I watch these kids drive now and they have computers that shift the car, computers that control the engine power, computers that track every detail of the car and a team of like 50 people all sitting at computers feeding them information. It's not so much racing anymore as a space exploration mission...or a video game. A lot of the young drivers now go from karting straight into the F3000 and F2 feeder programs. It used to be that in order to be qualified to drive a F1 car, which was so hard to drive that it would kill you if you made a mistake, a driver would have to have a huge library of prior skill development in sports cars, rallies, motorcycles and other open-wheel racing to even be able to control the thing. They truly were elite drivers, who were fast in anything. My favorite driver using this metric is Mario Andretti. No matter what he was driving, Mario was always able to run at the highest limits. I put Rudolph Caracciola, Sterling Moss, Fangio, Jim Clark, Jackie Stewart, Dan Gurney, John Surtees, A.J. Foyt, Senna, Alonso and Raikkonen in that bucket, and find it difficult to say who is better amongst them. If pushed, I would say Jim Clark was the best driver ever.
The best example of this is a video I just watched with Kimi and Antonio Giovanazzi driving around the Ring in an Alfa Romeo. Kimi was driving at nearly top speed, yet he looked like I do when I'm cruising down the highway in my F-150. Totally relaxed, in control and having an easy conversation ... at 150 mph on an undulating, wet racetrack with no runoff. Giovanazzi- a modern F1 driver- was
visibly scared out of his wits. You could see he was uncomfortable being untethered from his 50-person safety blanket and specialized F1 car set up just for him an a nice, wide track with plenty of runoff in all directions. This tells you all you need to know about a real, elite driver. Can you imagine A.J. Foyt or Senna acting like that? They would be smiling and laughing and giving Kimi s#$t for not going faster. Makes me wonder if the best days of auto racing are already behind us...
Edit: found it.