CHAPTER 2: ON THE MOVE
Who’s swapped teams and who’s new to F1, and the return of a couple of famous names…
When the pandemic pushed Formula 1 into hiatus a year ago, the driver-market cogs carried on turning behind the scenes… culminating in three drivers spending a whole season racing for teams they knew they’d be leaving, and a certain double world champion readying himself for a dramatic comeback…
THE PRODIGAL RETURNS
When the driver-market manoeuvrings triggered by Carlos Sainz’s move from Mclaren to Ferrari to replace Sebastian Vettel played out, it left Renault (now rebranded as Alpine) without a lead driver. Daniel Ricciardo spotted an opportunity to cash out before the start of his second season at Enstone and slot into Sainz’s vacant seat at the end of it.
Given this was an outfit under pressure from above to justify its continued involvement in F1 – new faces at board level wondering why performance targets hadn’t been met – it’s hardly surprising Cyril Abiteboul, team principal at the time, opted for stardust to fill the void. Some might view Fernando Alonso as stunt casting, since he hasn’t won a GP since 2013 and is about to celebrate his 40th birthday, but he remains fiercely competitive, if also demanding and divisive.
Alonso hasn’t spent his two years away from F1 sitting on the sofa; he’s had another two tilts at the Indy 500, taken a second Le Mans 24 Hours win, won the World Endurance Championship and contested the Dakar Rally. Like a moth to a flame, he’s found an F1 comeback irresistible, despite slamming the door on his way out – citing, amongst other factors, the ‘predictability’ of the racing.
While Alonso has publicly declared this season a watertreading exercise, and that he’s channeling his main efforts towards the rules reset in 2022, there’s been a changing of the management guard at his ‘new’ team since then. New Renault CEO Luca de Meo has pushed out the old Renault Sport hierarchy of Jerome Stoll and Cyril Abiteboul, installing former Motogp man Davide Brivio in a senior role. While it will take a while for the new management structure to bed in, there’s much more at stake now for the rebranded Alpine team.
Alonso might have to bag more results than he expected to this season, and he also had a disrupted build-up, having been knocked off his bike in Switzerland. Nobody can doubt his resilience, but even so a fractured jaw isn’t ideal preparation.
IMPROVED SERVICE WITH A SMILE
While Alonso has been circling for a new F1 opportunity for some time, the opening at Renault/alpine came earlier than anticipated when Daniel Ricciardo decided his career would better be served by filling the vacancy left by Sainz. It was a big move for a driver whose stock has declined somewhat recently; after being shown the way at Red Bull by Max Verstappen, Ricciardo took a salary upgrade but a competitive downgrade moving to Renault. Seasoned observers concluded that he was beginning the process of cashing out, an impression bolstered over the course of a muted 2019.
Ricciardo put such thoughts to bed by announcing a risky move to Mclaren – another team which has spent many years in the competitive doldrums – and then having a feisty final season with Renault. While he arguably jumped to Renault a year too early, since that team needed another technical department shake-up to get the needle moving in the right direction, the timing of his switch to Mclaren (on a three-year contract) seems right.
Although finances unexpectedly became an issue last year, Mclaren’s technical operation is now humming along nicely. Not only have the cars been better, the race team has rediscovered its mojo following the arrival of team principal Andreas Seidl. Mclaren ended 2020 ‘best of the rest’ behind Mercedes and Red Bull, and this is likely to continue now it has Mercedes power.
For Ricciardo this will be his first experience of any power unit other than Renault’s in the hybrid era, and he says he’s looking forward to it. But the opportunity to sample Mercedes power wasn’t what drew him here, he reckons.
“I feel like Mclaren have done the right things – particularly the last few years – to set themselves up,” he says. “In particular for these rule changes coming in 2022. I think that next era of F1 has the ability to turn the field around a little bit. Everything I’ve seen and known up until now really excites me about where Mclaren is heading.”
So much for a driver heading into cruise-and-collect mode...
LIVING EVERY F1 DRIVER’S DREAM
Cut from the same competitive cloth as his father, a rallying legend, Sainz was ultimately rejected by the Red Bull machine because he had the misfortune to share the same orbit as Max Verstappen. Carlos was never going to play dutiful number two and, since Max seemed the most immediately bright prospect at the time, Red Bull leaned towards the Dutchman and Sainz had to become the master of his own destiny.
Timing has been an issue more than once in Sainz’s career. The stigma of being deemed a lesser talent than Verstappen followed him into a ‘loan’ period with Renault, where he didn’t quite do enough – in admittedly second-class machinery – against Nico Hülkenberg to convince team boss Cyril Abiteboul to buy Sainz out of Red Bull. Abiteboul decided throwing pots of money at Daniel Ricciardo instead would solve the team’s issues.
In the slightly lower-pressure environment of a Mclaren dragging itself out of the mire Sainz thrived and rebuilt his brand, to the extent of making Ferrari’s shortlist when Maranello’s management decided change was in order at the Scuderia.
Certainly, Sainz has consistently had the upper hand over highly rated newcomer Lando Norris, but in Rosso Corsa Carlos faces greater challenges. Charles Leclerc for a start – but also the wider agendas at play within Ferrari, not to mention the constant sniping he can expect from the rabid Italian media if he doesn’t perform immediately.
Perhaps Ferrari’s bigwigs bought in to the social-media-fuelled ‘bromance’ between Sainz and Norris, feeling after two seasons of argy bargy between Vettel and Leclerc that more harmony in the garage would be a good thing. But the Sainz-leclerc dynamic won’t necessarily follow the same trajectory as Sainz-norris. Leclerc is a much more intense character than Norris, as well as being an established grand prix winner.
Given another lap or two at Monza last year and we might have been saying the same about Sainz. Of all the drivers changing places this season, he faces the toughest test: to prove that he’s not just keeping a seat warm while Ferrari evaluates a certain other son of a famous world champion…
PROVING TIME ALL OVER AGAIN
The nattering nabobs of the internet loudly proclaimed Sebastian Vettel’s migration to Aston Martin, formerly Racing Point, as an ignoble retreat to a comfy salary while he works out where life will take him next. But while this was indubitably the only option other than retirement for a driver who says he has no interest in racing in any category other than F1, it is anything but a cushy gig.
This is a relationship which has to work to mutual advantage. Team owner Lawrence Stroll has serious ambitions, both for his team and the car marque he snapped up for a (relatively) bargain price this time last year. Stroll did not achieve his station in life by being some mug who would shower a has-been driver in riches for the privilege of attaching a big name to a humdrum enterprise. There are co-investors to keep-sweet, yes, and a four-time champion in the fold will do that long-term project no harm. But there is more in play here.
Vettel’s stock might be lower than it once was, and his claim to remain among F1’s ‘megas’ is negated by his need to have a car with virtues tuned towards his driving style, but he still has much to give. It’s understood his contract is modest in terms of rewards, heavily weighted towards results-based incentives, and he’s taken an ambassadorial gig for the road car side. How this works out for one of F1’s most publicity-shy drivers remains to be seen.
Stroll has an eye for a great deal and there’s no doubt he’s acquired three great properties at a knockdown rate: the team which started life as Jordan in 1991 has always had a knack of making a little go a long way, despite a string of stingy owners; Aston Martin’s road car brand cachet has survived a similarly colourful ownership and solvency history; and now Vettel, too, arrives in need of turnaround.
The team controversially ‘cloned’ the 2019 Mercedes last season, in the hope of taking a shortcut to success, only to start throwing results away. It took all season to convert potential into victory.
Perhaps the greatest contribution Seb could make is to make winning seem easy, as it once did for him.
EXPERIENCE IS JUST THE TICKET
Sergio Pérez recently said that he’s been “waiting all my career to get an opportunity with a top team”, which may cause some Mclaren fans to chafe. This time around, though, Pérez is arriving at a top squad which is unlikely to endure a precipitous fall from grace.
While Red Bull hasn’t won a world championship since 2013, the year Pérez last made a theoretical entry into the big time, it seems to have overcome the issues which caused it to underperform for much of last year. Arguably, pretty much every season since 2014 Red Bull has begun the year with a halfbaked technical package which has required a major development push, and last year it compounded that problem by adding upgrades which failed to work.
By season’s end it had gained the necessary understanding to introduce a development step which did work – enough to become a proper challenger to Mercedes on pace. Since this season’s cars are largely carry-over designs from last season with limited development, Pérez can be reasonably optimistic he isn’t jumping into a lemon.
But he’s also been hired to do a job. He’s filling a void left by Red Bull’s young driver programme being temporarily short of F1qualified young talent, and team management being unconvinced by the more experienced drivers on the Red Bull books – namely Pierre Gasly, who remains on the fringes at Alphatauri, and Alex Albon, who has in effect been benched and will instead race in the DTM this season.
Pérez’s task is simple, and it will have been outlined to him in as few words as possible by Red Bull’s ‘driver advisor’ Helmut Marko.
Pérez needs to do what Gasly and Albon couldn’t: qualify and race closely enough to Max Verstappen to shut down Mercedes’ tactical options and enable Max to challenge for race wins. Should Max become indisposed during races then Pérez needs to be in a position to win. But at all other times his presence must not threaten the orange-tinted equilibrium within Red Bull.
Seen and not heard? Kind of. But then again, Pérez has always liked to let his driving do the talking…