Why Raikkonen and Bottas will decide the title

Not every Formula 1 season is like 1986, when Williams duo Nigel Mansell and Nelson Piquet took points off each other and, with a little help from a blowout on the streets of Adelaide, Alain Prost stole the world championship in the inferior McLaren. Yet conventional wisdom would have you believe it is.

That season is most often cited as supporting evidence for the strategy of a team having a set number one and number two driver. For while Piquet and Mansell did battle within Williams, Keke Rosberg played second fiddle to Prost at McLaren in the final year of his F1 career.

But what's happening in 2017 risks exposing the assumption that the number one/number two system is the one-size-fits-all solution that will always pay off in a title race for the folly it is.

If Mercedes and Ferrari continue to be locked in battle at the front for the rest of the season, both will need to maximise the weapons in their armoury. And that means Valtteri Bottas and Kimi Raikkonen are the kingmakers. In a title fight that could be decided by just a few points, they could have huge influence on the destiny of the championship. But not if they are kept out of the way.

So far, Bottas and Raikkonen have taken a grand total of zero points off their respective team-mates' title rivals. If anything, the pair have caused more problems for their team leaders, with Vettel losing time behind Raikkonen in China and Hamilton behind Bottas in Bahrain.

This is why Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said after the Bahrain Grand Prix that the ever-tiresome 'rules of engagement' (now apparently called 'racing intent') will have to include protocols to stop one driver holding up the other. But it's not for the reason everyone thinks.

With such tiny details deciding races - all three GPs so far this year have swung on strategic decisions and safety cars that impacted track position - the importance of the second drivers in the team is multiplied. They can act as a spoiler for the opposition, and take points off them, but it's essential that they do not delay the other driver. And there's a difference between ensuring that does not happen, and condemning one of your drivers to full-blown number two status.

This is because it is not just about privileging one driver over the other. Over a long season, it's likely that there will be times when Bottas or Raikkonen are leading the charge. In that scenario, it will sometimes be essential for the championship-chasing driver to let their team-mates maximise their own result.

Hamilton will be better off finishing a race third behind winner Bottas with Vettel in second than he would finishing second behind Vettel and ahead of Bottas - a difference between losing three points to Vettel if they both trailed Bottas or seven if he is runner-up to a winning Ferrari. Titles are won and lost by less.

And to explore this scenario further, say Vettel is leading from Hamilton and Bottas but the last-named has the fastest pace at that time. Were Bottas to be released to attack Vettel but prove unsuccessful, the Mercedes could be swapped back round. Of course, in this situation the task would be doubly difficult if Bottas had two Ferraris to deal with.

So the job of the 'second' driver is to minimise the damage they do to their title-chasing team-mate, while maximising the damage done to the opposition. And in order for a team to make the most of that opportunity, it's essential that whoever the slower driver is on a given weekend does not hinder the faster one. To make that strategy work, sometimes you have to be willing to give the advantage to the driver who will finish lower in the championship.

It's important for drivers to buy into this as well, because if you are quick enough this can also pay you back. A great example is the Williams team in 2014. In Malaysia, a team orders controversy was stoked up by Williams attempting to order Felipe Massa to let Bottas past as they ran seventh and eighth in the closing stages.

The order was a sound one, as Jenson Button's McLaren was just ahead and as Massa was unable to pass, it was logical to let Bottas have a go. Sadly, the language used, with Massa being told Bottas was faster than him, had echoes of the 2010 German GP (at a time when team orders were banned, which they no longer were by '14) that painted a negative picture and Massa railed against it.

The way the team reacted after the race wasn't helpful, with deputy team principal Claire Williams trying to draw a line between team orders and strategic decisions, which is a nonsensical thing to attempt to do. Fortunately, this was followed by a coherent explanation of the team's responsibilities in such a situation.

"I'd rather that it was just called strategic decisions and instructions, to call it team orders implies a whole load of negative connotations that I don't think are applicable," said Williams.

"We are a racing team that needs to score the maximum amount of points in the constructors' championship, so both drivers know that and understand that.

"As a team, those are the calls that we will be making to make sure that we gather the most amount of points.

"The objectives are to score the maximum points and to let our drivers race on the racetrack."

This is a perfectly sensible position to take. And there is a huge difference between what Ferrari did at the 2002 Austrian GP, when Rubens Barrichello lifted off out of the final corner to hand Michael Schumacher victory even though Ferrari already had a massive points advantage - effectively, pre-ordaining the result - and giving orders to reflect race situations.

Some will criticise, but it reflects well on what might be called the real racing intent of Mercedes that it is willing to use team orders when appropriate. More often, these will likely benefit Hamilton, but provided it is also willing to use them to prevent him from compromising Bottas, it's the logical position to take.

When it comes to recent world championship fights, the 2012 season is a fascinating case study. Vettel beat Fernando Alonso to the title by three points after a tense finale at Interlagos.

Something very interesting happens when you factor in their team-mates' roles. If you cancel out the points Mark Webber, in the second Red Bull, took off Alonso the title goes to Alonso by five points. And if neither Webber nor Massa were there the title goes to Alonso by three points.

While the Red Bull was clearly a superior car to the Ferrari in 2012, the gap between Vettel and Webber amounted to just 0.173% (based on the average of the fastest single lap of the weekend). By comparison, the gap between Alonso and Massa was 0.410%.

So you can make a compelling case that, heroic as Alonso's season was, were he to have had a second driver as close to him as Webber was to Vettel, he could, perhaps even would, have won the title because more points would have been taken away from his main rival.

Interestingly, it was a similar story in 2010, as if you again eliminate the team-mates of Alonso and Vettel, the title would have gone to Alonso. And that's even though Webber was causing more problems for Vettel that season.

The bottom line is that when one team has a clear advantage, a solid number two is absolutely fine. When it's so close, it's essential to have the second car in play. Effectively, to be a good number two, the other driver has to be treated like and act like an equal number one in all circumstances except those where they are directly hindering their team-mate.

This is where Ferrari needs Raikkonen to raise his game. While Bottas has been able to get in among the top two - taking pole in Bahrain and leading, as well as coming close to passing Vettel for the lead in the second stint or the race, Raikkonen has been less potent. Ferrari needs that to change, and while there's little doubt Raikkonen is a driver with a huge amount of ability, he's not performed like that in recent years.

F1 teams talk about maximising every tool, fighting for every fraction of a second and spend vast sums to give themselves the best possible package. In the shifting landscape of a race, having a second active participant is enormously valuable. It's foolish not to make use of that, even if there is the risk of your drivers taking points off each other.

As for the risk of pre-ordaining the result, ultimately it's down to the driver who is second in the pecking order at the team to raise their game and displace the team leader. The stopwatch doesn't lie, and it's nonsensical to think that teams will bend over backwards to privilege a driver who is slower over a season, even if it does occasionally happen on a one-off basis.

And that's another reason the battle of the number twos is a fascinating one. Bottas in particular has not yet shown how good he is in anything other than flashes since his move to Mercedes. It will be his performance, not what the team decides, that dictates whether or not he or Raikkonen continue in their current supporting actor roles, or if they can become the leads.

Whatever happens, the best strategy for both Mercedes and Ferrari is to treat them as joint number ones and maximise their contributions. The potential damage those drivers can do to the rival team is too big to be wasted.

This season, neither Ferrari nor Mercedes can afford to have a McLaren 1986 situation. To be a truly effective number two, the 'other' driver in a team needs to be far more than just a distant back-up. And to do that well, they can't be cast emphatically as a number two driver.