"You must take the compromise to win, or else, nothing. That means: you race or you do not."
These were the words of perhaps the most famous Formula One driver to have lived; Ayrton Senna. A driver who perfected the art of aggressiveness when it came to racing a Formula One car. This was just one of his quotes which portrayed the Brazilian's aggressiveness and hunger to win at what he could do best.
But recently in Formula One, due to a string of incidents because of the aggressiveness of some drivers; fans and people involved within the sport have been debating, "when is it no longer aggressive driving but just a danger to themselves and other drivers alike?" Well, in my opinion, it's obvious. You can have an aggressive driver who's spacial awareness is perfect and then you have an aggressive driver you is a little bit too ambitious. But, everyone makes mistakes and the very best can over estimate a gap when trying to overtake. Remember Senna, who we were talking about beforehand? Another of his famous quotes includes:
"Being a racing driver means you are racing with other people and if you no longer go for a gap that exists you are no longer a racing driver because we are competing."
A lot of the time Senna's aggressive driving worked out for him. Winning three World Championships before his untimely death in May of 1994. However, there were times where it didn't worked out how he would have liked. For example, Suzuka 1990. Here he had a collision with championship rival Alain Prost. For a time he claimed he went for a gap that opened up but it wasn't long before the Brazilian admitted into purposely crashing into Prost. This is the one of the differences between aggressive driving and dangerous driving.
Dangerous driving usually happens when a driver KNOWS they are commiting the "offence".
But this isn't always the case. Let's look at the 2018 Azerbaijan Grand Prix and the incident involving the two Red Bulls of Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen. Verstappen is known to be aggressive. He's not afraid to push just that little bit extra. Unfortunately for Max, this doesn't usually work out for him. Going back to Azerbaijan, Verstappen was leading Ricciardo in their little battle. If you know Formula One well then you will be well aware of the rule where you can only move once when defending. From my view, it looked as if Verstappen moved twice and therefore ended his race early when Ricciardo rear ended his teammate, eliminating them both. But, did Verstappen know what he was doing or was he just aggressively defending his position. Or, was Ricciardo just pushing a little too much? I don't know. It was a racing incident.
A range of other drivers have been showing some unfortunate examples of aggressiveness as of late including Magnussen and Grosjean. It has gotten to a point where other drivers have labeled them dangerous. But are they?
Unfortunatly, incidents happen and sometimes you can't stop them. I think the perfect motorsport racer should be aggressive, but they should know their bounderies. I'll happily defend some drivers actions if I believe it was aggressive but fine but if they take it too far and put themselves and others in danger, then it's gone too far.
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