Ataxia wrote:Don't see the fuss, really. All he gets are three extra letters and a medal.
Red Bull have won three titles under his leadership. Don't tell me that's not worth something anyway.
And yet it seems to have provoked quite a flurry of activity and a few slightly heated comments being slung back and forth - I hope that things do not get too heated.
CarlosFerreira wrote:TL;DR: Horner is very good all round.
pasta: it's not about if one has "displayed his authority", etc. That might be your model of what a team principal should be, but it is not a measure of management efficiency, or success for that matter. Wins, that's the measure of success. Or albums sold, for that matter. In modern society, it seems that only wins - and the monetary compensation that comes with it - is a measure of success. You may think that is incorrect - I, for one, do - but that's a discussion about what things should be like, not about how things are.
Back to Horner: the big story of the last 10 years in F1, like it or not, is the rise and rise of Red Bull. We may dislike it - I personally think F1 would be a better place if the soft drinks salesmen packed up and left, today - but they are a story of success. Horner is key to that story. He has managed to bring together difficult personalities - such as Newey, a notoriously fickle individual, and the Austrian fellow whose name I can't remember right now is not easy either -, difficult technical partners - how many times has Renault threatened to leave? -, a genious driver and make them work together. At the same time he has kept Webber happy-ish (fundamental for winning the constructors' Championship, which is where money for the teams is), and fought off the attempts of Toro Rosso to become more important than they should. And finally, he has those mechanics and pit crew working like a well tuned engine, regularly the fastest pit crew in the paddock.
Is that enough? Seriously, why don't we elect Horner as the new PM?
It is an interesting question - Horner has had some difficulties along the way, but on the other hand he has had the benefit of a fairly healthy budget in recent years, and there are many areas of industry, not just F1, where money can be extremely effective in smoothing out any impediments in your path. Of course, money alone is not the sole route to success - Toyota have shown us that many times in the past, and Horner has been quite effective in deploying those resources to the full in a way that some other outfits have not always managed to do. Others have brought up a comparison to McLaren, and I would say that, frankly, for the resources that McLaren have had in recent years, the team has failed to deliver on the promise they have shown at times - moreover, at times I feel that there is something of a discrepancy between the clinical outlook that they profess to have and the way in which they have actually acted on track, which sometimes has lacked that ability to dispassionately and critically evaluate themselves.
Admittedly, if I were to look amongst the senior managers of the teams and were asked to nominate those who were the most effective at their jobs, I wouldn't put Horner right at the top of the list.Personally, I would have said that, in terms of the efficiency with which they have used the more limited resources at their command, that I would have ranked James Allison and Andrew Green (the Force India Technical Director) ahead of Horner. I know that their roles are slightly different, but, overall, I would have said that, although the latter two obviously haven't had the same outright level of success as Red Bull, the results they have got relative to their resources are probably more impressive.
Still, in terms of converting resources into victories and titles, Horner has generally delivered, and if it is titles and trophies that are to be the final arbitrator in such a decision, it cannot be denied that the team have been accruing those at a vast rate of knots in recent years.
But why?
