“I’m looking forward to having this luxury problem at some point in the future, having two drivers that fight for podiums or wins and then having the challenge to deal with this as a team.”
Six years ago McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl could only dream of the problem of managing two drivers fighting over victories. But today that challenge is real for his successor Andrea Stella.
McLaren won the constructors’ championship a month ago and have more than twice as many points as any of their rivals. Yet there is a real chance the drivers’ crown will not go to Lando Norris or Oscar Piastri.
Stella has repeatedly stressed McLaren’s commitment to treating both drivers equally. But can they continue to justify that policy as Max Verstappen looms ever larger in their mirrors?
How long can a team allow their drivers to fight each other when they’re under pressure from a rival? Should they stick with their policy to the end or pick a ‘number one’ to back before it’s too late?
There are relatively few cases of team mates fighting for the title until the latter stages of a season while also under pressure from another driver outside their team. But within that relatively small group of seasons there are several examples of teams which saw both its drivers miss championship chances after letting them fight it out.
Williams and McLaren’s missed titles
In 1981 Williams initially attempted to impose a hierarchy on its drivers, to no avail. Carlos Reutemann, who joined the team at the beginning of the year, refused to follow an instruction to drop behind reigning champion Alan Jones at the second race of the season in Brazil.
From there on the Williams pair were at loggerheads and there was little the team could do about it. The pair scored two wins apiece over the 15-round championship and were beaten to the title by Brabham’s Nelson Piquet.
Williams could at least console themselves with the constructors’ championship, as was also the case five years later, when the title eluded their drivers again. Piquet, now driving for them, and Nigel Mansell were defeated by Alain Prost in a sensational finale at Adelaide.
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Piquet had joined the team believing he would have ‘number one’ status. But despite winning the season-opener, Piquet dropped behind Mansell in the points within five rounds. The situation was further complicated by the absence of Frank Williams, who suffered a road car crash at the beginning of the year which left him with paralysis.
McLaren’s current management were not in charge the last time the team faced a similar situation in 2007. The falling out between Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton, both of whom joined their F1 race team that year, amounted to much more than a missed drivers’ title.
The team could have taken the constructors’ championship that year but were disqualified from the standings and fined $100 million for using intellectual property obtained from rivals Ferrari. The details which led to their punishment were revealed by Alonso following a dispute between him and Hamilton in Hungary.
The team went into the final race of the season with Hamilton still the heavy favourite to win the title, four points ahead of Alonso and seven clear of Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen. But a poor start and a gearbox glitch early on confined Hamilton to seventh at the flag, while Felipe Massa eased Raikkonen’s path to victory and 10 points which clinched the title.
But despite these experiences of Williams and McLaren, a ‘hands-off’ approach to driver management need not mean championship defeat in these circumstances, as Red Bull showed in 2010.
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Red Bull in 2010
By the final race of the 2010 season both Red Bull drivers were still in contention for the championship. Mark Webber had drawn more than one victory clear of team mate Sebastian Vettel at the Belgian Grand Prix, but the points gap narrowed over the remaining races.
With Fernando Alonso moving into the lead of the championship, aided by ‘number two’ Massa, Red Bull’s policy of backing both drivers came in for some criticism. At the race after Alonso took the points lead, Vettel won, and there was clearly no question of Red Bull telling him to make way for Webber.
Some believed the team would have openly favoured Vettel, a product of its young driver programme, had he been the one leading. Red Bull’s motorsport director Helmut Marko clearly favoured the younger driver. No doubt Webber, Piastri’s manager, has given his young charge an unvarnished account of how equal he believes the team’s treatment of him and Vettel was.
But through race-wrecking collisions, rows over upgrades and backfiring team tactics, Red Bull continued to back both drivers and their approach was ultimately vindicated. Alonso’s eagerness to cover off the threat from Webber in the season finale proved a tactical miscalculation which left him trapped in seventh place. Vettel won again, and improbably leapt from third in the standings to win the title.
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Ferrari in 1979
When Ferrari’s drivers had a shot at the championship in 1979, the team took no chances. The team could have let the battle between their drivers continue beyond the Italian Grand Prix as the threat from their rivals faded, but instead issued a ‘hold position’ order to Gilles Villeneuve which ensured Jody Scheckter won the race and the title.
However Ferrari’s drivers were under far less pressure from their rivals than the raw points totals above indicate. This was due to the bizarre points system used that season.
Drivers could only count their best four results from the first seven races plus their best four from the last eight. So by Monza it no longer mattered that Jones had emerged as the driver to beat in his Williams: he was already out of championship contention.
Jacques Laffite’s hopes virtually ended when he retired from third place behind the Ferraris with nine laps to go. Had Villeneuve passed Scheckter, and Laffite won the final two races, the Ligier driver could have taken the title, but the odds were clearly stacked against him.
But Ferrari made their choice and Scheckter won what turned out to be the last title for one of their drivers until Michael Schumacher came along.
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The 2025 title fight with four rounds remaining
No two championship scenarios are alike but it’s easy to see how McLaren could soon be confronted with a difficult decision: back one driver or risk letting their rival from Red Bull take the title. As they and other teams have seen in the past, there is no easy answer to this “luxury problem.”
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