Best career moves and worst career moves.

Emerson Fittipaldi leaving McLaren after 2 WDCs to join ... Copersucar. He never won again.

Jacques Villeneuve leaving Williams after his WDC to join BAR. He never won again.

Jacky Ickx leaving Ferrari, Clay Regazzoni leaving Williams, etc...

Those look like bad career moves to me.

In the opposite, Hamilton leaving McLaren to join Mercedes was a good career move.

There must be plenty of other successful/unsuccessful moves that promoted or completely destroyed some drivers' career.

Did Alonso make bad career moves? Did Kimi ? Vettel ? Are there others?

 

WDC Damon Hill's move from Williams to Arrows for the 1997 season.

Zero wins.

Highest podium finish - 2nd in Hungarian GP (Only podium finish in 1997).

Finished 12th in Driver standings.

 

Worst :Alonso joining McLaren.
Best:Alonso leaving McLaren 2017.

 

Chris Amon leaving Ferrari at the end of the 1969 season, and betting with Enzo Ferrari that he will win a Grand Prix before Ferrari would. The 1970 312B1 won four of the last races of the 1970 season; Chris Amon, as we all know...

Rgds

 

Massa leaving Williams, AND F1!!!, at the end of last season, and changing his mind because Bottas left.
Credibility: 0

Rosberg leaving F1 gloriously last season, as WDC! And already showing his face at the Barcelona tests. Poor!

 

Damon Hill didn't chose to leave Williams, but was told his contract wouldn't be renewed. Frank Williams and Patrick Head thought he wasn't aggressive enough and had already decide to replace him. He went on to take the title!

 

Best - Schumacher joining Ferrari

Worst - Senna joining Williams

 

Yes. That's true. He was the Rosberg of his era. Effective enough to be carried by an exceptional car to the title.

 

You can understand Amon's frustration at Ferrari.

He raced 27 GPs for them, but his car broke 14 times under him!

That's more than a 50% rate of failure!!

 

Also

Worst: Alain Prost joining Ferrari.


Best: Alain Prost joining Williams to win his 4th WDC title.

 

Also

Worst:

Michael Andretti joining McLaren.

Nigel Mansell joining McLaren.

Both threw the towel after a few GPs...

 

Best career move:

Alain Prost throwing a tantrum at Renault and getting himself sacked.

He was picked up by McLaren, where he went on to win 3 WDCs titles!

 

You can add Alonso to the list of WDCs who moved to McLaren and had a disaster! Unfortunately for Alonso, he didn't have the good sense to quit in his first season there… Oh the pain...

 

Hang on he nearly won the WDC and would have if Senna had not deliberately taken him off.

Sure Ferrari were stupid not to listen to him, and through a tantrum, but hardly a bad career move IMO.
Pete

 

Yes, of course. I have never made a mistery that I am a great fan of him. What I find fascinating about him is that he was already almost sure that he was doing a mistake even on the day he told his decision to Enzo. Typical Amon...

Rgds

 

Chris Amon's career was a collection of mistakes and misfortunes, IMO.

You know that Bruce McLaren wanted him in his new team, don't you?
But Amon couldn't or wouldn't wait, so McLaren called on his other compatriot Dennis Hulme to join him. Hulme didn't do too bad in F1 at McLaren, and won the CanAm a couple of times too. I think the relation between McLaren and Amon was strained after that.

Instead Chris Amon took the offer from Ferrari after his Le Mans win, and everything went downhill from there, IMO. Apart from a couple of wins in sports cars (Daytona), the best he obtain in F1 was a few 2nd place. I think he won a Tasman series for Ferrari too. But Ferrari went through a bad patch, and Amon's fortune took a turn for the worse.

Later, at MARCH, that was pretty much a disaster. At Matra, he had endless problems with their F1, and the 2 GPs he could have won, he messed up badly (Clermont-Ferrand and Monza). Then Matra withdrew from F1, and Amon went to Ensign, Tecno and even built his own car. It was all hopeless. It was a terrible waste of a promising talent.

At the time, I found it strange that nobody at McLaren (Teddy Mayer and Tyler Alexander at the time) ever called Amon to step in after Bruce was dead, Hulme retiring and the team looking for drivers. Instead they went fro Gethin, and Revson.

 

Yes, I know the story, and what I find actually fascinating is that these three guys from New Zealand were at the top of motorsport for quite sometime...in 1966, Bruce McLaren and Chris Amon won the Le Mans 24h, and Dennis Hulme was second (and it could well have been the other way around, as we all know).

Rgds

 

I was there!

Ford tried to make it a dead heat, but it completely backfired.

Ken Miles wasn't too impressed ...

 

Anything Alonso did after 2007-Bad

 

Alesi taking Ferrari instead of williams....bad for both parts..since Williams lost the 94 and 95 titles clearly due to having weak drivers..and Jean would have walked away with 2 or 3 titles.....but of course he would not have driven for Ferrari, and i think that was and still is the most important for him...and i'm glad he chose Ferrari...

 

True. He was a great driver whose results didn't accurately reflect his real capabilities. He could have achieved so much more, but as you say, he wanted to be in Red and that's been good for him long term anyway.

 

Well, your opinion, of course.

One of the best career move in my opinion, was Jackie Stewart refusing a drive at Ferrari and preferring to take his luck with Ken Tyrrell instead.

Tyrrell operated from an old sawmill, had never ran an F1, didn't have a car yet, but Stewart must have seen something in him.

F2 team mate Jacky Ickx got the call from Ferrari next and accepted to sign for them.

Result: Stewart 3 WDCs, and Ickx just a 2nd place the year Rindt was killed.

 

+1 Absolutely Jean would have been a multi WC at Williams but couldn't resist the allure of Ferrari. On a lesser note Giancarlo Fisichella left Force India when the team was hitting its stride to replace Massa/Badoer at Ferrari for Monza. The move seemed to crush his spirit.

 

Yeah, you got to hit Ferrari at the right time, otherwise it's a complete waste of time.

Driving for the Scuderia brought disappointment to many ...

 

Didn't go down exactly like this though...Yes FI did well in the 2 low downforce races (spa and Monza) but apart from that it was same old business for them. Fisichella knew his time in F1 was likely up anyhow, and the oppertunity was there to see out the rest of his career at Ferrari. Any Italian, driving for the sacred team...they'd never say no to that. Never. It's a shame he didn't score points, but at least did better than Badoer. He knew full well that if/when Massa was fit, he'd be back in the car, and of course would also have the oppertunity to remain in the car if Massa was not up to the job.

Seems to have done alright for himself since then, has a cosy job racing for Ferrari in the WEC .