jammin78 wrote:
benmc wrote:
I don't really follow the lower formulas so well (I'm making it a priority to do so this year) but van der Garde at Caterham seemed pretty obvious to me.
I'd like to see Bianchi in F1, even though he's not exactly lit up the lower formulae, he's been performing fairly consistently against some strong opposition like Maldonado, Perez, Grosjean and Frijns. There's nothing indicating he'll be a great success, but then Vettel lost a title fight against di Resta and look where he is. Junior series aren't the definitive indicator of how a driver will perform in F1, and I'd rather see fresh blood than Sutil, who I thought was half decent but never showed great potential.
@jammin I think that's all good, but what about the WSR/FR3.5 champion? That series is arguably stronger than GP2 atm. F1 teams should have the right to judge talent for themselves, unfortunately money is more important than good judgement right now.
Thats true, maybe there needs to be a set path to F1, or set tiers at least. I.E.
Top Tier - F1
Second Tier - GP2
Third Tier WSR/FR3.5/GP3
Etc. Sure the teams should be able to judge the talent for theirselves, but is that what they're doing? I find it hard to believe teams looked at Max Chilton and Davide Valsecchi and went "yeah, Chilton's definately going to be a better driver."
Its always been the case that money is going to be a wanted commodity by a team, given that it's a business afterall, but I just think champions should get some kind of priority. Maybe the champions should have a gauranteed sponsor package to go with their title which makes them more favourable to F1 teams too. Say Mobil or Bridgestone or Total sponsor GP2... maybe that sponsor should gaurantee to sponsor the winning driver for a year following his/her title win. A team would be more likely to say "yes, we'll take that Champion for x years." Or maybe they'll have a constant turnover of drivers through the yearly sponsorship change, but it'll get the champions into F1 and give them at least some chance to be there.
I apologise if what I say makes no sense, I tend to ramble about nothing in particular.
I know exactly what you're saying, and I think IndyCar has a system similar to what you're describing, the 'Road to Indy' sponsored by Mazda. It operates a four-tier system, F2000, Pro Mazda, Indy Lights and the main series. The champions of each series earn a scholarship to help them move up to the next series, and the last two Indy Lights champions have signed deals with IndyCar teams.
Problem is, in the current economic climate, who will stump up the large amount of money needed for a driver to sign to an F1 team? Anyone who agrees to such a deal would be coughing up much more than Mazda does. Is the scholarship driver going to be able to stay in F1 beyond their rookie year? And which series gets the money given that FR 3.5 and GP2 seem to be so evenly matched?
Also, if you look at GP2, six of it's eight champions have graduated to F1. Of the two that didn't, one (Valsecchi) was stuck in junior formulae for an eternity and never made much of an impression before 2012, while the other (Pantano) already had previous F1 experience in 2004, when he struggled badly. By the time he won GP2, he was nearly 30. I think it's entirely understandable that F1 teams would overlook a driver who they believe may struggle to adapt quickly to F1, considering that driver took years to adapt in junior formulae. Look at James Calado for an example - Valsecchi was clearly better than Calado in GP2 this year, but if you ask F1 teams and fans who is more likely to make it in F1, they'll say Calado and with good reason.
I understand that van der Garde is older than Valsecchi, did much less and still looks like he'll get an F1 drive, and I admit that there are some injustices (such as Aleshin and Wickens going unrewarded for beating Ricciardo and Vergne in FR 3.5) but I don't think the system is too badly broken. Maybe that has something to do with pay drivers (i.e Maldonado, Perez) being very competitive now.