The Great Ones

Think for a moment what makes a driver great – a true champion. Go ahead, I’ll wait…hmmmh, hmmh, hmmmh. Done? What came to mind? Skill? Absolutely. Without doubt the true greats possess an inherent, seemingly hard-wired, ability to know and feel what a car is doing. This has been evidenced throughout the years by drivers like Clark and Fangio who could slip behind the wheel of a car they had never set eyes on before and within a couple of laps push the car faster than drivers with far more experience. Perhaps it’s genetics.

What else defines the greats? Nerve? Certainly this has to be a key component as well. How else could you get behind the wheel of a car that you had never driven before and push it faster than it has ever gone? Drivers like Villeneuve and Senna were capable of feats of shear courage behind the wheel that made other top-line drivers cringe just to think of it.