In defence of F1's indefensibly cruel driver scheme

Pierre Gasly's mid-season demotion to Toro Rosso, just 12 races into his time with Red Bull's main Formula 1 team and in a season when he was promised patience, has offered fresh ammunition for those who doubt Red Bull's methods.

Alex Albon, thrust into Gasly's vacant seat after just 12 F1 races full stop, has joked he has his "swimming shorts" ready for his dive into the deep end. But the rookie's rapid promotion and Gasly's treatment has triggered the usual suggestion that Red Bull's attitude towards young drivers is indefensibly cruel, and raised the wider question of whether its junior programme is really working.

Autosport magazine recently ran a cover feature on Red Bull's role in F1, and this included an interview with its motorsport advisor and junior programme chief Helmut Marko. Ex-F1 driver Marko is not the type to pull punches.

His words relate to the company's treatment of those on its junior programme, but they are very appropriate to its wider approach to drivers as a whole: "If you're not winning in a category straight away, then you're not the right guy."

How to defend the indefensible? Gasly presents a relevant case study. He was regularly the sixth-fastest driver out of six across the top three teams, but that should be an absolute given when there's such a gulf between those three teams (Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull) and the rest.

Yet too often Gasly slipped behind the leading midfield runners in races, and his one-lap pace over the first 12 races has been closer to the McLarens, Haases and Renaults of this world than his own team-mate.

There is no doubt Gasly is a higher level of driver than this, but he is not accessing that level at the moment and Red Bull needs someone who will. The wider impact of this argument can be found in this Autosport piece from Monday, in the aftermath of Red Bull's bombshell, but this broad outline underpins the first point in defence of the company: Red Bull is searching for the best of the best, not a driver who is struggling to even reach mediocrity.

"You need the best of the best, it's not about finding one mega driver every year?" Autosport asks Marko about the ruthlessness of the junior programme.

"Yes, exactly! I couldn't express it better," is the reply.

The fact is that if you consider someone like Max Verstappen to be a once-in-a-generation talent, then it would be paradoxical for two of him to exist. Let alone for Red Bull to be nurturing both of them. Let alone Red Bull having both in the same F1 team at the same time.

Red Bull is also generous - very generous - with what it affords young drivers. But that has to be earned, and retained. It is not a charity

To butcher an analogy: you can't make an omelette (discovering a world-class F1 driver) without breaking a few eggs (going through trial and error with drivers that look promising, but fail to deliver).

At any one time, Red Bull needs a driver capable of leading its championship challenge and a driver capable of supporting it. Red Bull's doubt is clearly that Gasly threatens to fail to even make it into the second category. To put it another way: if Red Bull's junior programme had created a Valtteri Bottas, he would not have been dropped for Albon.

This brings us to the second defence, which is Red Bull's track record. The years in which it has had a car capable of fighting for the world title are limited to 2009-2013. Red Bull team principal Christian Horner actually reckons the team's operational side was not capable of winning the championship in 2009, even if Sebastian Vettel had put together a more complete season himself. But let's be strict, and include it: of the five seasons Red Bull has been capable of winning a title, Vettel won the title four times.

So, all that trial and error, discarding all before him from Christian Klien to Sebastien Buemi; Vitantonio Liuzzi to Jaime Alguersuari, is valid, is it not?

Let's extend the example further, to race winners. Since slipping out of title contention in the V6 turbo-hybrid engine era, Red Bull has been capable of sniping for victories in 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019. Homegrown talent - Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen - has ensured it's won races in every one of those seasons.

Now, Verstappen looks like he has developed into a driver capable of mounting a title challenge once the car is up to it. Which means, regardless of Daniil Kvyat's shortcomings, Ricciardo's defection and Gasly's struggles, Red Bull looks set to enter 2020 with a driver who can win the championship.

What it needs is to establish who the best number two option is, and Albon represents an opportunity to find that out. Only Red Bull could rotate drivers in a way that it can physically test three different options for one seat. Given the drivers' and constructors' titles are the ultimate aim, and Red Bull still has the means to 'live test' its options to achieve that, it is difficult to truly question the effectiveness of the scheme because of the move it made this week.

Red Bull is also generous - very generous - with what it affords young drivers. But that has to be earned, and retained. It is not a charity. Drivers who are not good enough get swatted aside like commodities because Red Bull's ambition goes well beyond trying to populate the F1 grid with a few drivers who wear its stickers.

Gasly earned his Toro Rosso chance and his Red Bull chance, and was given both. Maybe Red Bull could have afforded him more time, but for reasons explored in great detail elsewhere, circumstances that include Gasly's own shortcomings have forced it to make a decision it did not want to even consider.

Some are not convinced by Red Bull's options below F1 at the moment, as the decision to drop Dan Ticktum - a wildcard Red Bull junior if ever there was one - earlier this year leaves it thin on the ground.

IndyCar-turned-Super Formula racer Patricio O'Ward and Formula 3 race winner Juri Vips are the likely leading candidates, but this is a medium-term problem and one that every team faces to some degree or another. If Verstappen/Albon works, or Gasly finds his groove again and reclaims his seat, Red Bull may not need to change for many years.

"We got a lot of criticism about [cutting drivers], which I would say is not fair because most of these drivers - 90% or more - are in other categories" Helmut Marko

It is likely that Red Bull gets more concentrated grief over its attitude because of the prominence of its junior team and the existence of Toro Rosso.

Compare it to the other big teams in F1 with junior programmes. Mercedes has struggled to find a seat for Esteban Ocon, although George Russell is at least in F1 with Williams. But Pascal Wehrlein dropped out.

Similarly, at Ferrari, only the late Jules Bianchi and current Scuderia driver Charles Leclerc have made it onto the F1 grid. What of Raffaele Marciello or Antonio Fuoco? McLaren's efforts with Stoffel Vandoorne have ended with the Belgian exiled to Formula E, and Nyck de Vries is no longer on the scheme. And none of Renault's proteges look close to entering F1 in the short-term.

This defence might seem more like attack, but (although that is often cited as quite an effective option) that's not the point. It simply serves to put Red Bull's programme into context. It has a bigger pool of drivers and therefore more make it, but by extension more do not make it either.

One argument is that Red Bull must do more for these rejected drivers. And Red Bull's approach to young drivers could probably be improved. Marko says it puts drivers in touch with psychologists to ensure they have assistance on the mental side as well as their work behind the wheel. Red Bull hoovers up drivers at such a young age and exposes them to intense pressure, but the idea it could offer softer landings for rejects glosses over some key points.

First, Red Bull already does an enormous amount, relieving them of a massive financial burden through their careers, recompensing them handsomely if they succeed, and giving them a lot of tools and training support - not just financial backing - that other drivers can only dream of.

Second, it is a slightly molly-coddling attitude to what is ultimately elite sport. No, that does not mean Red Bull is entitled to treat a person badly. But there is an emphasis on the athlete taking responsibility for their own actions.

Third is the extent of the opportunity Red Bull's support offers these drivers outside of F1, either still with the company's support or elsewhere. Take a look at how the likes of Sebastien Buemi used his Red Bull link to not only survive F1 rejection, but thrive in motorsport and become a world champion, Le Mans winner and Formula E title winner.

"We got a lot of criticism about [cutting drivers], which I would say is not fair because most of these drivers - 90% or more - are in other categories," says Marko. "Looking at the Spa 24 Hours or in DTM or LMP1 or Formula E. They all make [a living] out of it. What more can you expect from your life?"

It is also worth considering that Red Bull has made a massive contribution to the F1 grid beyond its current quartet of drivers: Vettel at Ferrari, Ricciardo at Renault, Carlos Sainz Jr at McLaren.

Maybe it could have handled certain scenarios differently, especially if you hold the opinion that Ricciardo or Sainz were effectively left by the wayside as Red Bull focused its attentions on Verstappen. Certainly, with hindsight, one can say with confidence that either of those drivers would have put Red Bull in a stronger position than it has found itself with Gasly after 12 races.

Yet, that risk-taking approach, the acceptance that Red Bull may get it wrong a few times to get it right when it matters, has been the cornerstone of Vettel's titles, Ricciardo's wins and Verstappen's progress.

These drivers are evidence of how well it does go when Red Bull really gets it right, as much as Gasly now risks joining the list of its drivers who were not quite up to it. Whether Albon is a better bet, we will only know the answer in hindsight. But Red Bull posing the question is along the same lines as all its previous calls, good and bad, and F1 is undeniably stronger thanks to that.