Formula One silliness … or is it?
The 2013 Formula One season has hardly passed the halfway-mark and the driver line-ups for next year are the subject of much speculation. Most of the seats are well and truly tied up, which leaves precious few slots for any driver keen on challenging for the 2014 title with a top team.
Since Mark Webber announced his departure from front-running outfit Red Bull there has been plenty of rumour as to who will occupy his vacated seat in 2014. Initial rumours seemed to revolve around Kimi Raikkonen.
The laconic Finn has made a spectacular return to the sport after brief stints in WRC and NASCAR, and presumably partying up a storm. He has managed to drag the Lotus into brilliant finishing positions, not least a very popular win early in the season. But Raikkonen is quick and Red Bull’s blue-eyed boy Sebastian Vettel knows this.
Considering that Webber is leaving (mostly) due to favouritism shown to his younger team-mate it’s very likely that Seb gets to decide who his next whipping bo… er, team mate is. It is unlikely that Kimi will kowtow to team orders; he will most probably want to be left alone as heknowswhatheisdoing. Will Seb the Finger take up the challenge of facing up to a properly quick team-mate? Hmmm…
One of the most obvious choices would be either of the Toro Rosso drivers, Jean-Eric Vergne and Daniel Ricciardo. Vergne impressed in his debut season, but has since been shadowed by the Aussie who recently participated in the young driver test session, and supposedly impressed the senior Bull team with his feedback and lap times. Another Aussie to Red Bull, are we seeing a pattern here?
Ferrari’s number one son Fernando Alonso is not extremely happy with the machine that the Scuderia has provided him. A not-very-secret bollocking by Ferrari boss Luca de Montezemolo would not have sat well with the Spaniard, who does not like it when things don’t go his own way; just ask McLaren.
Adding fuel to the fire was the fact that Alonso’s manager was seen visiting Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner at the Hungarian Grand Prix. Both parties claimed that the meeting was to discuss the futures of Carloz Sainz, Jr, but the timing was a little too suspicious.
Most recently German newspaper Bild claimed that the Alonso-to-Red Bull move is a certainty, which leaves an open seat at Ferrari.
Guess who is back in play? Our friend The Iceman. The last time Kimi wore a red overall he delivered a title to the Scuderia, in 2007, also the last time the Italian team relished in such success. The question is, will the team have him back? Seemingly, according to Bild the answer to that is yes. Reportedly the offer they have made is more lucrative than the one Red Bull have placed on the table.
In all of this I really feel for Lotus, the team that gave Kimi a chance to return to F1 in a semi-competitive car. He does have a contract with the team but as we well know contracts in this cut-throat sport are hardly worth the paper they are written on. I for one would love to see Raikkonen square up to Vettel in (hopefully) identical machinery. Maybe Vettel will finally put that finger away, or perhaps it has been frozen that way from being the team’s number one driver for too long.
But the answers to these questions will only really be clarified as the next few races unfold.
