Formula One will always have lead teams
By Andrew Hooper
June 7 2002
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| F1 will always have its lead teams | |
| In every period of Formula
One racing there will be either one team or a small group of say three who
dominate the sport. In past years it has been McLaren and Williams. Now it
is the turn of Ferrari to assume the position of the team everyone wants to
beat.
One driver who has his own views on the issue of teams dominating Formula One is BMW WilliamsF1 driver Juan Pablo Montoya. He accepts the fact that there will always be lead teams in the sport. But he still feels that no race is totally predictable. In a recent interview Juan Pablo had these comments: "There is always going to be a lead team. Four years ago it was Williams, three years ago it was McLaren, and it is always going to be like that. That is part of the sport. I think every race there is new things and everything is going to be different - look at Monaco for example. Everybody was expecting Michael to go and win and lap all the field and it didn't happen. The first four races were very competitive. Here every race you could take a different winner. Whoever won a match yesterday or today could be out of the world cup His was supported by McLaren's David Coulthard who said: "I think the hardcore fans are going to follow it irrespective, and you are always going to get fair weather fans who get turned onto it when there is a big event, something that brings the sport off the sports pages and onto the front pages, which happens occasionally, but I don't think anything has really changed throughout the history of the sport. You go back to 1988, when McLaren won 15 out of the 16 races, you know people at the time probably thought that was not the most exciting. But it is still more popular today than it has ever been in the past. Something has happened to allow the sport to grow, and I think there is many many good reasons why people tune in - the technology involved, the uncertainty, the fact that it changes year to year, and anything can happen, as you saw at the last Grand Prix. Anything can happen here." |
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But,
as in the past, commentators and the public have asked is having one team so
dominate a good thing for the sport. Does such a dominance drive people away
from Formula One to sports that have less predictable results, such as the
conflict between Formula One and the World Cup of Football which is been run
at the same time as this weekends Canadian Grand Prix.
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