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F1 Driver spots are filled - Red Bull keeps the lead!

18.05.2014 - With CHIPPer signing one more Italian to the series, Armin Zöggeler, driver spots for the soon starting F1 season are now filled! And what a line up it is: everyone from top 10 of the World Rankings is attending and in total there are 18 drivers from top 25 of the World Rankings. This F1 series will truly show who is the best of the best.

This also now gives us an opportunity to compare team strengths in the driver department, by combining the current ratings of each driver of each team. Mind you, these are just numbers about drivers, so all the speculation below is missing one very vital ingredient of successful F1 team - the car.

That said, let's see the first ever comparison of teams!

Team -- Combined Rating
Red Bull -- 8669417
OMR -- 8221625
CHIPPer -- 7913614
HamrdHedZ -- 7006631
Mercedes -- 6925170
Windsor -- 6458987
Jordan -- 6237635
DEM -- 6145750
Europe -- 6134502
Ferrari -- 5779290
Marussia -- 5711261
Trabant -- 5708827
McLaren -- 5550514
Williams -- 5183284
LKR -- 4585526

There seems to be 3 top teams - Red Bull, OMR and CHIPPer - breaking or almost at 8,000.000 rating. They are followed by 6 teams breaking the 6,000.000 rating and 6 more teams under 6,000.000 rating.

It's interesting to notice that money doesn't mean that much when it comes to drivers. One would think that the team with the most money would have the best drivers and high combined rating. But you have to remember that drivers come with managers who have their own relationships with different teams; thus their drivers in top 10 of the World Rankings may drive in a team with a little bit less money. Will this be a trend in following seasons too, or are the decisions made bit differently on this first season of F1?

More importantly, this will rise the most interesting question indeed:

Can teams with more money develop a car which will compensate the lower ratings of their drivers, and surpass their competition with better drivers but with less money for developing?

Only the track can tell that, and the first race can't come soon enough!

Fun fact of the moment:
There are 13 drivers holding their Nation Number One spot.