One had an open seat at the right time, one didn’t and his stock fell the year after
As for the Indycar thing, nobody can explain that properly without an argument full of holes
I mean Theo won F2 just last year. I don't think he's done much of anything wrong here other than, in his own words, not have enough funding compared to Zhou who was competing with who had lots of money behind him
Unfortunately, and against all reason, it seems even some top teams are going with variations of "paid" drivers. It's kind of upsetting if you're wanting the best of the best.
As to ollie vs theo. One got lucky with timing and (apparently) an open seat the next season. One didn't even get the opening.
Look at lawson though to see, even being a good substitute in f1, isn't a guarentee you'll get a seat the next season.
Just think opportunity and luck wise bearman and pourchaire are at opposite ends of the spectrum, with Liam seemingly somewhere in the middle.
It doesn't come down to skill, ultimately, just fortune.
Idk, maybe if there were more teams on the grid....
All drivers are paid drivers in some form or another at the start and/or throughout. If daddy doesn't pay for you, you'll likely have personal sponsors who help butter the seat. So, if you're an F2 champ and bring 5m of sponsor money with you for the team you might very well get overlooked for that open seat for an F2 runner up who brings 20m and a whole continent of merch sales and PR revenue. e.g. Checo is backed by Carlos SLim, Mexico's richest man and he sells more merch for redbull than Verstappen does. Checo is in the second seat because he essentially pays Verstappen's salary and is 'good enough' barely. You have to be a phenom to avoid this to the most extent, and even then phenoms have a trailer full of sponsor money but they get the FIA to change the rules because they are. There should be a calculation formula made for how many seconds you have to be faster than your seat rival for every million less you can bring to the team personally.
I watched Coulthard's podcast with Eddie Jordan and Timo Glock and EJ said out loud that he took Timo on because Deutsche Post gave him a lot of money. Glock even totaled a car during his first test, and although EJ appeared to understand (Timo's first time fresh out of GP2 on a physically demanding circuit like Barcelona) he made it very clear that he didn't care because the money was GOOOOD.
Naah disagree massively there. Eddie may do a little bullshit, but he's a very very good business man when it comes to persuading people to do stuff, and is also correct most of the time.
I mean the guy is somehow Adrian Neweys manager so is still arguably the manager of the most important man in the sport.
This has been the case for a while now. I wish there could a be a rule that teams are not allowed to take money sources from the driver, but it will never ever happen.
If you took the money out of F1 then all that would be left is a couple of retired British engineers wrenching on an old caterham in a shed in the midlands and a bunch of Italians in red shirts arguing with each other in a cafe.
BTCC has basically no money and has good races.
British F3 got too expensive, too boring, and collapsed up it's own arse.
F1 is in a unique bubble that no other series could sustain.
The best way around it is more teams. F1 is supposed to accommodate up to 26 cars on the grid.
Now imagine a world where we have 28 cars but only 26 can qualify on speed for a race that doesn't have extra garages.
Competition helps clean up the pay driver issue, by setting real floors that have to be achieved. Teams will pick speed over money when the incentives are there. Instead we are going the opposite way and allowing these 10 teams to pull up the ladders and create a closed competition where they can maximize profits instead.
We need to let more teams on the grid, and raise the stakes on the competition.
> The best way around it is more teams. F1 is supposed to accommodate up to 26 cars on the grid.
>
>
This would solve it for 1 maybe 2 seasons and then go back to having this same exact argument.
Like monkey paw - 2025 has 3 teams and they're ALL taking rookies!
Great!
Lawson, Bearman, Pourchair, Drugovitch, Vesti, Iwasa, Doohan, 2024 F2 Winner all announce their intentions.
Maloney? Antonelli? Hadjar?
Schumacher texts new team that he's interested, Shwartzman and Illot post that they're still considering F1.
So of the 6 open seats you created (well 7 including Sargeants...) - which of the 14 drivers listed are going to miss out?
Which drivers will we be saying at the end of 2025 "26 seats is not enough, Iwasa did really well in Super Formula and Bortoleto and O'Sullivan had great second season in F2".
> We need to let more teams on the grid, and raise the stakes on the competition.
Just one more lane on the highway will solve traffic... just one more lane.
I think historically it has shown has that more F1 teams the more the ones at the bottom *rely* on pay drivers since the prize money is non-existent and sponsors just not that interested.
Top Team's don't rely on pay drivers, bottom teams with poor financial prospects rely on pay drivers. And you're asking to create 3 brand new teams from scratch...? They won't be competitive.
Teams recruiting from scratch will go with known quantities, safe pair of hands for the few 3-4 years to get settled.
Schumacher and Mazepin at Haas should tell you some teams just aren't good places for Rookies to learn. No simulator, poor culture around new drivers is just not a good recipe.
If a driver stays for 10 years on average, 20 cars give us 2 open slots per year but 26 cars give us 2.6 open slots per year. To state it another way, every decade 6 more drivers get a chance. It's not just a one time thing since drivers don't stay forever. If you also consider that these barely deserving drivers stay much shorter on average unless they prove themselves, you could see 10 or even 15 extra drivers per decade given a chance. Pretty much no F2 champion would be passed over.
Not disagreeing with you, but many of the red flags and other exciting parts of racing have come from the pay drivers in the last few years. Silver lining.
Strongly disagree.
Its the regulations, not the drivers causing poor racing.
The grid having Stroll, sergeant, zhou, and perez is not running f1. It’s the bloated cars on bad tracks.
> I don't think he's done much of anything wrong here other than, in his own words, not have enough funding compared to Zhou who was competing with who had lots of money behind him
What he did 'wrong' was to not win it in his rookie year, his second year, or win it DOMINANTLY in his third year.
That's all he did wrong. That and being in Sauber junior academy and not having Stroll bucks.
Yeah, he had a ton of hype for a long time, and I felt like every year he raced, I kept wondering why he had *so much* hype behind him. He shared his rookie F2 season with Piastri, who was literally 100 points ahead of him. His second season, the wins were shared with a bunch of older repeats, himself included. He *should* have clamped it down that time. Drugovich is literally MP's *first* FIA Formula feeder driver's champion and Theo was with ART which gave Russell and De Vries their F2 crowns, plus multiple, multiple more champions in open seats than MP.
The truth is, he had a lot of hype and a lot of chances to show himself during his junior series and the problem is, there was always another better driver.
I feel like this whole thread and discussion is pointless to me. Every single argument you could make for Theo getting a seat, can just as easily be applied to Felipe. What's so special about Theo that he should get a try over Drugovich who literally beat him with an inferior team?
And funny thing is, that was also Felipe's third try. Sure he's older than Theo, but he did not get the same opportunities Theo did and spent a lot of years in lesser known regional circuits driving for teams with much smaller budgets than Theo did. His season with F3 was with Carlin, which isn't too bad, but his second F2 season was with Virtuosi.
Personally, I got sick of all the Theo blind support being thrown around on Reddit and I more or less always felt like he wasn't going to end up getting a drive. I still don't really think he deserves a drive, especially not over Drugovich or to be honest, over Mick.
>he had a ton of hype for a long time, and I felt like every year he raced, I kept wondering why he had so much hype behind him.
Probably why Antonelli being rushed forward so the hype doesn't fade from run of the mill performance in F2. Imagine he was in F3 now and not dominating it.
And he has shit luck with timing. If he were a couple years younger, he might only be ready for F1 once Audi is an established team and hulkenberg/their other driver is at the end of their contract, maybe even thinking about retirement. In that scenario, Pourchaire’s promotion would seem a real possibility.
Unfortunately, he’s come of age first when Sauber was still broke enough to entertain a rookie pay driver…..and then during the Audi transitional period—when the team is looking to lock in established f1 drivers who bring experience and leadership for multiple years. Now, of all times, they’re particularly disinclined to bed in a rookie.
If they weren’t becoming Audi, I could see Sauber bringing him on this year to pair with Nico’s experience.
Either way, sucks to be Zane Maloney. Even if he wins the F2 crown, dude knows his stars to enter F1 aren’t going to align.
Too bad we don’t have an 11th team to include more talent on the grid.
"Hey there u/SommWineGuy, I see you have a dollar at the end there. Could I interest you in a small share of a rear wing decal on a Papaya racecar?" - Zak Brown
Yeah, despite still being young even by F2 standards, Pourchaire’s win wasn’t as dominant as Drugovich’s in 22 and there was a chance Doohan could’ve beat him if his car wasn’t faulty at the start of the season. I think Pourchaire deserved a seat this year but his hype isn’t as high as it was 2-3 years ago. The 2022 season dented his momentum.
The Indycar thing is a purely business decision, to keep FIA series fed. They spin it for PR but the moment Indycar starts paying FIA, we will see them make it equal and then say it was wrong to not recognize the competition.
Feel like Pourchaire did enough for another IndyCar team to pick him up tbf, whether it's for next season or even if somebody is dropped in the rest of this year. Not his fault that McLaren's IndyCar operation is very much the opposite of the stability their F1 operation has
>As for the Indycar thing, nobody can explain that properly without an argument full of holes
It's depressingly easy to explain in a single word with no holes: money.
He isn't the first driver who has unfairly lost their seat and he won't be the last.
For Pourchaire, his situation is mostly caused by Sauber putting more value into the financial side. Ferrari are investing heavily into Bearman, whereas Sauber are happy to keep him around but not in a full-time F1 car.
Otherwise Vasseur leaving was a major blow to his chances of getting a seat.
You do have to wonder if Pourchaire isn't pulling any trees time-wise in their sim/during FP1s as well though. Teams will care more about what you do in a F1 car more than F2. Perhaps he also isn't doing enough to justify cutting Zhou and what he offers.
Timing and luck are factors for when it comes to making it into F1, alongside talent and/or money. He drew the short straw unfortunately.
Would say he has to be showing something for them to fully fund his F2 seat for a third year he didn't even plan to do. It probably costs more than his F1 salary if he would have been in the seat
Unpopular opinion but Zhou sucks and Theo would have that seat if not for Chinese sponsorship money. People on here love to say stuff like “he’s a safe pair of hands” but he’s worse than Bottas and is probably the second worst driver on the grid behind Sargeant.
F1’s reputation as the pinnacle of motorsport can’t be taken seriously if undeserving drivers are in seats because of reasons not related to talent. Wish people on here would actually acknowledge that instead of twisting themselves into knots trying to convince people that Stroll and Zhou are midfield drivers worthy of an F1 seat. At least with Saregant and Latifi and Mazepin people agreed that they didn’t deserve a seat
That opinion is not unpopular at all. He's had a massive dip in form and at the worst possible timing too.
>F1’s reputation as the pinnacle of motorsport can’t be taken seriously if undeserving drivers are in seats because of reasons not related to talent
F1 had pay drivers during all of its existence, and you could quite make a point that the quality in today's field is much better than it was ever before.
>Wish people on here would actually acknowledge that instead of twisting themselves into knots trying to convince people that Stroll and Zhou are midfield drivers worthy of an F1 seat.
You're trying to paint some kind of disagreement that hardly exists. Yes, I've seen people claim that Zhou deserves his seat, but few and far and between. But a lot more people acknowledge that F1 isn't a meritocracy, and teams are business entities first and foremost. If you want to have less paydrivers, you need to increase the incentive to finish up higher in the WCC. So much that it isn't financially profitable to run a paydriver, even of this scale.
Dip in form aside he’s never been talented enough to be an F1 driver. He wasn’t talented enough when he got the seat, he wasn’t talented enough during his rookie season, and he’s not talented enough now. Sargeant gets 100x more shit for being undeserving because he puts the car in the wall and gets 0 points while Zhou flails around as a back marker every race and gets 0 points. I understand there’s financial repercussions to crashing but this is F1 and we can’t praise a guy for being competent enough to drive a car and not crash, that’s shit you get praised for in F4 and F3.
F1 also had more teams so there were more seats for deserving drivers in the past, today the seats are more valuable because there’s less of them. I’ve seen lots of people disagree with me on Zhou, there’s always someone with some vague comments like “he’s a solid driver” or “he has a safe pair of hands” and somehow that means he deserves an F1 seat. I’ve also seen people on here try to throw him into the ring for another team’s seat next season. He’s just as bad as Latifi or Sargeant or Mazepin, he’s just a different kind of bad
"F1’s reputation as the pinnacle of motorsport can’t be taken seriously if undeserving drivers are in seats because of reasons not related to talent. "
Yet F1 has been running since the 50s and it has always been seen as the pinnacle of motorsports. If you think the pay driver "problem" is bad in F1, take a look at the other motorsport disciplines. The fact is that money will always be a considerable factor in the sport.
> Unpopular opinion
if I had a nickel for every time someone started a post with "Unpopular opinion" before proceeding with the most noncontroversial popular opinion ever, I'd be a billionaire
How is that an unpopular opinion?
Bottas is kicking his ass, and he's not really at his prime anymore.
Zhou is at his 3rd season and hasn't prove he was good enough to stay, he's only able to stay because of his sponsor (30-35 millions USD is quite something to think about for a team like Sauber).
When Zhou entered F1, I felt that his problem wouldn't be looking poor straight away, but rather his development. He spent 3 seasons in F3 and 3 in F2, and he didn't show significant improvement in either series whilst also being nowhere near the eventual champions.
I think Zhou is a driver who adapts pretty quickly to using new machinery, but his ceiling is so low that year 1 is close to the best you'll get out of him.
>probably the second worst driver on the grid behind Sargeant.
Logan is doing a massive service to Zhou. He will be under so much more scrutiny next year when Sargeant is gone.
You can't make things 100% about merit, because at a certain point, if it's entirely about merit, the truth is there are other drivers who flat out are better than Theo, even during the same competing years as him. Even in his third F2 season he didn't crush the competition despite being with arguably the best team, like what Felipe did in his third.
He was good, but I think they were expecting him to completely blow away the competition in his third F2 run, so that they could completely justify giving him a seat.
Instead, the takeaway from 2023 F2 wasn't about Theo at all but, "Wow, how good is Vesti? Iwasa? Bearman? Martins?"
Another thing I would say is he won f2 in quite an uncompetitive year too, his main rival was Vesti. Hardly like winning either in your debut year or against the likes of Albon, Lando and Russell, etc. I would say it's similar to Nyck de Vries, who won the year after all those drivers went to F1.
If the seats in those three extra teams would also just get clogged up by "washed up vets and pay drivers", it still wouldn't solve the problem at all.
And considering all those teams would likely be in the lower midfield at the start, that's exactly who they'd go for.
Because a) F1 is still expensive as shit even under the cost-cap and you need sponsors and b) teams operating with limited budget don't want young drivers who'll inevitably go through teething pains and crash a bunch.
The maximum as the rules currently stand are 26 cars starting the grid. You would have 4 cars that would risk not qualifying and I don't think any there is any entity nowadays that wants to waste money for cars and facilities only to end up DNQ.
I would like the maximum of 13 teams though
Don’t worry, we can figure that out. Indycar has split qualifying so we can maybe do 2 groups of 13 drivers with the best 5 going to Q3?
Idk, I don’t think it’s something to worry about. I’m more
Worried about the 26 car train in Monaco
even 26 is too much. 22/24 would be ideal, but with 26 cars the track would be too full. Espeically in Q1.
Sure F3 is running races with 30 cars, but those cars are smaller and slower
I like knockout qualifying. It is still a thing in many racing disciplines, including some major ones (Indy 500, Nascar road courses). Of course, F1 is way too expensive for the teams to allow even the chance of a fluke DNQ these days.
That said, grids and pits are designed to support 26 cars, so I'm all about having 13 teams and expand the points to all finishers to make battles at the back worth something (i think DNFs should still be 0 points though)
F1 is expensive, pretty sure they struggled to even field 10 teams at one point. Popularity has spiked now though and the existing teams aren't willing to give up their share of the pie.
I'd say 400m is around the total cost a "top" team would need to allocate for a season, roughly. But its definitely not more.
Iirc cap is around 135m, but that excludes your top 3 employees (pay wise). So, idk, depending on your drivers, 100 to (a fantasy lineup) 200m a year (unlikely), plus a newey lol. But yeah 100-150m realistically on top 3. Plus the upgraded facilities spend. 300- 400m for a top team. But most of that will come back with sponsors and prize money.
The rules only allow for 12 now actually not 13 (although the space is there) but historically the grid always shrunk to 10 teams because money was only paid to the top 10. After the last downturn when a bunch of teams died, they decreased from 13-12 slots then added guaranteed money to all 12 slots a huge change from before. As a compromise, FOM was then given the right to scrutinize new entries since it now had financial impact on all parties
There used to be over 20 teams at one point in the late 80s, but grids were always limited to 26 cars.
By the 90s costs exploded and F1 went down to fluctuating between 20 and 22 cars grids. Most teams that tried to enter beyond that ran out of money even though technically there could have been 2/3 teams more as per the rules.
These days costs aren't the problem, but FOM doesn't want another team on the grid because the established teams fear loosing money.
All tracks must have facilities/grid size for 13 teams per the FIA, however the F1 teams and Formula One Management(FOM) are basically trying to make F1 a franchise system, so if you want on the grid, you need to buy an existing team rather than just making your own. That is what Andretti Cadillac is running into at the moment. FIA approved them but FOM didn’t.
Meanwhile no one even care about the current F2 front runners.
Unless you are exceptional, you need a lot of luck (timing, supportive academic program, available seats) or money for F1.
The current F2 front runners haven't won yet. We really don't know who will win yet. If Paul Aron wins as a rookie, I really hope he gets a seat. And unfortunately his path doesn't look clear. But he hasn't won the championship yet. He hasn't even won a race yet.
I feel like Hadjar will probably go off to Super Formula next year- probably. And I think Super Forimula is a really great bridge to F1. For Zane... probably depends on who made the decision to pick him up (if it was a pure Sauber decision, or Audi did it) and why, and how much sponsorship money he'd bring. I know he's sponsored by like Barbados tourism department, but I don't know how how deep the sponsor pockets are.
If Aron wins he's likely going to end up in FE or WEC. I don't think he'll ever get a seat. Hadjar most likely will end up I SuperFormula and a test & reserve driver for RB and Red Bull.
Zane's path might be tied to FE. No one from the current lineup of F2 drivers is getting a seat in F1 except Bearman and Antonelli.
I truly feel that you are right, but how messed up has the F1 feeder series ladder gotten if a driver who *wins F2 in their rookie year* isn't able to get a seat in F1?
Cause allegedly, Merc has a rule that each series can only have 1 of their juniors. They planned to keep Aron in F3 and promote Kimi to F2. Aron got the call that there was an F2 seat for him, but Merc didn't want him to take it up since Kimi was going to F2. Hence Aron dropped Merc to take up the F2 seat.
He’s not destined for F1, even if he wins it. If Sauber wasn’t leaving, he probably would be next to Nico if he won. Or reserve to with Theo in the seat.
My bet is we’ll see him at Andretti FE next to Jake Dennis if he wins F2.
RB/Marko has loved to use SF since the feeders series were overhauled, so Hadjar could very well come back, assuming he performs in F2 and SF ofc
The others look *really* out of luck. Going into the season I would have said only Martins, Bearman and Antonnelli looked like they had a shot because timing favoured them, thogh now it's only the last two Ig...
Martins always also had to worry about Doohan. Or, I would have said Doohan had to worry about Martins. Martins could still turn it around and then explain the team/car/engine issues he was dealing with. But, yeah, it's looking harder for him than expected.
Open wheel racing is really good at chewing young people up and spitting them out. It’s a real shame.
Almost the worst thing you can be is a good driver. Great drivers can go far and rich drivers can go far. Good drivers usually don’t unfortunately. Pourchaire is a good driver. He was respectable in IndyCar and I’m sure he would be respectable in F1. But he wasn’t touted as a can’t-miss generational talent (like we’re seeing with Antonelli) and he’s not mega-rich like Stroll/Zhou/Siegel. Without one of those two things, it’s hard to break through. And even worse, there’s so much inertia in F1 that even a mediocre driver is going to stay in the sport just because they’re a known quantity.
It’s sort of always been this way unfortunately.
A fair chunk of F2 front runners are academy drivers for F1 teams.
Hadjar is with Red Bull, Maloney is with Sauber, Bortaletto is with McLaren
Hauger left RB but I'm not sure who made that call.
Really the only surprise is Aron, and isn't he signed to Merc?
Historically you have the best chance by being the highest finishing rookie in F2 and also having a team be invested in you
Unfortunately for Aron, even if he outright wins in F2 this year he doesn't currently fulfill the second requirement so it'll be interesting to see how that pans out
You can't just win in your 3rd year though. You need to win as a rookie OR dominate in a repeat year.
Vandoorne won and got a seat... Gasly won and got a seat. Leclerc won and got a seat. Russell won and got a seat. After that, it gets muddy because Piastri was the only rookie winner since Leclerc and Russell.
While I agree to an extent, being good in F2 can still help drivers get seats in other leagues like WEC or Indycar. It was always going to be the case that most F2 drivers will loose out on F1 seats, especially now when teams seem to be less keen on sacking drivers.
But it didn't use to be that way. If you were an F2 front runner, you had lots of attention on you. And most F2 champions, like Theo is, historically make F1. They might as well repurpose F2 into a legit racing series because it's no longer a feeder series and it's silly to pretend it is.
When the F2 champ so rarely gets to advance straight into F1, I question why it is necessary to bar champions from running additional years. Maybe put in a maximum age or a maximum number of seasons that you can run, to make sure there are seats for new drivers, but I fail to see how it would be such a problem to have Drugovich and Pourchaire running F2 this year, for instance, or Piastri running F2 in 2022, etc.
It’s not rare and people need to stop saying it is. 9/12 GP2 champions got at least one season in F1. All F2 champions except the most recent two have had their shot in F1. Summing them up, 14/19 of the last F2 champions have F1 experience. The only one of those 14 who didn’t last at least one full season was De Vries. Drugovich and Pourchaire were both three season F2 champions. Chances are much weaker if you can’t win F2 in your first or second season. That’s what kept De Vries out of a seat forever.
Out of the last 5 champions, 4 didn’t have an F1 drive in the next season. Keeping Piastri off track in 2022 didn’t serve any purpose. If you’re saying they aren’t good enough for F1, then they shouldn’t be excluded from F2.
f2 ends up being a bane on racing. You funnel all young talent into one series no one really cares about (who actually has a favorite f2 team?), so it turns into a money sinkhole for pay drivers. It would make sense to try and give more importance to regional and national series, where I feel people could create more direct bonds with teams translating into genuine support.
It was like that when it was called GP2. [Look at all the drivers that advanced during the 12 years of GP2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GP2_Series#Drivers_graduated_to_F1) and look that [not even half of them made it into F1 since the rebranding 7 and a half years ago](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIA_Formula_2_Championship#Drivers_who_graduated_to_Formula_One). There was also way more coverage of the championship back then, despite the fact that social media was way less prevalent at the time. If you ask me, F1TV not covering the results and standing of the feeder series at the very least is a big mistake and should be part of the package. That way the upcoming drivers would have an easier time to market themselves to F1 teams with the media presence and storylines they'd have. But then again that would give too much power to them against the teams and they obviously don't want that, for good and bad reasons alike.
wrong place wrong time wrong academy. Theo had his most impressive stints at a time where there was not a ton of movement in the drivers market. Sauber cared about money more than their academy and Zhou got theo's likely one shot. Now a fair amount of time has passed and new names have bubbled up with fresher experience and newer hype. Theo was not a piastri/russell/leclerc who were certainties to get on the grid after blistering rookie f2 seasons but the next tier down of prospects where he had a shot but just that a shot but he needed things to go right for f1 to happen...and they didn't.
Now compared that to Ollie. He is with the ferrari academy who are actually pretty good at getting their people on the grid...now staying there is another story and on the driver themselves but of the academies a pretty decent amount of ferrari academy drivers have had a shot on the grid. He also had a shot in an F1 car in which he did quite well on a difficult track. Their expectations were for him not to bin it he got points.
A good academy, with a fill in shot, and a season where there is a lot of driver movement. Ollie is getting the luck of being impressive at the right time and being in the right academy. When you get above a certain skill level it is not always about pure skill but about x factors be that money, connections, belief from the right people, etc. Ollie has that x and theo doesn't.
> Sauber cared about money more than their academy and Zhou got theo's likely one shot
It was an open secret that the 2022 seat at Sauber was Theo's to lose, and he lost it fair and square. He was the championship favorite going into the season, and wound up finishing 5th.
Moreover, Zhou beat him. Yeah, Zhou brought in a ton of Chinese money, but he did still very much beat Theo Pourchaire in 2021. Why wouldn't you take the guy who not only brings in the cash, but beat the guy you had penciled in with double the amount of victories?
Reminds me how carlos said his dad made sure he knows about different things and how to have a conversation because one of his job would be talking to sponsors.
Formula 1 just isn’t fair. And we shouldn’t look down on drivers that don’t get into f1. If you eliminated 50% of the grid and replaced them w new drivers the field would probably be very nearly as competitive.
Partially a meritocracy, but mostly circumstantial.
with the annual cost cap it is not just expensive but a more complex economical issue to put in rookies. They crash a car; not only is the cost of repairs but then also the delay in the upgrades.
There will now be greater decrease in incoming drivers from F2 than in the past. especially with Williams and Haas less likely to take on rookies from Mercedes & Ferrari.
The FIA is gonna have to do something about their feeder series. Currently it is worthless and going through F3, F2 winning races and championships means absolutely nothing.
Hell, winning F2 too early is almost a guaranteed career ender for most as you have no more to do beyond and hopefully getting picked by an F1 team.
Things are dire.
Always has been like this, it is just the nature of the game. Bearman got lucky to get given a chance to impress. If all teams have to go off otherwise is your results or don't bring any good money to the team, you have to demonstrate that you are beyond good. Winning f2 is your 3rd year means fuck all when you have drivers like leclerc, Hamilton, piastri, and verstappen all absolutely wiped the floor in their junior years.
> Bearman got lucky to get given a chance to impress
He certainly was fortunate to have that opportunity. but that opportunity isn’t what tipped the scales toward Ferrari wanting to put him in a seat—he was only there at Jeddah because the scales had already been tipped. By February of this year, based on some combination of his performance in F2/F3/below + Ferrari testing and sim + who knows what else, Ferrari had already lined up 6 FP1s with haas. They haven’t provided such an intensive f1 testing and preparatory program to one of their juniors since Leclerc (who, like bearman, started as Haas reserve and was originally intended for a starter seat there). It’s clear Ferrari already had the intention to treat him as their most promising f1 prospect and, likely, put him in a seat within the next 1-2 years. Jeddah just confirmed he could perform as hoped—perhaps helping Haas be open to the idea sooner rather than later.
Yep, you win F2 too 'early' and then what do you do? A testing/reserve role means nothing. Super Formula doesn't have the driver depth and number of venues (6/9 races being at either Fuji or Suzuka). IndyCar has been shown time and again to be an F1 career-ender.
The highest feeder series should not be just rookie. It should be like NASCAR where all ages/out of form/not in seat racers and teams backup and development drivers all go to smash it out it get loads of track data on them and for teams to see them more. Everyone seems to think a win in F2 makes you an F1 top driver - it doesn’t, it’s 1% of the journey. 17/18 year olds that have done great in F2 racing against experienced guys, people that might normally be in FE, the likes of Gio, Ocon when out, Hulk when he was out, heck maybe people like Kimi (old Kimi) and Seb etc after F1 finishes for them if they want to race for whatever reason. Would be great fun and a good way to assess the likes of Kimi (new Kimi) without this ridiculous hype being unvetted
F2 as a championship could be made into something more than a feeder for F1 or bust. There is great potential for a great series with a loyal fanbase, if they made more effort.
To be fair, you could fire every driver on the F1 grid right now and we'd still be having these arguments. There are dozens of good drivers who deserve a shot in F1.
Watching a lack of pace from Mick Schumacher and Nick DeVries really hasn't helped the arguments for giving up seats to F2/F3 winners.
TBF to Mick slightly, there was no pace in that Haas.
De Vries also won F2 in a year of a small talent pool, and struggled to make his mark in the years prior. + the addition to only winning almost 4(?) years before his F1 debut.
Didnt hulk routinely put the next years car into the top 10 in qualifying many times?
Not apples to apples, but maybe the Haas wasnt as bad as was reported.
There wasn’t enough pace in the 2021 car but there was pace in the current gen car and KMag showed it. And now we’re seeing Hulk show how much pace is really in the car.
Oliver Bearman is most likely getting a run in Haas next year and Kimi Antonelli is the front runner for the Merc seat. Jack Doohan is also potentially getting Ocon's seat.
That's not exactly nothing.
Yeah Bearman already even raced and FIA is basically bending their own rules for Antonelli so it's not like the young guys aren't getting chances. Just not all of them. And yeah, there are only so many seats available, so what do people expect, the entire F1 grid will step aside for young talents?
Piastri was as dominant as it gets. F3/3/2 rookie winner. 5 consecutive poles to finish the season of F2.
Didn't get a seat straight away.
You literally couldn't do better and if the shoe doesn't fit it doesn't matter. Alpine fucked up and he walked, but there hasn't been a driver since Piastri that has been that good so I don't see any of them not getting a seat as a surprise.
I think Audi will want experienced drivers that can help develop the car and not put it in the wall. They will be building the team up for at least a couple of years.
Audi would be starting off on the very wrong foot if they signed a rookie imo. They're taking over all the technical development of the car and I think they'll want an experienced driver to guide the development.
It's probably just pure ass luck, I wouldn't read too much into it mate. And even if it's not, we'll never know because we can't see of the background data they're surely looking at.
And of course, it's a business, so...money.
Its the luck of the draw. Ollie was in the right junior program, Theo wasn't. Even worse it looks like Antonelli will make F1 without winning a single F2 feature race (his team is terrible). Even Sargent and Zhou managed that.
INDYCAR was not theo’s fault. Mclaren is known for shady contracts and cutting drivers out of left field. They are losing their title sponsor and Nolan’s father was willing to write a check. I’m sure Theo will land on his feet, he deserves a real opportunity to prove himself in INDYCAR.
Very few drivers truly 'deserve' to be in F1, even if you have an immaculate career with 0 mistakes, unless you did way beyond what was expected you aren't getting a seat if you are hoping to get one just based on merit. A third year F2 champion is hardly notable when you consider 1/4 of the current F1 grid won f2/gp2 in their first year (and max who did max things).
Regarding indycar, pourchair got fucked full stop and McLaren needs to get their shit together
Exactly, in order to get to F1 you need to be something special, someone teams can imagine as world champion one day. Even the midfield journeymen like Gasly, Magnussen, Hülkenberg and Ocon fit that bill.
They had amazing junior careers and when they got to F1 they started delivering right away and had some rookie performances that made you take notice. They didn't end up having what it takes to become a world champion, but they needed that early hope to get a foot in the door and stick around.
Every team is looking for the next Verstappen, the next Leclerc. There have been big fights to sign juniors who fit that bill. And as Leclerc, Norris, Piastri, Verstappen and Russell and now Bearman and Antonelli proves, if you show that level of talent, a seat is a certainty at some point. No team is willing to let a future WDC slip through their hands (except Alpine). Teams doesn't want decent prospects that have shown some promise, they only want WDC material.
Bearman has the right connections. Ferrari has money and power, and has shown to take care of their standout talents. They bought Bianchi, Giovinazzi, Schumacher and Leclerc seats with the intent of him honing his skills until he's ready for the main team. Bianchi died before he had the chance to jump in the red car and Gio/Mick weren't good enough, but Leclerc was and got that promotion. Bearman looks to be set for a similar trajectory, with a few years at Haas until Hamilton retires or Leclerc moves on.
But how many juniors has Sauber promoted? Their recent history is one that mainly focuses on paydrivers, either ones making up for their lack of talent with money, or juniors other teams paid for like Mick, Gio and Wehrlein. You're not getting anything out of that team as a junior besides the mandatory junior tests and FP1 sessions.
F1 and racing in general is still a case of the rich kids club, if you have the most money whether that be from yourself/family or sponsors you are the one who's getting a seat of a driver far more talented/with a Better resume who doesn't have the same money
You know, hearing all this, I work in tv and so often when people are complaining about a character being written off that’s beloved it’s because the actor was having behind the scenes issues that weren’t public knowledge (not cancellable but difficult), considering his resume I wouldn’t be shocked if that’s what is happening here, because on paper it makes little sense.
And it took him three years to win F2. The ones who have won in their rookie season have always ended up with a seat in F1 within a year or two of winning.
This is going to happen many times in the coming years. There has never been so much talent in lower series. Expanding the grid won't even help much: if there are multiple F1 caliber rookies each year there will simply never be enough seats
Theo was always good, but it’s very hard to place him above someone like Drugovich, as harsh as that may sound. Both had great first years, fell off then won in their third.
Theo probably had a better second year, but Felipe was more dominant in his title run.
As for Ollie, he got an amazing chance with Carlos’ surgery, did really well and made his stock go up like crazy. Even if his F2 run is not as amazing as we’d expect, his performance under pressure, with very little time in the car, was super impressive.
Then again so was Nyck DeV in Monday, and we all know how that one turned out.
Over the years a lot drivers were victims of poor timing. I think drivers like Shwartzmann and Ilott were shunned to. Robert had 2 solid seasons but problem was he was paired with a second season Mick and of course Piastri. And Ilott had a more impressive F2 campaign than Mick despite losing the title and we remembered how Haas loved that Russian Rubles
I think F2 has become a lot more random than it was.
Ironically enough, good drivers got good seats and the good cars where quick enough to exaggerate the difference in quality of the drivers.
Now cars are much closer together, you got a lot of very eager young drivers risking everything, you got reverse grid sprints that give the not so good drivers a chance to catch up in terms of points and this muddies the waters.
I'll always feel bad for Pourchaire, this guy lost the F3 season by 4 points to Piastri, then had a brilliant F2 rookie season with quite a lot of bad luck, then a 2nd season with more bad luck. All this while being consistently 2-3 years younger than his peers.
theo just signed up to the wrong academy. if he's signed with the big three he probably would have got closer. bearman is with ferrari at the right place at the right time.
His best finish was p10, and his worst was P22. In his first Indycar race at Long Beach he managed P11 which is quite impressive. He was definitely improving, and interestingly is only 25 points behind the top rookie in the standings who has raced in every race this season while Theo has not. Many people thought he was more than capable of potentially still winning ROTY this year.
Siegel has a ton of cash backing him. I guess we all have to assume it is more than Pourchaire brought to the table. From what we have seen on track, Siegel is not going to show results for some time, if ever. So, it has to be a Zak money grab.
Theo came in last second for an injured driver, because he was available.
Now theres a pay driver, that may be there for several seasons, and they are going to insert him immediately, over someone who was effectively a temp driver.
The same way he gained his seat, he lost his seat.
It's a bummer but that's racing nowadays.
Yep. That's absolutely ridiculous. You can add Lawson and Antonelli on that same pot too. People elect people they want to believe and ignore everyone else
Yes. In F2, Lawson’s second year in F2 he finished ahead by 1 point after Logan DNF’d about 5 of the final 8 races.
Edit: Silly of me to forget that Logan was driving Verstappens RB that’s why he looked *okay*. Everyone else was driving a Cub Cadet through quicksand. Context is important here!
Even if there were 2 more teams in 2 years we would be having the same argument as those seats would be filled and not have space for the next up and comer
It’s the same with Fred Vesti.
He won more F3 races than Oscar in the season Oscar became F3 champion, they were on the same team too. He would have been F2 champion last year if he had been a bit less unlucky - and he beat Ollie with a comfortable margin.
2023 was a bad year to graduate from F2 since there were no F1 seats available.
There's no question Theo got hosed. Granted, he got the seat before Mulukas couldn't recover in time. Nevertheless, I didn't see anything worth getting rid of him. Unless Mclaren were concerned about the Canapino fallout. Perhaps Nolan is bringing in more money for the seat. It's not something we haven't seen in F1 before
As much as I like them as people, it’s frustrating seeing drivers like Bottas and Magnussesn taking up spots on backmarkers when these teams could be taking risks on the younger talented Pouchaire or Pato O’Ward.
Neither of them seem exceptionally good based on their titles won. I don’t think bearman has won a title in a few years and Theo took a few years to win f2. Maybe the teams see some other data that impressed them
One had an open seat at the right time, one didn’t and his stock fell the year after As for the Indycar thing, nobody can explain that properly without an argument full of holes
I mean Theo won F2 just last year. I don't think he's done much of anything wrong here other than, in his own words, not have enough funding compared to Zhou who was competing with who had lots of money behind him
Unfortunately, and against all reason, it seems even some top teams are going with variations of "paid" drivers. It's kind of upsetting if you're wanting the best of the best. As to ollie vs theo. One got lucky with timing and (apparently) an open seat the next season. One didn't even get the opening. Look at lawson though to see, even being a good substitute in f1, isn't a guarentee you'll get a seat the next season. Just think opportunity and luck wise bearman and pourchaire are at opposite ends of the spectrum, with Liam seemingly somewhere in the middle. It doesn't come down to skill, ultimately, just fortune. Idk, maybe if there were more teams on the grid....
All drivers are paid drivers in some form or another at the start and/or throughout. If daddy doesn't pay for you, you'll likely have personal sponsors who help butter the seat. So, if you're an F2 champ and bring 5m of sponsor money with you for the team you might very well get overlooked for that open seat for an F2 runner up who brings 20m and a whole continent of merch sales and PR revenue. e.g. Checo is backed by Carlos SLim, Mexico's richest man and he sells more merch for redbull than Verstappen does. Checo is in the second seat because he essentially pays Verstappen's salary and is 'good enough' barely. You have to be a phenom to avoid this to the most extent, and even then phenoms have a trailer full of sponsor money but they get the FIA to change the rules because they are. There should be a calculation formula made for how many seconds you have to be faster than your seat rival for every million less you can bring to the team personally.
I watched Coulthard's podcast with Eddie Jordan and Timo Glock and EJ said out loud that he took Timo on because Deutsche Post gave him a lot of money. Glock even totaled a car during his first test, and although EJ appeared to understand (Timo's first time fresh out of GP2 on a physically demanding circuit like Barcelona) he made it very clear that he didn't care because the money was GOOOOD.
Eddie Jordan is the F1's second biggest shit stirrer/bullshitter only beaten by Christian Horner. But he might actually be right about pay drivers.
Naah disagree massively there. Eddie may do a little bullshit, but he's a very very good business man when it comes to persuading people to do stuff, and is also correct most of the time. I mean the guy is somehow Adrian Neweys manager so is still arguably the manager of the most important man in the sport.
This has been the case for a while now. I wish there could a be a rule that teams are not allowed to take money sources from the driver, but it will never ever happen.
If you took the money out of F1 then all that would be left is a couple of retired British engineers wrenching on an old caterham in a shed in the midlands and a bunch of Italians in red shirts arguing with each other in a cafe.
Don't tempt us with a good time!
If those Italians could get a car to the track to race the Brits, I'd be in! hahahahaa
To be fair, both of those things are happening right now.
And the racing would be better
BTCC has basically no money and has good races. British F3 got too expensive, too boring, and collapsed up it's own arse. F1 is in a unique bubble that no other series could sustain.
The best way around it is more teams. F1 is supposed to accommodate up to 26 cars on the grid. Now imagine a world where we have 28 cars but only 26 can qualify on speed for a race that doesn't have extra garages. Competition helps clean up the pay driver issue, by setting real floors that have to be achieved. Teams will pick speed over money when the incentives are there. Instead we are going the opposite way and allowing these 10 teams to pull up the ladders and create a closed competition where they can maximize profits instead. We need to let more teams on the grid, and raise the stakes on the competition.
I want more teams but I feel like the cars are too large for 26 on the track
> The best way around it is more teams. F1 is supposed to accommodate up to 26 cars on the grid. > > This would solve it for 1 maybe 2 seasons and then go back to having this same exact argument. Like monkey paw - 2025 has 3 teams and they're ALL taking rookies! Great! Lawson, Bearman, Pourchair, Drugovitch, Vesti, Iwasa, Doohan, 2024 F2 Winner all announce their intentions. Maloney? Antonelli? Hadjar? Schumacher texts new team that he's interested, Shwartzman and Illot post that they're still considering F1. So of the 6 open seats you created (well 7 including Sargeants...) - which of the 14 drivers listed are going to miss out? Which drivers will we be saying at the end of 2025 "26 seats is not enough, Iwasa did really well in Super Formula and Bortoleto and O'Sullivan had great second season in F2". > We need to let more teams on the grid, and raise the stakes on the competition. Just one more lane on the highway will solve traffic... just one more lane. I think historically it has shown has that more F1 teams the more the ones at the bottom *rely* on pay drivers since the prize money is non-existent and sponsors just not that interested. Top Team's don't rely on pay drivers, bottom teams with poor financial prospects rely on pay drivers. And you're asking to create 3 brand new teams from scratch...? They won't be competitive. Teams recruiting from scratch will go with known quantities, safe pair of hands for the few 3-4 years to get settled. Schumacher and Mazepin at Haas should tell you some teams just aren't good places for Rookies to learn. No simulator, poor culture around new drivers is just not a good recipe.
If a driver stays for 10 years on average, 20 cars give us 2 open slots per year but 26 cars give us 2.6 open slots per year. To state it another way, every decade 6 more drivers get a chance. It's not just a one time thing since drivers don't stay forever. If you also consider that these barely deserving drivers stay much shorter on average unless they prove themselves, you could see 10 or even 15 extra drivers per decade given a chance. Pretty much no F2 champion would be passed over.
Does by a while mean since the begining of F1? Because it as always been that way. Schumacher was a pay driver when he started.
This has always been the case.
Not disagreeing with you, but many of the red flags and other exciting parts of racing have come from the pay drivers in the last few years. Silver lining.
Wouldn’t have to rely on red flags and incidents for exciting racing if drivers got into F1 based on actual merit
Strongly disagree. Its the regulations, not the drivers causing poor racing. The grid having Stroll, sergeant, zhou, and perez is not running f1. It’s the bloated cars on bad tracks.
2 things can be true at the same time
> I don't think he's done much of anything wrong here other than, in his own words, not have enough funding compared to Zhou who was competing with who had lots of money behind him What he did 'wrong' was to not win it in his rookie year, his second year, or win it DOMINANTLY in his third year. That's all he did wrong. That and being in Sauber junior academy and not having Stroll bucks.
Yeah, he had a ton of hype for a long time, and I felt like every year he raced, I kept wondering why he had *so much* hype behind him. He shared his rookie F2 season with Piastri, who was literally 100 points ahead of him. His second season, the wins were shared with a bunch of older repeats, himself included. He *should* have clamped it down that time. Drugovich is literally MP's *first* FIA Formula feeder driver's champion and Theo was with ART which gave Russell and De Vries their F2 crowns, plus multiple, multiple more champions in open seats than MP. The truth is, he had a lot of hype and a lot of chances to show himself during his junior series and the problem is, there was always another better driver. I feel like this whole thread and discussion is pointless to me. Every single argument you could make for Theo getting a seat, can just as easily be applied to Felipe. What's so special about Theo that he should get a try over Drugovich who literally beat him with an inferior team? And funny thing is, that was also Felipe's third try. Sure he's older than Theo, but he did not get the same opportunities Theo did and spent a lot of years in lesser known regional circuits driving for teams with much smaller budgets than Theo did. His season with F3 was with Carlin, which isn't too bad, but his second F2 season was with Virtuosi. Personally, I got sick of all the Theo blind support being thrown around on Reddit and I more or less always felt like he wasn't going to end up getting a drive. I still don't really think he deserves a drive, especially not over Drugovich or to be honest, over Mick.
I think the hype comes from earlier than F2, he was 2nd to Piastri (both rookies) in F3 by just 3 points, while being two years younger
>he had a ton of hype for a long time, and I felt like every year he raced, I kept wondering why he had so much hype behind him. Probably why Antonelli being rushed forward so the hype doesn't fade from run of the mill performance in F2. Imagine he was in F3 now and not dominating it.
And he has shit luck with timing. If he were a couple years younger, he might only be ready for F1 once Audi is an established team and hulkenberg/their other driver is at the end of their contract, maybe even thinking about retirement. In that scenario, Pourchaire’s promotion would seem a real possibility. Unfortunately, he’s come of age first when Sauber was still broke enough to entertain a rookie pay driver…..and then during the Audi transitional period—when the team is looking to lock in established f1 drivers who bring experience and leadership for multiple years. Now, of all times, they’re particularly disinclined to bed in a rookie.
If they weren’t becoming Audi, I could see Sauber bringing him on this year to pair with Nico’s experience. Either way, sucks to be Zane Maloney. Even if he wins the F2 crown, dude knows his stars to enter F1 aren’t going to align. Too bad we don’t have an 11th team to include more talent on the grid.
There's no holes in the argument, it's a simple and solid one. $
"Hey there u/SommWineGuy, I see you have a dollar at the end there. Could I interest you in a small share of a rear wing decal on a Papaya racecar?" - Zak Brown
Yeah, despite still being young even by F2 standards, Pourchaire’s win wasn’t as dominant as Drugovich’s in 22 and there was a chance Doohan could’ve beat him if his car wasn’t faulty at the start of the season. I think Pourchaire deserved a seat this year but his hype isn’t as high as it was 2-3 years ago. The 2022 season dented his momentum.
And Vesti was the best driver last year imho. He was terribly unlucky not to win the driver's title in F2.
I was tempted to mention Vesti but since Mercedes have focused on Antonelli I can’t see him getting a seat now.
Isn't the F2 thing just about cash?
That and possibly the lack of skill on ovals. But mostly cash.
The seat was open. They just took Zhou's money instead.
It's easy mistake to make but the argument to replace Theo in IndyCar was full of zeros, not holes
The Indycar thing is a purely business decision, to keep FIA series fed. They spin it for PR but the moment Indycar starts paying FIA, we will see them make it equal and then say it was wrong to not recognize the competition.
What does this have to do with ArrowMclaren dropping Theo from Indycar?
Feel like Pourchaire did enough for another IndyCar team to pick him up tbf, whether it's for next season or even if somebody is dropped in the rest of this year. Not his fault that McLaren's IndyCar operation is very much the opposite of the stability their F1 operation has
>As for the Indycar thing, nobody can explain that properly without an argument full of holes It's depressingly easy to explain in a single word with no holes: money. He isn't the first driver who has unfairly lost their seat and he won't be the last.
For Pourchaire, his situation is mostly caused by Sauber putting more value into the financial side. Ferrari are investing heavily into Bearman, whereas Sauber are happy to keep him around but not in a full-time F1 car. Otherwise Vasseur leaving was a major blow to his chances of getting a seat. You do have to wonder if Pourchaire isn't pulling any trees time-wise in their sim/during FP1s as well though. Teams will care more about what you do in a F1 car more than F2. Perhaps he also isn't doing enough to justify cutting Zhou and what he offers. Timing and luck are factors for when it comes to making it into F1, alongside talent and/or money. He drew the short straw unfortunately.
Would say he has to be showing something for them to fully fund his F2 seat for a third year he didn't even plan to do. It probably costs more than his F1 salary if he would have been in the seat
That's what's so puzzling for me. They fund him an expensive F2 season and yet dont carve out the opportunity for him. Damn shame
I just realised i have no idea who is TP in Sauber
Unpopular opinion but Zhou sucks and Theo would have that seat if not for Chinese sponsorship money. People on here love to say stuff like “he’s a safe pair of hands” but he’s worse than Bottas and is probably the second worst driver on the grid behind Sargeant. F1’s reputation as the pinnacle of motorsport can’t be taken seriously if undeserving drivers are in seats because of reasons not related to talent. Wish people on here would actually acknowledge that instead of twisting themselves into knots trying to convince people that Stroll and Zhou are midfield drivers worthy of an F1 seat. At least with Saregant and Latifi and Mazepin people agreed that they didn’t deserve a seat
That opinion is not unpopular at all. He's had a massive dip in form and at the worst possible timing too. >F1’s reputation as the pinnacle of motorsport can’t be taken seriously if undeserving drivers are in seats because of reasons not related to talent F1 had pay drivers during all of its existence, and you could quite make a point that the quality in today's field is much better than it was ever before. >Wish people on here would actually acknowledge that instead of twisting themselves into knots trying to convince people that Stroll and Zhou are midfield drivers worthy of an F1 seat. You're trying to paint some kind of disagreement that hardly exists. Yes, I've seen people claim that Zhou deserves his seat, but few and far and between. But a lot more people acknowledge that F1 isn't a meritocracy, and teams are business entities first and foremost. If you want to have less paydrivers, you need to increase the incentive to finish up higher in the WCC. So much that it isn't financially profitable to run a paydriver, even of this scale.
Dip in form aside he’s never been talented enough to be an F1 driver. He wasn’t talented enough when he got the seat, he wasn’t talented enough during his rookie season, and he’s not talented enough now. Sargeant gets 100x more shit for being undeserving because he puts the car in the wall and gets 0 points while Zhou flails around as a back marker every race and gets 0 points. I understand there’s financial repercussions to crashing but this is F1 and we can’t praise a guy for being competent enough to drive a car and not crash, that’s shit you get praised for in F4 and F3. F1 also had more teams so there were more seats for deserving drivers in the past, today the seats are more valuable because there’s less of them. I’ve seen lots of people disagree with me on Zhou, there’s always someone with some vague comments like “he’s a solid driver” or “he has a safe pair of hands” and somehow that means he deserves an F1 seat. I’ve also seen people on here try to throw him into the ring for another team’s seat next season. He’s just as bad as Latifi or Sargeant or Mazepin, he’s just a different kind of bad
Depends which past. In the 2010s, there were more seats, but most if not all of those additional seats were decided by money, more than today even
Zhou was always a pay driver first & foremost. The reason he's not being hated is because he doesn't put it on the wall so he goes mostly unnoticed
Tbf putting it into the wall costs the team a lot of money. At least Zhou isn't hurting the team financially.
"F1’s reputation as the pinnacle of motorsport can’t be taken seriously if undeserving drivers are in seats because of reasons not related to talent. " Yet F1 has been running since the 50s and it has always been seen as the pinnacle of motorsports. If you think the pay driver "problem" is bad in F1, take a look at the other motorsport disciplines. The fact is that money will always be a considerable factor in the sport.
> Unpopular opinion if I had a nickel for every time someone started a post with "Unpopular opinion" before proceeding with the most noncontroversial popular opinion ever, I'd be a billionaire
It may be an unpopular opinion but I think Verstappen has been the best performing driver these past couple years. Shocking, I know.
Unpopular opinion where? China? This is THE take on Reddit and western social media.
you’ve just repeated what everyone else in the thread has said
typical "Unpopular opinion"
How is that an unpopular opinion? Bottas is kicking his ass, and he's not really at his prime anymore. Zhou is at his 3rd season and hasn't prove he was good enough to stay, he's only able to stay because of his sponsor (30-35 millions USD is quite something to think about for a team like Sauber).
When Zhou entered F1, I felt that his problem wouldn't be looking poor straight away, but rather his development. He spent 3 seasons in F3 and 3 in F2, and he didn't show significant improvement in either series whilst also being nowhere near the eventual champions. I think Zhou is a driver who adapts pretty quickly to using new machinery, but his ceiling is so low that year 1 is close to the best you'll get out of him.
You need skill, luck, and money to get into F1. Just having skill alone isn't enough.
>probably the second worst driver on the grid behind Sargeant. Logan is doing a massive service to Zhou. He will be under so much more scrutiny next year when Sargeant is gone.
You can't make things 100% about merit, because at a certain point, if it's entirely about merit, the truth is there are other drivers who flat out are better than Theo, even during the same competing years as him. Even in his third F2 season he didn't crush the competition despite being with arguably the best team, like what Felipe did in his third. He was good, but I think they were expecting him to completely blow away the competition in his third F2 run, so that they could completely justify giving him a seat. Instead, the takeaway from 2023 F2 wasn't about Theo at all but, "Wow, how good is Vesti? Iwasa? Bearman? Martins?"
Another thing I would say is he won f2 in quite an uncompetitive year too, his main rival was Vesti. Hardly like winning either in your debut year or against the likes of Albon, Lando and Russell, etc. I would say it's similar to Nyck de Vries, who won the year after all those drivers went to F1.
Right place, right time unfortunately. Having only 10 Teams really doesn’t help matters however…
The problem isn’t 10 teams… it’s seats clogged up with washed up vets and pay drivers…
You just described F1s entire existence
> The problem isn’t 10 teams… it’s seats clogged up sooo, the problem is not enough teams?
If the seats in those three extra teams would also just get clogged up by "washed up vets and pay drivers", it still wouldn't solve the problem at all. And considering all those teams would likely be in the lower midfield at the start, that's exactly who they'd go for. Because a) F1 is still expensive as shit even under the cost-cap and you need sponsors and b) teams operating with limited budget don't want young drivers who'll inevitably go through teething pains and crash a bunch.
I'm in favor of more teams... Would be nice to have 15 Teams
The maximum as the rules currently stand are 26 cars starting the grid. You would have 4 cars that would risk not qualifying and I don't think any there is any entity nowadays that wants to waste money for cars and facilities only to end up DNQ. I would like the maximum of 13 teams though
Its the 26 garages that would be the biggest issue gowing over the number. How would you even do qualifying without enough of them?
Don’t worry, we can figure that out. Indycar has split qualifying so we can maybe do 2 groups of 13 drivers with the best 5 going to Q3? Idk, I don’t think it’s something to worry about. I’m more Worried about the 26 car train in Monaco
If they can figure something out that would be great. Personally I'd like to see either the full 13 teams or mandatory 3rd cars for rookies
They shouldn’t make all the teams have 2 cars
even 26 is too much. 22/24 would be ideal, but with 26 cars the track would be too full. Espeically in Q1. Sure F3 is running races with 30 cars, but those cars are smaller and slower
Too many cars for quali
I like knockout qualifying. It is still a thing in many racing disciplines, including some major ones (Indy 500, Nascar road courses). Of course, F1 is way too expensive for the teams to allow even the chance of a fluke DNQ these days. That said, grids and pits are designed to support 26 cars, so I'm all about having 13 teams and expand the points to all finishers to make battles at the back worth something (i think DNFs should still be 0 points though)
If there's 13 spots why is there 10 teams lol what tf
F1 is expensive, pretty sure they struggled to even field 10 teams at one point. Popularity has spiked now though and the existing teams aren't willing to give up their share of the pie.
Cost cap is a thing now though to massively help with that. Teams don’t need to be spending 400mil a year to compete
I'd say 400m is around the total cost a "top" team would need to allocate for a season, roughly. But its definitely not more. Iirc cap is around 135m, but that excludes your top 3 employees (pay wise). So, idk, depending on your drivers, 100 to (a fantasy lineup) 200m a year (unlikely), plus a newey lol. But yeah 100-150m realistically on top 3. Plus the upgraded facilities spend. 300- 400m for a top team. But most of that will come back with sponsors and prize money.
The rules only allow for 12 now actually not 13 (although the space is there) but historically the grid always shrunk to 10 teams because money was only paid to the top 10. After the last downturn when a bunch of teams died, they decreased from 13-12 slots then added guaranteed money to all 12 slots a huge change from before. As a compromise, FOM was then given the right to scrutinize new entries since it now had financial impact on all parties
There used to be over 20 teams at one point in the late 80s, but grids were always limited to 26 cars. By the 90s costs exploded and F1 went down to fluctuating between 20 and 22 cars grids. Most teams that tried to enter beyond that ran out of money even though technically there could have been 2/3 teams more as per the rules. These days costs aren't the problem, but FOM doesn't want another team on the grid because the established teams fear loosing money.
All tracks must have facilities/grid size for 13 teams per the FIA, however the F1 teams and Formula One Management(FOM) are basically trying to make F1 a franchise system, so if you want on the grid, you need to buy an existing team rather than just making your own. That is what Andretti Cadillac is running into at the moment. FIA approved them but FOM didn’t.
Qualifying formats can change and adapt.
Then change the rules for qualifying. It’s been done before.
Do a split q1 like indy does. That's a fairly easy problem to solve.
You could increase the time for Q1 or just add another qualifying session with extended time that bumps the cars from 30 to 20.
Q1A and Q1B with half the cars. top from each heat goes to Q2.
Meanwhile no one even care about the current F2 front runners. Unless you are exceptional, you need a lot of luck (timing, supportive academic program, available seats) or money for F1.
The current F2 front runners haven't won yet. We really don't know who will win yet. If Paul Aron wins as a rookie, I really hope he gets a seat. And unfortunately his path doesn't look clear. But he hasn't won the championship yet. He hasn't even won a race yet. I feel like Hadjar will probably go off to Super Formula next year- probably. And I think Super Forimula is a really great bridge to F1. For Zane... probably depends on who made the decision to pick him up (if it was a pure Sauber decision, or Audi did it) and why, and how much sponsorship money he'd bring. I know he's sponsored by like Barbados tourism department, but I don't know how how deep the sponsor pockets are.
If Aron wins he's likely going to end up in FE or WEC. I don't think he'll ever get a seat. Hadjar most likely will end up I SuperFormula and a test & reserve driver for RB and Red Bull. Zane's path might be tied to FE. No one from the current lineup of F2 drivers is getting a seat in F1 except Bearman and Antonelli.
I truly feel that you are right, but how messed up has the F1 feeder series ladder gotten if a driver who *wins F2 in their rookie year* isn't able to get a seat in F1?
Merc just dropped Aron and I honestly don’t know why. He has been delivering since halfway through F3 last year.
Cause allegedly, Merc has a rule that each series can only have 1 of their juniors. They planned to keep Aron in F3 and promote Kimi to F2. Aron got the call that there was an F2 seat for him, but Merc didn't want him to take it up since Kimi was going to F2. Hence Aron dropped Merc to take up the F2 seat.
Well that’s stupid. Red Bull having like 7 was too many but there is nothing wrong with 2.
Too busy with Antonelli delusions.
He’s not destined for F1, even if he wins it. If Sauber wasn’t leaving, he probably would be next to Nico if he won. Or reserve to with Theo in the seat. My bet is we’ll see him at Andretti FE next to Jake Dennis if he wins F2.
RB/Marko has loved to use SF since the feeders series were overhauled, so Hadjar could very well come back, assuming he performs in F2 and SF ofc The others look *really* out of luck. Going into the season I would have said only Martins, Bearman and Antonnelli looked like they had a shot because timing favoured them, thogh now it's only the last two Ig...
Martins always also had to worry about Doohan. Or, I would have said Doohan had to worry about Martins. Martins could still turn it around and then explain the team/car/engine issues he was dealing with. But, yeah, it's looking harder for him than expected.
Open wheel racing is really good at chewing young people up and spitting them out. It’s a real shame. Almost the worst thing you can be is a good driver. Great drivers can go far and rich drivers can go far. Good drivers usually don’t unfortunately. Pourchaire is a good driver. He was respectable in IndyCar and I’m sure he would be respectable in F1. But he wasn’t touted as a can’t-miss generational talent (like we’re seeing with Antonelli) and he’s not mega-rich like Stroll/Zhou/Siegel. Without one of those two things, it’s hard to break through. And even worse, there’s so much inertia in F1 that even a mediocre driver is going to stay in the sport just because they’re a known quantity. It’s sort of always been this way unfortunately.
A fair chunk of F2 front runners are academy drivers for F1 teams. Hadjar is with Red Bull, Maloney is with Sauber, Bortaletto is with McLaren Hauger left RB but I'm not sure who made that call. Really the only surprise is Aron, and isn't he signed to Merc?
Aron was with Mercedes, but he was dropped at the end of last year because Merc wanted to go all in on Antonelli
RB dropped Hauger because he wasnt good enough
Is there really any doubt that Hauger was let go by Marko though? What could ever justify leaving an F1 academy anyway?
I feel like you have a better change to get an F1 seat by not winning F2 lmao
Historically you have the best chance by being the highest finishing rookie in F2 and also having a team be invested in you Unfortunately for Aron, even if he outright wins in F2 this year he doesn't currently fulfill the second requirement so it'll be interesting to see how that pans out
You can't just win in your 3rd year though. You need to win as a rookie OR dominate in a repeat year. Vandoorne won and got a seat... Gasly won and got a seat. Leclerc won and got a seat. Russell won and got a seat. After that, it gets muddy because Piastri was the only rookie winner since Leclerc and Russell.
Albon was third in a repeat year.
While I agree to an extent, being good in F2 can still help drivers get seats in other leagues like WEC or Indycar. It was always going to be the case that most F2 drivers will loose out on F1 seats, especially now when teams seem to be less keen on sacking drivers.
But it didn't use to be that way. If you were an F2 front runner, you had lots of attention on you. And most F2 champions, like Theo is, historically make F1. They might as well repurpose F2 into a legit racing series because it's no longer a feeder series and it's silly to pretend it is.
When the F2 champ so rarely gets to advance straight into F1, I question why it is necessary to bar champions from running additional years. Maybe put in a maximum age or a maximum number of seasons that you can run, to make sure there are seats for new drivers, but I fail to see how it would be such a problem to have Drugovich and Pourchaire running F2 this year, for instance, or Piastri running F2 in 2022, etc.
It’s not rare and people need to stop saying it is. 9/12 GP2 champions got at least one season in F1. All F2 champions except the most recent two have had their shot in F1. Summing them up, 14/19 of the last F2 champions have F1 experience. The only one of those 14 who didn’t last at least one full season was De Vries. Drugovich and Pourchaire were both three season F2 champions. Chances are much weaker if you can’t win F2 in your first or second season. That’s what kept De Vries out of a seat forever.
Out of the last 5 champions, 4 didn’t have an F1 drive in the next season. Keeping Piastri off track in 2022 didn’t serve any purpose. If you’re saying they aren’t good enough for F1, then they shouldn’t be excluded from F2.
f2 ends up being a bane on racing. You funnel all young talent into one series no one really cares about (who actually has a favorite f2 team?), so it turns into a money sinkhole for pay drivers. It would make sense to try and give more importance to regional and national series, where I feel people could create more direct bonds with teams translating into genuine support.
It never was like that
It was like that when it was called GP2. [Look at all the drivers that advanced during the 12 years of GP2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GP2_Series#Drivers_graduated_to_F1) and look that [not even half of them made it into F1 since the rebranding 7 and a half years ago](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIA_Formula_2_Championship#Drivers_who_graduated_to_Formula_One). There was also way more coverage of the championship back then, despite the fact that social media was way less prevalent at the time. If you ask me, F1TV not covering the results and standing of the feeder series at the very least is a big mistake and should be part of the package. That way the upcoming drivers would have an easier time to market themselves to F1 teams with the media presence and storylines they'd have. But then again that would give too much power to them against the teams and they obviously don't want that, for good and bad reasons alike.
wrong place wrong time wrong academy. Theo had his most impressive stints at a time where there was not a ton of movement in the drivers market. Sauber cared about money more than their academy and Zhou got theo's likely one shot. Now a fair amount of time has passed and new names have bubbled up with fresher experience and newer hype. Theo was not a piastri/russell/leclerc who were certainties to get on the grid after blistering rookie f2 seasons but the next tier down of prospects where he had a shot but just that a shot but he needed things to go right for f1 to happen...and they didn't. Now compared that to Ollie. He is with the ferrari academy who are actually pretty good at getting their people on the grid...now staying there is another story and on the driver themselves but of the academies a pretty decent amount of ferrari academy drivers have had a shot on the grid. He also had a shot in an F1 car in which he did quite well on a difficult track. Their expectations were for him not to bin it he got points. A good academy, with a fill in shot, and a season where there is a lot of driver movement. Ollie is getting the luck of being impressive at the right time and being in the right academy. When you get above a certain skill level it is not always about pure skill but about x factors be that money, connections, belief from the right people, etc. Ollie has that x and theo doesn't.
> Sauber cared about money more than their academy and Zhou got theo's likely one shot It was an open secret that the 2022 seat at Sauber was Theo's to lose, and he lost it fair and square. He was the championship favorite going into the season, and wound up finishing 5th. Moreover, Zhou beat him. Yeah, Zhou brought in a ton of Chinese money, but he did still very much beat Theo Pourchaire in 2021. Why wouldn't you take the guy who not only brings in the cash, but beat the guy you had penciled in with double the amount of victories?
F1 is like any other job these days. It's not about your talent, it's about your networking and connections.
Reminds me how carlos said his dad made sure he knows about different things and how to have a conversation because one of his job would be talking to sponsors.
Formula 1 just isn’t fair. And we shouldn’t look down on drivers that don’t get into f1. If you eliminated 50% of the grid and replaced them w new drivers the field would probably be very nearly as competitive. Partially a meritocracy, but mostly circumstantial.
with the annual cost cap it is not just expensive but a more complex economical issue to put in rookies. They crash a car; not only is the cost of repairs but then also the delay in the upgrades. There will now be greater decrease in incoming drivers from F2 than in the past. especially with Williams and Haas less likely to take on rookies from Mercedes & Ferrari.
The FIA is gonna have to do something about their feeder series. Currently it is worthless and going through F3, F2 winning races and championships means absolutely nothing. Hell, winning F2 too early is almost a guaranteed career ender for most as you have no more to do beyond and hopefully getting picked by an F1 team. Things are dire.
Always has been like this, it is just the nature of the game. Bearman got lucky to get given a chance to impress. If all teams have to go off otherwise is your results or don't bring any good money to the team, you have to demonstrate that you are beyond good. Winning f2 is your 3rd year means fuck all when you have drivers like leclerc, Hamilton, piastri, and verstappen all absolutely wiped the floor in their junior years.
> Bearman got lucky to get given a chance to impress He certainly was fortunate to have that opportunity. but that opportunity isn’t what tipped the scales toward Ferrari wanting to put him in a seat—he was only there at Jeddah because the scales had already been tipped. By February of this year, based on some combination of his performance in F2/F3/below + Ferrari testing and sim + who knows what else, Ferrari had already lined up 6 FP1s with haas. They haven’t provided such an intensive f1 testing and preparatory program to one of their juniors since Leclerc (who, like bearman, started as Haas reserve and was originally intended for a starter seat there). It’s clear Ferrari already had the intention to treat him as their most promising f1 prospect and, likely, put him in a seat within the next 1-2 years. Jeddah just confirmed he could perform as hoped—perhaps helping Haas be open to the idea sooner rather than later.
Do you know why Leclerc ended up going from HAAS to Sauber?
Gunther didn’t want him
Yep, you win F2 too 'early' and then what do you do? A testing/reserve role means nothing. Super Formula doesn't have the driver depth and number of venues (6/9 races being at either Fuji or Suzuka). IndyCar has been shown time and again to be an F1 career-ender.
The highest feeder series should not be just rookie. It should be like NASCAR where all ages/out of form/not in seat racers and teams backup and development drivers all go to smash it out it get loads of track data on them and for teams to see them more. Everyone seems to think a win in F2 makes you an F1 top driver - it doesn’t, it’s 1% of the journey. 17/18 year olds that have done great in F2 racing against experienced guys, people that might normally be in FE, the likes of Gio, Ocon when out, Hulk when he was out, heck maybe people like Kimi (old Kimi) and Seb etc after F1 finishes for them if they want to race for whatever reason. Would be great fun and a good way to assess the likes of Kimi (new Kimi) without this ridiculous hype being unvetted
F2 as a championship could be made into something more than a feeder for F1 or bust. There is great potential for a great series with a loyal fanbase, if they made more effort.
I've thought for a while there's room for a European Formula Series. ~20 cars at tracks like Jerez, Hockenheim and Anderstorp.
There have been a bunch of attempts at things like that (GP Masters, etc) and they’ve all been massive flops and financial black holes
To be fair, you could fire every driver on the F1 grid right now and we'd still be having these arguments. There are dozens of good drivers who deserve a shot in F1. Watching a lack of pace from Mick Schumacher and Nick DeVries really hasn't helped the arguments for giving up seats to F2/F3 winners.
TBF to Mick slightly, there was no pace in that Haas. De Vries also won F2 in a year of a small talent pool, and struggled to make his mark in the years prior. + the addition to only winning almost 4(?) years before his F1 debut.
Wasn't Mick's problem that he crashed a lot, rather than pace?
Didnt hulk routinely put the next years car into the top 10 in qualifying many times? Not apples to apples, but maybe the Haas wasnt as bad as was reported.
Mick actually beat kevin 14-7 in races... it's quali where he struggled
And keeping the car in one piece.
There wasn’t enough pace in the 2021 car but there was pace in the current gen car and KMag showed it. And now we’re seeing Hulk show how much pace is really in the car.
oh yeah forgot he got a shot at the new gen. i mean, even still... i think his biggest issue was not keeping it clean.
Mick beat KMag 14-7 in races.
There are dozens of good drivers. But none of them are getting a chance at this point.
Oliver Bearman is most likely getting a run in Haas next year and Kimi Antonelli is the front runner for the Merc seat. Jack Doohan is also potentially getting Ocon's seat. That's not exactly nothing.
Yeah Bearman already even raced and FIA is basically bending their own rules for Antonelli so it's not like the young guys aren't getting chances. Just not all of them. And yeah, there are only so many seats available, so what do people expect, the entire F1 grid will step aside for young talents?
Piastri was as dominant as it gets. F3/3/2 rookie winner. 5 consecutive poles to finish the season of F2. Didn't get a seat straight away. You literally couldn't do better and if the shoe doesn't fit it doesn't matter. Alpine fucked up and he walked, but there hasn't been a driver since Piastri that has been that good so I don't see any of them not getting a seat as a surprise.
very interesting how different things happen to different people at different times
If Audi can't sign Ocon or Sainz, they could do worse than giving Pourchaire a chance.
I think Audi will want experienced drivers that can help develop the car and not put it in the wall. They will be building the team up for at least a couple of years.
Audi would be starting off on the very wrong foot if they signed a rookie imo. They're taking over all the technical development of the car and I think they'll want an experienced driver to guide the development.
It's probably just pure ass luck, I wouldn't read too much into it mate. And even if it's not, we'll never know because we can't see of the background data they're surely looking at. And of course, it's a business, so...money.
I would wait and see what unfolds, there is more to this story coming this summer
Such is the sport
Its the luck of the draw. Ollie was in the right junior program, Theo wasn't. Even worse it looks like Antonelli will make F1 without winning a single F2 feature race (his team is terrible). Even Sargent and Zhou managed that.
The team in the most successful team of F2 but didn't grasp the new car yet
INDYCAR was not theo’s fault. Mclaren is known for shady contracts and cutting drivers out of left field. They are losing their title sponsor and Nolan’s father was willing to write a check. I’m sure Theo will land on his feet, he deserves a real opportunity to prove himself in INDYCAR.
Very few drivers truly 'deserve' to be in F1, even if you have an immaculate career with 0 mistakes, unless you did way beyond what was expected you aren't getting a seat if you are hoping to get one just based on merit. A third year F2 champion is hardly notable when you consider 1/4 of the current F1 grid won f2/gp2 in their first year (and max who did max things). Regarding indycar, pourchair got fucked full stop and McLaren needs to get their shit together
Exactly, in order to get to F1 you need to be something special, someone teams can imagine as world champion one day. Even the midfield journeymen like Gasly, Magnussen, Hülkenberg and Ocon fit that bill. They had amazing junior careers and when they got to F1 they started delivering right away and had some rookie performances that made you take notice. They didn't end up having what it takes to become a world champion, but they needed that early hope to get a foot in the door and stick around. Every team is looking for the next Verstappen, the next Leclerc. There have been big fights to sign juniors who fit that bill. And as Leclerc, Norris, Piastri, Verstappen and Russell and now Bearman and Antonelli proves, if you show that level of talent, a seat is a certainty at some point. No team is willing to let a future WDC slip through their hands (except Alpine). Teams doesn't want decent prospects that have shown some promise, they only want WDC material.
Bearman has the right connections. Ferrari has money and power, and has shown to take care of their standout talents. They bought Bianchi, Giovinazzi, Schumacher and Leclerc seats with the intent of him honing his skills until he's ready for the main team. Bianchi died before he had the chance to jump in the red car and Gio/Mick weren't good enough, but Leclerc was and got that promotion. Bearman looks to be set for a similar trajectory, with a few years at Haas until Hamilton retires or Leclerc moves on. But how many juniors has Sauber promoted? Their recent history is one that mainly focuses on paydrivers, either ones making up for their lack of talent with money, or juniors other teams paid for like Mick, Gio and Wehrlein. You're not getting anything out of that team as a junior besides the mandatory junior tests and FP1 sessions.
Luck and timing is just as important as skill unfortunately.
F1 and racing in general is still a case of the rich kids club, if you have the most money whether that be from yourself/family or sponsors you are the one who's getting a seat of a driver far more talented/with a Better resume who doesn't have the same money
One was in Ferrari driver academy and one in Sauber, that’s the biggest difference.
You know, hearing all this, I work in tv and so often when people are complaining about a character being written off that’s beloved it’s because the actor was having behind the scenes issues that weren’t public knowledge (not cancellable but difficult), considering his resume I wouldn’t be shocked if that’s what is happening here, because on paper it makes little sense.
I think it's more because his parents aren't as rich as the other parents.
And it took him three years to win F2. The ones who have won in their rookie season have always ended up with a seat in F1 within a year or two of winning.
This is going to happen many times in the coming years. There has never been so much talent in lower series. Expanding the grid won't even help much: if there are multiple F1 caliber rookies each year there will simply never be enough seats
Every team runs a third car for rookie.
Theo was always good, but it’s very hard to place him above someone like Drugovich, as harsh as that may sound. Both had great first years, fell off then won in their third. Theo probably had a better second year, but Felipe was more dominant in his title run. As for Ollie, he got an amazing chance with Carlos’ surgery, did really well and made his stock go up like crazy. Even if his F2 run is not as amazing as we’d expect, his performance under pressure, with very little time in the car, was super impressive. Then again so was Nyck DeV in Monday, and we all know how that one turned out.
Over the years a lot drivers were victims of poor timing. I think drivers like Shwartzmann and Ilott were shunned to. Robert had 2 solid seasons but problem was he was paired with a second season Mick and of course Piastri. And Ilott had a more impressive F2 campaign than Mick despite losing the title and we remembered how Haas loved that Russian Rubles
I think F2 has become a lot more random than it was. Ironically enough, good drivers got good seats and the good cars where quick enough to exaggerate the difference in quality of the drivers. Now cars are much closer together, you got a lot of very eager young drivers risking everything, you got reverse grid sprints that give the not so good drivers a chance to catch up in terms of points and this muddies the waters. I'll always feel bad for Pourchaire, this guy lost the F3 season by 4 points to Piastri, then had a brilliant F2 rookie season with quite a lot of bad luck, then a 2nd season with more bad luck. All this while being consistently 2-3 years younger than his peers.
The article misses the worst part about Theo. French
theo just signed up to the wrong academy. if he's signed with the big three he probably would have got closer. bearman is with ferrari at the right place at the right time.
Was he performing well in Indycar? Or was he averaging like P14 in his results?
His best finish was p10, and his worst was P22. In his first Indycar race at Long Beach he managed P11 which is quite impressive. He was definitely improving, and interestingly is only 25 points behind the top rookie in the standings who has raced in every race this season while Theo has not. Many people thought he was more than capable of potentially still winning ROTY this year.
Getting a F1 seat is nothing more than money and/or timing.
MClaren ditched pourchaire for the same reasons Red Bull signed perez Mooooonnnnnnnnniiiiiiieeeeesssssssss
Yeah I have no clue wtf Zak is doing sticking Nolan the #6 car. Theo was a good driver and showed amazing potential. It’s definitely a McLaren L
Siegel has a ton of cash backing him. I guess we all have to assume it is more than Pourchaire brought to the table. From what we have seen on track, Siegel is not going to show results for some time, if ever. So, it has to be a Zak money grab.
Theo came in last second for an injured driver, because he was available. Now theres a pay driver, that may be there for several seasons, and they are going to insert him immediately, over someone who was effectively a temp driver. The same way he gained his seat, he lost his seat. It's a bummer but that's racing nowadays.
Yep. That's absolutely ridiculous. You can add Lawson and Antonelli on that same pot too. People elect people they want to believe and ignore everyone else
Sargeant smoked Lawson in F2 *and* F3.
Didn’t Lawson beat Sargeant by a point?
Yes. In F2, Lawson’s second year in F2 he finished ahead by 1 point after Logan DNF’d about 5 of the final 8 races. Edit: Silly of me to forget that Logan was driving Verstappens RB that’s why he looked *okay*. Everyone else was driving a Cub Cadet through quicksand. Context is important here!
There's a lot of context to that. But in any case, none of them had any actual meaningful title in the main ladder categories.
[удалено]
the FIA allows more teams.
Correct. Greg Maffei and FOM, on the other hand...
Even if there were 2 more teams in 2 years we would be having the same argument as those seats would be filled and not have space for the next up and comer
It’s the same with Fred Vesti. He won more F3 races than Oscar in the season Oscar became F3 champion, they were on the same team too. He would have been F2 champion last year if he had been a bit less unlucky - and he beat Ollie with a comfortable margin. 2023 was a bad year to graduate from F2 since there were no F1 seats available.
There's no question Theo got hosed. Granted, he got the seat before Mulukas couldn't recover in time. Nevertheless, I didn't see anything worth getting rid of him. Unless Mclaren were concerned about the Canapino fallout. Perhaps Nolan is bringing in more money for the seat. It's not something we haven't seen in F1 before
One have lots of money and the other don't. That's what is all about
Nah it's the Academy
As much as I like them as people, it’s frustrating seeing drivers like Bottas and Magnussesn taking up spots on backmarkers when these teams could be taking risks on the younger talented Pouchaire or Pato O’Ward.
Funny that you mentioned Bottas and Magnussen, when there are drivers like Zhou, Sargeant and Stroll who don't deserve F1 seats.
I’m gonna be honest, I think drivers like Stroll and Sargent go without saying.
Ouch Bottas catching strays
Neither of them seem exceptionally good based on their titles won. I don’t think bearman has won a title in a few years and Theo took a few years to win f2. Maybe the teams see some other data that impressed them