The Unlikely Champions

Almost 2 years ago, with Hamilton being crowned the F1 world champion after a season long battle with Massa, one had the feeling that the F1 world would be back to the days of Ferrari- McLaren tussles at the top of the standings at least for a few years to come. Not much was thought of the seventh placed team Red Bull and the 9th placed team Honda, even less might have been expected from a certain 2 drivers – Mark Webber and Jenson Button. 


This can be made justifiable because Honda always was one of the largest funded teams in the paddock and Red Bull is owned by the energy drink billionaire Dietrich Mateschitz and have arguably the best engineering brain in the F1 industry (Adrian Newey) at their service. Though Button and Webber have been appreciable respected for their driving, but most accepted that neither of them had the outright speed. 


With Honda pulling the plug at the end of 2008 and forcing Ross Brawn and Nick Fry to dig deep into their pockets in order to save the team. Save they did, mere weeks before the start of the 2009 F1 championship, with the new team being called Brawn GP. 
All doors seemed closed for Button as well , and his denial to leave the team at its current state only complicated matters for him; but that proved to be a masterstroke by Jenson, as he went on to become the World Driver’s Champion, on the way surprising all in the paddock. The rest is what one calls “history”, with Brawn GP providing the shock of the season and ending up winning both championships.


 All knew him to be very consistent and dependable as a driver, but none expected such a result at the end. Critics (which include me) still do say that he will not win another championship and the only reason he won it last time, was due to the sheer dominance of the Brawn that helped him to win; but one cant ignore the level headedness with which he approached the second half of the championship when things were not going right for him, never did one see him panic and he always seemed to be at the right place, hence delivering the title against all odds (betting ones that is). 


With 2009 complete and with red Bull emerging to the fore from the mid-point of the season along with McLaren’s and Lewis Hamilton’s resurgence in the latter part of the season, one assumed that Button’s chances of another title wouldn’t be there due to the apparent lack of resources and sponsors with Brawn GP’s grasp. True to form, it was Red Bull and McLaren on top at the start of the season and the now rebadged Mercedes team (With Mercedes taking over Brawn GP) floundering in the middle of the pack; but Button was no more at Mercedes, after another surprising decision being made by the British driver to move onto McLaren to team up with Lewis Hamilton. Several people criticized Button as he had left a team fully behind him and gone to a team which was expected to be in Hamilton’s pocket, but with the full season complete, Jenson finished 5th in the championship 26 points behind Hamilton and 40 points behind eventual winner Vettel. 26 points might seem more but it is only a little more than a win away from Hamilton and he was in with a shot for the championship with 2 races to go.

Now, we move over to the Red Bull side of the pit lane. Ever since Sebastian Vettel’s triumph in a Toro Rosso at Monza, great things were expected from him, and with his promotion to Red Bull and Adrian Newey’s toy showing very strong pace during testing, all eyes were on him. True to expectations, he did deliver and was in contention for the title until the second last race. With Mark Webber having a poor string of races in the second half of the season, he was given the ‘disliked’ Number 2 driver status in the team. 


In his defense, Mark had broken his leg before season start and had hampered him for at least the first few races of the season, but the writing on the wall seemed clear as to who the favored son of Red Bull was going to be. With 2009 complete and red Bull looking strong once again for 2010, once again Vettel’s name was being bandied about as a possible WDC with no mention of Webber. 


Mark did not have a great start to the championship, but soon found his feet and soon displayed himself as a serious championship contender with 3 consecutive poles and 2 wins, the last pole at turkey perhaps not being converted to victory thanks to his teammate. From that point of the season things started going downwards for Mark with some key members of the team trying to shift the blame on Mark for the Turkey fracas followed with the team giving Mark’s front wing to Vettel during the British Grand Prix. This did not go down well with Mark, but he kept his head down and went on to win the British Grand Prix followed by the Hungarian Grand Prix two races later; hence slowly surging to the lead of the championship with 3 races to go, much largely due to his consistency (despite lack of outright speed). 


Could this have been his year? Or could it have been another championship for Button? With Vettel, Hamilton and Fernando Alonso mixed in the championship fight; the end result could have gone in any of these drivers favor. But alas, due to a disappointing last 3 races, Webber was robbed off championship glory by his teammate Vettel. One thing is clear in my mind though, irrespective of the end result, both Mark Webber and Jenson Button have shown that there might not be just one brand of winners in Formula 1, but there can be another…..

Rantings of a confused f1 fan

There are so many drivers and teams in Formula 1; it makes it a hard choice to choose between them. To a purist, it will definitely sound odd when he or she hears that a person is a fan of a driver who has not been F1 world champion or might never become. This makes things not so simple in the fan world, leading to many arguments and tiffs; but little do people realize that it is what brings about enjoyment in the sport for fans. 


If all supporters were there to support just one driver or one select club of drivers, then the sport would no longer be a fun sport and then there would be not much of endless discussions, and perhaps no more sport due to the fact that with only few drivers being supported, there would be only those few drivers required to race, but with so few competitive drivers racing, and with very little overtaking these days, there would be very less to enjoy about the sport and one would see people’s patience dwindling below what it already is. This though might seem a lame reason for as to why a person tends to support some other driver. 

To answer this, one might have to go to the past and understand in total how the human psychology developed. This is a topic which would require much understanding and discussion, and what will be mentioned here on, might be just the tip of the iceberg, so as to speak. There are numerous reasons as to why people tend to go for different drivers, but in the end it burns down to one simple fact, which is that all humans are unique in their own way, and the same applies to their likes and dislikes. The same reasons apply for all sports, all entertainment and for everything in life, but here I will stick to F1.


There is a general tendency for a racing enthusiast to stick behind a driver who is of their nationality and who he/she has followed right from the beginning of the driver’s fledgling motorsport career. This perhaps becomes the easiest choice in most cases. It especially holds true in the case of countries who have not had a driver in F1 at least for some time, so when a new driver comes from that country, one from the outside can see a general overwhelming support for that driver coming from his own country. This not only brings fans for an unexpected driver (as he might be slow in the end), but then adds to an increase in the F1 fan base. 


The above fact is not lost out on the team owners, and these teams try to capitalize on this fact and hence, through demonstrations and sponsorship deals, increase the general f1 knowledge among the new masses, and hence undeniably increase the support for that F1 driver. This approach has its side-effects too, one being if this driver’s teammate ends up achieving quite better results, then these new less knowledgeable and curious supporters begin to like the teammate and the team too. Support slowly shift as the masses become more knowledgeable and it might tend towards those drivers which are getting wins and podiums.


Things are unfortunately not as simple as mentioned in above paragraph. The question remains as to why even the knowledgeable fan supports the less known drivers. This comes down to psychology. A person might like to see certain character from their favorite driver, and they might not necessarily find it in the top driver. This is perhaps the best reason as to why we have such variance in driver supporters. 
At the end when one assesses the situation, it becomes an infinite loop with many things needed to be taken into consideration, such as sport visibility, profits, knowledge, character and so on. Now, one can come back to what was said at the start of the article, and one slowly gets to realize that there are too many variables which do affect F1 mania. So at the end, only a rhetorical question remains- would one like a world with fans just supporting the Alonsos, Hamiltons and Vettels, or would it be better as it is?