Perfectly pleasant non-froth job F1 team managers
Discussion
OK, through the last 70 years or so it has become clear as to what makes an ideal/successful F1 team manager/owner. You need to be selfish, short tempered, inconsistent and with a lightbulb "screw in a new one" philosophy regarding your drivers.
Maybe thats a bit unfair. Enzo,Colin and Bernie often displayed some of these features but you could sometimes catch them on a good day. Even gentlemanly Ken Tyrrell was famous for the occasional and notorious "froth jobs". Gunter Schmid ran ATS in the 70s/80s and doesn't seem to have been a bundle of fun.
Perhaps Rob Walker, a perfect gentleman in every sense, stands out in the past whilst I have time for Zak Brown these days.
Who are/were the other good guys ?
Maybe thats a bit unfair. Enzo,Colin and Bernie often displayed some of these features but you could sometimes catch them on a good day. Even gentlemanly Ken Tyrrell was famous for the occasional and notorious "froth jobs". Gunter Schmid ran ATS in the 70s/80s and doesn't seem to have been a bundle of fun.
Perhaps Rob Walker, a perfect gentleman in every sense, stands out in the past whilst I have time for Zak Brown these days.
Who are/were the other good guys ?
entropy said:
Eric Mc said:
Would you include Ken Tyrrell or John Cooper in that assessment?
Tyrrell were caught cheating by adding ball bearings in the fuel tank in the early 1980s.Fundoreen said:
The ones that had no success were probably the nice ones lol.
Perry McCarthy would say otherwise!To be honest, having read many of Fundoreen's comments on lots of other PH threads, he comes across as a rather nasty piece of work himself i.e. a humourless troll.,
Eric Mc said:
entropy said:
Eric Mc said:
Would you include Ken Tyrrell or John Cooper in that assessment?
Tyrrell were caught cheating by adding ball bearings in the fuel tank in the early 1980s.Fundoreen said:
The ones that had no success were probably the nice ones lol.
Perry McCarthy would say otherwise!To be honest, having read many of Fundoreen's comments on lots of other PH threads, he comes across as a rather nasty piece of work himself i.e. a humourless troll.,
Eric Mc said:
I was thinking about Fundoreen's comment that they didn't care for their drivers.
There's some truth to it. Attitudes to safety over time, politics.Enzo enjoyed egging his drivers, playing his drivers against each other even if it resulted in risking their lives.
Some drivers didn't want to race for Lotus. The unreliability and safety factor - not that I'm saying Chapman deliberately built dangerous cars.
1990 Australian GP - Soaking wet race. Most drivers bar Senna were apprehensive to race. Bernie and team managers were telling drivers to race.
1994 San Marino GP - Williams had known they had a problem with its steering rack. It was found before the race when Coulthard was doing testing. The rest is history.
2001 Italian GP - Michael Schumacher pleaded to drivers not to race in the first couple of chicanes, team managers told their drivers not to listen to the German. This was in response to the previous year's race when a marshall was killed during a first lap pile up.
Muzzer79 said:
Ross Brawn, if you were driving for him.
Tainted by his association to Schumi. Benetton traction control, dodgy Ferrari bargeboards, special treatment for testing at Maranello, special treatment for tyre testing for Merc.Brawn is so nice and comes off so well as a nice, pleasant guy you think "him? no, he wouldn't hurt a fly"
Muzzer79 said:
moffspeed said:
Who are/were the other good guys ?
Ross Brawn, if you were driving for him.I always thought Martin Whitmarsh was a decent sort.
Personally I do think Toto Wolff is in that mould too, but he's more about man management where Ross was one of those rare top quality engineers who turned out to be also top quality managers.
And Zak Brown. He seems like a great guy to work for, too!
Bruce McLaren was supposedly a good boss who looked after his people too... as long as you were from New Zealand anyway
Other than that, I believe Paul Stoddart and Guy Ligier were supposed to be good chaps to work for in Formula 1, as was Jackie Stewart (though I don't know how much of running Stewart GP was him and how much was his son). But I can imagine Jackie being a fair boss.
I also agree with the comment earlier about how the mould of the team boss has really changed over the years from team owner to more of a kind of chief officer role, with the corresponding change in the types of characters we see.
Last one I'd throw in the mix as a dark horse would be Ron Dennis. He's at the centre of a few meltdowns and has his idiosyncrasies but I'd say on the whole he was maybe not especially nice but he was fair, in the age of Chapman, Frank Williams and Enzo, he seemed a decent chap too, relatively speaking.
I can't make up my mind about Horner. He's sneaky, he's manipulative, but he also seems to earn some strong loyalty within his team. I don't like him but I wonder if people who work for him would really agree with the character profile that gets built on Drive to Survive.
Edited by kiseca on Monday 19th April 13:53
entropy said:
There's some truth to it. Attitudes to safety over time, politics.
Enzo enjoyed egging his drivers, playing his drivers against each other even if it resulted in risking their lives.
Some drivers didn't want to race for Lotus. The unreliability and safety factor - not that I'm saying Chapman deliberately built dangerous cars.
1990 Australian GP - Soaking wet race. Most drivers bar Senna were apprehensive to race. Bernie and team managers were telling drivers to race.
1994 San Marino GP - Williams had known they had a problem with its steering rack. It was found before the race when Coulthard was doing testing. The rest is history.
2001 Italian GP - Michael Schumacher pleaded to drivers not to race in the first couple of chicanes, team managers told their drivers not to listen to the German. This was in response to the previous year's race when a marshall was killed during a first lap pile up.
He used the word "all" - not "some".Enzo enjoyed egging his drivers, playing his drivers against each other even if it resulted in risking their lives.
Some drivers didn't want to race for Lotus. The unreliability and safety factor - not that I'm saying Chapman deliberately built dangerous cars.
1990 Australian GP - Soaking wet race. Most drivers bar Senna were apprehensive to race. Bernie and team managers were telling drivers to race.
1994 San Marino GP - Williams had known they had a problem with its steering rack. It was found before the race when Coulthard was doing testing. The rest is history.
2001 Italian GP - Michael Schumacher pleaded to drivers not to race in the first couple of chicanes, team managers told their drivers not to listen to the German. This was in response to the previous year's race when a marshall was killed during a first lap pile up.
kiseca said:
I also agree with the comment earlier about how the mould of the team boss has really changed over the years from team owner to more of a kind of chief officer role, with the corresponding change in the types of characters we see.
They weren't just team owners, they were the team founders in most cases - so their very existence and purpose was to run a motor racing team (and not just F1 - especially before the 1970s). It wasn't a team manager role - as it is today where the team is run by someone progressing through some corporate hierarchy.Edited by kiseca on Monday 19th April 13:53
It was a very different world.
entropy said:
2001 Italian GP - Michael Schumacher pleaded to drivers not to race in the first couple of chicanes, team managers told their drivers not to listen to the German. This was in response to the previous year's race when a marshall was killed during a first lap pile up.
I was under the impression that Schumacher was advocating not racing the first couple of chicanes as some weird kind of 9/11 tribute-thing?Gassing Station | Formula 1 | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff