Favorite Racer

[RUS]

Who is your favorite real racer? Tell us!

[RUS]

Favorite world racer: Michael Schumacher
Favorite Russian racer: Grigoriy Komarov

[zargz]

some of my favorite racers on Tellus are from

F1 :arrow: Montoya

NASCAR :arrow: Mark Martin

motoGP :arrow: i begin to like Rossi since he left the best team for a weaker and stil won the Championship!
Wish Shumacher had the guts to do that .. :roll:
Boring when the same guy wins all the time & the team with most money gets the best cars and drivers!
Think next year I'll follow the IRL- Indy Racing League instead of F1
As I understand they all get the same chassi and engines :?: not sure but pretty tight racing the races i've seen!

[RUS]

zargz, IRL is too thick racing. I think ChampCar is better...

[G'Kyl]

Favorite driver? That would be Alessandro (or Alex) Zanardi. I always had a lot of respect for his driving and himself, especially for how he managed to be an excellent race driver while at the same time being this guy next door - without faking the latter. Many are said to have stayed sooo down-to-earth when success hit their lives... he actually did. Anyway, from a racing perspective he often drove more visibly pleasant than most of the rest of the world. Plus, he managed to be successful with it. ;) Too bad he never got accustomed to an F1 again when he changed series from Ganassi to Williams. I am certain he had a lot more potential than he was able to show. Anyway, we all know what happened at the German500, but what I still find most respectable is the way he knew his sport and its risks and how he accepted both the latter and the loss of his legs. And now he is back in the cockpit? I find that amazing like nothing else. Yep, if there were anything like a hero in my life, it would be him. ;)

Ben

[infoxicated]

F1: JP Montoya and Jacques Villeneuve are my faves, not that I watch F1 any more.
IRL: Dario Franchitti (the scottish connection!), and Vitor Meira really impressed me last year - if he can maintain his mid to late 2004 season pace this year then he should win a few. I also thought Buddy Rice was good value last year, but made mistakes when it mattered most. Tomas Scheckter is also cool - taking five cars on the outside of one corner at Indy, but again, he makes too many mistakes.

<IRL promotional rant>
RUS - not sure what you mean about IRL being "too thick racing" - the league governing body has to be one of the most pro-active in motorsport for creating a series with regulations that allow the cars to run within inches of each other. In no other series where the cars have wings do they run closer and more exciting races than they do in the IRL. It's where F1 gets it all wrong - every car is designed to disrupt the airflow of the car behind.

zargz, you could do much worse than following the IRL this year - it restored my love of motor racing last year, after over a decade of being jaded by the poor product that is F1. The first few races I watched I couldn't understand why the announcers were so blase about some of the closest, edge-of-the-seat racing I had seen in years, and it turned out it was because they were used to it! I watched every IRL race from the Indy 500 onwards last year, and there was only the one at Milwaukee which I thought was dull. That was the exception, however - a couple of the races had the closest finishes in the history of the sport.

Check out the final ten laps of the Kansas 300:
http://209.43.92.201/brickyard/imsproductions/webvideo/040704kan2-bg.wmv

Those are team mates going at it, side by side, for the win - you'd never see that in F1! :lol:

And then there's the absolutely insane finish in Chicago 2003:
http://209.43.92.201/brickyard/imsproductions/webvideo/030907chi2-bg.wmv

With some road / street courses thrown into the mix this year, it should be a more gentle transition for those who have watched F1 all the time and aren't sure about oval racing, so give it a try - you wont be disappointed. :)
</IRL promotional rant>

[Lance]

.
i've tended to be a European road racing purist, but IRL is very good. and a couple of years ago, i saw a race in NASCAR [NASCAR!!!!! ? !!!] that blew me away. although it was a road course. ;)
it was at the old Sear's Point course in California, which is usually referred to now by the nascar crowd by the name of the race sponsor, Infinium. what an awesome race, utterly close and unpredictable right down to the finish, with cars trying like hell to pass each other in the hairpin. side by side, within inches, or less! of each other. a spin out into the sand by the leader, who fell well back, then caught up to the front again! his car ultimately failed. the engine blew out, i think. but what a race and what an effort by all the drivers. great stuff. my snooty elitism took a big hit that day, and never quite recovered.
.

[G'Kyl]

Rob: When F1 started to become the bland circus of promotion that took the fun out of watching races, Champcar (then Indycar) was the one open wheel series that kept my faith in motorsports. I agree, though, the IRL currently does it best. They don't try to be something they are not and at the same time have one of the best competition within any racing series.
Lance: I have seen another great NASCAR race. I don't remember were they were driving - some superspeedway I think. Anyway, they went side by side, three wide most most of the time, with the entire pack never breaking up, with no accident happening throughout the race. Some might say that was boring as hell to look at, but to me it was one of the things I won't forgot so quickly. Way cool. :)

Ben

[Lance]

.
the most exciting NASCAR tracks to me are the two roadracing venues and the the small ovals, such as Bristol and Martinsville. Rockingham is also very good. the racing is so dynamic on those tracks. the action is more apparent than it is on the superspeedways, although there is actually plenty of action on them as well. i didn't realise how difficult real-life oval tracks are to drive till i got the F355 Challenge videogame for Dreamcast. bloody hell! it is really hard to win those races. the simulation of car behaviour seems so true to life in that game, so true to my own experience of how cars feel at extremes of behaviour, that i must believe it is really like that to drive on the ovals. each one seems to have its own unique irregularities of surface and curve, and to not be uniform and dull as i had imagined. i still like road courses better, but now i respect oval track racing and the drivers who do it. they're very skilled, and very technically knowledgeable, no matter what accent they speak their language with.
.

[G'Kyl]

What I like about ovals is that they are more about head-to-head competition than road races. Sure, driving them isn't easy as one might suspect, but the driver can make more of a difference himself than he can on road courses.
I don't know what kind of a computer you have, Lance, but if you can grab a copy of one of the latest NASCAR Racing games from Papyrus. There is no better simulation of the series than the latest NR!

Ben

[DuraFlex]

Last year I went to watch the F1 grand prix here in Belgium (Spa Francorchamps) and I was stunned by the whole atmosphere. The noise, the speed, ... Realy realy cool. We even made some sound recordings there :D Maybe the F1 season was boring, I think its still cool.

I prefer regular circuits above ovals. Probably other culture since it isnt done in Europe (at least not that I know of). I admit the high speeds on ovals are insane, but nothing cooler then taking a series of corners at high speed. Check Eau Rouge on the Belgium grand prix, one of the most intense series of corners in racing.

On topic, my favourite pilot is Michael Shumacher although there are some great talents comming up like Raikonnen, Button and Alonso.

[G'Kyl]

I prefer regular circuits above ovals. Probably other culture since it isnt done in Europe (at least not that I know of).

Oh, but there are ovals in Europa. I was at the Eurospeedway (40 minutes away from were I live) in 2001 [edit: that was 2001, not 200 ;) ], witnessing Europa's first Champcar race and it was amazing, to say the least. I just loved the sound of the engines when the cars would fly by while neither braking nor accelerating. You could hardly hear them. Only a quiet whisper made you recognize the cars. :)


I admit the high speeds on ovals are insane, but nothing cooler then taking a series of corners at high speed.

Actually, from my, if I may say so, somewhat extensive experience with racing games, I like 3rd or 4th gear corners best. They are were you can really make a difference when preceeding a straight. Not to mention going side by side into a turn.


On topic, my favourite pilot is Michael Shumacher although there are some great talents comming up like Raikonnen, Button and Alonso.

I have a somewhat ambivilant opinion on Schumacher. On the one hand, he is one f the greatest race driver of all times, to say the least. I am pretty sure that we will not see another driver like him in our lifetime. On the other hand, though, he is certainly not the most charismatic pilot around - never has been. So I guess you could say he is great, but no fun to watch. ;-)

Ben

[Lance]

.
off topic][again]
Ben, i have an old, slow computer. 500MHz Celeron, 96 megs RAM, and a dial-up internet connection. downloading games is difficult, and in any case, i prefer console games [ahem, edit:] to PC games. i've tried some racing games on my PC, but... just not satisfactory[/off topic]

my favourite racing driver of all time: Stirling Moss
other greats:
Tazio Nuvolari
Juan Manuel Fangio
Jim Clark
Niki Lauda
Alex Zanardi
Dan Gurney
the genius-talented but nasty Ayrton Senna
Alain Prost
David Coulthard
Count Louis Zborowski
Tim Birkin
S.C.H. Davis
...

[DuraFlex]

G'Kyl, didnt know about the ovals, could be cool to watch, guess you have a good overview of the race on an oval. With fast corners I meant high 3rd or 4th gear, although Au Rouge is in 5th I think.

Here in Belgium Schumacher particpated in a soccer game for charity (he scored 2 goals) so I think some people may have a wrong image of him. But I must admit that when it comes to racing he's a perfectionist and probably a difficult person to work with. Your right about the charisma anyway :)

Still forgot a favourite pilote, and that was Senna.

[infoxicated]

Schumacher just donated $10 million to the tsunami disaster fund, but that doesn't make him the kind of guy I'd get along with, either.

I'd be asking him "Hey, Michael, how come you made sure Johnny Herbert never had the same parts as you when he was your team mate at Benneton? And why did you take Damon Hill out at Adelaide that time? What about Villeneuve? remember when you drove into his car when yours expired in the final race of that '97 season? Surely that makes you one of the least honourable sportsmen to ever drive in the Formula One world championship? No? but what about your race fixing when you were soundly beaten by Rubens? and then your further cheapening of the sport at the US GP when you tried to engineer a draw?..."

And I'd probably go on, too, until they set their dog on me. A dog that was a stray his wife adopted at a GP circuit. But that doesn't mean they're the kind of people I'd get along with! ;)

[G'Kyl]

You're spot-on, Rob. Of COURSE Schumacher, and a few others, donated a carload of money. But hey, it's been expected of them and it doesn't cost them even half as much as it seems to John Doe.

You get one hell of good view, DuraFlex! :) In fact, I was able to oversee anything except for some parts of the track near the finish line. Apart from that you could follow one car around the entire track if it wasn't running within too much traffic.
Whoops, you're right. When I was typing my last post, I was actually thinking some not so recent years, when Au Rouge was still a flat out passage.

And Senna, yes.... would have loved to see him in direct competition with Schumacher. Two perfectionists in two similarily fast cars, what else would I have needed to live? ;)

Lance: If you got time (a lot - no, a LOT - of it) then buy yourself a copy of Grand Prix Legends and a steering wheel. That might change your attitude towards console games. ;)
OK, no, you won't probably like it that much, but driving the '67 F1 season, powered by still one of the best physics engines around, really gave you a feel for what that sport must have been like. But I won't stray "off" any further. Sorry. :)

Ben

[zargz]

infoxx: Those links you posted is what I'm talking about! :rock_on :guitarist :evilgrin 8)

[jimsin]

Was going to post a new thread about this, but then found this one lurking around from years ago.

My favourites are:

1 - Ayrton Senna
2 - Valentino Rossi
3 - Jean Alesi
4 - Alessandro Zanardi
5 - Juan Pablo Montoya

[Mu5]

My favourite - Colin McRae :D

[KIGO1987]

:D:DI still have his old PS1 games:D:D

[mic-dk]

My favorite has to be Valentino Rossi. I also have a lot of sympathy for Loris Capirossi, now that he's grown up (yes, yes, he was a bit of pillock when he raced the lower classes).

Honourable mention to Stéphane Peterhansel for winning the (Paris-)Dakar Rally on both two and four wheels.

[slimjim]

Colin McRae
Ari Vatanen
Stig Blomqvist

[miizu3]

-Ayrton Senna
-Mika Häkkinen
-Marcus Grönholm
-Tommi Mäkinen

[AG-wolf]

Lightning McQueen!! :D

Wait a minute...

In all honesty, I haven't had cable for over 5 years, so I haven't been able to follow racing in any of its forms. I'm a big NASCAR fan but Earnhardt was still alive when I was still in the loop, I used to watch NHRA drag racing but lost touch with that too, I know jack sh*t about the F1 circuit (and never really liked it anyway), don't follow euro Rally racing, hate supercar racing (this dumb thing (http://www.automobilsport.com/uploads/_neustart/00American-Series/grandam-homestead-liferacing.jpg)), and any other vehicles maintain far less of my interest :P