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I'm honestly quite surprised that you've never even heard of the likes of Senna or Schumacher Until now I was under impression that even those who had absolutely no interest in racing and motorsports still knew those household names! Anyway, the answer to your question depends on whom you ask. One thing you have to realise is that the sport has changed so much over the years that there's no way to rate drivers over different eras objectively and so comparisons across generations are pretty much useless. Different cars, different attitudes and mentality, different technology, different standards; just a different racing culture altogether. As an example, it's one thing to drive a heavy death trap of the 60s and 70s with no power steering and help from the team garage on unforgiving tracks with poor safety standards, a completely different one to drive a modern heavily aerodynamics-reliant F1 car with all its subtleties, the electronics and driver aids and constant team feedback over the radio where the driver has to do a lot of information management in the cockpit. Rating the drivers based on the era they raced makes more sense I think. I'm only following F1 properly since late 80s/early 90s so can only judge the previous generations based on some archive footage, stories I've heard and books I've read, but that's how I'd do that: 50s - Fangio 60s - Clark 70s - Lauda 80s - Prost 90s - Senna 00s - Schumacher 10s - Hamilton The list still misses a lot of extremely gifted drivers; Mansell, Piquet, Häkkinen, Alonso, Stewart, Moss, Patrese, Hill to name a few big ones. My personal list from the ones I followed closely would be Schumacher - Senna - Prost - Hamilton. Michael will always be #1 for me (for numerous reasons; some of them being objective, some very subjective) but I'm putting that list in no order otherwise. Hamilton is definitely the best driver of his generation, only Alonso comes close to him in my opinion.

I need a vomiting emoji reaction to properly respond to this.

Well, when I think about him now, I feel the same way. You need to have certain characteristics that might make you look arrogant if you want to be at the top, in that business. Just when I was younger I just saw it as arrogance. But I still liked his personality even more when he got older. He was more relaxed and open for a bit of fun every now and then.

For me as a kid watching him drive the car was pure magic; raw speed, his driving style and especially his cornering technique, also his incredible performances on a wet track in the rain. I also loved his confidence and determination; he seemed to radiate authority and command respect with his presence alone. For sure he had quite a few highly controversial moments on the track and while I wasn't proud of them, I was still always impressed with his sheer will to win, his hunger and resilience. I can definitely understand how that could come across as arrogance, especially combined with his privacy and "cold" interviews, but for me there was a fine line there which he didn't cross and seeing how well he treated his mechanics and other team members and later hearing first hand accounts on how he treated people in general only cemented his status as a legend to me.

I had a Michael Schumacher Thermoskanne that I brought with me everywhere I went

Frentzen then. I remember jumping on my parents couch when he won his first race in San Marino back in 1997. Used to draw his Williams car all the time to as a kid

Heinz-Harald Frentzen or Sebastian Vettel for me. And yes, I have been to the Nürburgring in 2013. I recorded this video:

Geez don't promote that shite

Well, there's the one from the official F1 youtube channel, Beyond The Grid Missed Apex Podcast And @nudge 's favourite , former F1-Champion Nico Rosberg's podcast Beyond Victory

Their team principal, Guenther Steiner, is funny as fuck

yeah - in terms of racing, the Andretti's are a household name here. I'll be team Haas, though. I love a good underdog.

Nope, but I guess it's not that bad in F1, since teams always relied on investors and sponsors. But even though I was already a Sebastian Vettel fan when he drove for Red Bull, I wouldn't have worn any of their merchandise with the fucking Red Bull logo on it

Charles Leclerc for sure. There's no such thing as relegation or promotion; you have 10 teams (also called constructors as each team is required to build their own chassis) at the moment taking part in F1, each team has two cars/two drivers. Most teams have their own driver academies or driver development schemes where they sponsor young upcoming drivers in lower feeder series. F1 is the highest class of single-seater motor racing. F2 is one step below on the ladder; then you have various F3 series below that, then F4 series, then various karting competitions etc. They all differ in organisation and rules and regulations but essentially, those junior formula series are spec series, meaning that all cars in the series are essentially the same so there's better opportunities for young drivers to demonstrate their skills hoping to make impression to climb through those junior single-seater ranks and "graduate" into F1 eventually.

Formula 1: Drive to Survive https://www.netflix.com/title/80204890

Oooooooooooh. Guenther Steiner on Beyond the Grid this week. Should be a good one. I'll listen to it later.

He could watch the Netflix documentary. Loads of new F1 because of it, especially from America.

What about Scott Speed?

Interesting. https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2019/04/01/the-walking-dead-finale-who-is-the-mystery-voice-on-the-radio/#40dce00f6a9b

Which years? I was there in 2010 and 2011. Need to go again but will probably try and get to Spa rather than Silverstone. Imagine what a detestable team Red Bull will become when he is Verstappen's team mate.

The podcast was meh though