In this three-week period between Grands Prix when nothing is happening and news gets thin on the ground, those of us suffering from F1 withdrawal symptoms can get some relief by delving into history at YouTube. This is a fantastic resource if you’re looking for old video clips of great races or drivers. Just enter the name in the search bar and, if the videos are there, they will show up in the results.

Here are three I found in a few minutes digging this morning:

A lap of Monaco with Senna. Who better to drive you through the streets of the principality than the master himself?

Senna holds back Mansell at Monaco in 1992. Mansell had a commanding lead until having to change tires ten laps from the end, allowing Senna in the uncompetitive McLaren to move to the front. The Williams was so much the quicker car that Mansell was able to catch Senna with three laps to go. The problem then was the minor matter of getting by him…

Hakkinen versus Schumacher at Spa. It’s a fair old battle but the real reason I include this one is that it has a wonderful in-car shot of the Eau Rouge corner, taken at full speed.

There are quite a lot of repeats amongst the videos as the most popular ones get copied again and again, but this is a sure pointer to something worth watching. And, every now and then, it is possible to stumble across a gem, a clip of some great moment remembered vividly from the past and now presented once more for our delight. How about this, for instance:

A compilation of highlights from 1967. All the old names are here and the cars as well. But look at the circuits – can you see any run-off zones or armco? They were brave men indeed, although I suspect the guy waving the flag at the start and end of the race was the bravest of them all!

Enjoy!

Wherever F1 fans gather, the subject will come up: who was the greatest driver of all time? It’s a never-ending debate and one that has no answer, as it’s impossible to compare drivers from different eras; each faced and conquered the challenges of their time, extracting performance from their cars that seemed impossible.

Much also depends on what we have seen. In the early sixties, there was general consensus that the greatest was Tazio Nuvolari. René Dreyfuss said this of him: “He talked to his cars, and they answered! It was incredible. He would jump from side to side, put his whole body into the effort. It seemed to me sometimes that he was himself physically lifting the car – over a curb, for example, to take a corner faster. We’d ask ourselves often, how can he drive that way? That’s not right. But then he’d win …”

My problem is that I never saw Nuvolari drive, apart from blurred images in old newsreels that told one nothing. And how can we compare those skinny-tired monsters of the time with the technical masterpieces of today? The skills required to drive them must be entirely different.

So Nuvolari must remain for all time as the greatest driver of the pre-war era and we can talk only of the drivers of modern times. Fangio and Clark have some claim to be the best, but they occupy that intervening period when cars were still fairly primitive and downforce was never mentioned. Our era really starts with the introduction of wings; from that moment onwards, designers spent much of their time getting the cars to stick to the track.

With the possible exception of Stewart, there is no driver who stands head and shoulders above the rest through the seventies. Ground effect and skirts moved the goalposts at the end of the decade and I would propose a little-regarded driver as the one who mastered those cars better than any other: Nelson Piquet.

Ground effect cars were difficult to drive because they would hang on to the road like leeches but would let go very suddenly and without warning when the limit was reached. For this reason, you won’t see them sliding as they go through the corners; the drivers learned quickly to stay within the boundaries of adhesion. Except Piquet. Watch old videos of him taking the Brabham BT49 through corners and you will see the car twitching – it is right on the limit and Nelson is catching it every time it lets go. His reflexes were almost superhuman and it is no wonder that he was the only driver to mourn the outlawing of skirts a few years later.

The ground effect era was brief and Piquet was not to prove so outstanding in the cars that followed. But another Brazilian then came on the scene and towered over the drivers of his era. From the first, it was clear that Ayrton Senna was something special. He could get in a Toleman and wring its neck until it threatened the leaders. When he graduated to competitive cars, the only thing that would prevent him winning races was mechanical failure. I have no doubt that he was the greatest driver of the modern era.

Finally, there is Michael Schumacher. His record suggests that he might be on a par with Senna but there are doubts as well. The long list of controversies must be one and the new lions, Raikkonen and Alonso are others. Perhaps we need some distance before we can assess Mr Schumacher dispassionately.

John Surtees is still the only person ever to win world championships on both two wheels and four. I watched him in the sixties and, in my opinion, he was as fast as Jim Clark but not as astute in his choice of car. Jimmy stuck close to Colin Chapman throughout his career, knowing he was on to a good thing; Surtees made the risky decision to go to Ferrari, won a championship for them, and then fell out with il Commendatore. It was all downhill from there.

I will admit that my assessment of John Surtees is based almost entirely upon one race: the German Grand Prix of 1963. It was John’s first year with the Ferrari team and it looked as though he’d made a bad mistake in going there. In 1962 Ferrari had swept all before it with their shark-nosed 156, its V6 engine providing far more power and speed than the 4-cylinder Coventry Climax engines of the other teams. For 1963, however, Climax produced a V8 that immediately put the British cars ahead. Ferrari started work on a V8 of their own but, for most of the year, John had to soldier on with the V6.

It was a frustrating time for him but he tried hard in the underpowered car, usually achieving good finishes. And then came the German Grand Prix. This was held at the old Nurburgring, all 14 miles of it, the most challenging test of any driver with its huge variety of corners, straights, bumps, dips and even a banked corner known as the Carousel. The closest we have to it now is the shortened Grand Prix course at Spa in Belgium, but even that is a pale shadow in comparison to the Nurburgring. It was mighty and only very brave and capable drivers could win there.

Being a bike rider, John was certainly brave and he managed to qualify the Ferrari in second spot, right next to Jim Clark’s pole position. And, in the race, John hit the front and stayed there. For lap after lap he increased his lead over the more powerful Climax-engined cars, putting his car on the edge through every corner and wringing the utmost from the engine down the long straights. Clark tried hard but could not catch him.

In the end, John won by over a minute from Clark and the rest trailed in even further back. It was a victory won through the driver’s skill and courage alone, for we knew that the Ferrari was not the equal of the British cars, especially the Lotus. And it is the reason I think Jim Clark was not the fastest of them all in the sixties. The Nurburgring sorts them out and that day, August 4, 1963, John Surtees proved that he was a Ringmeister.

John went on from there to win the championship the next year and then to go from one failing team to another, eventually forming his own team to compete in the seventies. But, to me, his greatest moment came in Germany at the most terrifying circuit of all, when he showed the world that the great Jim Clark could be beaten and beaten well.