[New!] Ranking Nigel Mansell's F1 Cars

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#76

Post by JBT »

Bottom post of the previous page:

Interesting. No inside info Michael - my detail came from the book 'Team Lotus - Beyond the Colin Chapman Era' by Ibrar Malik. I stand corrected.
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#77

Post by White six »

JBT wrote: 3 years ago Interesting. No inside info Michael - my detail came from the book 'Team Lotus - Beyond the Colin Chapman Era' by Ibrar Malik. I stand corrected.
It's odd :haha:
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#78

Post by XcraigX »

Antonov wrote: 3 years ago 1. 1992 Williams
2. 1987 Williams (evolution of the already great '86 car)
3. 1986 Williams
4. 1991 Williams
5. 1990 Ferrari (evolution of the '89 car)
6. 1994 Williams
7. 1985 Williams
8. 1989 Ferrari
9. 1984 Lotus (95T)
10. 1982 Lotus (91)
11. 1995 McLaren
12. 1988 Williams
13. 1983 Lotus - latter season (94T)
14. 1981 Lotus (87)
15. 1980 Lotus (81)
16. 1983 Lotus - early season (92)
I think it's a bit early for the whole list. Instead we should continue our discussion. Places 9 through 16 are close, but we originally had the FW12 and the MP4/10 lower in the order.

Is it time to start talking about the Ferrari's?

I'll go. I've always like the Ferrari 640 and was dissapointed with it's reliability (or lack of consistency there). I've read it was a battery problem. But I loved that they were the first to introduce the semi-auto gearbox. It was usually the fastest car in race trim, but not always in qualifying (it had great top end HP, but low on Torques). Unfortunately, it did not finish very often, but it won it's very first race outright. Without Mansells two (duh!) disqualifications that year, they could have finished 2nd in the championship. The 640 seemed to be the only car to challenge the McLarens that year and had they got to the bottom of the issues faster, who knows?
The Ferrari 641 proved an even better car than the 640 and propelled Prost to 2nd in the championship. Unfortunately for our man Nigel, he was outclassed by the multiple world champion in his own team. Even then this car still was amazing and the complete fullfilment of the Ferrari vision in the late 80's. If only it wasn't for that pesky Senna ( :haha: ) , it would have been a WDC winning car.

I think the Ferrari 641 should take the 4th spot behind the 3 top Williams (14B, 11B, and 14) and and the 640 should take 7th in front the of the FW10.
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#79

Post by Michael Ferner »

I think it's a common mistake to believe that the 1990 Ferrari was better than the '89 one, and one that Ferrari made themselves - they failed to push development, and got left totally behind in 1991. If you look at the results, you can see that Ferrari was already slipping badly in 1990. With Berger and Prost switching seats, it's easy to compare: both Senna and Berger improved their results in 1990, while Prost and Mansell both had a worse season than the year before. Ergo, McLaren was further ahead of Ferrari in 1990 than in '89, and only the fact that Prost was a (much) better driver than Berger created the false impression that Ferrari were getting closer. In reality, they were already dropping away, culminating in the disastrous '91 campaign.
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#80

Post by XcraigX »

Michael Ferner wrote: 3 years ago I think it's a common mistake to believe that the 1990 Ferrari was better than the '89 one (A), and one that Ferrari made themselves - they failed to push development, and got left totally behind in 1991. If you look at the results, you can see that Ferrari was already slipping badly in 1990. With Berger and Prost switching seats, it's easy to compare: both Senna and Berger improved their results in 1990 (B), while Prost and Mansell both had a worse season than the year before. Ergo, McLaren was further ahead of Ferrari in 1990 than in '89 (C), and only the fact that Prost was a (much) better driver than Berger created the false impression that Ferrari were getting closer. In reality, they were already dropping away, culminating in the disastrous '91 campaign (also A).
Disagree here.
A. The 640 barely finished a handful of races that year. It was quick, but had many problems. 3 race wins and 18 Retirements does not make it a better car than the 641.
The 640 was designed by John Barnard who left the team at the end of the season. Meaning that the 641 was designed by him also and simply developed by Nichols and Scalabroni to iron out the kinks for the 1990 season. The 642 was the first car designed wholly by Steve Nichols (Scalabroni left) starting some time in 1990. The reason 1991 Ferrari 642 was poor was because a different team designed the car.

B. And the notion that Berger improved at McLaren in 1990 is false. Berger made the podium in every race he finished in the Ferrari 640 in 1989 (one win and two 2nd places), but failed to win a race in 1990 at McLaren (the champion winning MP4/5B car). The only reason he placed higher in the championship is that he finished more races. He only saw the checkered flag 3 times in 1989 at Ferrari vs. 13 in 1990 in the McLaren. His best result in 1990 was two 2nd places. Your interpretation of the available data does not prove your point that he "improved". He just finished more often because the MP4/5B was a better car than the Ferrari 640. In fact it proves the point that the Ferrari 640 was not as good of a car as the 641 based on the fact it the 640 had so much trouble making it to the end of a race.

C. 1989 constructor points: McLaren = 141 vs Ferrari = 59. 1990 constructor points: McLaren = 121 vs. Ferrari = 110. Very false. Did you look this up?

The 641 was an evolutionary improvement of the 640 and therefore a better car. The trend of downward performance at Ferrari was not a result of a poor car in 1990, but a complete change of team members.
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#81

Post by Michael Ferner »

Of course, the 1990 Ferrari was better than the '89 Ferrari, that's a bit like saying every Minardi was a better car than the Lotus 49! It's the relative performance to McLaren that is the issue here, and that can best be assessed by the performance of the drivers, which merely shuffled around between the two teams:

Senna improved from 60 points to 78 in 1990,
Berger from 21 to 43.

Prost dropped from 81 to 73, and
Mansell from 38 to 37.

In other words: if you stayed with McLaren, or moved to McLaren, your results improved, but if you stayed with Ferrari, or moved to Ferrari, your results suffered. It's true, the '89 Ferrari had dreadful reliability issues, but that's part of the "package", isn't it? Even with the better reliability in 1990, Mansell scored fewer points, if marginally. But both McLaren drivers in 1990 made big jumps in the standings, while the Ferrari drivers not only stagnated, but dropped slightly in performance. I'm not saying Ferrari was on par with McLaren in 1989, or that Senna or Prost could have been World Champions in a red car, but the often repeated mantra that Ferrari closed the gap in 1990 is definitely not true, in fact it's the opposite. Merely comparing the constructor points is a futile exercise because of the change of drivers.

And no, the 1991 Ferrari was not an entirely new car, in fact you only have to look at it to understand why Autocourse wrote: "Ferrari started the year (1991) with what turned out to be basically its 1990 car." (I'm paraphrasing here from memory, I can give the full quote later). Even the new car introduced half way through the season couldn't hide its origins with the original Barnard design ('639') which had been shown to the press fully three years earlier. Ferrari stood still, while McLaren and Williams made giant leaps.
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#82

Post by XcraigX »

You are using the McLaren to asses the Ferrari and I don't think that applies. That creates a False Causality which is a known statistical error. Senna scored more because he got a weaker team mate in the fields most dominant car. Prost scored less because he went from the best car McLaren to the 2nd best car Ferrari. Mansell scored 1 less which is a statistical tie. Berger scored more because he went into a better car. There are some very significant factors you are ignoring to draw a conclusion. You can't ignore them.
How should we compare cars? Lap times, finishes, points, wins, poles, and fastest laps are good indicators. I don't think WDC points when drivers move between teams is a fair assessment because there are too many other factors to consider.

There are many things that cause a team to slide in performance, but it may not be relative to how good the previous car was. The 642 could have been a bad car because while the other teams developed something new, Ferrari's team made yet another evolution that did not go far enough or was dated compared to the rest of the field. This does not mean that the 641 was a bad car when it was new. In fact the other statistics seem to point to the fact it was a decent (almost championship winning) car.

The last bit of evidence is that the 640 scored no poles and 4 fastest laps in 1989.
The 641 scored 3 poles (all Mansell) and 5 fastest laps in 1990. Looks better from where I am sitting.
I see the statistics above as more relevant to a comparative performance of the Ferrari against the best car in the field (MP4/5). The addition of Prost did not increase the number of poles for the team, but did help in the fastest laps and wins.


While I'm glad you value the Autosport journalistic opinion, the evidence still does not support how the 641 was a worse car than the 640.
Can you argue that Ferrari were becoming a worse team through staffing decisions? Yes, I would agree. And that's what culminated in their decline in the early 90s and the introduction of worse and worse cars.
The 641 was the last car to be designed by Barnard before he left. He took what was good about the 640 and made it better.

So we spent all this time on where I ranked it. Where would you rank the 640 and the 641?
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#83

Post by White six »

XcraigX wrote: 3 years ago You are using the McLaren to asses the Ferrari and I don't think that applies. That creates a False Causality which is a known statistical error. Senna scored more because he got a weaker team mate in the fields most dominant car. Prost scored less because he went from the best car McLaren to the 2nd best car Ferrari. Mansell scored 1 less which is a statistical tie. Berger scored more because he went into a better car. There are some very significant factors you are ignoring to draw a conclusion. You can't ignore them.
How should we compare cars? Lap times, finishes, points, wins, poles, and fastest laps are good indicators. I don't think WDC points when drivers move between teams is a fair assessment because there are too many other factors to consider.

There are many things that cause a team to slide in performance, but it may not be relative to how good the previous car was. The 642 could have been a bad car because while the other teams developed something new, Ferrari's team made yet another evolution that did not go far enough or was dated compared to the rest of the field. This does not mean that the 641 was a bad car when it was new. In fact the other statistics seem to point to the fact it was a decent (almost championship winning) car.

The last bit of evidence is that the 640 scored no poles and 4 fastest laps in 1989.
The 641 scored 3 poles (all Mansell) and 5 fastest laps in 1990. Looks better from where I am sitting.
I see the statistics above as more relevant to a comparative performance of the Ferrari against the best car in the field (MP4/5). The addition of Prost did not increase the number of poles for the team, but did help in the fastest laps and wins.


While I'm glad you value the Autosport journalistic opinion, the evidence still does not support how the 641 was a worse car than the 640.
Can you argue that Ferrari were becoming a worse team through staffing decisions? Yes, I would agree. And that's what culminated in their decline in the early 90s and the introduction of worse and worse cars.
The 641 was the last car to be designed by Barnard before he left. He took what was good about the 640 and made it better.

So we spent all this time on where I ranked it. Where would you rank the 640 and the 641?
What's the point of these threads if you don't compare cars from year xxxx against other cars of the same year?

That seems the whole point

On one hand the fw11 is amazing, on the other it's shit

It's just a bit of fun
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#84

Post by Michael Ferner »

"You are using the McLaren to asses the Ferrari" - yes, that was exactly the stated intention, and no, that has absolutely nothing to do with logical fallacies, or "false causality" as you call it. I'm sorry, but you have completely misunderstood that article. To avoid further embarrassment, I'm going to notify you that I'm a trained philosopher, and that includes lessons in logic which I have concluded summa cum laude - you're not going to win a metaphorical fight with a judoka master. :wink:

Once again, not the difference in performance between the '640' and '641' is at question here, but the difference in relative performance between the '640' and the MP4/5, and between the '641' and the MP4/5B. In other words, I use the McLarens of 1989 and '90 as yardsticks to measure the merits of the 1989 and '90 Ferraris, respectively. Or, to use Minardi again, there's no question that, in absolute terms, say, a Minardi M194 was a much better car in every aspect than a Lotus 72, yet in terms relative to its competition, the latter was top of the pops for several years, while the former was an also-ran - here, I'm arguing the corner that the Lotus was a better car than the Minardi, okay?

You are right, in that I'm ignoring several factors here for simplicity's sake, but whether they're significant or even "very significant" is a different matter. The object of F1 motor racing is to win championships, and that is achieved by accruing championship points over a specified period. I'm all for detailed analysis why this car failed to score more points, or why that driver was flattered by his final score, but in the end it's the bottom line that counts. And, I really don't want to get involved in silly qualifying times mathematics, as I don't give a damn shit about pole positions or the like, it's completely immaterial. Also, fastest race laps have to be seen in context, otherwise they're pointless, too. WC points may be a flawed criterion, but at least they're universally accepted by the competing teams and drivers, otherwise they wouldn't bother, would they? In any case, I have my standardized evaluation system which puts more weight on wins and podiums, and here the situation is even clearer (Senna improves from 20.7 to 24.4, Berger from 6.0 to 8.2, Prost drops from 22.6 to 21.6, and Mansell from 10.7 to 9.0).

I still owe you the quote from Autocourse 1991-92, written by no less an authority than Alan Henry: "(...) when the MP4/6 and FW14 respectively immediately outclassed what was essentially a 1990 Ferrari, now given the designation '642', nobody should have been surprised. One person who wasn't was Prost, who had anxiously pressed the management to speed up the design of a new car over the winter. It didn't happen, so Ferrari relied on last year's hardware to open the season. And they were blown away." -- No, this does not say or mean that the 1990 Ferrari was a bad car (I'm only including it here to completely refute your assertions as to why Ferrari fell off the cliff in 1991), and it definitely wasn't. it was a more than competent car which almost won the championship. But it was not as big a step forward from the '89 car than the MP4/5B was, and the failure to appreciate that was one of the contributing factors in Ferrari's steep decline that followed. That's all I'm saying. :)
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#85

Post by XcraigX »

White six wrote: 3 years ago What's the point of these threads if you don't compare cars from year xxxx against other cars of the same year?

That seems the whole point

On one hand the fw11 is amazing, on the other it's shit

It's just a bit of fun

Yes you can. Perhaps my first statement is a bit of a mistake. (I should have chosen different wording). Sorry for creating my own confusion.
I can even see where I used the comparison in a different way in my own post.

There are so many factors when you compare between cars, that they all need to be considered as relative performance. I just feel individual driver points at different teams is not a relative car performance indicator.
Lap times, total races finished, total points of the car, fastest laps, poles, and gaps between finishing positions are all good car performance indicators in my mind.

Of course it's all fun. Do I sound angry? I hope not. That's not what I was trying to convey. I guess I'm arguing my position too hard.

It's also why I asked @Michael Ferner for where he would rank the Ferrari's.

so with that said, where would you put them in this list?
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#86

Post by XcraigX »

Michael Ferner wrote: 3 years ago I'm going to notify you that I'm a trained philosopher, and that includes lessons in logic which I have concluded summa cum laude
So you're a philosopher?


:haha:

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#87

Post by Michael Ferner »

Yep. Seek cover, or I'm going to bullshit you to death! :tongue:
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#88

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Sorry for being away from this thread, been very busy with work this week. I see discussion has moved onto the Ferraris, which is very good.

@Michael Ferner seems to be saying the 1989 car was better, while others say the 1990 car was better.
There is no real science to this game, but I find Michael's logic odd, because points scored is not relative between individual years. 1989 was totally dominated by McLaren but in 1990, Ferrari obviously clawed a lot of that deficit back and did not allow McLaren to run away with it.

Prost actually won MORE races in 1990 for Ferrari than he did at McLaren in 1989 when he was crowned champion. So, for me, it's in this order:

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#89

Post by XcraigX »

:agreepost:
While the 640 showed lots of potential (1 win and 2 seconds for Mansell), it seemed to rarely finish a race. Therefore I think there are a few cars in between these because the 640 should be lower in the ranking.
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#90

Post by White six »

PTRACER wrote: 3 years ago Sorry for being away from this thread, been very busy with work this week. I see discussion has moved onto the Ferraris, which is very good.

@Michael Ferner seems to be saying the 1989 car was better, while others say the 1990 car was better.
There is no real science to this game, but I find Michael's logic odd, because points scored is not relative between individual years. 1989 was totally dominated by McLaren but in 1990, Ferrari obviously clawed a lot of that deficit back and did not allow McLaren to run away with it.

Prost actually won MORE races in 1990 for Ferrari than he did at McLaren in 1989 when he was crowned champion. So, for me, it's in this order:

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The 641 at no.1, and the 640 at no.27?

That seems unduly harsh
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#91

Post by Michael Ferner »

PTRACER wrote: 3 years ago @Michael Ferner seems to be saying the 1989 car was better, while others say the 1990 car was better.
There is no real science to this game, but I find Michael's logic odd
As odd as a Lotus win in 1987? I can live with that... :mrgreen:
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