Sidepodcast - All for F1 and F1 for all

Thursday Thoughts - Christine's ideal team - Selecting drivers based on something other than their racing skills

Published by Christine

Journeyer asked the question this week, and it's fallen to me to answer it on behalf of Sidepodcast. The question revolves around a dream F1 team, which drivers would be the ideal choice to make the best team, assuming money is unlimited, and everyone is available.

Well.

Hands up who thinks I'm going to say Franck?

Actually, I've been giving it some serious thought, and although a good looking, rather speedy French driver would be an asset to the team, I'm not going to go with Mr Montagny. He has unfinished work to do in Le Mans, and I'd rather he concentrated on that for now.

My wish list is actually quite a simple one - I only want drivers in my team who are on Twitter, and use it a lot. The added communication, the contact with the fans, the feeling of inclusion in events is something that is extremely valuable to a team. Just ask Mr C how he feels about Claire Williams after watching her Twitter feed all week.

So, drivers that tweet on a regular basis are few and far between at the moment, although it seems to be a growing trend, which is good. I've had a good look through our new Twitter page and decided that the drivers who have tweeted the most get my spare race seats.

Barrichello has been microblogging an awful lot and racked up a whopping 18,000 tweets, which is more than I can even comprehend. I'm slightly concerned that he'll be so busy on his mobile phone that he won't actually get any work done, but if it works for Williams, it works for me. Next up is Lucas di Grassi, which means I do get a delicious driver in my team, even if it's not Franck. He has just broken the 1,000 tweet mark which means he has a way to go to match Rubens but is still ahead of the rest.

Oddly, the next most prolific driver is Jenson Button, which lands him directly in my test seat. That means the defending World Champion can't actually keep his hands on his title, unless something happens to either of my main drivers. That's entirely possible, of course, they might get repetitive strain injury in their thumbs, so perhaps Button would get the call up sooner than he might think.

That's my team - three excellent drivers, with three fabulous Twitter accounts. We'll be called Team140, and due to cost-cutting measures, we have to restrict the number of employees to 140. Everyone else in the team will have to tweet too, and together, we could take over the micro-blogging world.