Caterham's Loss of Patience Meant Wheels Were Bound to Fall off Its F1 Wagon
For their opening three seasons in Formula One, Caterham looked like the only credible motor racing operation among the three "new teams."
While HRT, the Spanish outfit, were always heading towards extinction and Virgin, who would later become Marussia, encountered a number of calamities—the most notable of which saw the team participate with a fuel tank that was too small to reach the end of a race—Caterham, formerly known as Lotus, seemed to have a plan.
That much was clear in the respective driver line-ups of each team.
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Caterham, for 2010 and 2011, employed two former grand prix winners in Heikki Kovalainen and Jarno Trulli—who was replaced by Vitaly Petrov, a one-time podium finisher, in 2012—while HRT, by the end, were racing with veterans in the shape of Pedro de la Rosa and Narain Karthikeyan and Marussia often appeared to pick drivers' names out of a hat to find a team-mate for Timo Glock.
The instabilities encountered by both their rivals left Caterham with something of an open goal to claim 10th place in the constructors' standings, which they did with relative ease in years one and two before delivering a crushing blow to Marussia by stealing 10th at the final round of the 2012 season.
By that point, Caterham, to all intents and purposes, were ready for the next step, ready to join the midfield and compete with the likes of Scuderia Toro Rosso, Force India, Williams and Sauber for points finishes, something that, despite their advantage over their closest rivals, had always eluded them.
Their decent stature in Formula One at the end of 2012 makes the events of this week—which, according to BBC Sport saw Caterham permitted by Bernie Ecclestone, the sport's supremo, to miss the next two races in the United States and Brazil after entering administration—difficult to digest.
A team that was set to become an established part of the grid less than two years ago is now staring at the end having, you would presume, run their last lap.
The downfall of Caterham can be traced back to the latter stages of 2012, when the momentum surrounding the outfit was blunted through their own actions as they failed to gradually build upon their early progress, choosing instead to overhaul an operation that produced promising results.
Tony Fernandes' decision to hand the team principal role to Cyril Abiteboul in November 2012 was the first sign that the Malaysian was beginning to lose interest in the F1 project, opting to spend more time on his football interest, Queens Park Rangers, for whom he acts as the team's mascot and, occasionally, the club's chairman.
The changes were not confined to the boardroom either, with Caterham disposing with the assurance provided by former McLaren driver Kovalainen, a servant of the team, and Petrov in favour of Charles Pic, who had completed just one full season for Marussia, and Giedo van der Garde, who made his grand prix debut at the age of 27 at the beginning of 2013.
It was almost an open invitation for Marussia—who had not enjoyed the finest winter themselves, having replaced Glock with Brazilian driver Luiz Razia and then replaced Razia with Jules Bianchi as financial worries mounted—to take 10th place in the teams' standings and proved that, despite knocking on the door of the midfield, Caterham retained the philosophy of a backmarker.
Bianchi, of course, allowed Marussia to break into the top 10 for the first time in the team's history with a 13-placed finish in the Malaysian Grand Prix, with Caterham failing to genuinely threaten that result over the course of the remaining 17 races of last season.
The frustration that had set in the previous winter had, as a result of Marussia's rise, evolved into panic in the build-up to this season, with Caterham changing their entire driver line-up for the second successive season—a sure sign of a team with little sense of direction—as Kamui Kobayashi and Marcus Ericsson inherited the seats of Pic and Van der Garde.
On the day of the announcement of his new drivers in January, Fernandes—little more than a month after QPR announced plans for a new 40,000-seater stadium—effectively told the team's staff that it was a case of do-or-die for Caterham.
He was quoted by BBC Sport as stating:
"If we're not competing then we have to seriously examine ourselves and ask "does this make sense?"
My message to the 250 people here (at the factory) is we have to go for it this year. This is it—the final chance.
We've given you the best infrastructure, the best potential drivers, but it is now down to all of you to go and do it.
If we're at the back I don't think I'm going to carry on. Nothing is set in stone, but after five years with no points there is a limit to one's patience, money and motivation so it's an important year.
"
The 2014 regulation changes, on paper, presented Caterham with an opportunity to reset, forget the disappointment of 2013 and finally join the midfield, but they found themselves further away than ever after Bianchi worked his magic once again by scoring two points for Marussia in Monaco, leaving Caterham with no chance of hitting back.
Fernandes, as a consequence, offloaded the team after just eight races, with the news of a sale to "a consortium of Swiss and Middle Eastern investors" confirmed by Caterham ahead of the British Grand Prix.
Since then, it has become a question of surviving, clinging on by their fingernails as the team have descended into the type of dysfunctional operation that they may well have scoffed at just a few years ago, with staff locked out of the team's headquarters, as per the BBC, as the team tears itself apart.
The Caterham affair is a result of trying to run before you can walk—and it would probably be for the best if the team were put out of their misery.
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