Reject Seasons

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Life w12
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Reject Seasons

Post by Life w12 »

For all of you "Rejects" I was wondering what year you would consider the most reject season. I know F1 Rejects has The Annus Horribilis Award but that's just based on the number of reject teams and drivers competing in that season, what I'm talking about is overall badness, such as a really predictable champion (like 2002 ) lots of horrendous accidents, lots of bad or boring racing or the season just plain overall sucked.
My pick for a reject season would be 1994. We lost a legend and a young driver on the rise, as a result many of the new safety requirements shot up the cost of racing and that trimmed down the number of teams in the subsequent years, many fast and exciting tracks like Spa and Montreal now had mickey-mouse chicanes to slow the cars down. Add to that the large number of pay-drivers and reject drivers and you have my reject season.
What season would you all consider a "Reject Season?"
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Re: Reject Seasons

Post by RejectSteve »

My only disagreement would be that "lost young driver" was 33 years old, I believe. 1994 was very rejectworthy. It was also the last season we had full 26 car grids all year, even with Pacific's drivers failing to qualify. 1996 was quite reject worthy as well. Williams was the only consistantly quick team, with Ferrari only accomplishing anything thanks to Schumacher's brilliance. It was the first year of the 107% rule which rapidly spiralled Forti into oblivion and Panis had his terrible accident in Montreal, if I remember correctly. Of course, Jacques Villeneuve and Ralf Schumacher made their grand prix debuts.
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CarlosFerreira
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Re: Reject Seasons

Post by CarlosFerreira »

2004. The way Schummy won 13 of the 14 first races (cheers to Trulli for Monaco) moved me away from watching Formula 1. It was the year I started preferring MotoGP or DTM to F1.
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dresda
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Re: Reject Seasons

Post by dresda »

'94 was a ghastly year, Verstappen had a fire during a refueling stop at Hockenheim, and I think that was the year we had a wheel go into the crowd and kill someone (can't remember the venue however, Monza?). Frentzen's accident at Monaco was in '94 too. <shudder>

We've had some pretty boring seasons - '92, but it was very nice to see that lovely man, Riccardo Patrese, do so well. Such a gentleman.

Just about any season where Schuey won the championship (yawn).
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Re: Reject Seasons

Post by Captain Hammer »

The Michael Schumacher years are a bit like Beatlemania: I can approeciate what the Fab Four did for music, but that doesn't mean I have to like any of the songs they produced. In the same way, I can appreciate what Schumacher did in taking seven World Championships, but he also single-handedly made the sport boring.
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Re: Reject Seasons

Post by Debaser »

Panis had his bad crash in 97, and Ralf made his debut in 97. 97 was a year for rejects to do well-9 teams made the podium,and if there was ever a reject champion Jacques Villeneuve has to be it. I'd say 1990 was best reject year,you had Coloni, AGS, Life, EuroBrun,t he final chaotic year of Monteverdi/Onyx and Osella and reject drivers such as Barilla, Langes, Gary Brabham, Foitek, Dalmas and honorary rejects like Aguri Suzuki, Roberto Moreno and Tarquini.
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midgrid
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Re: Reject Seasons

Post by midgrid »

1995 - the season that provided the stimulus for the 107% rule to be introduced.

Highlights:
*Forti, Pacific and Simtek all together in the same race! (Until the latter went bust.)
*Giovanni Lavaggi and Jean-Deletraz having fun in the Pacific. Katsumi Yamamoto and Oliver Gavin saved from reject-dom by failing to be granted super licences. Hideki Noda prevented from returning to F1 by Simtek's withdrawal.
*Forti only qualifying within 107% of pole position on one out of 34 occasions. A common occurrence for the field to be spread evenly over a ten-second interval per lap, and the tail-enders to be lapped up to seven times during a race.
*Taki Inoue driving for Footwork, in between getting hit by course cars.
*Drivers routinely qualifying two seconds or more in front of their team-mates (Schumacher and Herbert, Frentzen and Wendlinger/Boullion, Montermini and Lavaggi/Deletraz).
*Nigel Mansell's final comeback and retirement.
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rffp
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Re: Reject Seasons

Post by rffp »

1992 was one of the most boring seasons ever. Williams had such a superior edge that it proved impossible for others to match the "Nige's pace". Patrese could be a contender, but he had a mediocre performance, and for those who don't remember, in Magny-Cours he was in the front and was ordered to let Mansell by. Of course, there were good races like the Monaco, Belgian and Australian GPs.

2002 and 2004 were of course terrible years. In the first, Ferrari dispensed Barrichello a shameful treatment, and although I believe he didn't have an actual chance of being champion, the gap from him to Schummy should be way less than 77 points. In 2004, well, it was the most boring of them all. No team made an actual challenge to Ferrari, and Schummy was at his peak with no driver close to matching his performance.
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Re: Reject Seasons

Post by RejectSteve »

Debaser wrote:Panis had his bad crash in 97, and Ralf made his debut in 97. 97 was a year for rejects to do well-9 teams made the podium,and if there was ever a reject champion Jacques Villeneuve has to be it. I'd say 1990 was best reject year,you had Coloni, AGS, Life, EuroBrun,t he final chaotic year of Monteverdi/Onyx and Osella and reject drivers such as Barilla, Langes, Gary Brabham, Foitek, Dalmas and honorary rejects like Aguri Suzuki, Roberto Moreno and Tarquini.
My mistake. 1997 was a bit reject worthy then, wasn't it? What a great year, two Japanese drivers on the grid with Katayama and Nakano. The last official year of Brian Hart engines before his company was purchased by Arrows. There was the MasterCard Lola (lack of) effort which included none other Ricardo Rosset. Villeneuve, the world champion? The clincher.

dresda, the incident with the wheel you mention was on the Imola start line incident when Lehto stalled the Benetton, fortunately nobody was killed in that incident. Other than the previously mentioned accidents there was also Barrichello's horror smash on Friday and one of the Minardis exiting the pits on three wheels as the fourth mowed down mechanics at Lotus. I don't remember Frentzen crashing at Monaco, but Wendlinger did and never quite showed the same promise again. Other reasons for 1994:
* The Silverstone shenanigans: Schumacher passing Hill on the warmup lap and the subsequent disqualification and his two-race ban
* The Spa shenanigans: Schumacher's disqualification from Spa thanks to plank wear.
* The Schu won the championship with questionable driving in Adelaide (a quick, young German crashing, returning to the course, and continuing in Australia... Vettel's inspiration? :lol: )
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Re: Reject Seasons

Post by Enforcer »

94 is probably the best candidate, between Wendlinger, Barrichello, Senna, Verstappen, Montermini and Ratzenberger all having horrible accidents, and the litany of reject drivers that snaked into the sport. Although I have a certain fondness for it because of the Grand Prix 2 video game.

2002 would a be a personal pick of mine, because it's when Jordan slid from being capable high midfield runners who had reliability issues for a couple of seasons, to back of the pack material, where they remain today as Force India.
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dresda
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Re: Reject Seasons

Post by dresda »

RejectSteve wrote:dresda, the incident with the wheel you mention was on the Imola start line incident when Lehto stalled the Benetton, fortunately nobody was killed in that incident. Other than the previously mentioned accidents there was also Barrichello's horror smash on Friday and one of the Minardis exiting the pits on three wheels as the fourth mowed down mechanics at Lotus. I don't remember Frentzen crashing at Monaco, but Wendlinger did and never quite showed the same promise again.


My mistake, yes, it was Wendlinger who crashed at Monaco in '94. That really was a pretty grim year.

Frenzen had his Monaco crash in 2001, fortunately not as serious as the one Wendlinger had.
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Re: Reject Seasons

Post by jonnyeol »

2002 - I was living a heavy all-night clubbing life back then and picked a good year to miss a few races. It was the way Ferrari lorded their advantage over the entire field. 2004 was much the same but not as bad as it still produced some good races (Monaco, Spa - also Monza and Interlagos to an extent).

I think any year where there was one dominant team, plus two or three teams who are reliable enough to pick up the minor points (and thus prevent any minnows giving us a 'feel good moment') but not fast enough to challenge for wins. 2002 again! Ferrari win 15 out of 17 races, but in all bar one case, McLaren and Williams hogged the lower steps of the podium.
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runningboots
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Re: Reject Seasons

Post by runningboots »

For me, any of the Ferrari-Schumacher years were awful and fully allowed me to book Sunday afternoon on the sofa with two hours guaranteed kip after the start.

1988 was different as total domination was such a new thing, but there was real racing between Prost and Senna.

This season is so much better already.
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Re: Reject Seasons

Post by rffp »

Enforcer wrote:94 is probably the best candidate, between Wendlinger, Barrichello, Senna, Verstappen, Montermini and Ratzenberger all having horrible accidents, and the litany of reject drivers that snaked into the sport. Although I have a certain fondness for it because of the Grand Prix 2 video game.


1994 was also a sad year since it was marked by the end of Lotus. It was kind of sad to see such great team vanish, especially for us Brazilians, since Fittipaldi, Senna, Piquet and Moreno (of course) all raced for Lotus.
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Re: Reject Seasons

Post by Chilled Phill »

2002 has to be very high up the list, certainly. Along with 1988 for the same reason - a reason you can probably guess already with 1992 not far behind as well as 1993, but I think the latter (which had three possible world champions prior to the Portuguese Grand Prix) was perhaps more open than '92 - although saying "that year was more open than '92" is like saying your nation has more Grand Prix winners than Nigeria, utterly pointless . ;)

1994 I wouldn't really class as a "Reject season" of sorts as I'm sure the championship fight between Hill and Schumacher was a massive plus. However, scrutineers' decisions made a major minus along with the deaths of Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenburger.

However, if we're seriously considering a season to which a notable amount of fatal accidents occured, then one has to put forward 1974 - David Purley's "finest hour", per say, always seems to get to me. :(

Off track controversy has to go to 2007 for the farce they made of the McLaren Spygate scandal and other incidents which were handled pretty poorly - Hungarian GP anyone? 2006's "Mass damper" issue was a reject worthy farce, although nothing is more farcical than a £50m(?) fine slapped on your team for one man's, a man who wasn't even - a man who wasn't even employed by your team in the first place, foolish actions... :roll:
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Re: Reject Seasons

Post by Har1MAS1415 »

This year perhaps?
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