Decision time already looms for Alonso
Sky F1's Mark Hughes explains why Fernando may have to make a decision on his future sooner than you may have previously thought...
Monday 29 September 2014 11:36, UK
Could – as the Singapore rumours insisted - Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel be about to change places between Ferrari and Red Bull?
Absolutely; discussions between the parties are widely believed to have taken place already. If such an exchange happens, will it be for next season? Probably not and 2016 would be a more logical target date, but there are pressures building that could yet make it happen before then.
As pointed out here several months ago, it is Alonso – widely perceived as F1’s number one driver - who holds the key to the driver market. Alonso is ostensibly contracted to Ferrari to the end of 2016, but in reality multi-year contracts such as this often have release clauses written into them and it would be surprising if Alonso’s did not.
Sources who have been in negotiation with Alonso insist that he is free if he wants to be, that his points deficit to the leader at a key point of the season (believed to be post-Hungarian Grand Prix when he was 87 points adrift of championship leader Nico Rosberg) triggered such a clause. However, other sources at Ferrari insist that his contract is totally watertight and that there are no clauses that would allow him to be contractually free until the end of 2016. But they do concede that it would be impossible to make someone drive for them that has no wish to. Reading between those lines suggests the points deficit has left him free for 2015 but subject to an early release penalty payment.
Vettel signed a one-year extension to his Red Bull contract earlier this year which takes him ostensibly to the end of 2015, 12 months shy of the official end of Alonso’s. Ferrari has long been a fan of the quadruple champion and he is believed to be its number one choice of Alonso replacement should the Spaniard leave, notwithstanding strong rumours from Italy that the Scuderia has also been in touch with Vettel’s team mate Daniel Ricciardo.
On the surface it makes no strategic sense for Alonso to leave at the end of this season – even supposing that he can. Each of his three options – Ferrari, Red Bull and McLaren - have question marks around them that are difficult to read. Ferrari is completing a process of re-organisation from a Luca di Montzemelo-led team to the new era of Sergio Marchionne-Marco Mattiacci management, next year’s car will be the first to have been created under the technical management of the very highly rated James Allison. The problems with this year’s car and the reasons behind them are now widely understood. There is therefore good reason to believe that a Ferrari renaissance beginning in 2015 is feasible.
The question marks at Red Bull concern how much the Renault power plant will progress into 2015. Longer term, there is also a natural concern about the departure of Adrian Newey as Red Bull’s technical director.
Ron Dennis is pushing hard to secure the services of either Alonso or Vettel at McLaren. But a team that has produced an aerodynamically mediocre car for two consecutive seasons and that is being supplied from 2015 by a manufacturer, Honda, making its first attempt at a new hybrid F1 engine, has obvious question marks alongside it.
With all three teams at the beginning of new technical eras, looking at it from Alonso’s perspective, why should he make a move now rather than one year from now, when he will be much better informed? By which time he will have been able to gauge any progress made by Ferrari and what the prospects of both Red Bull and McLaren look like.
But there are possible complications to him simply postponing his decision for a year. Although he may be contractually free in some sense right now because of his points deficit, that assumed buying-out option will close at a certain time long before the beginning of next season; he will not remain free. If next year’s Ferrari is properly competitive, he may not be in a position to have a repeat ‘freedom window’ triggered. Should the 2015 Ferrari be properly competitive, in other words, he may well find that he is committed to the team for the full term of his contract until the end of 2016. So his only window of opportunity to leave early could end up being right now – probably sometime between the Hungarian Grand Prix in August and the end of this season. That said, if next year’s Ferrari is sufficiently competitive for that freedom clause not to be triggered for 2016, why would he want to leave early?
Alonso remains publically adamant that he will be staying where he is in 2015, as does Vettel – and this must be seen as the most likely outcome. But at the moment he and Ferrari are like a couple caught in a crucial moment of a marriage, when now would be the perfect time to call it quits if they are ever going to, but when each also sees very good reasons to re-commit. The problem is that the window of opportunity itself can create extra pressures on the marriage.
MH
