Once again in the wake of the FIA’s confirmation of their driver rankings for the season to come the web is awash with comment, opinion, and no little anger it seems, about both the principle, and some of the practice, of ratings and their effects on the career prospects of current, and aspirant Pro drivers.
In the first full season of the FIA WEC I was asked by a small group of team owners to help pull together a meeting of their peers to assist them in collating views to present to the Championship management and the ACO rulemakers on a small number of issues.
To be clear, I wasn’t asked because they were keen to hear my views, I was asked because I knew how to convene, and manage, a potentially noisy meeting!
The meeting turned out to be very well attended (and indeed very noisy!), all of the then LMP2 and LMP1-L teams came along, and whilst there were a number of issues exercising them, one above all else was at the forefront of their minds. Driver rankings.
A little context is perhaps appropriate here. Back in 2012 the process was in its infancy and it was a mess – different systems for different Championships, some Series were using the ratings in a rather ‘direct’ fashion to manage overall performance, others were blind to their particular Series’ failures.
At Sebring in 2014 for instance at least three cars, present in the paddock, were withdrawn from the race after late re-classifications of drivers saw the teams without a workable driver line-up, a situation that meant that one or more of the following was in play:
a – the teams had worked out how to drive a coach and horses through the system,
b – the Series had left it way too late to respond to emerging strategy from several of their entrants, and/ or
c – Both! *
• It was C!
A cottage industry had already grown up with teams and drivers planning 12 months ahead for the results that a talented Pro would have to deliver in order to ‘earn’ or retain Silver status. This writer was approached on more than one occasion in a racing paddock to be asked by team owners whether I knew “any false Bronzes?”
Back to that 2012 meeting though and what was interesting is that there was no dissention whatsoever from the need to have the rankings, more of that in a while, but rather the team’s issues were that the system lacked any kind of realistic input mechanism from the entrants themselves, potential wrong ratings could not be challenged easily, the most valuable asset in the paddock it seemed was a fast Silver ranked driver, and the muddying of the waters caused by this was putting entries at major risk!
It would be a fair argument that it was this area of the regulations, far more than the issues of cost capped chassis and engine supply, that was closest to the heart of the potential woes in LMP2 in the FIA WEC even as far back as 2012.
Effectively the economics work like this:
Full racing season costs = x
Three drivers means that theoretical cost per driver = x divided by 3
The reality is though that many Am drivers, wanting to improve both their own skill set and their chances of success employ the best Pro drivers available both to coach them and to add pace to the overall effort which means they (at least!) pay that share too (plus a Pro drivers salary)
In order to compete with a monied and relatively rapid Gentleman plus quick Pros the game rapidly becomes that of a search for the best Silver ranked driver, and that’s where things start to get tricky, because strip away all of the other nonsense (in reality few care about the difference between Gold and Platinum and fewer still care about Bronze, the only thing the ranking excludes is that a Bronze-ranked driver cannot compete in LMP1) and you are left with the battleground that is the Silver ranking.
It’s a mish mash of the most talented non-professional drivers, younger aspirant Pro Drivers, older Pros, Pros returning to racing after a lengthy lay-off and some who just plain know how to play the game!
It’s that, and likely only that, which needs to be unpicked and reworked.
For example, Signatech Alpine signed Tom Dillmann for the final two rounds of the FIA WEC, Dillmann has top level single seater experience, has won a GP2 race, and has a national F3 Championship win on his cv but is ranked Silver, Signatech win one race and score pole position and a 4th in the other scoring 38 of the team’s 86 points in the final two rounds.
In Shanghai Dillmann comprehensively saw off a challenge from Gold-ranked Roman Rusinov with both men on the same rubber.
Dillmann has been reclassified for 2016 as Gold, Rusinov reverts to Silver, in the year he wins the Championship!
The Silver ranking effectively then put Dillmann (and for that matter now puts Rusinov, a man who has raced in F3000, tested in F1, has won races in single seaters and GT3 machinery and was GT2 class Champion in 2004 in the Le Mans Series) into the same ranking as Ed Brown, hugely enthusiastic, experienced but nowhere even remotely close to the pace and consistency of the two men mentioned above.
And that ranking can have a profound effect on a Pro driver’s career prospects. Another example:
The successful RML AD Group LMP2 effort in its final year fielded two Pro drivers, Thomas Erdos and Ben Collins.
In the wake of the team withdrawing Erdos retained Gold status whilst Collins took time away from the sport to pursue his successful media and stunt/ precision driving career.
When he came back he was ranked as a Silver, despite having been at broadly similar pace to Erdos, who was still a Gold. As a Silver though Ben secured drives with Ram Racing and Krohn Racing (and would have run at Bathurst this year for Maranello Motorsport had the car not been shunted) whilst Tommy failed to secure a seat anywhere.
It’s this aspect of the system that causes the most angst, and correctly so, with career prospects damaged for drivers pogoing up and down between Gold and Silver, and often back again!
It’s made more complex still by the varied race distances involved across the major Championships that mean that in the United States in particular a Gold ranking can be an utter disaster, as most races have just two drivers as against the ELMS, Blancpain Endurance Series and FIA WEC’s more usual trio.
It’s certainly a system that needs another look. But beware those who say scrap driver rankings completely, usually basing that view on the fortunes of one or another driver or small group of drivers in any given year.
To make a decision like that needs full visibility of its ultimate effects
What is required is proper consultation, with teams, with the people that fund those teams, and with professional race drivers. And there appears little appetite for that at present from the FIA end.
Those who administer the system need to understand fully the effects of their decisions and, put bluntly, the system needs to be simpler at both ends, and potentially WAY more sophisticated in the middle!
But if the powers that be won’t engage then there’s a straight choice for those directly affected. You can continue to howl at the moon and/ or take to social media (neither of which have proved to be even remotely effective since the system began), or you can get organised as a professional group and take a considered case to the rule makers for change.
Alternatively we can meet here again, in 12 months time, for a bout of deja vu!
GG
