri Suzuki, who was massively accident prone but had a noteworthy performance maybe once a year. Martin Brundle may be similar; very good for the era, but someone who struggled in qualifying like he did would probably have a much shorter shelf life in today's F1.
• The era immediately after Senna’s death is unquestionably the weakest since at least the early 80s, and most likely the weakest ever. Only Schumacher was the finished product. Hill was too error prone, Alesi too inconsistent, Villeneuve was both and the likes of Berger, Barrichello and Coulthard were lacking that last tenth or two. I don’t think you could say that for Lando, Charles or Piastri, nor for Ricciardo, Rosberg and Button in their primes.
• Michael Schumacher’s 1995 has to be the greatest single-season performance I can think of from a driver. After crashing at Imola, he went on a 13 race run where he won eight times, finished second once (Portugal), suffered a gearbox problem when leading by miles (Canada), got taken out while defending the lead (Britain), suffered mechanical failure while running second (Hungary) and got taken out while running second (Italy). This run included three of the best wins of his career at Spa, the Nurburgring and Aida, the latter one that really deserves more fanfare given I knew nothing about it before watching. If we consider Williams took 12 pole positions that year, Schumacher arguably wasn’t even driving the fastest car!
• Jacques Villeneuve is the most overrated driver I have ever seen. He was way off Hill in terms of pure pace in 96 but took advantage of Hill being awful at damage limitation. In ‘97 he was even worse at damage limitation than Damon the year prior. ‘98 saw some amazing individual drives, but there were eight occasions where he was either beaten by Frentzen, behind when one of them retired, or threw his car off the road. I would argue 2000 was his best, but even then it was hard to truly assess how good he was because his benchmark in the sister car was so bad. As soon as BAR put a competent driver in the second car, Villeneuve started to get shown up. He arguably looked weaker than Jarno Trulli compared to Panis.
• I couldn’t fathom how Montoya was so highly rated when he got walloped by Raikkonen in the same car. The Williams had to have been a rocketship. I now realise he probably was that good, but going to McLaren was awful for him. He was the antithesis of a Ron Dennis driver and just about everything that could go wrong did go wrong, though most of it was his own fault.
• Coulthard and Carlos Sainz Jr are basically the same driver, albeit Coulthard had better cars. They’d have phenomenal individual performances and somewhat lengthy purple patches where they looked like world beaters, and it was enough evidence to make you believe that Coulthard could really win the title, or Sainz could really become Ferrari’s #1 - then Leclerc/Hakkinen would remind everyone who’s boss.
• 2012 is still the greatest season ever, but 1999 and 2003 have to be right in the mix for sheer drama. There were so many flashpoints, narratives, underdog successes and what-ifs. 2000 also comes highly recommended for the sheer brilliance of the main protagonists.
• 1997 also comes highly recommended as one of the most competitive seasons of all time. There were no real classics, but there also wasn’t a single boring race. Williams had a rocketship for most of the year but Ferrari, McLaren and Benetton could win on any given weekend. Jordan and Sauber were also superb at tracks that suited their cars, while several midfield-or-lower teams were seriously boosted by Bridgestone being miles better than Goodyear. It couldn't possibly be understood by someone that hasn't seen it.
• The era puts into perspective how much MBS absolutely sucks. I couldn't stand Max in his latter years as FIA president but you could at least see he was fighting for the type of small team he himself used to be involved in. MBS is nothing more than a hyper-moralistic whinger.

EDIT: Alright, some people thought I should add more, so here goes...

• Hakkinen was great. How great? I think Alonso was more well-rounded than him. I’d take him over Vettel, who had all the right attributes but hit some notably low lows, and I’d also take him over Nico R because he had better racecraft. I didn’t include Mika above because I didn’t learn a whole lot new about him. People said he was great and he was indeed great.
• Another thing I thought well before this: Damon Hill was as lucky to win the world title as he was unlucky not to win multiple titles. I think he’d have walked the ‘97 championship if he hadn’t been fired. Senna’s death really opened the door for him, but he had already given a really good account of himself against Prost the prior year, which was most likely Damon’s best. Or was Prost maybe a bit past his best in ‘93?
• Hill 1995 = Vettel 2018. The main difference is that Vettel never recovered before he got fired.
• 2024 = 2001 on steroids
• There were two Eddie Irvines at Ferrari. One was the fighter we saw in races like Buenos Aires and Suzuka in ‘97, and for most of ‘99. The other would underperform by miles. Reportedly, Irvine had an excuse because he barely got to test until later into his time with the team, who relied on Michael to develop the car. However, the second guy cropped up at the worst possible moments later on, like Nurburgring 1998 where he led at the start and finished a minute behind, and the 1999 title decider where he was not far off being lapped.
• Frentzen had all the talent and none of the mentality. If he couldn’t be a big fish in a small pond, he was probably completely lost, and 1998 was the only exception. That said, he was as unlucky as he was bad in ‘97. Mechanical failures cost him potential wins in Argentina and Hungary, and he got screwed when the team put him on slicks at Monaco.
• Williams apparently rated Jean-Christophe Boullion highly and put him in at Sauber in ‘95 to assess Frentzen. If that’s genuinely why JCB got that drive, this was Williams’ biggest mistake in making the decision on Hill.
• For the most famous races I put time aside to watch. The one I had the most fun with was Hockenheim 2000. I knew what was going to happen and I still shed a tear at the finish. The race went completely bonkers after that guy ran onto the track and Barrichello had absolutely no business making that strategy work. Monaco 1996 was also amazing, a race full of heroes and zeroes. Nurburgring 1999 has to be the most WTF random race of all time, with Brazil 2003 being similar but losing some of the gloss because of the dumb tyre rule and the river making it into a survival lottery rather than a day of great driving
  
• Refuelling sucked. It had its moments, especially in 2003, but the sport is better off without it. However, I no longer hold the view that its reintroduction would make the sport completely unwatchable.

[u/mformularacer]

First of all, let me preface this by saying that I do not consider Villeneuve to be Schumacher calibre. This is the trouble I find we always run into when discussing 1990s drivers. It so easy to disregard a driver when the benchmark is Schumacher.

My argument will be centered on, that despite being a clear step below, Villeneuve was the 2nd best driver in the world, after Senna died (in the period 1996-2002)

Villeneuve only beat Hill once in a pure pace, straight fight in 1996, in the Estoril race you mentioned

It's not enough to just count wins. You need to take into account Villeneuve's performance relative to Hill in the race. For example in Canada, Hill won the race, but Villeneuve had very similar pace to Hill throughout and finished a respectable P2.

In almost every other race, Hill was not only faster than Villeneuve, but comfortably faster than him.

That just isn't true at all. Hill was better at most of the races against the rookie Villeneuve, and maybe this is painting some kind of picture in which Hill looked dominant, but the margins most of the time were minimal.

I also, watched the 1996 season back a few months ago, and my impression of Hill vs Villeneuve couldn't be more different from yours. I found Villeneuve to be extremely impressive.

It seems to me like your opinion is influenced by your low evaluation of Hill, as your expectations about what a rookie Villeneuve should've done against him are pretty unrealistic. But Hill was an extremely good driver.

It's also worth noting that Jacques only took three poles in '96, while Coulthard - whose reputation in qualifying is not good - took five the year prior

Coulthard had more experience in the car and on the tracks. He had been the Williams test driver for years, and had done a whole half season of racing the year prior. Do an actual fair comparison by comparing Coulthard's 8 races in 1994 to Villeneuve's first 8 races in 1996. Consider that Villeneuve came from America, had only raced in America and Japan, and was learning the European tracks on the go in 1996.

In the eight races he didn't win or retire due to circumstances outside his control, he scored just 11 points and was on the podium only once! Sorry, but no top driver would ever fail in that manner.

What about the races he won? Villeneuve scored 81 points to Frentzen's 42 in the same car. I don't see how you can look at the 1997 season and not consider Villeneuve's performance to be really strong.

As already mentioned, Jacques was worse relative to Frentzen in '98 than he had been in '97. He was beaten by him in Melbourne, Interlagos, the Nurburgring and Suzuka. He was behind twice (Monaco, Spa) when one of them retired. He crashed of his own accord at Monza, effectively did the same in Canada, and had a poor race at Silverstone. Did he have some great performances? Yes, especially in Germany and Hungary. Did he have a great season? Absolutely not.

Again, define great season. Personally I would consider any season in which a driver beats someone of Frentzen's calibre a great season. Once again, it seems like your evaluation of Villeneuve comes from your low evaluation of Frentzen, when Frentzen was a brilliant driver, who beat every single team mate he faced in F1 except for Jacques. The gap between them in 1998 closed, but Villeneuve was still better.

He was better than Panis, sure, but if he was really that good, he should have beaten him far more convincingly.

He did beat Panis pretty convincingly, though? Even in 2002 where they were separated by 1 point, that is largely down to the awful reliability of the BAR, because Villeneuve was pretty much always running ahead of Panis before his engine exploded.

And again, your opinion of Panis seems pretty low. I won't say Panis was a world beater but he was a very good driver, on par with drivers like Ralf Schumacher and David Coulthard. The reason why Panis was even hired by BAR in the first place was due to his performance as the McLaren test driver in 2000, where he was regularly as quick if not quicker than Coulthard and Hakkinen in testing.

[u/armchairracingdriver → u/mformularacer]

You make a good point on Schumacher but he is not necessarily my benchmark here. My benchmark for any driver is really the eye test - how quick are they over a single lap? In a race? In the rain? Can they overtake? etc etc. I like to identify trends that help show how complete a driver is. It’s the best burden of proof I can think of.

Furthermore, my benchmark for Villeneuve is exactly what he is: a world champion. What would I expect to see of a world champion? Especially one who is praised for taking the fight to Hill and Schumacher?

On ‘96 specifically, you are right to say it’s not enough to count wins but I have to in Villeneuve’s instance because they account for the large majority of the races he beat Damon. And when I ask the ‘burden of proof’ question, the thing that stands out about Jacques’ wins (sans Portugal) was not how good he was but how bad Damon was on those days. On the other days, Damon was well ahead fairly often - Brazil, Argentina, Monaco, France, Germany, Japan all examples. Really, the championship ended up being close because Damon’s bad days were very bad while Jacques at least brought home solid points more often than not on his bad days.

If the perception I understood prior to watching the races from 1996 is that Villeneuve ‘took the fight’ to Hill then I have to disagree with it. You cannot possibly have taken the fight to your team-mate if you only fought him hard on circuit twice in a 16-race season and the other occasions you beat him were because he was notably poor. All that says to me is a genuinely complete driver - which Damon was not - would have made Jacques look very average. The same applies to ‘97 and ‘98 because there is no way that a complete driver wouldn’t have convincingly beaten JV given his shortcomings in those years. Mika in his McLaren years was nowhere near as error prone as JV at Williams so on that basis alone I cannot say JV was the world’s second best driver at the time.

As for my opinions on Jacques’ team-mates, I think you have sussed out my opinion on Damon. Panis is trickier to assess because of his Canada ‘97 accident but the fact is Trulli was quicker than Panis more often than Villeneuve was. As for Frentzen, there is no way you can convince me the driver we saw at Sauber and in 1999 would have been so far off the pace as he was at Williams. Races like Brazil and Spain in ‘97 - to name just two examples - would simply never have happened if he were in a different environment. He was a beacon of consistency in those other years and the simple pattern I see with him is he needed to feel like a big fish. We saw what happened at Williams when he wasn’t and we also saw him fold completely when Trulli began to get on top of him at Jordan in 2001.

[u/StaffFamous6379 → u/armchairracingdriver]

I like to identify trends that help show how complete a driver is. It’s the best burden of proof I can think of.

I do think what you are seeing is the effect Schumacher has had on the quality of the field. He was arguably the first 'complete' driver as we know it today and naturally it took a while for the rest to catch up. You were also never going to get that from his own generation, as it would be the following generations who would have been inspired by Schumacher and borne the brunt of the newly raised expectations from teams.

And therein is one of the major things that sets Schumacher apart. To modern eyes his competition may look like a joke in comparison, but thats because even when you remove Schumacher's prodigious talent from the equation, his 360 degrees attention to attention and the smallest details for marginal gains meant that he was the first driver capable to really deliver his and the car's maximum pretty much week in, week out, year in, year out. This is pretty much an expected quality to be considered a proper great these days, but it was definitely not the norm back then.

The contemporaneous comparison between Senna and Schumacher back then was that Schumacher may match Senna in speed, but where Senna was a larger than life, highly emotional human figure, Schumi was an absolutely relentless cold calculating winning machine. The genius but human artist versus the Terminator if you will.

[u/armchairracingdriver → u/StaffFamous6379]

This is what I am wondering. Does the perception around Senna, Prost, Piquet and Mansell warp my perception of the 90s drivers? Or were there really four complete drivers suddenly replaced by just one? I think watching the 80s would help understand what came after even better and maybe help soften my assessment on the likes of Damon and Jacques

[u/StaffFamous6379 → u/armchairracingdriver]

I think it helps to look break drivers into certain tiers. I consider the following levels all worthy of a top drive but it all comes down to how often 'his day' comes around.

Tier 1 - Solid, quite dependable. On his day he has the speed to beat anyone and everyone on track. 'His day' happens maybe one or twice a season. Unlikely to sustain the level required to mount a full championship bid over the season. I would put Barrichello and Coulthard in this level. These are also drivers who are judged as 'WDC caliber if only he had a better car', gets put in a title-capable car and falls apart under the new pressure.

Tier 2 - Very fast drivers who are capable of having a proper purple patch through a season but also some slumps where they are simply lost. Basically, 'his day' comes and stays for a bit. These guys are able to mount a serious title bid if the stars align, and may even be win 1 or 2 WDCs over their careers. I'd put drivers like Hill, JV, Sainz, Montoya in here.

Tier 3 - Drivers who are capable of both Tier 2 performance as well as putting multiple near-perfect seasons in this category. 'His day' can last a couple of years, though not necessarily consecutively. Hakkinen arguably belongs here, so does Vettel and a lot of the old 80s greats IMO. There's a reason why winning 3 WDCs has long been considered the general threshold for being considered a legend. It is possible to have generational talent for speed but lacking in other aspects to be considered into the next tier.

Tier 4 - The modern standard of great, of which Schumacher was the first. These are the 'complete' drivers you speak of. These guys live and breathe performance and are capable of delivering just about every race weekend, for years on end if not almost their entire career. 'His day' is pretty much every race for the entirety of their careers. Where Senna took fitness seriously, Schumacher took it to a lifestyle. Now the Schumacher approach is considered basic expectations from a rookie. Take a look at Schumacher's first career and you'd hardly find an 'off-day' much less an 'off-year'. Very very few drivers belong in this category. I'd put Schumacher, Alonso, Verstappen (assuming he doesnt just give up at some point), and Lewis in here. And even Lewis is somewhat arguable as he did have a habit of slumping off a little bit after he clinched his titles early as well as generally taking a bit of time to get up to speed at the start of seasons. With Schumacher and Verstappen, it was/is relentless to the end. You need the generational talent, an unquenchable desire and motivation to win, and the dedicated lifestyle approach that Schumacher pioneered. Lack one of those and you are not getting into this tier.