It is supposed to be the entertainment to keep you going when the racing stops, but last year the actions of Silly Season were almost wantonly tedious. If it hadn't have been for David Coulthard finally retiring and precipitating a bit of minor seat-juggling from the Red Bull driver empire, it would have been entirely probable that we'd have started 2009 with an identical line up to last year. As it is, we picked up Sebastien Buemi, who is fantastic, so it wasn't all bad news.
This year, though, there is a quiet but persistent murmur that the driver market will be at it's most convoluted and malleable for years, as big names tire of poor cars, big teams tire of poor drivers, new teams enter with their delusions of grandeur and the midfield runners shuffle their respective hands, which all should make up for the yawnsome result of last year's faffing. So, with the summer rush for drivers, teams and F1 news site column inches about to kick off any time soon, here's a few key points that may well decide the look of the 2010 grid.
- Whither Alonso?
In recent years, Alonso's personal career choices have echoed the general entertainment value of silly season as a whole. In 2007, with his McLaren career rapidly disintegrating around him, he was negotiating a return to Renault, which precipitated a fairly animated driver merry-go-round, whereas last season he doggedly stayed put with the Regié, buoyed by two late-season wins, and everyone seemingly decided to follow suit.
This year though, surely enough is enough. For the second year in a row, arguably the most talented driver of the current generation is languishing in a useless Renault spending his time scrapping for 12th place and generally making a bit of a cock of his career. Surely this time he will be drawn elsewhere, be it to Ferrari (as pretty much all Alonso rumours predict) or somewhere more surprising, and surely that will precipitate a huge driver movement, with whichever big name Alonso replaces plonking themselves on the market and setting up a domino effect of driver and team pairings collapsing like a knackered soufflé. Alternatively, Flavio Briatore could spend the summer months wining, dining and whispering sweet nothings into his favourite son's ear, trying to convince him, DC style, that next year will be their year.
- The new boys.
If the current lot of F1 teams still refuse to play swapsies with their drivers this year, then it doesn't really matter all that much, because there are three brand new teams raring to fill up their available seats with a mixture of underwhelming GP2 talent and borderline-retired Big Team test drivers. Either way, they should be able to provide a route into the sport for some of those that get passed over for race seats every year by the bigger boys.
Early favourites for those precious seats are, by and large, exclusively drivers that hail from the same country that the team is from, as the F1 rumour mill gets confused as to whether or not they've started playing A1GP instead. Therefore, USF1 are supposed to be yee-haw-ing their way towards a pair of up-and-coming American drivers, with baby faced champion offspring Marco Andretti and baby faced underwear model Danica Patrick producing the rumours offering the most credence. Though that could all just be because there aren't really any other up-and-coming American drivers.
Elsewhere, every British driver of any limited single seater note is being hawked in the direction of Manor (think Gary Paffett, Paul di Resta, that bloke out of A1GP), while Campos Racing seem happy to hoover up Spanish failure Pedro de la Rosa into one of their seats.
Whatever happens with the new boys, they will at least provide a fresh injection of faces and talent into the stagnant F1 grid. And de la Rosa will be there as well.
- Nico's Choice.
As I've moaned about before, Nico Rosberg may well reach a bit of a crossroads this winter, having reached the same crossroads last winter and decided to just sit there staring at them for a bit before heading back the way he came, to Williams HQ. Should the "big teams" come sniffing around the German again, like hungry dogs around the bins at a chip shop, will Nico choose to fly the Williams nest that has treated him so well to date in favour of a genuine shot at race wins in a BMW, for example (2009 form notwithstanding).
Right now, he would be wise to stay where he was, with Williams keeping a decent pace with the upper midfield, even if they've never looked like getting on a par with Red Bull and Brawn this year. But should the team from Grove see their pace vanish over the second half of the season, the deja vu may just make Rosberg's mind up for him.
- GP2's hopefuls.
One of the reasons that there was so little movement in Silly Season last year was because the F1 squads viewed the GP2 field of last season with more than a smidgeon of disdain. Champion Giorgio Pantano was viewed as too old (though he has been linked with a seat at Campos for 2010), Bruno Senna as too raw, and the rest as largely poor or unproven. This year, that may well all change, with early championship leader Romain Grosjean already closely linked to Renault, Nico Hulkenburg already employed as a Williams test driver (for what that title is worth these days) and Lucas di Grassi popping up on the radar of a number of teams, there may well be a bit more of a trickle up the ladder to F1 this season.
As for the new 'feeder' series, Formula Two, although the eventual champion will get a test drive in a Williams, the calibre of the first year grid is woefully low, with former midfeld GP2 runner Andy Soucek topping the early standings, and only highly-rated Canadian Robert Wickens really showing any potential to achieve much more in his career.
- Number two exodus.
Many of the teams down the pit lane have second drivers that are now in perilous positions, after all were given a second chance to prove themselves this year. Think Nelson Piquet Jr at Renault, Sebastien Bourdais at Toro Rosso and Kazuki Nakajima at Williams, along with Adrian Sutil at backmarkers Force India. Whether they stay or go will probably depend on their performances through the rest of the season improving by about 400%, and in Nakajima's case, whether or not Sir Frank still wants Toyota engines next season. Still, after another underwhelming season from the lot of them, the gamble associated with opting for a new man in the team at the expense of one with experience of how to work the coffee machine in the garage will lessen to the point of being a no-brainer.
So then, there seems to be an awful lot of reasons to think that this year will be a bonanza of crazy driver shuffling, and with the potential number of new faces, teams and other craziness in the offing for 2010, it should be the best season ever. It will be fun to watch that hopeful comment unravel over the course of the next few months, if nothing else.
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