Driver/Co-driver Bonds

[AndyF]

I know most drivers and co-drivers bond well with each other (well you have to if you trust them to drive at 150mph!), but are they actually 'contacted' to each other?? When a driver changes team, the co-driver always stays with the driver if they wish to, but do the team management of the new team have any choice in the co-driver?

[MattXPOWER]

Generally there is no official contract between driver and co-driver but when you find a good co-driver who understands you and can control you well you want to keep him. Sometimes it takes years to develop the right understanding to get the best from the pairing. It has happened in the past when a team has sacked a co-driver despite what the driver wanted. Mcraes old co-driver was "released" from his contact to "pursue other opportunities" because Mcrae wasn't listening to him and the co-driver must control the driver. Auriols best friend and co-driver was sacked by Toyota when he best 7 bells out of a bloke who had been "abusing" his 9 year old daughter, well done I said but was allowed back into the team when the dust had settled. The teams pay the wages so ultimately say what goes.

[SJ Spode]

I think it's a case of not splitting up a team that works well, as it takes a while to bed-in a new co-driver ( I think the success of Tommi Makinen and Kaj Lindstrom comes down a lot to Tommi's experience)

It's interesting that the end of last season saw the split of two partnerships; Thomas Radstrom and Tina Thorner when Radstron went to Citroen, and also Didier Auriol and Denis Giraudet - although I don;t think this would have happened if Didier had found another drive.

[AndyF]

The Radstrom/Thorner split seems strange, as Radstrom has a better chance of getting good results this year!

[SJ Spode]

I've had another look at this & realised that I'd missed something ie; that Giraudet is now Radstom's co-driver at Citroen.

So a more experienced, French co-driver would be the natural choice for Citroen to partner Radstrom. Good to see that Tina is now working with Kenneth Eriksson at Skoda though.