Feedback: your letters
This businesslike orderliness may be good news for souvenir programme printers, but is it good news for the sport?
Missing the days of driver line-up speculation
Can anyone remember when next year’s driver line-up was fixed before the last race of the year? Wait, I’m talking to Autosport readers, of course someone will!
However, my point is, isn’t it odd, and slightly depressing? Where’s the excitement, the speculation and the tension? I remember long debates and flights of fancy trying to work out which mercurial newbie Ken Tyrrell or Eddie Jordan would pluck out of the junior formulas, or which earnest but plodding pay driver would buy their way out of obscurity into a March or an Ensign and the like, but who might just surprise everybody.
This businesslike orderliness may be good news for souvenir programme printers, but is it good news for the sport? I can’t help wondering why we’ve ended up here, given what we have ended up with.
For Mercedes, Red Bull, Mclaren and Ferrari (Vettelian meltdowns not withstanding) it was a no-brainer, arguably the same could be said for Renault and Alfa, but the rest?
Racing Point may be a special case because Daddy owns the company, but any close analysis ought to indicate that proper long-term ambition should rule out Lance Stroll, and you have to question the sanity of a team that re-engages the carcrasher Romain Grosjean when Nico Hulkenberg is available.
Also, there had to be a reason why Dr Helmut Marko fired Daniil Kvyat (more than once). The freak result that was Hockenheim apart, he hasn’t really delivered as well as he ought.
That leaves us with Williams, sadly the only team with the balls to bring in new talent, but they have a car as slow as a slug!
Where are the future firebrands like Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton ever going to find a place and show what they can do if the current lockdown in the F1 driver market endures?
Here’s a radical idea: every team must run a ‘first time F1 driver’ in at least one GP in each season. Now, that would showcase new talent as well as mixing up the grid, wouldn’t it?
Phil Oakes Portishead
A boost for Formula E, but what about the WRC?
It was good to read that Formula E will now have world championship status from the 2020-21 season. Given it has met the criteria for a number of years, and seems to be going from strength to strength, this seems entirely deserved.
It does, however, leave a bit of an elephant in the room. With Citroen withdrawing, on what basis can the WRC remain a world championship now it only has three manufacturers represented?
David Ryan By email
There’s some degree of opacity surrounding this issue, but it would be hard to imagine the WRC without the W. Watch this space – ed
Full of praise for a job well done
Watching the goodbyes from Sky Sports F1’s commentating team after the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, and recalling some of the treats they get during the year, it occurred to me – they don’t get paid as well, do they? What a peach of a job they all have. Their enthusiasm is infectious and never seems to waver. A great team.
George Copeland Wokingham