FORUMula1.com - F1 Forum

[Jabberwocky]

is it me or is this a new thing in F1. A top driver turning up and spending a long time with that team. Is it because the Minardi's do not exist anymore, who where just there as feeders for the bigger teams. When you look at Caterham/Marussia/HRT has any of there drivers really moved up the grid? Senna has I suppose but that is more luck then anything else as I think Williams had no real options after last year.

Where as people like Vettel and Hamilton have been protogees and stayed with the people who gave them a break into F1.

Compare that to someone like Alonso's career.

[LewEngBridewell]

Interesting point of discussion. When analysing the current crop of world champions, Lewis Hamilton is the obvious stand-out when it comes to driver loyalty. A loyalty that has constantly been questioned and thrown in the air by the press, especially in the past couple of seasons. But it's all hot air in my opinion. Hamilton has been very fortunate to break into F1 with a leading team like McLaren, and he has no reason to leave at the present, and never has done. Hence his static position he's maintained team-wise since his début in 2007.

His team mate Jenson Button, on the other hand, has experienced a much greater degree of movement amongst teams. Since replacing Alex Zanardi at Williams for the 2000 season, he moved on to Benetton, which became Renault in 2002, and then found he was to be replaced by Fernando Alonso. Moving to BAR, he then became a central part of the team, which became Honda and then Brawn. The latter took him to the title in 2009, rewording years of floundering around in the midfield and seemingly getting nowhere. A Mercedes buyout closed all doors at Brackley, but opened the shining silver ones at Woking, and he could well stay out the rest of his career there.

Fernando Alonso started with the minnows, but his progression to Renault gave him the titles after a year on the sidelines. The partnership with McLaren could've been long and fruitful, but it all famously broke down and the Spaniard completely wasted 2 seasons in moving back to Renault, a team which had since become a faded rose. He'll probably see out the rest of his career at the Scuderia, titles or not.

Kimi Raikkonen of course, broke into F1 with Sauber, after an alarmingly short prior career in cars. McLaren spotted him and gave him success, and then Ferrari gave him the title. Now he's with Lotus. I don't think the iceman gives two sh!ts about loyalty to be honest. He'll go where the fast cars are.

Sebastian Vettel, we mustn't forget, was given his F1 début with the BMW team, but RBR was always grooming him, and a rare success for Toro Rosso paved the way through to RBR. Seems pretty loyal to them, and they'll keep him as long as he wishes to stay, seemingly.

And we all know Schumi's story. It's the stuff of legends.

So on refection, most of the current champions have worked their way through numerous teams to get where they are today.

[zurich_allan]

The answer to this one is very simple. In years past, small(ish) teams such as Minardi could bring young drivers thorugh who had shown a little potential in the hope that they could pick up points due to the poor mechanical reliability if they could just outlast a couple of the bigger teams in a tough race. They could do this because the budgets in F1 were barely a 100th of what they are now. Because the smaller teams could and did bring through young, talented drivers that didn't command massive wages, this allowed the bigger teams to save money on investment in young drivers because they could cherry pick the best from the small teams just by the offer of a decent contract.

Now, with budgets as ridiculously high as they are, small teams struggle to survive without massive sponsor deals and corporate partners, and so the only drivers considered are those that can bring a large slice of that budget to the table, talented or otherwise - or rather talent is just a bonus. As such, there is naturally much less raw talent at the lower level of F1 for the larger teams to pick from, and so they have no choice but to invest in youth themselves.

The follow-on from that is of course that once the larger teams have invested that money, they don't want to see their investment wasted, and so will try to keep the talent that they have helped to produce.

In short - the fault (if you'd call it that) for the change in this area is 100% down to the growing budgets required to stay afloat in F1.

[madbrad]

Sometimes they start the sport in a poor team and if they're good they move up the ladder and if they aren't they leave the series. Sometimes they start in a top team. It isn't new. JV did that too, so did Hill and cubehead for that matter, but it goes farther back than that and both extremes have been going on for decades.

[scotty]

Jim Clark and Lotus?
Martini and Minardi?
Hakkinen and McLaren?

Must be more out there, but these guys were pretty loyal to their teams if i remember rightly. Hamilton and Vettel have barely been with their teams for 5 years, even Gilles Villeneuve was at Ferrari for nearly this long before he was killed.

[Jabberwocky]

Mclaren 56 Drivers in 46 Years. That works our as 0.82 drivers a year
Ferrari 78 Drivers in 62 years. 0.79 drivers a year.

That suprised me as I thought Mclaren where the more local team. However since Schumacher they have changed very few drivers.

[madbrad]

Brawn had no driver changes during the entire length of its existence.

MS spending 11 straight seasons in one team, that's pretty long.

[Hammer278]

I think zurichallan nailed it with this one. The scenario has changed massively over the years and has changed the game of musical chairs as well...I think we'd much prefer the older F1 of course. Small teams bringing in real talent and those who shine are then scooped up by the front runners. Kimi, Alonso being prime examples.

[racechick]

I think its just circumstance. Drivers reach F1 in different ways. And it is a business. Take Lewis, as he is the standout top driver from the point of view of remaining with one team. He was an experiment for McLaren, and a very successful one. Had he not been so successful he would not have progressed with them, he would have been dropped. Mclaren want the fastest drivers (one would assume??)
From Lewis' perspective, I think he does feel an immense loyalty to McLaren and would love to remain with them all his career. But its not that simple. F1 drivers have a few golden years and have to make the most of them. Lewis wants chamionships and sadly if the circumstances aren't right to achieve that at Mclaren he may decide to move.If he did I'm sure it would be with huge regret. But its business, from both driver and team perspective. Each have to do what they think is best at the time.

[LewEngBridewell]

Mclaren 56 Drivers in 46 Years. That works our as 0.82 drivers a year
Ferrari 78 Drivers in 62 years. 0.79 drivers a year.

That suprised me as I thought Mclaren where the more local team. However since Schumacher they have changed very few drivers.

I wonder what Williams' record looks like? Surely they've had more drivers than Tiger Woods....

[Hammer278]

Mclaren 56 Drivers in 46 Years. That works our as 0.82 drivers a year
Ferrari 78 Drivers in 62 years. 0.79 drivers a year.

That suprised me as I thought Mclaren where the more local team. However since Schumacher they have changed very few drivers.

I wonder what Williams' record looks like? Surely they've had more drivers than Tiger Woods....

I don't think his drivers matches the number of his flings though the stud.

[Jabberwocky]

Mclaren 56 Drivers in 46 Years. That works our as 0.82 drivers a year
Ferrari 78 Drivers in 62 years. 0.79 drivers a year.

That suprised me as I thought Mclaren where the more local team. However since Schumacher they have changed very few drivers.

I wonder what Williams' record looks like? Surely they've had more drivers than Tiger Woods....

Williams 37 Drivers in 35 years. 0.95 drivers a year.

[Jabberwocky]

Redbull have had 6 drivers in 7 years, so that is 0.85 drivers a year

[zurich_allan]

Redbull have had 6 drivers in 7 years, so that is 0.85 drivers a year

The statistics being presented in this way give a misleading picture though. In these examples, each of the teams has had two seats available each season, but the way these figures are being presented is as though there were only one seat available. Do you understand what I mean?

So for Red Bull, in 7 years that works out at 14 seats available at that team. 6 drivers have filled those seats = driver change every 2 1/3 years.

0.85 drivers a year doesn't really mean anything....


Edit: Williams presented the same, more understandable way is, in 35 years, 70 seats available, 37 drivers in that time = driver change every 1.9 years.

[andrew]

Number of races would be a better measure of loyalty than number of years.