The McLaren-Williams Predicament

2017 is shaping up to be a whole new direction for F1 although the complete set of regulations are still under the cloud. But the most interesting variable has to be the driver line up. With a lot of old drivers running out of steam and a contract at the end of 2016, it may result in a lot of vacancies for the 2017 season.

The key to the silly season may be held by Raikkonen but Button’s desire to continue or at the very least end his career at Williams where his saga began is looking set to swing in motion a hoppity-bop amongst the drivers.

While Ferrari faces a simple choice of either keeping Kimi or replacing him with any of the younger drivers available at the grid, McLaren’s and Williams’ predicament makes the Ferrari problem look easy peasy.

McLaren once again faces the choice of either replacing the 2009 world champion or keeping him in the racing seat but this time it’s tougher than it was at the end of 2014. Alonso was going to arrive the next season and so was Honda as a power unit supplier. For McLaren on one hand was its young talent in the form of Magnusson on whom the woking-based outfit had invested a lot of money to groom him for f1 and not to forget his comparatively low fees but on the other was a proven driver in Button.

The scales finally tipped in the favor of the Briton considering his mammoth experience behind the wheel, his loyalty to the team when it was out of form during the Red Bull dominance era and even when it’s protege Hamilton had left the team but more so his considerably lower fees.

But the 2017 choice is much harder with the arrival of highly rated Belgian Vandoorne. McLaren cannot risk losing another young talent to its rivals especially if that young talent is the 2015 GP2 champion and scored the team’s first points in Bahrain substituting for an injured Alonso.

With Button’s talent fading away, something that is evident from the time difference between Alonso and him and if rumors are any indication, Button may be on the way out of McLaren at the end of the year.

However, the myriad of changes that’ll take effect in 2017 will have an impact of taking F1 into an unknown territory. Given such predicament, Button’s experience in setting up the car and providing a feedback to the engineers and the HQ will prove invaluable in the development of the new car greatly bolstering his chances.

But things would have been so simpler had this been the case, but like life teaches us, there’s always a catch.Button’s desire to end his career with Williams and Bottas being a possible replacement for Kimi and Massa running out of age, a game of musical chairs looks set to ensue.

Scenario 1
Bottas is not selected by Ferrari

In such a situation things will become a little easy for Williams. Since Bottas is running out of a contract at the end of this year the new contract would definitely be for multiple years. The other racing seat may go to either Massa or Button. While the former brings a ton of experience and a proven working dynamic with Bottas, Button also brings no lesser amount of experience to the table but his stature of a world champion and the fact that his desire to continue in F1 even with a lower fees makes him a tad bit more valuable proposition than the Brazilian. Plus the emotional connect of starting and ending his career with the same team might tip the scales in his favor. Along with this, the team may also bring its young protégé Alex Lynn to the team and put him on FP1 duties to groom him to take up the other seat in 2018.

Scenario 2
Bottas is selected by Ferrari.

Now this might be a troublesome scenario for Williams. With Bottas gone the team would have to look up for a young proven talent in the existing field because it definitely would not like to go ahead with two drivers who have 1, or 2 at the very best, years of life remaining in them. Neither will it like to move forward into the unknown with two young drivers whose ethos is completely unknown to the team. This might open up a great opportunity for the current crop of midfield drivers to step up in the hierarchy. Perez, Sainz, Kvyat and Grosjean are looking set to be the viable contenders.

In such a situation the other seat may go to Massa as he has a working relationship with the engineers and within the team that’ll allow Williams to tackle the 2017 changes efficiently while it’s newer driver gets acquainted with the team and settles down.

The new regulations coming into effect in 2017 will take the sport in a new territory, the driver market will also undergo a swirl. Factor in Kimi’s impending retirement and F1’s silly season is gonna get the silliest it ever has been.

Grab a bag of popcorn and watch the events unfold.