Why F1 shouldn't beat itself up over Newey

F1 is a sport that rather likes to beat itself up; to look inwardly with a degree of disgust; to self-recriminate. At least certain factions within it do. We've seen it rather a lot this season especially.

Adrian Newey's announced side step
from F1 caused some recrimination
Photo: Octane Photography

And there's been a bit more of it about since last Sunday in Montreal, following the news that Adrian Newey plans to side step F1 in order to do other things. 'What does this say about modern F1?' was the gist. It's a terrible indictment of the sport, of the regulations, that the design standard bearer should chose to go off and pen boats or whatever it is to be. It was all given a bit of encouragement by Newey earlier in the year having made some critical comments about the 2014 spec of rules.

Perhaps though - without meaning any disrespect to Newey - such criticism from him has a touch of Mandy Rice-Davies's 'he would say that wouldn't he?' about it. After all, Newey was and is the aerodynamicist supreme, so is unlikely to be too keen on anything that dilutes the importance of aero, and the increased (and probably temporary) variation of power unit performance has indeed done that this season. And plenty of others expressed the view that the balance of importance had been tilted rather too far in favour of aero in 2013 and previously.

But also one way in which F1 history can be helpful is that in many matters it provides some oil of perspective to pour on the troubled waters of the moment; demonstrate that a lot of things aren't as peculiar to the here and now as you might think. And it does in this case, both for Newey's personal tale and those for F1's technical stars more generally.

Silly season latest part 1 - Adrian Newey to Ferrari rumour

The world has changed. Not sure when or how, but it has.

As the name might suggest, 'silly season' in F1 used to actually be a season. Time was it used to start sometime around mid-summer and continue roughly to the campaign's end. Indeed the German Grand Prix at Hockenheim was once upon a time viewed as the traditional silly season starting gun; some said that in these pre Schumi-mania days the fact that this meeting, at a rather soulless venue given to tepid races, tended to give not much to talk about on-track so speculation about who was going where would fill the gap (the old Hockenheim seems to have established a curious popularity in hindsight which it never actually had at the time - though I digress).

Hockenheim - the former scene of the start of silly season
Credit: AnRo0002 / CC

Silly season was finite in other words. With a beginning and an end. Meaning we had some respite from it. But it is not a season any more, instead it seems a perpetual, 12 months of the year, presence.

Most likely this is down to the fact that the 'who goes where' activities of an F1 team - be it for drivers or for other staff - is now also a never-ending activity. These days those suggesting waiting until July to think about firming up your various contracts for the following year would be considered close to certifiable by any team principal. And to take an extreme example, Fernando Alonso's deal to take him to Ferrari, originally intended to come into force for the 2011 season, was thought to have been signed all the way back in the July of 2008.