F1 faces long-term driver shortage

The seeds of a problem can be planted many years before they germinate and the initial symptoms of a malaise become detectable. Formula 1 is now starting to feel the early effects of a decision made over four years ago.

For all the millions spent on designing, developing and running grand prix cars, the driver remains a vital component. A driver cannot win without a good car and a good car can be made to look less effective in the absence of a quality driver. It is a symbiotic relationship.

While the difference between the average rank-and-file F1 driver and a gold standard, world championship-winning one is tiny, this can make all the difference between a great season and merely a decent one. The best drivers are able to deliver week in, week out. Think of the relentlessness of a Fernando Alonso or a Sebastian Vettel, who near as makes no difference always deliver.

The bottom line is a top team must have a top driver. Not just a good driver, but an excellent one. There are not many of them around. Just ask Martin Whitmarsh.

While McLaren is doing a superb impression of a midfield team on track, in terms of size, resources, potential and ambition it is a top team. It has Jenson Button on its books, a world champion and a classy driver, but history has proved he has a narrower performance window than some. He drives exquisitely at times, is one of the greatest low-grip pilots F1 has seen on slicks in the wet, but he is not the most consistent.

He's well worth having in any top team but just as the Lewis Hamilton/Button alliance was ideal from 2010-12, so the Button/Sergio Perez duo is concerning McLaren. There is no question Button will stay on, but the team has been scratching its head over Perez's perfectly respectable, but often unremarkable, performances.

McLaren needs the right partner for Button © XPB

But if McLaren does want to replace him, choosing an alternative is not easy. Fernando Alonso is a realistic medium-term target, but in the absence of him, what could it do for 2015? That question is tough to answer.

And here, we come back to where we started. F1 is facing a long-term driver shortage.

It has barely begun to hit home, but as the years go on, if nothing changes, it will become ever more apparent. And though it is not because there is a lack of drivers with potential coming through, that too is a symptom.

While the demise of the manufacturer era, with significant money going into junior programmes, has played a part in this, the decision to outlaw in-season testing for the 2009 season is a more significant factor even when the need for many teams to take drivers for sponsorship reasons is factored in.

The test ban was a necessary step. F1 had started to wean itself off incessant testing in the preceding few seasons, but for cost reasons it needed to make a clean break.

But there was collateral damage in that young driver development was stymied by this move.

All the teams recognised the problem, but the creation of a three-day young driver test was little more than a sop; a recognition of the downside of the test ban, but an inadequate solution. There were ways to tackle this without simply allowing vast amounts of running out of race weekends.

With the exception of Red Bull, which has the perfect nursery slope in the form of Scuderia Toro Rosso, top teams are now relying primarily on other teams to develop their drivers. In 2007, McLaren was able to promote the long-nurtured Lewis Hamilton to a race seat off the back of significant testing mileage. But the situation is very different today.

Magnussen is the class of Formula Renault 3.5 but can he step straight into F1? © LAT

McLaren still has a junior scheme, with Formula Renault 3.5 nearly-champion Kevin Magnussen at the front of the queue.

He has impressed McLaren in what little testing he has had, but it cannot properly develop him with track mileage. As Whitmarsh himself pointed out earlier in the season, if you offer a promising young talent to a smaller team, the response is now 'how much?'.

If McLaren can't properly develop its own future stars, where does it turn next? Ultimately, it's down to luck. Specifically, the luck that smaller teams will be fielding drivers capable of making the step up. Effectively, it's a crapshoot.

So what if McLaren decides that Perez isn't up to the job and can't get Alonso quickly enough? It might consider Magnussen to have the potential to do the job, but with little testing throwing him in for the 2014 season would be a spectacular roll of the dice.

What's more, McLaren cannot even run the rule over other contenders with a few days in its car, simply because of the outright test ban. In effect, it is no longer in a position to ensure it gets the best possible key component in its car: the driver.

All of this could be interpreted as an argument for bringing back unrestricted testing. That would be folly. But with only eight days of in-season running next year, a decent proportion of which will either be taken up by race drivers or more experienced testers, the problem is still there. Anyone arguing that this will make a vast different to driver development is wrong.

What McLaren is experiencing now is only the thin end of the wedge. It's not the only team in this position. Ferrari has the promising Jules Bianchi on its books, but it was through luck rather than its own judgement that the Frenchman washed up at Marussia this year - had Luiz Razia's backers stumped up the cash, Bianchi would be at best a Friday driver for Force India.

Mercedes also has a proud record of involving itself with young drivers and ensured Daniel Juncadella had a runout for Williams in the Silverstone test this year and has also given Sam Bird, another driver with the CV but not the opportunity to break into F1, mileage.

But beyond the extra running in obsolete machinery that some teams offer, most teams are hamstrung to the point of paralysis when their juniors get to the brink of grand prix racing.

Hulkenberg still hasn't had a proper chance to prove himself in F1 © XPB

And even when promising drivers do get onto the grid, it now takes two or three seasons for them to make the progress they would have made in one thanks to extra track time seven or eight years ago.

And when they are ready for a top seat, as Nico Hulkenberg is, for example, people waver because they have yet to see what such drivers can do in leading squads even though it is abundantly clear how good they are in lesser teams (although in McLaren's case, there are also concerns about his height and weight).

So, assuming F1's big teams don't decide to take over their own Toro Rosso-style junior teams - itself an undesirable situation - what is the solution?

The decision to allow an extra set of tyres for the first half-hour of Friday morning practice, harnessed with the potential to switch drivers mid-session, is not a bad move. It's just of very limited use as far as developing young drivers goes.

One extreme move might have been to mandate all season testing must be conducted by rookie drivers. With due apologies to Gary Paffett, this would have to include restrictions on age/experience to stop veteran test drivers being brought in. But that ship has sailed and would have been rejected anyway.

Equally, some form of incentivised extra running on a weekend for rookies has its appeals, perhaps rewarded with extra sets of tyres or the like - something that makes a tangible impact on the weekend.

Ultimately the key is that the teams, collectively, tackle the problem. Many team principals have started to publically self-flagellate over their failure to find consensus when given the unique opportunity to run the sport themselves. Unfortunately, this public admission of their failings will not change anything.

If they can't tackle immediate problems like cost-cutting in a coherent and united way, long-term problems like young drivers are hardly going to get onto the agenda.

But it will eventually catch up with them. While today's top guns have plenty of life left in them, they cannot go on indefinitely.

By finding a way to allow young driver development, it will serve the collective good and prevent ever-more teams facing McLaren's current uncertainty.

For every F1 team, relying on serendipity to provide their key component is simply not an option.