Announcing driver changes before season end

Am I the only one who sees a huge problem with this?

Sure, it's happened for years in F1, but in say, football, they wouldn't usually announce a transfer mid season as it would affect the team's chances of success. Surely the same can be said of F1?

I compare the Hamilton move to the Robin Van Persie transfer. RVP was clearly negotiating with clubs before season's end, but Arsenal would never say "Yeah he's leaving" in April. The same way we've known about Lewis's move for a long time, but announcing it mid-season jus seems wrong.

Hamilton and Mclaren may seem less focused for the run-in, etc, and surely we could have announced all this in December, no?

 

The suspense was killing me as it was, waiting until December would have been hellish.

 

It is actually an unwise move. Whats to say that McLaren won't favour Button now instead, as he's there from next season onwards.

 

They might like Button more (if they didn't already), but McLaren have nothing to gain by doing favouring him. If Jenson hadn't of blown his chances from Spain-Valencia then maybe they would have but they will still want the title and Hamilton is the only one with a chance at the moment.

 

You can't leave it until December to sort contracts out because firstly, they take ages, and secondly the teams need to know well in advance who will be driving the cars they're designing. They also want to get sponsors sorted for next season as well which is affected by drivers. You could never let that many people in on it and keep it secret, and even if you could why would you want to; if all the team personnel know about why shouldn't the fans?

Edit: Also, you mention that Arsenal wouldn't announce van Persie was leaving in April, but it would be a bit hard to when a deal wasn't agreed until August. Podolski's move was announced in April.

 

And Podolski's announced move unsettled the Koln team, leading to them being relegated.

 

Lets not forget that Alonso announced his move to McLaren for 2007 very, very early and still went on to win the title with Renault in 2006.

 

Alonso winning the drivers champs also helped Renault win the WCC

Mclaren wont favour or not favour Hamilton in the last 6 races. whatever happens wont effect their 2013 campaign. What will be interesting is when Mclaren will release Hamilton to start working at Mercedes. I have a feeling they wont let him go till 1st jan

 

Well, that's what Mercedes (Brawn GP) did with Button, wasn't it? McLaren might be a bit more grown up about it.