Top 10 Formula 1 Drivers of the 2000s

so heading into the 2000s everyone thought they were going to die or something i don't know something about computers forgetting who they were and everything breaking and being thrown back into the stone age all very tinfoil hat stuff sure enough it didn't happen but what we did get was a very interesting decade of formula one full of legends and incredible moments and tire blowouts and traction control and groove tires okay maybe not all of it was amazing but looking at the grid back in those days was pretty astounding and when you look back and try and rank the drivers from that period it's nigh on impossible what do you want to do save a box of kittens or save a box of puppies don't make me choose but without wishing to get woefully off topic here and seeing as how it's been a while since i did the last one i figured to move into the twilight of the series and rank the 10 best formula one drivers of the 2000s now i feel the need to mention a thing or two here because even i got a bit angsty at a couple of my choices on this list basically i'm taking the whole decade into account what i mean by that is that a driver is done one or two seasons in the 2000s we'll probably have less of a chance as someone who has stuck around for the entirety of it sometimes achievements will outweigh a driver's pace and vice versa hey look this list is entirely opinion based no sherlock so don't take it to heart if you disagree with it just comment your top 10 list down below so i could be in the youtube algorithms good books for another week capisce right on so first we'll dig into the honorable mentions and oh boy there are some big cookies in this one there was nick heidfeld an extraordinary driver who probably has about half a dozen less victories than he deserved nico rosberg and the days before he jumped shipped to mercedes putting in some bloody good performances in the williams before the decade was out ralph schumacher a very good driver for the likes of toyota and williams in this decade before he went on to become jack vioner's successor in time magazine's loudmouth of the year award robert kubitsa who is quite handy in the bmw salba i'm going to hell aren't i david coulthard who is much better than people may think or remember him to be and also help lay some of the foundations down for the red bull team to be what it is today and lastly mika hakkanen okay please i know some people are going to be asking for my head for putting him in the honourable mentions ward but him only being in the first two years of the decade makes it a tad hard to put him in the ten besides it's not as if it makes it bad or anything it's just how these rankings work on this channel because it's run like a dictatorship probably not a good thing in hindsight anyways as always we're not gonna start with number one on this list rather we'll start with one pablo montoya i had to make that joke don't kill me montoya was menacingly fast on a racetrack and he had proven that long before he entered the world of formula one after having set the american open wheel scene alive formula one team boss and pro wheelchairs frank williams offered him a gig in his team not a stupid idea given the success he had with jack vilner and while montoya looked at fitness in the same way that meghan the stallion's entourage looked at martin brundle his ability behind the wheel shone through especially in those epic battles with michael schumacher but broke through with a win at monza in 2001 for the next two years he would stamp his authority at williams and was in close contention for the title in 2003 but then the walrus car happened and then he went to mclaren and although he would achieve three wins at mclaren making it seven victories overall in his relatively short f1 career he's still fondly remembered to this day some even as amongst the best who have never won the world championship someone else you could physically put into their argument was fellow south american and ferrari slave man rubens baroquello when you think ribbons barricallow some of you are probably going to be thinking michael schumacher's wingman which kind of sucks because there was more to this guy than 2002 austria replacing eddie irvine at ferrari in 2000 he was always meant to be on a hiding to nothing but that didn't stop him from achieving some fine results he achieved 11 wins throughout his career most of them at ferrari but some of them at the braun outfit in 2009 whilst he couldn't match jensen in his time there he still managed to achieve decent results for sure and although he was always branded as schumacher's mule at ferrari his nine wins and 13 pole positions in the 2000s demonstrated his skill one particular example being at the 2003 british grand prix a performance that i'm pretty sure even by the more lack standards of the time wasn't meant to be shown before the watershed his time at honda was a little bit of a down period but you can't expect much from him when the car is going slower than the supposed b team at the time but i mean hey losing to a b team driver wasn't the most alien thing to happen back then mark weber experienced that back in 2008 not that it meant webber was a bad driver he definitely wasn't when he entered the scene back in 2002 not many people would have predicted he'd get points or anything i mean for crying out loud he was in a minardi who was about a state of the art as ekwyo's fleet but after half the grip blew up on the first corner and after mikasa crumpled under the pressure of battling for fifth place with a minardi weber got points on debut and became the first aussie to score points in his home grand prix at least i think he was and of course whilst he couldn't do much of anything in that team he went over to jaguar then to williams with some amount of success i suppose and by that i mean he got one podium in 2005 but both these teams had completely died in the ass in terms of their former glory he was then snapped up by red bull for 2007 and by 2009 it seemed to all work out for him getting his first victory at the nurburgring later that year more success would follow in the 2010s but for what it was worth and how he performed relative to his teammates this was a pretty decent effort all around and that debut in 2002 really was a thing of beauty especially compared to the other debutants in that race who retired an enorgy of smoking coolant ah yes that poor salba didn't fare too well that's for sure but in the races after that felipe massa did pretty well despite being replaced by heinz harold francine in 2003 for some reason he would return to the team for 2004 and o5 performing valiantly and asserting himself as a genuine talent and that was great for him because in 2006 he was given his big break at ferrari replacing rubens varakalo he was now going to be the teammate of michael schumacher and oh boy that's a hell of a teammate to have but you know he did good winning his first grand prix in turkey that year and also winning at interlagos in front of his home crowd in a ferrari which is just about as good as life can possibly get he also had a good season in 2007 despite the indomitable kimi raikkonen having been signed on to be his teammate but 2008 was where he would put forth a serious claim for the title he drove so bloody well that year and was briefly world champion before teemo glock's endeavour to walk on water backfired but with another win at interlagos as well as a further five wins that year alone to accompany it massa was admired by everyone for being a damn good driver and had that german decided to defy the laws of physics and avoid becoming a mean would have been a very worthy world champion indeed on the subject of that race actually someone who helped massa almost become champion was a dude who would eventually become champion himself now me putting sebastian fettle the slow on the list is gonna horrify some people but let me clarify for the next couple people on this list that their debuts in the decade were quite late so that's all i'm going to say on it if you haven't got the picture by now no no slam your head on the desk or throw your phone out the window either one of them should do the trick anyway seb made his debut back in the 2007 united states grand prix driving for the bmw salba team after robert kubitsu was injured in montreal in that race he would become the youngest point scorer ever and what was a pretty good drive once robber got better however seb was taken out of the sea and back into oblivion but then he was given another lifeline when scott speed was given the old heave hoe from toro rosso after fighting with an elderly fan and thus gave seb a full-time slot on the grid pretty much that season's car didn't really allow him to do much of anything but a 4th place finish in china after starting 17th was a remarkable result although it wasn't quite as remarkable as his maiden win at monza the following year that newer toro rosso was definitely the goods but sid maximized its potential and damn nearly played a hand in deciding the 08 title by planting his car ahead of the mclarens after being promoted to rebel 109 he began winning on a more consistent basis he finished runner-up that year in oldboy we probably weren't prepared for the beast that was about to come in the decade that followed ditto goes for the next dude on this list mr lewis hamilton we're all too used to the prospect of lewis fighting for wins week in and week out probably because for virtually his entire career that's just how it's been debuting in 2007 against the lord of the eyebrows not a hell of a lot of people were expecting this guy to be pushing him against the ropes by heading into the second to last round that year in china he was leading the standings by 12 points in a time where a win got you 10. he could have won the title that day lest he found that one pit lane gravel trap in the entire world whilst driving on ties that were worn down to the canvas he lost his maiden title in his maiden year of formula one that means it sounds gut-wrenching but my god man that was a hell of a debut year arguably one of the greatest best car or not in 2008 he would get his maiden title despite a few things that happened that year putting in some absolutely herculean performances such as that silverstone in the rain and even in 2009 when the car was a bit of a heathen he still found a way to win because that's just what you would expect from a dude who was just that great behind the wheel but of course the car didn't quite match up to the braun that year which took jensen basson to his first and only world title before that jensen was always regarded as a fantastic talent his first season wasn't brilliant but then again judging off of one season is not the smartest thing in the world to do you often need to give them a couple of years or in some people's cases five he sort of bounced around from williams to benetton then to bar and almost back to williams again before contract doings prevented that and that was strange because in 2004 bar had done pretty well and gave him a car which could score podiums on a consistent basis in fact after having scored no podiums preceding that season he scored 10 that year fantastic then maybe this will lead to bigger and better things eh yeah no not really the team began to gradually decline and despite scoring his maiden win in hungary in 2006 the team began to drown in 07 and 08. honda then pulled out of the sport which at this stage was starting to become kinky for them and left everyone in limbo but when ross braun bought the team for a pound and went into the preseason testing in 09 they knew they had something and after winning six out of the first seven grand prix it gave button enough of a cushion to help him win the world championship in 2009. it's remarkable that he held onto it to be honest especially with what the other teams began to produce in the latter half of the year although ferrari were always kind of against the ropes that season which was a little bit sad because they had kimi raikkonen that year and raikkonen was absolutely undeniably insanely mesmerizingly fast debuting in 2001 for salba he had shown his speed and immediately put himself in ron dennis's good books signing him up for mclaren in 2002 his success wasn't immediate primarily because the damn thing was so unreliable but by 2003 he got his first grand prix victory in sepang he didn't win anything else that year but he came so close to winning the title thanks to 17 million second place finishes that year had things gone differently maybe he could have won the title meh coulda woulda shoulda if taya fabi's here didn't weigh him down he could have been a 10-time world champion but hey here we are now after his stint at mclaren he went off to ferrari for 2007 and immediately won the world championship after mclaren tore itself to pieces from the inside out he won races for the remaining two years he had for the scooter at the time before eventually deciding nah can't be asked with f1 anymore at the end of 2009 and bug it off to do rally and nascar but for me the season that embodied just how fast kimi was was the year 2005 finishing second that year it may seem a little strange to put that above 2007 but there is a good reason why there was no one no one that year that extracted more out of the car than he did 2005 kimmy was scary fast he won seven races that year and a total of 13 podiums in the 19 races held that year if you want to count this one as a race but kimmy's problem was that the car was still bloody and reliable it was a huge shame but you need only watch kimmy that season to understand why there is more to him than the lovable persona where he applauds the media and loves the drink he's a great dude and hell of a driver and probably 2005 driver of the year even if the champion for that year was the lord of the eyebrows alright for his sake i'll stop calling him that now fernando alonso entered formula one with minardi and much like other people who joined that team he couldn't do too much with it after taking a year off he was in with renault and immediately took a liking to being up the front taking his first pole position and sepang that year and winning his first race at hungary his incredible ability behind the wheel needed a carter match and in 2005 he got it with the r25 he took his first world championship and would win again the following year to become a national hero in spain i think his time at mclaren almost brought about another world title but it definitely did just about require the entirety of the working outfit to undertake marriage counselling he then went back to renault where things didn't really improve so much but he definitely made hay with what he had with a little bit of help from resident walking waterbed flav his championship in 2005 was for some people at least an absolute blessing because for the entirety of the 2000s up to that point it was dominated by one man as with the 1990s this decade was topped by the one and only michael schumacher from 2000 to 2004 schumacher racked up five world titles adding on to the previous two one in 94 and 95 even in years like o3 where he was able to ward off the likes of montoya and raikkonen yeah crazy to think there was a time where more than one or two cars vied for the world title now radical concept shimmy continued to show why he was the man in formula one his final season or at least we thought it was his final season and 2006 proved that even when he was about to bow out that he was still going to go toe-to-toe with whoever it was to become champion of the world problem is before he got a chance to do that his engine noped on him in japan still he retired with 91 total wins seven world titles and only one major controversy in this decade an improvement over the 90s this decade further added to the legend of the man and why people still to this day regard michael schumacher as the greatest to have ever done it but you know there ain't no goat if there was one it'd be this dude the joke's old now in it anyways thank you all for watching drop a comment below subscribe to the channel if you're awesome and always remember keep it respectful be wholesome don't be a modest and as always i'll see you all later [Music] you

Channel: Josh Revell

Views: 364,213

Keywords: F1, Formula 1, Formula One, 2000s, Schumacher, Michael Schumacher, Hamilton, Lewis Hamilton, Alonso, Fernando Alonso, Raikkonen, Kimi Raikkonen

Id: Xy3tjCh7S3c

Length: 13min 26sec (806 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 28 2021