Kait Borsay looks at how working as a team in Formula One can cost drivers the championship.
Can working as a team in F1 cost drivers the world title?
With just one race remaining in the current Formula One season, Fernando Alonso sits at the top of the drivers' standings. Yet his team, Ferrari, are third in the constructors' championship, with no hope of winning it. The two teams that sit above them have arguably as good, if not better drivers, so why might all this talent miss out to Alonso? Kait Borsay looks at how working as a team in Formula One can cost you the drivers' title.
With such a strong field of contenders this year, and the cars on a more even keel, Formula One has become really quite entertaining again. The depth on the grid has, over the past few seasons, been getting better and better. With only two races remaining, the drivers' championship could have gone to any one of five men. Interestingly, two pairs of those challengers each belong to the same team: Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel for Red Bull and Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button for McLaren. But such a strong team presence may count for nothing in the drivers' standings if Fernando Alonso - seemingly Ferrari's number one driver - manages to trump the lot of them.
Going into to the final race in Abu Dhabi things have now got a little tighter. Button is out of the picture and Hamilton would have to be dealt the finest hand in a game of fortitude to emerge the overall victor. For Webber and Vettel, it is not only a battle against Alonso, it also is a battle against each other.
Such a dilemma is not a new one. Rewind back to 1986 and Williams had the stronger car, comfortably beating McLaren by 141 points to 96 in the constructors' championship. Williams had two talented and successful drivers in Nigel Mansell and Nelson Piquet and throughout the season both amassed a huge amount of points. Yet both were beaten in the drivers' championship by McLaren's Alain Prost.
Much like this year it was a close call, and the championship went down to the final race of the season. Ultimately though, it was Prost's superiority over his team-mate Keke Rosberg that did it. Look at the Williams team and Mansell scored just under 50 per cent of his team's points. Prost scored 75 per cent of the points picked up by McLaren and earned all four of their race victories. Williams achieved nine victories over the season but Mansell and Piquet shared the splendours. Had either driver won more of those nine races one of them would have been crowned champion.
The same situation occurred at McLaren in 2007. The in-house wranglings between Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso lost both drivers the title to Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen. With just a quarter of the season to go, Ferrari elected to choose their leading driver on points. Raikkonen was the man leading their score board and he duly won three out of the final four races, whilst Hamilton and Alonso were too busy trying to take points off each other.
Again it was a close call and boiled down to the last race of the season. The well-publicised animosity between the pair certainly wouldn't have helped things either. But if the focus of both drivers and team had been better placed, there's no doubt that one of the two big cats at McLaren would have got the cream.
Furious
Fast forward to this season and Red Bull's Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel find themselves in a similar position.
"I think we've made it very clear that we let both of our drivers compete for that championship" Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has said, with reference to the drivers' standings. "So rightly or wrongly we let our drivers race." This policy, though, came a cropper this season, firstly when the drivers collided while disputing the lead of the Turkish Grand Prix in May. In another instance two months later at the British Grand Prix, the team elected to give Vettel a new front wing for qualifying which had been used on Webber's car during morning practice. Rumours of unrest in the Webber camp are compounded by Red Bull's apparent keenness to nurture and build their future around the young in-house Vettel.
In both cases, Webber appeared to either get the blame (Red Bull's motorsport advisor, Dr Helmut Marko appeared to openly back Vettel in the incident at Istanbul) or the rough end of the deal.
The furious Webber went on to win at Silverstone, telling Horner over the radio: "Not bad for a number two driver".
Horner maintains that Red Bull do not have a number one or number two driver. "Both drivers have cars to exactly the same standard." He also admitted blaming Webber for events at Istanbul Park was "a mistake".
Webber also stated that he would not have signed a recent contract extension had he known how he would be treated. The Australian has now said that he regrets these comments but that didn't stop him from having another dig at a recent news conference before the Brazilian Grand Prix.
After saying that, technically, everything had been very good, Webber was asked if he felt Red Bull were emotionally behind him. He replied: "It's obvious isn't it?
"When young new chargers come on to the block, that's the way it is, which is absolutely fine. I've got favourites in life. That's how it is. It's human nature."
He added: "I think I wasn't supposed to be in the hunt. At all. So it's maybe quite inconvenient, but I've enjoyed every bit of it."The point is, in a team with two strong drivers, who are performing on a similar level throughout the season, they will invariably end up taking points off (and shots at) each other.
By their nature, top sportsmen are competitive. It's a big part of what gets them to the level they're at. With no clear pecking order and two drivers in the same team going head to head, there are bound to be spats. How many of us would really think twice before usurping certain work colleagues to ensure we got the Christmas bonus, or the promotion we had worked so hard for?
In contrast to the unrest at Red Bull, the apparent 'bonhomie' of Button and Hamilton seems almost too good to be true. A lot of people had predicted it would blow up between the pair by the end of the season, including former world champion Damon Hill. But so far, so good at McLaren and although both drivers are effectively scoring points off each other (which has cost either one of them the title) will the desire to be just that bit better cause problems between the two next season?
McLaren have had their fingers burnt in the past, most recently with Hamilton and Alonso, but that pairing was never going to work: two drivers with too close a mental make-up. At least Button is a different animal: he might be tactically acute and an expert opportunist, but he lacks the raw pace of, and aggression of, his team-mate. The only real scuffle we've seen between the pair was Button's late overtaking of Hamilton in Turkey - and the younger of the two simply barged back into the lead. The incident though, nearly took both drivers out of the race.
To flip the coin: Michael Schumacher, by accolade, is one the modern era's Formula One greats and for the past fifteen-plus years, a variety of drivers have been team-mates with the seven times world champion. Prior to his comeback year of 2010, though, not one of them finished a full season with more points. Schumacher had the knack of getting his team moulded around him, working for him. His team-mates were not usually allowed to finish ahead of him, even if they could.
In the now notorious 2002 Austrian Grand Prix, the German's team-mate Rubens Barrichello was winning, only to carry out instructions from Ferrari to slow down and let Schumacher go ahead. Consequently there was a huge media outcry that races were being fixed and the sport's governing body, the FIA, banned team orders that would affect the outcome.
So are we truly left with a situation that means no team orders? Well yes, although 'no team orders that look like team orders' might be a more accurate way to put it. There was a slip up by Ferrari in Germany this year. When race engineer Rob Smedley radioed his charge, Alonso's teammate Felipe Massa, saying "Alonso is faster than you, please confirm" it appeared this was rather a coded message - an opinion strengthened when Massa duly let the Spaniard past. Ferrari picked up a $100,000 (£65,100) fine.
Separate camps
So, are there still two separate camps? In other words, are there individuals who work for the team, or does the team work around just one individual?
Constructors would have you believe it's not the latter: the last thing they want to admit to is all the emphasis being on the driver. As a general rule, Formula One team principals have insisted that the sport is built around squads and not individuals, even if some are happy to let their drivers continue battling it out on the track. Besides, the driver will at some point leave - and the likes of Red Bull and McLaren would rather you not follow them.
Half way through the current season, Damon Hill weighed up the argument.
"I think from a tactical point of view it makes more sense to have one guy on your team (regularly) scoring more points (than the other) if you have that opportunity," He said.
"But that would be uninteresting for us as spectators."
"We want to see competition, and it's frustrating as a driver if you are competing against a team that has that (single driver focus) set up. You're fighting a war on two fronts - with your own team-mate and with another team."
History tells us, though, that very rarely are Formula One drivers truly comfortable unless it is obvious they are top dog. We all like to know we're wanted after all.
"At the end of the day, the team should be bigger than any individual" Red Bull's Horner has stated.
But do the egos of the Formula One drivers agree?
