Thursday, July 28, 2011

Fortunes change fast in F1

Last year during the new drivers test, Daniel Ricciardo drove for Red Bull and was the fastest among all the drivers. Of course, it was another matter that the Red Bull car was the best car among all the cars, Daniel Ricciardo was immediately hailed as a Super star in the making. It was also rumoured that he will get a Torro Rosso seat. However, better sense prevailed and he was drafted in as a third and reserve driver in Torro Rosso.

Red Bull clearly felt that he has potential and wanted him to drive in all the first practice sessions on fridays during the race weekend. It was expected that one of the Torro Rosso drivers will not perform and will soon be replaced by Daniel Ricciardo. Unfortunately the situation got complicated. Sebastien Buemi started beating Jaime Alguersuari and when people started expecting that Jaime Alguersuari is on his way out, he bounced back and in the last 3 races started scoring points. This resulted in the Red Bull management deciding on funding HRT to get a seat for Daniel Ricciardo.

And in just two races, Daniel Ricciardo stands exposed. He has been thoroughly beaten by Vintanio Liuzzi in Silverstone and Nurburgring as well as by Narain Karthikeyan in the First Practice in Nurburgring. Now Daniel Ricciardo has been quoted as saying that HRT and Torro Rosso are his potential teams for 2012. Clearly the expectations have been scaled and Red Bull is out of his Radar. He had never talked about dreaming of a HRT seat earlier. Now HRT is his ambition.

So a great learning from Formula 1 is that if you are able to create a hype and are able to immediately cash in on that, then it is good for you. If for some reason you can't get into the mainstream with great machinery, then you stand exposed.

Same is the case of Heiki Kovalainen. He drove one season for Renault and was found wanting. His supporters chimed in and said that the Renault boss is demotivating him and it is showing up in his races. Mclaren team got bowled over by this hype and drafted him into the team. He stood thoroughly exposed. Though he did win a race but clearly he is not the championship material that Mclaren expected him to be. He is good enough for a mid of the grid team. Similarly, Daniel Ricciardo can remain at the back of the grid. Thinking that he is a Super star in the making is plain madness.

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