Assessing the 'bidding war' for Max Verstappen between Mercedes and Ferrari and the battlegrounds both teams may prioritise when they consider their 2017 driver line-ups...
Wednesday 11 November 2015 09:40, UK
Bidding wars start early in F1.
While the reported battle between Mercedes and Ferrari to wrestle Max Verstappen out of Red Bull's grasp carries the dramatic appeal of the sport's current top guns fighting over motorsport's latest hotshot, the sobering reality is that none of them are ready to offer Verstappen a seat at F1's top table in 2016.
Mercedes have Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg under contract. Ferrari have stuck with Kimi Raikkonen alongside Sebastian Vettel. And Red Bull boss Christian Horner quietly confirmed in Mexico that Daniil Kvyat and Daniel Ricciardo will be retained if the team stay on the grid.
The Verstappen battle is better regarded as a phoney war in which F1's major players are jostling for the high ground in the expectation that the driver market will open up for a major overhaul in 2017.
Yet it is also a contest which may ultimately be won not by the size of a cheque or competitive advantage but the importance Mercedes and Ferrari attach to two very different markets and future battlegrounds.
For the time being, neither outfit has reason to dismantle the status quo. Ferrari are still in a process of rebuilding while Mercedes have won two successive championship doubles. Even though Rosberg's reputation has been diminished in the wake of his crushing defeat to Hamilton, Mercedes will be comfortable with their line-up, despite its apparent inequality, all the while they believe it is a match for Ferrari's. Raikkonen is thus both a buffer and, from Rosberg's perspective, a pressure-relieving ally.
Yet driver line-ups in F1 rarely stand still for long and an unforgiving pressure point is inevitable if and when Ferrari catch Mercedes. It's that expectation, fuelled by the rise of F1's new generation and the dramatically inferior performances of Rosberg and Raikkonen relative to their respective team-mates in 2015, which is underpinning their interest in Verstappen.
Something - or rather, someone - will have to give. Rosberg's problem is that Hamilton isn't going anywhere and, unburdened by his coronation as a three-time champion, he appears to reaching a new level of performance. Rosberg signed a contract extension with Mercedes 18 months which is believed to run until the end of 2017. But might Nico jump before he is pushed if his 2015 thrashing is repeated next year?
"I think that Nico is going to tackle next year full steam ahead," reflected Mercedes boss Toto Wolff. "If it doesn't go as he thinks it could go, maybe he is going to have that thought, but he is not there, he is not yet there. And hopefully he never will be."
But Mercedes will also be aware that Verstappen has all the hallmarks of being a once-in-a-lifetime talent. Having let the Dutchman slip out of their grasp once would be loath to make the same mistake again. The surprise, perhaps, is that there was apparently no consideration about using Verstappen, contracted to Red Bull for at least another season, as a bargaining chip in their ill-fated but fleeting negotiations over a 2016 engine deal.
The notion of Hamilton partnering Verstappen is a mouth-watering prospect which would guarantee Mercedes a welter of positive publicity. His acquisition would also open up a direct route to a young audience - precisely the reason they were initially interested in offering their rivals an engine lifeline. "Red Bull is a very hip brand. [We wondered] is there in any way we can make that work so that Mercedes benefits from an association with Red Bull on the road car side with joint platforms so we can afford to dilute our success in Formula 1," confirmed Wolff.
Ferrari's interest in Verstappen is harder to gauge.
The Scuderia are traditionally reluctant to appoint young talent to their driver line-up - Verstappen is currently 18; the youngest driver Ferrari have had on their books in the last two decades has been a 24-year-old Felipe Massa - and the team appear intent on building themselves around Vettel, a dynamic which the introduction of a bright young thing such as Verstappen would disrupt if not disintegrate. Given that Raikkonen has accounted for less than 50% of the total points Ferrari have accrued over the last two years, it is clear that the equilibrium and stability derived from retaining Raikkonen must have driven the team's decision to keep him.
But there will be no more second chances for Raikkonen after next season. Notwithstanding the benefits of his friendship with Vettel and long working relationship with technical director James Allison, Raikkonen, who has all-but ruled out finishing his career with another team, will head into retirement in 12 months' time unless he can rediscover a hefty chunk of his former self in 2016.
The Scuderia won't be short of alternatives. Verstappen will feature prominently on any short-list and Ferrari are known to have given serious consideration to replacing Raikkonen with Bottas for next season before cooling on the idea when the Williams driver's form dipped during the early summer and the size of the compensation package being demanded became clear. Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo has both race-winning pedigree and Italian heritage - his father was born in Sicily.
Romain Grosjean insists he signed for Haas without any assurances from the Maranello hierarchy that he'd leap to the front of the queue to replace Raikkonen if he was willing to do the hard yards to bring respectability to Ferrari's 'B team' in 2016. The Frenchman is open on his 'dream' to race in red before his career is over - and he's not just talking a good game but speaking it eloquently too: Grosjean has started taking lessons in Italian.
Yet while Grosjean's move to Haas has been interpreted as a giveaway clue as to Ferrari's thinking for 2017, less attention seems to have been given to the larger play - namely, Ferrari's decision to take on Haas as their 'B team', an investment that makes plain Ferrari's determination to crack and then dominate the American market.
"Ferrari is in the market with the biggest potential by far," Edwin Fenech, the successor to Marco Mattiacci as Ferrari's North America CEO, said in March. "We feel that Ferrari is part of US. The US for us is the most important market in the world."
And what better way for Ferrari to endear themselves to that market than by aligning themselves to an American-based team before then hiring an American driver? As Haas have already found to their frustration, American drivers capable of driving in F1 are few and far between, but widen the definition of American to North American and suddenly two viable options emerge.
Couple together Ferrari's prioritisation of the American market with the fact that around 18% of the population of the United States is Hispanic and Esteban Gutierrez's selection alongside Romain Grosjean at Haas next season starts to assume the shape of a straight fight to be the leading 'internal' candidate to succeed Raikkonen. Gutierrez's fellow Mexican Sergio Perez, meanwhile, has entered the equation on account of his unexpected 2015 defeat of Nico Hulkenberg - a driver already in danger of missing his time at the age of 28 and whose nationality is likely to work against his candidature in much the way as it could pave the way for Perez to enjoy a second shot at the big time three years after his ill-fated stint at McLaren.
Perez's 2013 'failure' is a trenchant reminder of the perils of 'too much too soon'. Yet as F1 continues its rapid pursuit of new markets and new money trails, such old-fashioned considerations may become increasingly peripheral. For Mercedes, the advantages of tapping into a young market through Verstappen and the marketability of a 'Max Attack' Hamilton-Verstappen line-up may prove irresistible. For Ferrari, such benefits may be deemed peripheral compared to the potential boons from mining a rich seam on the other side of the Atlantic.
All that's clear now is that both teams, and both companies, have 12 months in which to determine where their priorities lie - and another season in which to determine if Verstappen's talent outweighs them all.
PG
Watch the Brazilian GP live on Sky Sports F1. Race-show coverage begins at 2.30pm on Sunday with lights out at 4pm. Watch all three days of the Brazilian GP for £10.99 on NOW TV. No contract.
