Alonso and Raikkonen at Ferrari next season – Masterstroke or Madness?

“Scuderia Ferrari announces that it has reached an agreement with Kimi Raikkonen. The Finn will join Fernando Alonso in the driver line-up for the next two racing seasons.”

The above update on the Ferrari website will be music for the ears of their fans, which will have arguably the two most talented F1 racers driving for the Maranello-based team next season. While it is undeniable that Ferrari have pulled off a massive coup in getting the drivers in their line-up for next season in their attempt to dethrone Red Bull from the top, it does represent a huge gamble moving away from the tried-and-tested strategy of having a clearly defined number-one driver.

Whether this move was a masterstroke or sheer madness, it will be known only by mid-2014. But without doubt, Ferrari will boast the strongest team on the grid next season, and any empathy for Felipe Massa is likely to be short-lived.

Ferrari will hope that with Raikkonen and Alonso in the team, their pace and class would translate into results in the races, and ultimately it will be the points that will count in the World Championship. Both drivers, who have been World Champions in the past, are very capable of bringing out the best from their cars, and will fight till the last moment of the race. Having both of them in the team makes sense, as a winning team is ultimately built by winning drivers.

The fear at the team is obviously that there should not be a repeat of a scenario like the Alonso vs Hamilton at McLaren in 2007. Seven years henceforth, Alonso will be expected to be a wiser and more mature teammate; however there hasn’t really been any indication yet that he has become any better at dealing with a competitive driver alongside him in the same team.

While Massa rarely out-performed Alonso at Ferrari, things would probably be different with the arrival of Raikkonen. Kimi is a pure-racer who believes in being quick, and doesn’t bother about mind-games. There will be instances when he will be faster than Alonso, and then there will also be instances when Alonso would perform better.

In the scenario of the latter case happening, Kimi is likely to be unnerved, and will have his typical “Leave me alone, I know what I’m doing” attitude. But if the reverse scenario happens, how Alonso responds to that is anyone’s guess.

Alonso has been critical of the team in recent times, and the step to sign Raikkonen could be seen as one taken by Ferrari to remind the driver that no one is bigger than the team itself. Michael Schumacher had done well to understand this early in his Ferrari career, while Alonso is still very much on the learning curve. His attempts to try to engineer a move to Red Bull failed, as the world champions spurned his advances to sign Daniel Ricciardo instead. He now knows that staying at Ferrari is his best bet, and will have to realize that he needs the team as much as they need him.

Ferrari will hope that being pitted against each other in the same team will bring out the best from both Raikkonen and Alonso. It is the first time since the 1950s that two World Champions will be lining up together at Ferrari, and whether this move turns out to be successful or not for the team, only time will tell.