Why did Williams hire Bruno Senna?

Senna-Williams reunion in 2012

With Williams announcing Bruno Senna’s joining the team as the second driver in the 2012 season, the driver lineup for the upcoming F1 season is almost complete. Except a race seat at the HRT, every team now knows its drivers with whom it will race in an all new and exciting season of Formula one racing. For many reasons, Williams’ decision to hire Senna has evoked lots of responses among the F1 fans across the globe. Did Williams hire the legendary Ayrton Senna’s nephew because of the marketing possibilities the young Senna can create? Or was the hiring purely on talent basis?

Even though Williams F1 claims that Senna was chosen on merit, let’s face it. Which team won’t seek the service of a talented young driver who can also bring some business deals to the table? If the choice was between an ageing Rubens Barrichello and a young Bruno (with the huge surname Senna), then the choice was obvious. I can already imagine Williams’ marketing campaign speaking of bringing the Senna back to the team. In 1994, Williams was the team for which Brunno’s uncle and three time world champion, Ayrton Senna drove and was killed in a tragic on-track accident at Imola.

Every team expects to use its drivers as marketing tool. The Telegraph’s Formula One Correspondent Tom Cary writes, “all drivers are employed to generate cash to some extent. Fernando Alonso may get paid a whacking great salary at Ferrari but would Santander be paying the team so much if he wasn’t there? Would McLaren be paying Lewis Hamilton so much if he wasn’t a useful marketing tool for them as well as an exceptional driver?” And if rumors are to be believed, Senna’s presence at Williams can bring sponsorship deals worth more than $10mn this season.

F1 pundit Damon Hill has no doubt that sponsors will prefer Senna instead of Barrichello in the Williams. He told “Senna has potential. We don’t yet know what he is capable of, something which is attractive to sponsors. We knew what Barrichello was capable of; he was a known quantity.”

And in all this discussion on labeling Senna as a ‘pay driver’, we are forgetting that Bruno is not a bad driver. Even though he has not been great in his previous stints at HRT (in 2010) and Renault (in 2011, test driver but later replaced Nick Heidfield), to be fair to Bruno, he hasn’t got enough chances to show his true worth. You can’t blame him of nonperformance while driving in HRT car. Last year, he spent most of the season as a test driver but showed immense improvement in the 8 races he participated. His performance at the toughest tracks like Spa-Francorchamps and Suzuka was brilliant last year. With another young yet talented driver Pastor Maldonado (he was also labeled as a pay driver when Williams had hired him last year), Bruno will be a great asset for the revamped Williams team. At Williams, Senna will get more chances than what he had got in his last two years.

Ayrton had once said, “If you think I’m good, wait until you see my nephew.” Who knows, the wait may be over this year.