Ten crazy rules that used to exist in F1<\/a><\/p>\nIn an interview with RacingNews365, Villeneuve made some strong claims about the quality of drivers in the modern era, particularly when compared to those of the past \u2014 including why he believes that modern drivers are less skilled than their predecessors.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, an average driver can look acceptable,\u201d Villeneuve said to begin his explanation.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you look at the past, an average driver would be two seconds off the pace, the way the cars were.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, an average driver will be half a second [behind]. Okay, that\u2019s acceptable \u2014 but you meant less difference.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Villeneuve, this is \u201cbecause of the way the cars are driven.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re very stable cars,\u201d he explained, \u201cand also, once you get to race pace, they slow down a lot to work, to control the tyres and everything.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo it\u2019s just a different F1 driver, different kind of cars.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a result, Villeneuve believes that the quality of the field overall has declined.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you look at the past, in Ayrton Senna and [Alain] Prost\u2019s era, you had five drivers like Max [Verstappen] every year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow you only have Max, so the playing field is\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cNow there\u2019s a lot of good drivers, where before there were a few extremely good drivers and a bunch of good drivers. So, I think the whole scheme has changed.\u201d<\/p>\n
But where does that leave Verstappen?<\/p>\n
\u201cMax is not better than the very good ones of the past,\u201d Villeneuve stated.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s alone right now, so he stands out. He makes the difference.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is a pure racer, and there\u2019s not many of them anymore\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
But Villeneuve seems to be implying that Verstappen\u2019s recent dominance is less to do with his surplus of talent, and more to do with a dearth of talent in the rest of the field. It follows that if there were more drivers of that calibre in the field, Verstappen would be facing stiffer competition.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a bold statement, but as with many other arguments about how to properly rate drivers between eras, it doesn\u2019t necessarily get at the complete heart of the sport\u2019s ever-evolving situation \u2014 where cars have grown more reliable, seasons have expanded, tracks have gotten safer, drivers have prioritized the optimization of physical performance, and teams operate with near-military precision.<\/p>\n
Read next:\u00a0Uncovered: The technical details behind F1 2025\u2019s design secrets<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Is Max Verstappen one of the greatest Formula 1 drivers of all time? There are many who would…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64904,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,818,13207,825,44,918,85],"class_list":["post-89478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-home-page","tag-jacques-villeneuve","tag-max-verstappen","tag-news","tag-red-bull","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}