The '13 driver transfer discussion/speculation thread op updated 16/10

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Adrian Newey has said he intends to finish his career with Red Bull.

Christian Horner has said that Vettel is under contract until 2015.

Luca di Montezemolo has said he won't put Vettel with Alonso because he "doesn't want two roosters" in the team together.
 
But why does F1 embrace this No. 1 and No. 2 garbage? I'd again point to NASCAR, where Hendrick runs 2 champions and 2 other would-be champions and treats them all equally. You don't hear much about within-team driver status in IndyCar either.
 
zippy_the_cat
But why does F1 embrace this No. 1 and No. 2 garbage? I'd again point to NASCAR, where Hendrick runs 2 champions and 2 other would-be champions and treats them all equally. You don't hear much about within-team driver status in IndyCar either.
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I could be wrong, but it may be something to do with team orders.
 
Two top drivers working at a team;

Berger & Alesi.
Stewart & Hill.
Hakkinen & Coulthard.

But as for two world class, championship winners working in tandem, that's a bit of an ask. Prost & Senna being a prime example. Button and Hamilton have done better than I thought they would, but you look at Canada 2011; it's not a foolproof situation. It can work, but not always.
 
zippy_the_cat
But why does F1 embrace this No. 1 and No. 2 garbage?
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Because if two drivers are directly competing against one another, taking points away from one another, it can cost the team the title. By rights, Red Bull should have won both the Drivers' and Constructors' Championships in 2009 - but Vettel and Webber were so busy taking points away from one another that neither could mount a challenge on Jenson Button, and despite Brawn running out of money to develop the car, he managed to get the title.

Ferrari is unique among Formula 1 teams in that they clearly have a number one driver from the start of the season. They back the driver that they feel will give them the best chance of winning the titles, and they support that driver from the outset.

zippy_the_cat
I'd again point to NASCAR, where Hendrick runs 2 champions and 2 other would-be champions and treats them all equally.
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You couldn't have picked a worse sport to point to. NASCAR and Formula 1 are at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of how the races are run and how the teams and drivers approach them.
 
Nobody but the diehards remember F1 Constructor's titles. Most anyone who casually follows the sport can tell you who won the Driver's Championship, though.
 
prisonermonkeys
Because if two drivers are directly competing against one another, taking points away from one another, it can cost the team the title.

...

You couldn't have picked a worse sport to point to. NASCAR and Formula 1 are at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of how the races are run and how the teams and drivers approach them.
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"Taking points off each other" can cost a driver the WDC but the point for the teams in F1 is to win the WCC, because that's where the money is. For the latter you wanna maximize the points haul from both drivers, and, assuming your car is up to competing, that in theory means getting the best drivers possible.

If you don't want to argue NASCAR, we can argue V8s. I don't see any No. 1/No. 2 situation between Whincup and Lowndes. On their day the team seems happy for either to win.

Maybe Ferrari doesn't care about the constructor's because they're pretty well fixed for cash either way.

Edit: I'm looking at the results for 2009 and I don't see where Webber and Vettel taking points off each other was the issue. They did, however, seem to have a massive reliability problem because they had 12 non-points finishes. Webber had a string of poor finishes in the final third of the season, a time when Vettel was racking up points. Brawn by contrast had only 3 non-points finishes all season. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Formula_One_season#Constructors.
 
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zippy_the_cat
If you don't want to argue NASCAR, we can argue V8s. I don't see any No. 1/No. 2 situation between Whincup and Lowndes. On their day the team seems happy for either to win.
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Why do you insist on comparing Formula 1 to another, completely-unrelated category?

Ferrari choose to have a clearly-defined number one driver and a clearly-defined number two driver, and they choose to separate those drivers into those roles early in the season. They do this because they believe it is the best way forward, and they have done it thsi way for years. It doesn't matter what Hendrick Motorsports does in NASCAR, or what Triple Eight does in V8 Supercar - those teams don't affect Ferrari.

Ferrari have a number one and a number two driver because they believe it promotes team harmony. Each of their drivers know what is expected of one another. There is no need for them to compete with one another to gain the support and the resources of the team, and they can instead focus on the championship. That might not make sense to you, but they believe it is the right way forward. And if they had have treated Alonso and Massa equally this year, they would not be in contention for either title. They often used Massa to test parts or tyres for Alonso's sake because Massa was not competitive at the time. Because of that, Alonso was able to plan his races more effectively, and get results that he might not have otherwise been able to achieve.
 
prisonermonkeys
There is no need for them to compete with one another to gain the support and the resources of the team, and they can instead focus on the championship.
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And I'm saying that there is no need, based on what we see in other categories, to have drivers compete within the team to gain its support and resources. Ferrari proceeds from a false premise.
 
There's just one small problem with your theory: none of the other categories have any bearing on what Formula 1 teams do. You might as well be citing the Oakland Raiders' strategies as things Ferrari should consider.
 
zippy_the_cat
And I'm saying that there is no need, based on what we see in other categories, to have drivers compete within the team to gain its support and resources. Ferrari proceeds from a false premise.
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Yes there is.

If you let drivers compete with each other, that leaves the door open to another driver to win the Drivers' Trophy.

Obviously, if you have the best car, you will win the Constructors' Trophy. That's expected. But you get more publicity if you win the WDC.

Do you remember that Ferrari won WCC in 2008 when Lewis Hamilton won WDC? Do you remember that McLaren should have won WCC (if it hadn't been disqualified) when Kimi won WDC in 2007?

Nobody outside of the teams really care. The teams care because it's big money, but F1 is also about prestige, and there's more prestige in the public eye to have the World Champion sitting in your garage. And prestige in F1 equals sponsorships. Sponsorships equals money.

Which is why it's perfectly reasonable to have your two drivers swap places on track. Whichever one finishes ahead of the other, you get the same WCC points, but your leading driver gets more WDC points.

The team will not totally unsupport a driver, that's stupid, but if it doesn't have the resources to mount a two-pronged attack for a race, it will give what it has to the better driver.
 
prisonermonkeys
There's just one small problem with your theory: none of the other categories have any bearing on what Formula 1 teams do. You might as well be citing the Oakland Raiders' strategies as things Ferrari should consider.
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Dude, it's all racing. F1 is nothing more than a series of technical specifications for road racing. Guess what, there's lots of other road racing formulas out there. And in none of them do we see the No. 1/No. 2 dynamic like we do in F1. What is it about the regs that dictates that? Or how is that the culture around the sport has evolved that way? Was it simply a quirk of history that the man-management skills of the key team principals were so poor (c.f. Ron Dennis) they really couldn't handle more than one decent driver at a time, that the resulting dynamic has now become something close to an iron law? If it's a quirk, what kind of opportunity does that create in the future for a team with a different idea, based on the examples we see elsewhere, for how to do things?

I'm not a biz-school guy but I do suspect a premise of b-school training is that useful lessons can be drawn from different disciplines.
 
I'm sure Ferrari are keenly following this thread, and are adapting your insight into their race strategies as we follow.

After all, it's not like they're the most successful Formula 1 team in history.
 
zippy_the_cat
If it's a quirk, what kind of opportunity does that create in the future for a team with a different idea, based on the examples we see elsewhere, for how to do things?
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Go ask Ron Dennis why he has been unable to hold on to Championship-level drivers. Maybe it'll hit you.
 
zippy_the_cat
But why does F1 embrace this No. 1 and No. 2 garbage?
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If it's a clear situation like Alonso VS Massa now, it's not garbage at all.
But if both drivers have nearly equal points and the team choose to support one driver more than the other, it is garbage.
 
prisonermonkeys
I'm sure Ferrari are keenly following this thread, and are adapting your insight into their race strategies as we follow.

After all, it's not like they're the most successful Formula 1 team in history.
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So far with Alonso they've won precisely squat.

That ain't changing this year, and few I think see it changing next year. Their aero engineering lags well behind RB, McLaren and even Sauber and they seem baffled as to why. And they ran off the last two drivers to win titles for them. So forgive me for thinking it's a team that doesn't quite know what it's doing.

What they did in the Schumacher era no longer matters. Michael's gone, so are Brawn and Todt, and the one guy who maybe could fight Newey on equal terms, Bryne, they pay to do nothing.
 
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The problems with Ferrari are not going to be changed simply by giving both drivers equal status within the team. And if you think they are, then you clearly don't know what Formula 1 is.
 
prisonermonkeys
The problems with Ferrari are not going to be changed simply by giving both drivers equal status within the team. And if you think they are, then you clearly don't know what Formula 1 is.
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I agree with the first sentence. The fix for Ferrari is getting rid of di Montezemolo, who for all the world looks like the George Steinbrenner of F1. For non-Americans, Steinbrenner is the late NY Yankees owner who for about 15 years epitomized the meddlesome, megalomaniacal tycoon whose every intervention in team affairs made things worse. Eventually he got old, and not coincidentally when he started spending more time at home in the garden the team got better.

As for your second sentence, I'm getting more than a little sick of your gas. Try arguing a point instead of slamming anyone who doesn't bow down to your superiority.
 
zippy_the_cat
But why does F1 embrace this No. 1 and No. 2 garbage? I'd again point to NASCAR, where Hendrick runs 2 champions and 2 other would-be champions and treats them all equally. You don't hear much about within-team driver status in IndyCar either.
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Because in NASCAR, you have about 15-20 drivers all in contention for wins and about 10 with a shot of the championship. If a team doesn't switch its drivers around then it's less of a problem, because it's unlikely you'll have just one driver from another team consistantly scoring big points. In F1, you typically have about 4-6 drivers in contention for wins and 2-3 with a chance of the championship, so the chances of your main rival scoring podiums is much higher - and so you need every point you can get.

zippy_the_cat
Edit: I'm looking at the results for 2009 and I don't see where Webber and Vettel taking points off each other was the issue. They did, however, seem to have a massive reliability problem because they had 12 non-points finishes. Webber had a string of poor finishes in the final third of the season, a time when Vettel was racking up points. Brawn by contrast had only 3 non-points finishes all season. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Formula_One_season#Constructors.
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Then try 2007. If McLaren had thrown all their resources at either Alonso or Hamilton they would have won the drivers championship at a canter and in all likelyhood won the constructors as well (penalties aside) - and even if you include exclusion from the constructors, they still would have been better off with a drivers championship than no championship at all.

Or 1986, when Piquet and Mansell spent all season with no team orders, taking points off each other, only to lose the drivers title to Prost in the McLaren. Williams won the constructors anyway, so why not introduce team orders to achieve both titles and the sponsership that brings?

Having a clear number 1 can harm the sport when one car dominates because it's so unnecessary, like in 2004, but generally in F1 you're more likely to get a big result from a car that isn't always the quickest if you throw all a team's weight behind one driver.

zippy_the_cat
Their aero engineering lags well behind RB, McLaren and even Sauber and they seem baffled as to why.
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All the more reason to solely focus on one driver, then. If you don't have the fastest car then getting behind one driver gives you a better opportunity to secure the driver's championship as you won't have any chance to achieve the constructors. Any championship is better than none.
 
prisonermonkeys
You might as well be citing the Oakland Raiders' strategies as things Ferrari should consider.
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You have to admit, that "Just win, baby" is exactly what Alonso must do to reel in a third title...(capt. Obvious-ness aside)

NASCAR is also a bad example, because you have some 3-4 car teams, so they can afford to run two champs, a journeyman, a rookie, et al.
 
zippy_the_cat
I agree with the first sentence. The fix for Ferrari is getting rid of di Montezemolo, who for all the world looks like the George Steinbrenner of F1.
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Ferrari is now a different company to how it was in Enzo's time. Back then it was 'build road cars to fund the race team' These days Ferrari's various racing activities are used as marketing for the company's road car division, with sponsorship (Marlboro, Shell, Santander etc) covering the cost of their F1 activities.

In the 90's, Montezemolo turned Ferrari from a debt ridden road car company with an under performing F1 program, into what it is today - a highly profitable road car company, with an F1 program which is consistently at the top or thereabouts.

You can't compare F1 to NASCAR, IndyCar, V8 Supercars or any other formula. F1 has the best drivers in the world at their prime, the others don't. They are competing to be 'the best driver in the world' drivers in other series are not. As others have mentioned, only the F1 teams themselves are concerned with the constructors title. The general public wants to know who's going to win the driver's title, so that's what gets the column inches and is what most people talk about. The top drivers hold the power, which is why they'll want the best chance of winning, even if that means having their team mate contractually obliged to play second-fiddle, if the team is that way inclined.

Ferrari also (presently) gets a bigger slice of the FOA pie than any other team, so relies less then other teams as far as 'money from winning the constructors title' is concerned.
 
zippy_the_cat
Dude, it's all racing. F1 is nothing more than a series of technical specifications for road racing. Guess what, there's lots of other road racing formulas out there. And in none of them do we see the No. 1/No. 2 dynamic like we do in F1. .
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Oh..:
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/99239

Oh.....:
http://www.crash.net/btcc/race+report/162614/1/chilton_heads_aon_1-2.html

Oh...........:
http://www.touringcartimes.com/article.php?id=664

Oh..................:
http://moto-racing.speedtv.com/article/motogp-returning-stoner-targets-wins-not-team-orders/

Oh dear.
 
n°1 and n°2 drivers are comon in most motorsport I know of, I dont really mind as long as it's not stupid like ferrari did it in Austria with Rubens or Germany with Massa.

I can understand that at the end of the season it could cost but honestly I dont think it's worth it for your image and the mental of the driver that have to let his position. I prefer the Mclaren way even if it can cost you a driver/team championship. Prost/Senna and Hamilton/Alonso was awesome years to follow I think.
 
Really, the team shouldn't even have to ask with team orders...its pretty logical. The only times where its controversial are when its not clear cut i.e. neither driver is clearly more in contention.

There are plenty of examples of teams that have lead drivers. Usually though, most "Number 2 drivers" in non-F1 series are pay drivers.
 
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