Weekend Debate: What price team harmony in Formula 1?

On Wednesday evening I was at a TAG Heuer event in London with Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner, who said that he believes Daniel Ricciardo will stay with his team after 2018, rather than leave for Ferrari or Mercedes.

That is going to be tricky for two reasons; Verstappen is a once in a generation talent, who at 19 was regularly outqualifying Ricciardo and now at 20, with some reliability in his car, is beating Hamilton and Vettel.

Also history suggests that the Red Bull management rallies around its 'chosen one' and there's little doubt that is now Verstappen. I don't blame them, I would have moved heaven and earth to keep him too.

So Ricciardo's path to becoming a world champion is not clear.

At the same time, Toto Wolff's comments about the part that team harmony played in this year's double championship winning season were front of mind. Once Nico Rosberg made his shock decision to retire this time last year, Wolff and Lewis Hamilton sat down around a kitchen table and aired all their grievances and niggles after a torrid few years together and cleared the air.

Wolff hired Valtteri Bottas to partner Hamilton and the chemistry between them has been ideal for Hamilton to do his best work.

Over at Ferrari Kimi Raikkonen has had a decent year, but there were several occasions, like Budapest and some would argue Monaco, where his own ambitions were overlooked by the team in the pursuit of the drivers' title for Vettel.

That's how Ferrari roll and if you are going to be the number two driver there you have to accept that some times; it comes with the blazer, the tie and the company car. Can you see Ricciardo accepting that?

Singapore showed that things can go wrong when the number two tries to stake his claim. You can't blame Kimi, he got a once in a decade start and wanted to get something from it, but that wasn't the brief from Ferrari at that stage of the season.

So what price team harmony in F1? Is the new normal to bet big on an ace driver and pair him with someone frictionless - the Schumacher/Barrichello model? Are the days of Prost/Senna or Hamilton/Rosberg now behind us?

One hopes not. But the tension at Mercedes from 2014-16 was hard to manage for Wolff and counter productive on occasions. Had they had a less dominant car - this year for example - they might have thrown it away with two drivers taking points off each other and creating internal problems.

The sporting tapestry is made up of many different colours in F1, it's one of the things that gives it such a depth and richness. But what I'd like to see next is the top teams doing what Red Bull has done and giving talented young drivers a chance to show what they can do in a competitive car.

Verstappen has brought to F1 a younger generation of fans; the I-Gen as they are known, born either side of the millennium. That can only be a good thing.

Another from that generation is Esteban Ocon and we have Charles Leclerc (below) and behind him Lando Norris coming through. These all look like top quality drivers.

Rather than have them stagnate for years in midfield teams before getting a break, it would be great to see them fast-tracked to the front. That's what gave us Hamilton, Vettel and Verstappen, after all; three in a decade. Much more exciting than a safe and frictionless pair of hands in the number two seat.

I always enjoy seeing the chemistry between older top drivers and the challengers; you could see early on, for example, Schumacher clocked Alonso as the driver who was going to give him a hard time. He even told me that himself, when Alonso was just a test driver for Renault.

You can see the same respect in the way Hamilton treats Verstappen today, when they are together in parc ferme interviews or in the press conference. He knows that this is the guy who is going to give him a hard time. He already is.

That spirit of the young challenger is so exciting and such a good story for F1.

So if Leclerc hits the targets next season in Sauber, put him into a Ferrari for 2019. If Ocon continues to beat Perez, as he has lately, then promote him to Mercedes. It would make for a fabulous cast list for a racing season.