F1 2012 - Teams and Drivers - Who goes where?!

Im glad Senna has a drive but its sad to see Rubins leave, I dont think his form is spent just yet. He never really had the chance to prove that unfortunatly once he left Brawn. However heres to hoping the major changes at Williams will spark the revival they need :)

Is it just the one seat thats up for grabs now or are they all gone?
 
I remember when Trulli used to be a prodigious qualifier. Then in the race, he would turn into a mobile roadblock. In recent years though, his super qualifying speed has now deserted him. He really should call it a day and give an F1 opportunity to a younger driver.
 
See, I can never remember him being that amazing at qualifying. I can remember him sticking it quite high up a few times, but never with the regularity that you would expect from someone labelled a '1 lap master' by some of the commentary team.

But then I suppose you don't have to do things that many times in F1 to earn yourself a label of 'always' doing something.
 
I remember countless times where you would see Trulli becoming a mobile roadblock.

His qualifying and race performance (pace wise) were not comparable and it was almost as if his team had stuck a rocket to his car during qualifying, but removed it from the race.

EDIT: I actually did ask this question (about Trulli) back in 2008:
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=12813041&postcount=273

Some people did attempt to answer it, but most couldnt understand why he was disproportionately slower in the race, than in qualifying. Duke gave a nice answer.
 
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I agree, he's had a long time in F1 to make a splash, but he's always been one of the 'almost' crowd and never made the impact I'm sure he once hoped to. Now I get the feeling he's there because he can, and because he obviously enjoys it (power steering issues aside - or excuse?). For a sport as fickle as F1, it's actually quite remarkable he still has a seat and I think that deserves a hat-tip in itself. Time for some more young blood now though, he has served his purpose in Caterham and they are on the path to becoming an established mid-field team. They just need some more young talent and excitement to boost their status firmly up there. This, of course, all depends on what machine they can produce for 2012...
 
sunama said:
So basically, Williams are now heavily reliant on their drivers bringing in sponsors, as opposed to the team itself, bringing in the main sponsors. This is not a good strategy UNLESS, one of the drivers owns/runs the team.

I still believe that the main problem with Williams is money. If they could employ some top sales staff to bring in some sponsors (which is not easy when the car is performing so badly) to increase revenue, which in turn can be used to employ some top end engineering/design staff, who in turn can produce a better car.

If you go back to the mid 90s when Williams had a comparable budget to other leading teams (excluding Ferrari...who had a ridiculously big budget), other teams were thinking of ways to increase future revenue. McLaren decided to associate their name with Mercedes and push their brand (the name McLaren is synonymous with Mercedes - a huge name in car production worldwide). They also built a huge production facility in Woking which would be used exclusively to produce commercial vehicles (for profit).

Imagine, if Williams, during their heyday had produced commercial vehicles, endorsed by Mansell, Prost, Senna, Hill, Villeneuve (these are some of the biggest names in the history of F1) and even Montoya...they would've made a small fortune. Ferrari made full use of MSc's name. Vodafone are making full use of Hamilton and Button's names. Williams failed to capitalise on their assets.

To be honest, when you look at things from a commercial stand point, Williams are clearly an old-school team, who are unable to compete against teams who are more commercially astute. For me, it all comes down to money and Williams are completely to blame for not having enough of it and being subsequently forced into hiring rent-a-drivers, who are unable to extract the maximum from the cars.

I remember, reading a comment on these forums stating that an F1 team should not be run as a business. Well, the Williams F1 team is living proof of what happens when a team is not run as a business.
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Not disagreeing with you at all - but dont you think its a little sad that one of the old "true" racing teams is doing so badly

As you have so correctly explained - all the other big teams are there because of car production in one way or another and the F1 team is there to sell more cars, rather than as a pure race team which funds itself by itself as it were.

Its one of the main reasons why I still love Williams even though its been failing for years (and seems now to be on the very slippery slope in one direction) because they are only in the "business" of racing F1 cars - and engineering by products for the that reason.

sunama said:
Note: that this has not happened in recent times.

If you look at the big 5 teams:
RBR - a pure racing team, bank rolled by Red Bull Drinks company
Ferrari - a pure racing team, who are bank rolled by Fiat
McLaren - a part racing/part commercial team who couldn't find anyone to bank roll them, so they decided to earn extra revenue through their brand/racing by selling road cars
Renault* - funded heavily by Renault, though it isn't clear where they get most of their money from. Did Renault officially pull the plug on as being a works team...I have no idea?
Mercedes - bank rolled/funded primarily by Mercedes road car company.
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Thats pretty laughable - they are the biggest "marketing" team on the grid. Even originaly Fangio described it as "the road cars allowing the racing team to turn up" or words to that effect, admittedly they are making the biggest success out of it also, but thats what they will always be. To a lesser extent its the same with RBR, with these publicity stunts on the Great Wall and up mountains etc etc its purely about marketing

It would be facinating to know more about how Renualt work - with this "cover" of the investment house cough running cough the team

Being attached to a huge name ( Williams should pursaude Coke /Pepsi to sponsor them - hahaha) is the only way to really survive at the top end of the grid (until like McLaren you can make your own money as a by product) now adays
 
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I dunno, I doubt McLarens road car arm is profitable yet. I expect the Vodafone contract is worth a tidy sum though. McLaren are more in the success brings sponsors brings money camp, especially when you remember that McLaren actually only owned about 15% (or was it 30%?) of the team until a couple of years ago.

And the Ferrari racing team used to be a racing team, but now they are the road cars main global marketing project. Its why I always find Ferrari's threats to leave completely hollow. They success of the road cars globally is largely due to the marketing by association achieved through the F1 race team.

And I do agree that the Renault thing was a bit suspect. However, now that the word 'Renault' is no longer part of the team name, I can't see them still funding it. I would assume that all ties are now gone (Dany Bahr doesn't seem like the kind of guy who wants to hold hands with Renault anyway).
 
FrankJH said:
Not disagreeing with you at all - but dont you think its a little sad that one of the old "true" racing teams is doing so badly
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Not necessarily.
Sometimes in life, you have to make sacrifices and compromises to get by.
I have 2 jobs. 1 job (currently) pays little and is fun. The other job pays my bills. I would love to concentrate on the job which I love, but if I did, I would eventually become homeless...so, I have to divide my time.

In the same way, Williams should've seen this coming. Even now, its not too late. However, as was pointed out, they are an old school team who don't seem to want to change...hence, unless they get lucky and produce a stunning car, they are likely to fall further behind and as funding dries up, they may disappear.

FrankJH said:
Thats pretty laughable - they are the biggest "marketing" team on the grid.
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In a sport where 100s of Millions of £s are being pumped in, there will always be an element of marketing/advertising. Ferrari, to my mind though, remain a race team, through and through. They do trade heavily on their brand name...which is huge.

FrankJH said:
Being attached to a huge name ( Williams should pursaude Coke /Pepsi to sponsor them - hahaha) is the only way to really survive at the top end of the grid (until like McLaren you can make your own money as a by product) now adays
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They would need to hire new blood. New sales people. People who can go and get contracts from big sponsors. Given that they haven't done this in the last 10 years...I doubt we are going to see any change. What they NEED are big sponsors and the best time to do this would've been when they were winning everything.

OR

they need a rich billionaire, who instead of spending money on a football team, decides to spend money on an F1 team (I think this was suggested earlier in this thread).
 
Skeeter said:
I dunno, I doubt McLarens road car arm is profitable yet. I expect the Vodafone contract is worth a tidy sum though. McLaren are more in the success brings sponsors brings money camp, especially when you remember that McLaren actually only owned about 15% (or was it 30%?) of the team until a couple of years ago.
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Buy producing road cars and mixing their name with Mercedes, McLaren have improved their branding massively. I routinely see their name mentioned in TV adverts. When was the last time you saw Williams' F1 team name mentioned in an advert on TV?

McLaren's decision to build a huge factory to produce cars is long term. The idea is to produce a brand name...much in the same way that Ferrari has. Anywhere in the World, if you say the name "Ferrari", everybody knows it. Most people would love to own one. McLaren want to get to this level.

Think of it as a long term investment which isn't necessarily earning them huge money today...but in 5-10 years should be contributing significantly to their coffers.

Also, don't forget that every McLaren road car which goes on the road...every advert advertising McLaren Mercedes vehicles...improves their image. This makes it easier when getting the higher bids from sponsors, who have already heard of you. (its easier to get more money from a sponsor if they have heard of you and your company, than if they have never heard of you at all).
 
I think the worst thing is that people could see that this was going to happen after BMW pulled out, which was 5 years ago, but nothing has been done about it. :(

sunama said:
Buy producing road cars and mixing their name with Mercedes, McLaren have improved their branding massively. I routinely see their name mentioned in TV adverts. When was the last time you saw Williams' F1 team name mentioned in an advert on TV?

McLaren's decision to build a huge factory to produce cars is long term. The idea is to produce a brand name...much in the same way that Ferrari has. Anywhere in the World, if you say the name "Ferrari", everybody knows it. Most people would love to own one. McLaren want to get to this level.

Think of it as a long term investment which isn't necessarily earning them huge money today...but in 5-10 years should be contributing significantly to their coffers.

Also, don't forget that every McLaren road car which goes on the road...every advert advertising McLaren Mercedes vehicles...improves their image. This makes it easier when getting the higher bids from sponsors, who have already heard of you. (its easier to get more money from a sponsor if they have heard of you and your company, than if they have never heard of you at all).
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I'm not disagreeing. I'm just saying that at the moment, the road car arm is not funding the race team. I doubt its even funding itself yet. Previous road car projects were more marketing than money making too.

However, going forward, clearly the McLaren group as a whole will be funded by its own business as well as sponsorship.

Actually, something I have never understood. How the hell have Red Bull got so much money? They seem to sponsor everything, yet as far as I can tell, their sole source of income is selling Red Bull. And while they sell a good few billion cans a year, its not that much when you look at where they are involved.
 
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I think Red Bull was a marketing company to start off with so it is not all to do with selling drinks

Prepared to be proven wrong on that though
 
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