How idiotic drivers can destroy a team

Just as the last race before the summer break in Hungary was enlivened by another clash between the Force India drivers, so the first after it at Spa produced not one but two controversial moments.

It seems that Sergio Perez and Esteban Ocon are still out to destroy everything that Force India has worked so hard for by trying to wipe each other out whenever they are near each other, yet again costing the team significant points.

If I was there, I'm afraid I would have lost it by now and I am sure Bob Fernley, Otmar Szafnauer or Andy Stevenson will do, or will already have done.

They are acting like spoiled kids and really need their heads knocked together. When I saw them touch going down into Eau Rouge on the first lap, I thought it was all over then. It could have been a plane crash.

But then seeing them together again in the same place later on, it was inevitable that contact was going to be made. It will be a shame if their race results come down to instructions from the pitwall as they are two very good drivers, but no top team will look at them if they don't start to respect each other.

These problems go back a long way, at least as far back as the Canadian Grand Prix when Ocon wanted to be let past Perez in the closing stages of the race. Then there was the collision at Baku that potentially cost Force India a double podium, and the clash at the first corner at the Hungaroring.

I believe Force India's management should have put its foot down earlier in the season. From the outside, you could easily see neither driver was taking responsibility for the previous incidents and, if nothing else, a proper warning shot to both of them after the Hungary incident might have reminded both that the team is bigger than either of them. Force India is around 400 strong, and each and every one of them is feeling the pain caused by two irresponsible drivers.

Now it's happened again, how do you deal with it? It's very difficult to say anything more to them that hasn't already been said. They simply need to have respect for each other. They are similar in performance, so will normally be close together on track, but as they aren't having incidents with other cars that's perhaps a very good detail to point out to them. It suggests that their desire to beat each other is the problem.

They also need to be very aware of the fact that other teams are watching what's happening. Above all, racing teams need drivers that will bring the car home if at all possible. If a top team were considering either of them, then this latest incident will be a big black mark. I never liked drivers that thought they were bigger than the teams and the concern is these two won't change overnight.

Perhaps they are too stupid to understand this, but the golden rule is that you don't wipe out your team-mate

We only have to look back at how the aggro escalated between Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton. Rosberg isn't there anymore because he retired - who knows if the deterioration of their relationship played a part in that.

The way these incidents will be noticed by the big teams is something that needs to be pointed out to Perez and Ocon. Perhaps they are too stupid to understand this, but the golden rule is that you don't wipe out your team-mate. For the team, it only matters that both cars finish in the highest possible position. It doesn't matter if it's Ocon sixth and Perez seventh or the other way round, so risking those results by trying to beat each other reflects a selfish nature.

When these kinds of things happen, it is mainly the driver briefings and the debriefs that start to suffer. Fortunately, those in the garage are resilient and professional and probably just think both of them are idiots, which in this case appears to be true.

There is the question of the fact that Perez brings a substantial amount of sponsorship money to the team, but that should never interfere with on-track behavior or the way that is dealt with. In the car, both are equals and it's the performance - and more importantly the results - that count.

In my day, I worked with plenty of drivers who brought money to the team, but I never cared about that. That was the responsibility of Eddie Jordan. I was only interested in the cars on the track and if either of my drivers were as stupid as these two, I would be on their backs pretty quickly and try to stamp it out before it festered. Force India needed to do this a long time ago.

Getting them under control now is going to be very difficult. Maybe you need to look at taking the damage costs out of their pay, that way they might at least realise that these parts don't come cheaply.

There has also been the threat of benching one or both for a race. But to actually go that far, blame has to be apportioned, and in any incident that is pretty difficult. The stewards didn't blame either Perez or Ocon for what happened at Spa, so that makes it difficult for the team to take such action.

There was some blame in earlier incidents, but that is all in the past. In future, it would be a pretty good and independent way to lay down the law - if there's a penalty, then you can bench a driver.

Both drivers are determined to make an impact. Ocon is a Mercedes junior so has his eye on a works drive, while Perez is later in his career and probably realises this is his last chance to get a top drive and he can't afford to be beaten by a younger driver.

Perez is also the driver with more experience and has become relatively hot property with his performances since leaving McLaren at the end of 2013. But he's not doing himself any good this season and has, if anything, showed his immaturity.

Ocon is the new kid on the block and is trying to assert his authority, but this is not the right way to do that. He needs to do it on pure speed in qualifying, and I haven't seen enough of that yet.

The two of them remind me of when we ran Giancarlo Fisichella and Ralf Schumacher at Jordan in 1997. They were both at similar points in their career and both were chasing that big team drive.

They both got just that, with Fisi going to Benetton and Schumacher to Williams a year later, but not before we'd had many a strong word with them. Not least after their collision in the Argentinian Grand Prix that cost a double podium and perhaps even a win. It made for some interesting driver debriefs.

Force India isn't the only team with driver problems. Again, Fernando Alonso had trouble with Honda at Spa and he's clearly now at the point where he's fed up with the situation. He wants to be in a competitive package and he does not have that with McLaren-Honda.

He's made some pretty poor decisions lately, is he about to make another one with his career? It looks like he might have parked a healthy car at the weekend, and that's never good for team morale - not that anyone in the McLaren garage is happy with the situation.

To add to Honda's problems, I don't understand why, for some very strange reason, when everyone else removed the most draggy parts from their cars, McLaren continued to use such parts. With a car that we all know - and as Alonso keeps reminding us every race - doesn't have the power of the others, optimising it for the mid-section of the track means that it is sacrificing performance in section one and three.

I believe a better compromise was there to be had. Would it have made much difference? Probably not but it would have meant it might just have been able to hold its own on those long straights just that little bit better.

After all, Alonso confused his engine in qualifying by taking Pouhon flat, which again suggests the balance wasn't right.

Up front, Mercedes is still that little bit faster than Ferrari, and in race trim it is still down to whoever gets the jump at the start - and that is normally the pole man.

Red Bull hasn't really closed the gap to the leading two teams or, more importantly, fixed the reliability problems that are ruining Max Verstappen's season. Romain Grosjean is still complaining about his brakes, the Force Indias are still hitting each other, Williams is still having trouble...

What Spa did show was that a real race track drags the best from the drivers. They all love this type of fast, sweeping track where talent and bravery come together. When it comes to combining those two there is no one better than Lewis Hamilton.

The television doesn't really do justice to the speed that these cars can achieve through the fast sweeping corners, pulling in excess of 5g under braking and 4g laterally in the corners is amazing to see up close. For these guys to do it lap after lap with such precision is exceptional.

Williams is really in trouble and has been going backwards since its best season of recent times in 2014

The focus for the future must be on a set of regulations that allows the drivers to actually race each other on a competitive level. It won't be easy, but it has to be done otherwise the spectacle on TV is just not there and that is what is needed to get the casual viewer more involved in Formula 1.

Spa highlights the need for aerodynamic compromise. Section one and three need top speed, section two needs downforce, but as we know following another car through those fast corners in the middle of the lap is almost impossible. So being close enough to someone entering section three to be able to overtake them is very difficult if not impossible.

It's mainly down to section one for overtaking and, with the use of DRS, a few achieved it but it wasn't enough to alter the outcome of the battle at the front. Hamilton was always able to pull out enough to make sure Vettel didn't get the DRS advantage and without it a pass was never really on.

Mercedes and Ferrari run the same philosophy rear wing, a slightly 'V' shape. This reduces the drag on the outboard section of the wing near the rear wing end plates, which is the most inefficient part of the rear wing because it sets up the vortex that we see coming off that area in wet conditions.

The Ferrari wing looks like it has a little more cross section in the middle part, so would still have a little more drag but produce a little more downforce. These small things are what add up to Hamilton being able to hold off Vettel. Both of them ran with the 'T' wing and with their power level, I am not surprised.

I don't really know how it managed it, but Williams dragged a few points out of what was a dismal qualifying. The team is really in trouble and has been going backwards since its best season of recent times in 2014.

Williams still needs to look carefully and identify its problems and instigate developments to rectify them. At the moment, it appears it is just introducing random updates which appear to be exaggerating the problems - especially in qualifying.

When you have a problem like this it is probably down to the balance on new tyres or getting new tyres to come into the working zone together. If the car has an inherent understeer, when you fit new tyres it will be exaggerated to a level that it doesn't generate front tyre temperature.

To make the best use of a new or softer-compound tyre, the car needs to have a little tendency towards oversteer or you need the set-up window available to you to increase the front grip to bring the front tyres into their working zone at the same time as the rears. Williams doesn't seem to have this.

Safety cars and the way they are used still confuses me a lot. It basically ruins a race. Yes, it brings everyone back together, which is a spectacle and it gives them a second chance, but like the DRS all that is artificial. On a track that has a race lap time of over 1m45s, surely a virtual safety car could have been used to clear up the debris from the Perez/Ocon incident?

If the safety car still must be used, it needs to be able to go faster. I keep saying that the lead driver should in effect become the safety car. They should be setting a pre-defined pace that allows them to get, or keep, temperature in the brakes and tyres but still go slow enough past any incident. Also, this business of allowing the lapped cars to overtake and make up either all (or almost all) of their lost lap is farcical.

If it's someone that through no fault of their own has lost time or position because of the incident that caused the safety car to be deployed, then I fully understand. But when it's just a car that has been lapped fair and square through its level of performance, then they should just be sent to the back of at least the top 10.

The pressure is on Ferrari to up its game for one-lap performance and with the next race in Monza you can multiply that pressure 10-fold. Will Ferrari come to Monza with something new? There is talk of an updated power unit and, at Monza that will be vitally important, but it also needs something in the chassis to grab that little bit more out of the new tyres in qualifying.

With these cars and their extra chassis-mounted downforce producing devices at Monza, a high-speed, low-downforce track, overcoming the extra drag of the bigger tyres is going to be difficult.

It's going to be interesting to see who really goes to town on their rear wing set-ups.