Winning drivers’ titles is a complex adventure that depends on volatile and unpredictable parameters, but the constructors’ world championship does follow a more imaginable script.
To win titles you have to get outstanding in various subjects. If you want to win a World Cup, here is the instruction manual.
Subject 1: Budget
It’s no mystery, to win you need a lot of dough. Without a budget, there is not much to do, and the fact that big things happen with a small budget is usually more the product of specific genius, flattering temporary environments, or twisted or interpreted regulations with greater fortune for some and misfortune for others. «Yes, but eg that BrawnGP…». Yes, it’s true, BrawnGP had a punctual performance never repeated of taking the biggest with limitations of all kinds, and it is no less true that part of its success was due to its famous double plane diffuser coming from Super Aguri. When the rest of the teams kept the couplet they tried to clone it with greater or lesser success in their designs, but they arrived too late.
Another one they tempted was Fernando Alonso, who was put on the table with an economic offer of such caliber that never before and never since has anyone matched it de facto
This is part of well-remembered history… but many forget that Flavio Briatore or Ron Dennis, among others, promoted FOTA that year. That cartel of teams, dissatisfied with the dough they received, proposed setting up an alternative Formula 1, with a plan foreign to the established one, and that would strip power from the FIA and the owners of the category. The double-plane diffuser was the anti-tank mine that the sport’s managers placed under the ass of the teams that wanted to get lost and weaken their position. The usual thing, the normal thing, the frequent thing, is that the rich essentially win because they can afford better cars, better structures and better drivers. BrawnGP was a wonderful rarity, but above all, the latter.
Subject 2: Winning Drivers
Just as the best driver does not make a mediocre car win, a middling driver can make a winning car lose titles (and there are many examples). The logical thing is that the best teams want the most outstanding drivers, and the fastest riders want to be where they give them the best possible material; gluttony is combined with the most appetizing of the menus. They say that Jaime Alguersuari It returned spectacular results in the Red Bull simulator when loaded with the profile of the blue RB but on asphalt it had to settle for the performance of the more limited Toro Rosso. “Helmut, give me, you give me one of those cars and you’ll see how far I go,” the Barcelona native once told the Austrian… without success. At that time the Red Bulls were unbeatable, and sitting waiting to be able to take the cars that made Sebastian Vettel champion, the DJ rejected other offers. The rest is history.
In Toyota they wanted to sign Schumacher and they extended him little less than the blank check that he never accepted. Another they tempted went to Fernando Alonso, to which they put on the table an economic offer of such caliber that never before and never since has anyone matched it de facto. He may have had some similar proposal, but as far as is known, no one has paid him the amount that the Japanese drew him on a piece of paper and to which he said no. In this way, the Orientals had to settle for not so desirable pilots. Being respectful to all of them, because they weren’t bad pilots either, but they were never champions, winners, and role models. If you want to win, you have to buy quality and certain guarantees behind the wheel.
Subject 3: Strong investments in technology and infrastructure
Take note: when the team accounts come out this year you will be surprised by how many formations are going to lose money. And when we talk about Formula 1, it’s never hundreds or thousands of euros. Not even millions. In terms of formulaic economics, money candlesticks use the unit of measure called ten million. When a formation loses money, it is always ten, twenty, or sixty million leuros and that is a figure that may seem small if you read it in writing, but gigantic when you have to pay it in wads of hard cash. It often happens that the teams announce bleeding losses full of zeros and it is because from time to time they have to scratch their pockets to acquire first-class material with consistent invoices. A wind tunnel can cost 30 or 40 million eurosa black leg simulator can come out for a comparable figure if you are a little careless, or the construction of a new headquarters a few hundred.
The most expensive and technical sport in the world is a dragon that burns banknotes with its hypo-hurricane breath, and much of that butter is melted in high-tech infrastructure that costs a Congo. Given the current budget limitations, many formations have gone ahead and melted down what they had before the financial handbrake limits their growth in this regard. Hence, McLaren has reached into its wind tunnel, Ferrari has revamped its simulator, Aston Martin has thrown the rest with its new factory, and surely others have made acquisitions of a similar caliber in the face of the difficulties to come.
When Andreas Seidl arrived at McLaren on his first visit he was surprised when he saw the metal cutting machines he said “We had those fifteen years ago, when I was at Sauber”. In technological terms, something five years old is already antediluvian, so imagine fifteen. On the other hand, look at how long McLaren has not won on a regular basis and how long those mills had, and although the General Law of Cause and Effect cannot be applied directly, it reveals that there is a certain correlation. Better tools, better results, you don’t have to be a rocket engineer to understand it.
Subject 4: Winning technicians
Without detracting from the value of the drivers, today more intrinsic merit lies in the contribution of a good car than in the hands of a good driver. That is why the vault key on which the success of a team is based is not the car… but who designed it and the team of mariachis attached to it. «That this is an engineering championship? Well, sign up the best, phenomenon, and that’s how you’ll win.”. There are very few Neweys in our universe, but the balding engineer is one of several capable of creating winning cars. Aldo Costa, James Key, Andrew Green, the semi-retired Rory Byrne… The list is short, although people always arrive with good ideas, capable of growing, expanding and evolving, who can create good single-seaters. The father of the Red Bulls earns more than half of the drivers on the current grid, and this should be enough to understand the importance they give to his presence. Choosing a bad technical director can be very expensive, almost worse than signing a pilot who is not up to the task.
Anything else. Engineering within a team has a bit of a Biblical form of religion. If in the role of Jesus Christ we could put the chief designer, technical person in charge, or main ideologue of the project, we cannot disdain the holy apostles that surround him, that is, the clique of sub-chiefs. In the business of engineering, simulators, single-seater construction, aerodynamics, or materials, among others, they should not be neglected, and all of them act as tentacles of the main squid. If one fails, they all fail.
Subject 5: Innovation
Fundamental. Those who win are always inventors, they are always ahead. They often lead the way for the rest, who more or less veiledly try to achieve the same results by applying similar recipes. The unwritten law is that those who travel first class almost always have a magical gadget that gives them an extra advantage. They can be snitch exhausts, a double plane diffuser, an engine with extra horsepower, an F-duct, flaccid wings, a DAS system in the direction or a whatever that they treasure exclusively and with which they can cut off the rest from the heights. Interpreting and looking for loopholes in the regulations to wade through the limitations without breaking the established rules is a necessity.
The one who invents wins, and to create what is stated in point three is often needed: technological investments. The process of implementing changes, especially the most radical and esoteric ones, requires a lot of testing. In a time of very strong restrictions when it comes to putting cars on the track, everything has to be tested in that kind of metaverse of speed that occurs inside computers, simulators and wind tunnels. Needless to say, that costs a pretty penny, and requires highly trained technicians and knowledgeable about the uses and customs relating to these practices. The more you have, the better, both ideas and systems to test that they work. One doesn’t usually work without the other.
Subject 6: Sound Management
Steve Jobs, the father of the iPhone, had a great phrase to define himself to his employees. The statement read something like “you play an instrument, but I play the orchestra.” And the fact is that there is no symphony orchestra of the size of the six hundred to eight hundred employees that a medium-sized team can have on staff… if it does not build its own engines. Without wishing to disparage other team managers, the called to win during the last decade, Christian Horner and Toto Wolff, have been the Steve Jobs of speed in this period of time. His management, according to the results, has been exemplary. From choosing the buffet at Hospitality to which mechanic sits on which wheel at the pitstops is up to you.
They have the last word on everything, and if the results have been titles, it is that they were right in their choices. The task is not easy and there are also many sticks to play: internal politics, lobbying the regulatory body, dealing with shareholders and sponsors, managing human resources with their limitations and possibilities, business strategies, future investments, important signings, management of the media, etc. A team leader Formula 1 he is not a coach but something much more complex, and more similar to the person in charge of any company that runs on the stock market.
Epilogue
Take a look at the teams and see if they meet these requirements or not. They do not need all of them, but the deficiencies in some subject must be compensated with greater incidence in others. Those who win will more or less follow this script, and those who lose will have done other things through inaction, omission, or because they cannot afford it. You know, this is a sport locked inside a business. If the latter doesn’t work, the former doesn’t either..