Change is an inextricable part of motorsport. Nothing ever stays the same for long. Series appear and disappear. Teams are founded and die. Sponsor money comes and goes. And with that, drivers rise and fall. Because of these fluctuations, every winter break brings about shifts in the status quo. I’m used to that and can deal with it. I memorise the changes; I move on. However, last winter so many core elements of the motorsport machine shifted that even now, a month into the 2016 season, my head is still spinning. The changes are just too drastic and numerous to be memorised quickly. Every time I come across them, my head gives a 404 error as if to tell me “eh… no, just NO.”
Most of these errors are provoked by teams. First there was ROWE Racing who, after years of loyalty to Mercedes, suddenly announced it was switching to BMW. Whenever I see a ROWE car nowadays, my first response is “it had an accident HALF THE NOSE IS GONE oh wait.” Then there is C. Abt Racing, which made it known some months ago that it was leaving its family brand Audi for Bentley. The move has left me unable to even say the name of the Abt cars correctly. At best, I end up with “Abt Audley”. And finally there’s Car Collection, the team that moved from Mercedes to Audi and now employs an army of Audi drivers that my head utterly fails to associate with them. As a result I’m often unable – sometimes for minutes at a time – to remember what team their drivers race for.
But teams aren’t the only culprits. Drivers aren’t innocent either, not by a long shot. Over the last winter, a great number of them sneaked away from Porsche. It wasn’t obvious at first. The only inkling I got that something might be afoot was when Philipp Eng announced he was leaving Porsche for BMW. The true enormity of the Porsche exodus didn’t become clear until a few weeks ago, when the first entry lists were announced. Suddenly Christopher Zöchling was in a Lamborghini, Elia Erhart was in a Lamborghini, Gerhard Tweraser was in a Lamborghini, Rolf Ineichen was in a – you guessed it – Lamborghini, and Côme Ledogar was in a McLaren, probably because Lamborghini had run out of seats. The only driver who seems to be piloting a Porsche in 2016 is David Jahn, which is quite neat apart from the fact that I expected to see him in a Corvette this season and is therefore not helping the case at all.
It’s probably better when we don’t even get started on the mess that has become singleseater racing. For the first time in almost as long as I can remember, Formula 3 is a Felix Rosenqvist-free zone. There’s a hole there now that no Maximilian Günther or Charles LeClerc (oh wait, blast, he moved to GP3; sorry!) can fill. Furthermore, the names Schumacher, Alesi, Newey, and Delétraz are on everyone’s tongues, but they never refer to the people I think they are referring to. And why oh why is Pascal Wehrlein driving an F1 car now? And WHO made Esteban Ocon wear Renault yellow? AND WHY IS BEN BARNICOAT CALLED BEN BARNICOAT?
Overload.
Overload.
Overload.
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