And no I didn’t think this up myself… They talked about it during commentary on SPEED TV... But I kind of agreed that the new teams add no value. Lotus, HRT, Virgin… Instead of those teams why not just have the top 6 teams have 4 drivers?
Who is sitting around rooting for Virgin?
Of course this brings up the age old question… which is a bigger factor… driver or car? You guys tell me… I’m a Newb... What if Vettel was in a Lotus and Kovalainen was in a Red Bull this season..? How would that have gone?
Webber would have won the championship, Kovalainen would have finished in the top three and Vettel would have finished where Kovalainen did. At least, close to that statement.
The new teams
do add value. Lotus have come in with exactly the right spirit, passion and desire for success. They've shown dedication, a love for racing and an attitude that is nice to see in teams. They enjoy what they're doing, they're hungry for glory and success and they've put together a strong technical team with which to achieve their goals. Yes, they were slow this year, but at best they had a year to design their cars and Lotus only had, what, seven months or so? So to be only four to six seconds off the pace, considering the ban on testing, the low budgets (remember, those teams lodged entries under the assumption that the budget cap would actually be in place - blame Mad Max for that) and the lack of previous experience as outfits.
Yes, Virgin might just appear to be Branson's latest toy, but they're a solid race team who have had success in junior categories and have made the step up to F1. They took a different approach to designing and developing their car to the other teams and shunned wind tunnels in favour of a CFD-only design. Yes, designing a car with a fuel tank that was too small was, you might say, an amateur error but it was the result of a change in regulations that took place after the car had been designed. Considering their pace was quite close to the Lotus car, sometimes better, and usually superior to the Hispania, you could say that this approach was a big success. Again, they were off the pace, but for a first-year team they didn't do bad at all.
You may have a point with Hispania, but they've had their own major problems and if you take those in to account, they've done remarkably well. The only problem is that they seem to have no car for next year and no ability to design and build one...
