How to Solve Rivalries Among Formula One Teammates

I have always reckoned Formula One as weird activity. Before my interest in the spectator sport began to sprout, I remember shunning it for being boring.

Hardly any overtaking, and the usual blah-blah.

It took a German wearing Red to get me hooked on, and God, was it worth all the hours spent in front of the telly.

The anticipation used to begin right from Thursday, and the high (or low) would not be gotten over till the following Wednesday!

But during my transition from non-F1 geek, to die-hard Ferrari fan (or like a certain POTD hogging, McLaren Mercedes fan puts it, Tifosi; tifoso to be gender specific) I have encountered one most painful thing about the sport: lack of sportsmanship.

I don’t know if many of you will agree with me on this one, but of all the sports I love and follow, F1 seems, somehow, to rank lowest when it comes to the “men who matter,” taking victory and loss in stride, and being appreciative of one another.

For some raison d'être, the animosity isn’t as much between drivers from conflicting camps as it is between two drivers on the same team!

Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost are an odd pair that come to mind. The two McLaren drivers used to be at loggerheads quite often, until the untimely and heartrending death of the former.

In more recent times, we’ve had the paring of Schumacher with Barrichello at the Ferrari stable and of course, Hamilton along with Alonso at McLaren.

There seems to be a common trend in the aforementioned disputes within the team hierarchy.

Ego, and the inability of two world class, Driver’s Championship winning material drivers to enjoy each others’ success, especially if it has come at the cost of your own chances at the title.

Why does this happen? After all, are these not mature professionals? Don’t they have the ability to understand that the other person pines for the same glory they seek?

This is where the team “Principals” and management come in, further complicating matters, like it happened at McLaren last season.

Prost had suggested that the only way the Alonso’s problems at McLaren could be sorted was by giving them the same dealing; much like the Prost-Senna pair was treated.

But partiality plays a huge part in Formula One these days.

There is always the “main” driver, the one who is going to get the WDC, and the other is just a dummy, used for gathering the points that will bring home the Constructor’s. Also Known As: the Rubens Barrichello-type of driver!

Such a position is always a bit depressing to even witness, let alone be in!

Felipe Massa willingly and quite happily played second fiddle to Schumacher during the German ace’s final season.

Last season, with Kimi Raikkonen better placed to aim for the championship than Massa himself, the Brazilian publicly stated that he would happily let his teammate pass him, if he stood a chance.

But will he readily accept being a second-class citizen at Ferrari for a third consecutive season, if the championship heats up towards the climax, and the Italians decide to bank on just one of them, for fear of losing out on constructor points?

The chances of Massa accepting his countryman Barrichello’s fate are slim to none.

However, letting two drivers slug it out simultaneously has its own disadvantages.

For one, as witnessed by the Senna-Prost relationship, the situation could go from bad to worse.

Either you have one champion driver, alongside a disgruntled one, or two blokes hungry for each other’s blood!

So why does such a quandary exist in the first place?

It’s the most basic problem in Formula One in my opinion.

The fact that it is called a “team” sport complicates matters.

Due to that classification, one would expect the most prized and sought after honor would be the Constructor’s Championship.

But in the light of all the media frenzy and fanfare, without which F1 wouldn’t have an end objective, like any other sport, the accolades for the team are reserved the backseat, and the World Driver’s Championship is allowed to take the wheel in this quest for glory.

In a true team sport, the team always comes before the individual.

The highest award in football is not the World FIFA Player of the Year award; it is the league title, the Champions League, or the FIFA World Cup.

In this way, F1 has been bestowed with the worst of both worlds. All the tantrums and selfimportance of a star from an individual sport from the drivers, and all the management problems of a team sport.

The obvious thing to do, therefore, would be to make sure the Constructor’s is deemed more prestigious, by some decree. But how close are we to that happening?

Such a thing may change F1 greatly.

With the team given more importance than the individual, we may see more exciting finishes, as teams would start caring less about who wins the Driver’s Championship. A more aggressive approach would definitely be on the cards, and for a change, the team “bosses” would start acting their titles.

PS: An amateur’s attempt at the big bad world of Auto-Racing literature, I hope it wasn’t a total waste of your time!

Please leave comments and criticisms! Appreciate your time spent!