For the sake of completeness and rather than simply updating my earlier post, I thought I would post the actual list as featured in this week’s Autosport magazine together with a very brief quote from the magazine about each driver.

When you think of who has been left out, remember those included were, and I quote, “over time, these guys were consistently the best of their eras.”   Agree?  I think not!

10.  Jacky Ickx - “he’s an obvious selection as a rainmaster”

9.  Lewis Hamilton - “we’re already wondering where Hamilton could ultimately fit in the rankings of the greats”….”He was brilliant too at Shanghai - let’s not hold that pitlane mishap against him”

8.  Damon Hill - “there were rainy days when he proved that he really could get the job done”

7.  Juan Manuel Fangio - “in the Swiss GP…in one of the drenched races in history…Fangio won by nearly a minute”

6.  Gilles Villeneuve - “his reputation as a wet-weather star is based in large part on his performance in practice that weekend”

5.  Stirling Moss - “Moss’s talent shone through in any conditions in any car”

4.  Jim Clark - “His skills were demonstrated by two successes (in the wet) at Spa, the ultimate test and a track he hated”

3.  Jackie Stewart - “…earns his high position thanks largely to this extraordinary performance.  He dominated a miserable afternoon (and) he crossed the line four minutes ahead of nearest challenger Graham Hill”

2.  Michael Schumacher - “his final career tally includes many brilliant wet successes”

1.  Ayrton Senna - “…is our undisputed number one, simply because so many of the key landmarks of his career involved astonishing drives in the rain”

There are only very brief paragraphs about each driver apart from Senna, so I haven’t picked and chosen which sections to quote simply to benefit my own argument.  To me, they haven’t lived up to their opening claim - several drivers appear to have been chosen simply because of a performance in a single race which goes against their aim of finding the best from each era.

Because of the infrequent appearance of wet races, perhaps it’s hard to come up with a proper all-time top ten - maybe they should have simply tried for a top ten wet drives of single races instead.

But then that may not have created so much argument and debate  ;)