Hey chief, I got a pic of Senna dominating Monaco (in the rain, of course) as my desktop! He's my hero, but I dunno how he'd do in a modern Ferrari against Schumi. We can discuss, but there's no question Michael's up there with the best.
Alain is probably the most cerebral driver ever. Not the most talented, but one of the smartest.
Trying to compare F1 and NASCAR is like trying to compare ballet and break dancing. Both are great racing but the similarities end at the fact that each competitor has 4 tires and an engine. Technology, track design, physical demands placed on the drivers, not to mention the rule variations leave very little room for meaningful comparison.
While I'm not a great fan of oval racing the fact is that NASCAR is great afternoon entertainment. F1 is a very different animal and to truly enjoy it requires a significant investment of time and attention. Look, I'm an F1 psychotic, but then I'd probably watch insects race if it were televised. I track pre-season test times for every track and driver and do stats analysis on the results. The whole sport is about strategies and technology, and the rules Mosley brought in this year for qualifying have thrown an interesting monkey wrench into the mix due to the post-qualifying Parc Ferme regulation, which forces the teams to think carefully about their fuel strategy. NASCAR's a much more rough and tumble form of racing to be sure, but there's a competitive tension in F1 simply because the opportunities for overtaking and fewer pit stops leaves much less margin for error for each driver/team.
Both have their respective merits, as does CART, but the similarities end there.
Someone made a comment about the average speeds at Monaco. Irrelevant. The only reason they still race there is history and the fact that a lot of the drivers live there. It's a dangerous tight street course with little or no overtaking opportunity and the teams positively hate the pit/garage arrangement. For speed look at Hokkenheim or SPA, but unfortunately unless Belgium does something about their tobacco advertising rules we've seen the last race there we'll see. Pity.
Now, as for Michael. It would be interesting to see a shoot out with him and Senna but tragicallly we can't. Would Senna come out on top? Hard to say. Schumi is in better physical condition than Senna was and the tracks have changed due to safety considerations but that's not the whole story. One has to look at the knowledge base of the two. Recall where Michael came from. His dad was a dirt poor small engine mechanic in Kerpan who built his son a go cart with the hopes he'd develop an interest in engines and therefore learn a trade. Well, Michael became interested in engines, all right, specifically how fast he could make one go! The rest is history. The one major difference between him and every other driver is his almost mystical ability to read a car's performance on the fly and advise his team what needed to be changed. No other driver spends as much time actually working with his engineers and mechanics and actually helping to develop the car. A lot of F1 drivers basically show up at the track. Could other drivers today better him in the same car? Well, Alonzo seems to be coming along nicely and Kimi is proving to be a real talent. The Canuck in me wants to think that Jacques could give him a run for the money but JV is so darned hard on cars that he'd likely find a way to ruin Ferrari's reliability record. He's past his due date IMHO. As for Road Hazard Montoya it's a reason to open the champaign whenever he manages to finish a race without hitting anything.
The biggest complaint one could make about F1 is the disparity in team budgets which range from around 25 million for the Minardi's of the world to over 300 million for Ferrari and Toyota (remember them? That's what this thread started out being about!). If something doesn't give on the engine supply front this could be crippling to the sport in the medium term, but my faith is Max and rabbi Eccelstone will come up with something (saying no to bernie is a very bad strategy).
To all you NASCAR fans who have never been to an F1 race but otherwise love racing I highly recommend you give it a try, and by luck the Indy race in September is one of if not the least expensive F1 events on the calender, not to mention that the city puts a great face on for race weekend. Heck, the way the season's shaping up it may even be the deciding race for the championship this year. It's not the best F1 track on the tour but watching those cars come around turn 13 and in front of the main grandstand (turn 1 for you Indy 500 fans...the F1 cars go around the other way...and will run in the rain, BTW) and peel into the straightaway is one of the most beautiful sights in racing. There is simply nothing to compare to the passion and atmosphere of Formula 1 when seen live at the track.
Okay, typed long enough. In the words of the immortal Murray Walker, it's time to "GO GO GO!"
Cheers, eh!