[Driver] The GOAT - Round One - Jones vs Gurney

[crmalcolm]

The twelfth match-up in Round One sees Jones vs Gurney.

So who do you vote for as the greater driver?

Alan Jones
At his peak, many see Jones as the best driver on the grid. This was a relatively fallow period, during Niki Lauda‘s first retirement and before Alain Prost, Nelson Piquet, Elio de Angelis, Nigel Mansell, and Keke Rosberg had reached their best. Nevertheless, it was an impressive period of high-level performance from Jones, which helped bring Williams into its period of great success.

Dan Gurney
Dan Gurney never quite made a serious challenge for the WDC, but he was just as quick as title winners of the era and his abilities were deeply respected by his peers. His career began at Ferrari in 1959 before a move to BRM alongside Graham Hill and Jo Bonnier in 1960. While he was initially outperformed by Hill, 1961 saw an improvement in form, as Gurney dominated Bonnier at Porsche. He carried this momentum into 1962, again outperforming Bonnier. Across 1960-1962, he beat Bonnier 6-2 in counting races, 13-9 in qualifying, and 36-10 in points.

From 1963-1965, Gurney demonstrated his potential by facing and beating double-champion Jack Brabham 5-5 in counting races, 19-7 in qualifying, and 54-34 in points. Gurney was also joined by the rookie Denny Hulme in 1965, beating him 1-0 in counting races, 5-0 in qualifying, and 13-5 in points.

Gurney left to start his own team with the new 1966 regulations, just as the Brabham team became front-runners, carrying Brabham and Hulme to titles. The model predicts that Gurney would have been favorite to take both the 1966 and 1967 titles, had he remained at Brabham. Gurney spent 1966-1967 as sole driver at his new team, with a crippling 14 mechanical DNFs in 19 starts. In the remaining five races, he finished four in the points, including a win at the 1967 Belgian GP. Thereafter, Gurney made only occasional race appearances in F1.

One of Gurney’s key attributes was his incredibly clean driving. In 86 starts, he had only two crash-related DNFs, one of those in wet conditions. His crash rate of just 1.4% in the dry is the lowest of any driver who started at least 50 races.

[Aysedasi]

Gurney for me on this one.

[FIRE]

Jones