Martin Galpin | Racing Driver | number66.net

Former Formula One World Champion and A1 Team Great Britain Chairman John Surtees thinks that F1 needs younger drivers. Speaking to Autosport, Surtees encourages: “What we need to do is give more youngsters an opportunity.” Absolutely right. However, is putting more youngsters into Formula One really the best way to achieve that?

His comments are a question of interpretation. If by young drivers he actually means new drivers, then I agree, that is exactly what the sport needs.

When you think about it, Surtees has actually highlighted two separate problems. First, how does a young driver get to Formula One in the first place? I applaud him for raising the question and to an extent, his contribution is keeping Robbie Kerr in A1 Team Great Britain. I think that I covered the problems associated with this reasonably well previously (Where does all the money go?) and so I wont do so again. However, the second question Surtees has unknowingly raised, and the topic of this article is: how can we make progression to Formula One sustainable for the future? To answer that, let us look at what exactly is the problem.

F1 drivers are around for too long. When the 2007 World Championship begins in Melbourne next month, six drivers will continue long past their 10th season in Formula One. At the same time, the youngest World Champion in history, Fernando Alonso, enters his sixth season and both Jenson Button and Nick Heidfeld are to begin their seventh. What will surely please Surtees is the sight of four debutees: Lewis Hamilton (22), Heikki Kovalinen (26), Robert Kubica (22) and Adrian Sutil (24).

When Fernando Alonso made his F1 debut, he was 20 years old. Jenson Button and Kimi Rƒ¤ikkƒ¶nen were both 21. Sebastian Vettel, who is yet to make his race debut has already become the youngest driver ever to take part in a Grand Prix meeting aged just 19 years and 53 days. When you consider that, it’s hard to conclude that we need more young drivers in Formula One.

The last time Formula One suffered a fatality was the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix. During that weekend, Austrian Roland Ratzenberger and three-times World Champion Aryton Senna were both killed in separate accidents. Since then, almost 13 years have passed and an increased emphasis on driver safety has seen significantly fewer injuries than ever before.

Yet for all its merits, the inadvertent consequence is that Formula One has lost an unpleasant contributor to its driver turnover.

When Michael Schumacher retired he was 38 years old. Mika Hƒ¤kkinen retired when he was 33. Great Britain’s last World Champion, Damon Hill, hung up his overalls at 39. Should David Coulthard retire at the end of 2007, he will have spent 13 of his 37 years racing in Formula One. The point here is: without reason, drivers don’t necessarily need to retire until well into their 30s.

In 2006, Formula One had 11 teams each providing two cars. 12 of the 22 seats were occupied by career drivers, that is, drivers which have had more than two full seasons of racing and who are contractually secure. Other drivers realistically faced little threat but did not satisfy this criteria.

The point is, in my opinion, by introducing more young drivers into Formula One it will in fact reduce the number of opportunities for future talent. If our goal is to ultimately see a greater number of drivers (or talent) reach the pinnacle of the sport we should either be increasing driver turn-over or reducing costs to allow more teams. Otherwise, the two are mutually exclusive.

By increasing the number of drivers of the age of Hamilton, Vettal or even Alonso (in 2001 he was just 19), it is only limiting the number of serious opportunities for new drivers in the future through occupying the limited number of seats for longer.

Correspondingly, by reducing the entry age into Formula One, it is also accelerating the financial prerequisites for national competition. If a driver makes his F1 debut aged 20 or 21, an ideal (and mostly typical) career path suggests at least one year of GP2 (aged 19), probably two years of Formula Three (aged 18 and 17), two years of Formula Renault or similar (aged 17 and 16) and largely, a childhood of karting. Furthermore, encouragement of younger drivers in Formula One, leads to drivers starting earlier and to compete in such highly expensive series at such young ages requires either the support of a generous patron or the benefit of a particularly wealthy upbringing.

In the end, all that happens is that those who needed opportunity, are still without, but instead this time for longer. What we really need is for motor sport to cease its obsession with adolescence and slow down. There is nothing wrong with entering Formula One at 25 or 26. In actual fact, it’s probably better for the sport.

No related posts.