In the paddock: Edd Straw

Conservatism is forcing the Formula 1 driver market towards status quo again. Is there any way to induce change – and new stories – without burning bridges?

Daniel Ricciardo is going to Mercedes, Kimi Raikkonen is out of Ferrari, Max Verstappen is leaving Red Bull for Sauber, Formula 2 leader Lando Norris is headed to Toro Rosso, rising star Charles Leclerc is moving to Renault and Artem Markelov is joining Force India.

Something akin to this would be happening were the Formula 1 driver market as exciting as what’s going on in Motogp for 2019. Well, it is if you allow a few broad-brushstroke correlations to be drawn between certain drivers/riders and teams.

Four of the six drivers in F1’s big three teams are out of contract at the end of this year, yet right now the smart money is on all of them being in the same place in 2019. The big three’s line-ups will probably be the same for a third consecutive season.

There’s a word for that: stagnation.

Why? There are multiple reasons, some of which lie in the cautious mentality of the teams, some of which are down to the nature of the current generation of F1 cars, and because of the strong divide between the haves and the have-nots in contemporary grand prix racing.

Firstly, teams tend to be conservative on driver choices. It’s a case of‘ better the devil you know ’being more appealing than risking a‘ grass is always greener ’appointment. For every inspired piece of recruitment, there are cases of drivers who underachieved when given a big chance.

It’s also a more comfortable existence to have a clear hierarchy in your team, which is effectively what Mercedes and Ferrari currently have. But this is the easy option. While there are some infamous cases of two big-name drivers causing problems in teams – Williams in 1986-87 with Nelson Piquet and Nigel Mansell being the obvious example – there are also times when it has succeeded. Crucially, it needs strong and bold management.

The second factor is that current grand prix cars are hugely complicated, with a vast array of unseen set-up options within them. For drivers to master the intricacies to the maximum requires a season of experience. In simpler times, adaptation was less complicated.

This is particularly relevant when it comes to drivers moving from the midfield to large teams. As Valtteri Bottas explained in a recent interview with Auto sport ,“changing teams was a bit bigger than I expected.” he cited the range of set-up changes, ones that can be made multiple times during a lap to optimise the car, as a big part of that.

There’s also the question of the sheer lack of options in F1. This will be the fourth time in six seasons that Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull lock out the top three in the constructors’ championship.

To come back to the Motogp comparison, there are myriad destinations that give you a realistic shot at good results. Even if you can’t land a manufacturer ride, there are satellite teams that will allow riders to piece together good campaigns – and more than the promise of a stack of finishes in the bottom half of the top 10.

Outside of F1’s elite, Renault is the only other squad a superstar driver could consider throwing their lot in with right now.

There’s a final, hidden, factor. The unseen hand of the proverbial ‘men in smoke-filled rooms’ manipulating driver moves in the background was once a powerful force in grand prix racing, but there’s been no sign of Liberty Media having an appetite for pulling strings to facilitate such transfers.

Bernie Ecclestone was never afraid to play his part in moving some of the chess pieces to keep the F1 grid fresh. The classic example was in 1994, when following the tragic loss of Ayrton Senna he moved mountains to bring back the one established

‘big box office’ driver still racing – Mansell.

Stories about the driver market remain among the most engaging in F1, but there are not enough such stories to go around – even among the smaller teams.

The last time there were so many drivers staying in the same car was from 1989 into ’90 – but with 20 teams on the grid in the second of those years, that’s a much smaller proportion.

Not every year can be a 2010, or a 1996 – when six of the seats in the top four teams from the previous campaign changed hands – but F1 needs more driver movement to keep itself fresh.

For that to happen, F1 needs to tackle its problems of the inequality of funding and the unprecedented chasm between the elite few teams and the rest. Now, more than ever, sports stand or fall on the stories they generate, and driver moves in F1 are a huge part of generating such interest.

Even this season, when we’ve had three different teams win races and Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes are often covered by a few tenths, has been criticised for supposedly being boring.

That criticism perhaps says less about what we’re actually seeing, and more about the feeling that fans are seeing variations of the ‘same old’ every weekend. That’s what makes what could be termed ‘freedom of movement ’so important.

“NOW, MORE THAN EVER, SPORTS STAND OR FALL ON THE STORIES THEY GENERATE”