Hamilton to Red Bull?
Lewis Hamilton qualified 5th for the Canadian Grand Prix half a second away from the pole time of Sebastian Vettel’s Red Bull. After this session it was widely reported that Hamilton took the time to have an impromptu chat with Christian Horner, the team principal of Red Bull. Despite negotiations with Mark Webber, Red Bull technically have a seat free next year. Obviously a lot can be read into such a chat, and the necessary denials have already been made.
I’ve already written about how I feel Lewis Hamilton is becoming increasingly frustrated, and it appears to be reflected in his driving of late. He has been used to success and he knows he is one of the best if not the best driver out there. He has a comfortable home at McLaren, he has the measure of Jenson Button most of the time but is aware that his time in Formula 1 is finite, and he wants the success to prove that he is the one of the greats not just very good.
McLaren obviously make good cars, but they’ve actually only won one driver’s championship this century, and no constructor’s championships. For a team this good, it’s not impressive statistics and needs to improve to keep a driver with the ambition of Lewis Hamilton despite a contract for next year.
I would love to see him out of his comfort zone at some point. You don’t get too much team changing between the big names these days, so it would be really fascinating to see him integrate into a new team.
Hamilton to Red Bull would make perfect sense. He’s still very young, has a cultivated edgy image and is supremely fast. It would be very interesting to see how Vettel would react as well. He didn’t like it when Webber was giving him such a hard time last year, and with Hamilton, you’d have to expect an even tougher time. Certainly there would be fireworks and there is questions of why would Red Bull want to upset their star driver when the present situation works so well? But for now this meeting seems to be just a warning shot.
He may have been involved with McLaren in some form since he was six and he’s unlikely to walk out on a deal, but when you’re an ambitious young racing driving, eager to keep winning championships loyalty will only last a certain amount of time and contracts can be broken.
New Australian ready to shine
There’s another driver dilemma going on lower down the grid. Sebastian Buemi and Jaime Algersuari are from Red Bull’s young driver program and are currently driving for Toro Rosso just like Vettel was before them. Red Bull are eager to produce more stars to prove just how effective their program is, and they only have a certain amount of seats for them.
So far the Toro Rosso drivers have shown occasional impressive speed and each have had a number of accomplished races. However it is a lack of consistency that is affecting them both. Just when you think they’re delivering their potential, the next race brings them down again. They’re not exactly exuding star quality. Toro Rosso test driver and potentially Australia’s next superstar is Daniel Ricciardo and is beginning to threaten their positions.
He too is part of the Red Bull young driver program and has been driving in first practice at each of the first seven races. He has outpaced the regular driver three times so far, had plenty of success in many junior formulae and was extremely impressive at the end of season test for Red Bull last year in Abu Dhabi.
It’s not unlikely that Ricciardo will be given a race at some point this year, it is up to the Toro Rosso regulars to make sure his rise to the top is delayed before it’s too late.
Rotation, Rotation, Rotation
It was nice to see common sense prevail over Bahrain as the race was re-cancelled for this season. India moves back to its original October 30th date and Bahrain is probably going to be back in 2012 if the situation returns to normal. Whether normal is a good thing is up for quite some debate especially after the jail terms handed out to activists against the government today.
What this does mean is that there is a 21 race calendar for next year. Jean Todt, president of the FIA, has said one will certainly drop out. At the moment that looks likely to be Turkey as the government there are unwilling to pay such a high race fee anymore for little return. The race isn’t promoted enough and the crowds have generally been poor.
It would be a shame to lose the race as it is one of the better new tracks. This doesn’t solve the increasing problem that Formula 1 has already reached the limit the teams agreed of no more than 20 races per season.
The USA is joining next season and Russia wants one for 2014, France’s prime minister Francois Fillon is seeking to get backing for a revival at the Paul Ricard circuit and after a demonstration in Hong Kong which attracted over 40,000 people there are rumours they would like a race there as well.
I think it is about time the FIA began to think of rotating races. Disregarding political intricacies of which I’m sure there would be many, my plan would be this. You would have the core races which would contain classics and important markets which are important to the teams and their sponsors.
This would contain Grand Prix from Monaco, Britain, Belgium, Italy, Japan, Brazil, Canada, USA, Russia and China and maybe India and Singapore. These races would become the back bone of the season embracing historical and modern needs with commercial necessity. It also might be beneficial to not rotate the race of the most popular driver, such as Spain for Fernando Alonso although this is not essential.
After this you would divide the rest of the races into zones, and rotate them from year to year. At the moment the rotation groups would mainly include European races, but you could also have Abu Dhabi and Bahrain swapping for a Middle East zone with Qatar expected to try for a race at some point in the future
In an Australasian zone you could have Australia, Malaysia, South Korea and Singapore. Depending on where the races are coming from is how you would judge the zones. Obviously it is a plan with many creases to be ironed out, but I don’t believe it is unworkable.
It would be beneficial to some countries that maybe don’t want to lose a race but can’t afford to put it on every year such as Melbourne in Australia. A bi-annual event would be a good solution and would enable Formula 1 to continue to expand into new territories without having to lose the old ones and the money that goes with it.
BBC, please stay?
Finally there were reports in Murdoch owned newspaper the Sunday Times that the BBC were looking to axe Formula 1. We won’t go into details over the ownership of the newspaper and the apparent attempt by Newscorp to buy Formula 1, although it is relevant to say that despite what was reported viewing figures haven’t be so high for years.
However, although mere rumours at the moment it is no secret the BBC is looking to save money as a result of the license fee freeze. I can only hope they find some other way. The coverage the BBC presents is an absolutely fantastic package.
We have a fantastic host in Jake Humphrey, brilliant punditry, some great interactive elements and now we have the best commentary pairing in Martin Brundle and David Coulthard who have both grown into their new rules better than anyone could have predicted. Coulthard in particular has been a revelation, incisive critique and very amusing too. And most importantly no adverts!
Let’s hope the BBC realise what a thrilling sport they have, and now with a BAFTA win, why would they give up on the fastest, most intriguing and compelling sport in the world?
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