From: thos@suite.sw.oz.au (Thomas Cohen)
Newsgroups: rec.autos.sport
Subject: Re: Winning and !winning (was Re: F1: Piquet)
Date: 14 Apr 92 03:03:25 GMT
Organization: Softway Pty Ltd

In <9APR199208371454@utarlg.uta.edu> b790zcd@utarlg.uta.edu (George M. Smiley) writes:

[ much toing and froing]
>>>>>>Would you prefer to watch someone winning races or winning a championship?
>>>>>>I'd rather watch a driver like Gilles Villeneuve trying to win each and 
>>>>>>every lap, than someone like Piquet, content to collect championship 
>>>>>>points for second or third places.
>>>> 
>>>>>I can not agree with you. What is the goal of F1 ? Obviously it is win the
>>>>>championship. Every sport has its own rules. If points were given to the
>>>> 
>>>>As Stirling Moss put it "you may drive fast, you may even win races but 
>>>>unless you take every corner as fast as you can, you're not a racing
>>>>driver" (quote necessarily mangled by memory.)
>>>> 
>>>Yeah, but, Stirling Moss never won a chapionship, so I guess that makes
>>>him a poor source of quote.
>> 
>>Guess again. If you take the World Championship by itself to be the pinnacle
>>maybe.  As I said in reply to another post, I don't see the Championship
>>to be the be all to end all. Stirling Moss never won the championship
>>true, but the whole thread started because someone (Bruce McCulley?)
>>said that a racer is one who finishes, usually winning. My definition
>>of a racer is more in line with Moss's above quote. If you do not drive
>>as fast as your car is capable of going, then you are just collecting
>>starting money.
>> 

>Wrong again, the World Championship is the pinnacle, they only run races
>so they can crown a world champion. Back before Mansell started driving,

Gee, I wonder why they bothered running races before 1950 then?
As I said, I don't take the Championship to be the most coveted thing
in motorsport. The idea of 'it's not whether you win or lose, but
how you play the game' still holds some appeal to me. Obviously not
you. As I've said in some other post, the attitude that winning is
everything is a regrettable Americanism that seems to have been
promulgated far beyond its worth.
And, BTW, I was not wrong, I'm looking at it from an all too obviously
different viewpoint to yours.

>Moss was known as the British driver who won the most races without 
>winning a championship - not exactley a positive thing to be known as. The
>problem with him and many other 'racers' is that when the car starts to
>degrade because of the flogging they have administered to it, they just
>keep driving as fast as they were like nothing was wrong. This
>both endangers themself as well as anybody who happens to be near them 
>when the motor blows and spills oil all over the track. A real racer
>would either pull over or try to nurse the car to the finish.

What you're talking about here is an idiot, not a racer. If you see
yourself as a person who can class drivers of the calibre of Moss,
Villeneuve, Clark, Rindt, Mansell, Rosberg(probably) et al to 
that class, well, who am I to argue with you?

Nowhere in any of my arguments was it said, or implied that a 
Real Racer (tm) would keep going if the car becomes dangerous.
Drive as fast as the car is capable. If you would actually think
back to the beginning of this thread, we were arguing about drivers
who were at 8/10ths, not cars. Moss, Villeneuve, Rindt etc would
all stop if the car started failing. Only if they had a real chance
of winning would they keep going, but then, so would any 'thinking'
driver. It's amazing what adrenaline and a checquered flag does to
instincts of self-preservation.

Stroking around deliberately slower than the car is capable of is 
what started this thread - comments about Mansell setting fast laps
near the end of the race and how stupid that was. I say, so what?
The car's obviously capable of it, the driver too.

Peter Brock set the fastest lap of the 84(?) Bathurst 1000 race on the
very last lap and no one said that he was stupid to do it. They all 
commented on the crushing superiority of the car/team/driver.

>In other
>words your definition of a racer is someone who wants to die a racer.

I don't think that I even implied that. I wish you'd listen/read
what I said and not hang my name on your interpretation of it.
Admittedly the racers are perhaps more at risk, because they 'let
it all hang out' more frequently, but they are more entertaining,
and (consequently) usually more popular. On average they are also
held to be generally faster than most other drivers.

I will say it again...
My definition of a racer is more in line with Moss's above quote.
If you do not drive as fast as your car is capable of going, then
you are just collecting starting money.
For god's sake, these guys are paid to race, so how can you complain
that he was driving too slowly?

>George.
-- 
thos cohen  				       |Softway Pty Ltd
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 'but its _not a Ferrari_ is it?' R.Bulgin, CAR|Internet:    thos@softway.oz.au
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