F1 drivers of the current era

There have been many debates about who is the best F1 driver thus far and it is a difficult one to judge because different drivers faced different challenges during their career and the cars they drove were very different. Typical Brits will say it is Lewis Hamilton because of his natural ability to drive the heck out of the car at any given day while Germans will argue that Michael Schumacher is the undisputed best of all with the most number of wins, most Championship titles and most Pole Positions, then the Brazilians will say it is Ayrton Senna. None of these top names can be accurately compared with one another since the cars and technology were different. They all possessed natural talent and incredible tenacity to win.

Now comes a new breed of F1 drivers who will soon replace seasoned drivers like Hamilton. The two names that come to mind are Max Verstappen and Carlos Sainz. These two are sons of former race car drivers with Max Verstappen being the son of Vos Verstappen who was the team mate of Michael Schumacher and Carlos Sainz is the son of the multiple world champion rally driver Carlos Sainz. Racing is in the DNA of these two young drivers and soon another son of a legend will join them, Mick Schumacher, son of Michael Schumacher.

The pressure and expectation on the shoulders of these young drivers is immense having fathers who succeeded in their racing career leaving a legacy behind for their sons. It is not uncommon for sons of previous champions to join the same fraternity, people like Jacque Villeneuve and Damon Hill were sons of champions. Both managed to live up to their father's legacy and won on their own capacity.

There is no shortage of talent in F1 but standing out in the crowd is the hard part. Driving with a top team makes things that much easier in terms of winning but the true talent is on display when the driver can win in a second rate car. Driver's like Sebastian Vettel did so in a Torro Rosso and so did Fernando Alonso. Driver's like Lewis Hamilton had a good car in all of his career so far and that helped tremendously with his wins tally however if he was stuck in a second rate team with a mediocre car, can he win? Of course one would argue if the conditions were right and he had the opportunity he could definitely win.

The current season's championship race is not very interesting because it appears that Mercedes is having an internal battle between the two drivers but once the regulations change again in 2017 there might be a shake up and some secondary teams may be able to pull something over the big teams. this was what happened with Brawn GP team and got lucky with an aerodynamic component design that allowed them to have a massive advantage.