The Never Ending Driver Age Dilemma

after olle Ban's exceptional debut for Ferrari in jeda standing in for the injured colos science he has absolutely put himself in the shop window for a seat in 25 and also added yet another exciting element into what we already knew was going to be a crazy year in the driver Market however when a young driver makes the sort of Splash that he did with minimal preparation straight out of Formula 2 it resurfaces a conversation that we seem to have every 2 or 3 years with regards to older drivers taking seats away from younger drivers every single time that this conversation gets brought up there is always one man's name that immediately gets brought up and that's Fernando Alonzo after jeda Ralph schumacker speaking about Ban's debut and the difficulty for young drivers in general said money can beat talent because you have so much time in a cart or in a car that you can learn how to do it but also to break this vicious circle so that young drivers get a chance again and instead along o now 42 is going along nothing against Alonzo but it can't be the goal of Formula 1 to get older and older and now schumacker wasn't the only one beating the younger older driver drum after jeder but he was the only one to call out Alonzo by name with other pundits like Naomi Schiff saying there are some drivers that have been blocking seats on the grid for multiple decades this is not to say that they don't deserve their spots but it would be great to see more Young Drivers coming through and now this conversation has always frustrated me whenever I've seen either fans or media bring it up because in my opinion the goal of Formula 1 shouldn't be to have a younger grid it shouldn't be to have an older grid it should be to have the most competitive grid possible now this is a little bit of hyperbole by me but I genuinely wouldn't mind if Fernando kept racing into his 50s provided that he was still one of the best drivers on the grid and was beating his teammate who isn't a rookie because under those Circ cumstances it means that there is at least one driver who actually deserves to lose their seat ahead of Fernando on a performance basis which at the end of the day is the most important metric that a driver should be judged by I am not saying that other factors don't influence why some drivers get seats over others like experience the money they bring or the sponsorship and exposure that they can allow the team to get either through their personality or nationality but at the end of the day as long as they are outperforming their teammates in the same car that to me trumps almost any argument that's not in favor of older driver staying on the grid and now I would say that jeda is a unique circumstance but a driver making their F1 debut with a last minute call up because another driver was injured has now happened three times in the past 3 years having said that other than this specific type of circumstance in general I do agree that young drivers aren't given enough opportunities but that's not the fault of drivers like Alonzo or Hamilton it's more so down to the lack of testing opportunities with all of these testing restrictions that we have and it's also due to the fact that there are only 10 teams with 20 seats available which is a seriously difficult problem to solve when the other teams themselves are too greedy to let a credible team like andreti join Formula 1 and create two new seats when you look at Alonzo and Hamilton even now they more than justify their place on the grid ahead of some younger drivers who also have plenty of experience in the case of Lewis even though he has had a rough start of the year which a lot of people have been jumping on let's not forget that last year he dominated his younger teammate in the championship and that is someone who is considered the future of Mercedes And as for Fernando people weren't calling for him to make way for younger drivers just a year ago when he was scoring all those podiums and single-handedly with just his points alone dragging Aston Martin to fifth in the constructors now that is not to say however that they aren't drivers who are currently underperforming relative to expectations and are holding a seat which could go to a younger driver L stroll is the driver that immediately comes to mind and now we all know that Lance was brought into the team by his dad and in the past I have described him being there as artificial he didn't naturally earn his seats based off performances or that he was an upgrade on the previous driver he was artificially inserted into that team because his dad owns it and in his five full seasons of the team team under various names he has never beaten a single teammate the problem for Lance is that his level of ability caps the team's ultimate potential Aston Martin have scaled up to challenge for podiums and wins like we saw last season but the problem is that when they had a car capable of those results only one of their drivers was actually good enough to achieve the results that the car was capable of given the uncertainty over Alonzo's future I don't think that they're the type of team that can risk having a rookie in their car especially if Alonzo leaves because you cannot have a rookie alongside L stroll as your driver lineup they have to absolutely have a guaranteed top level driver in at least one of their cars and that is why in a recent video I said that Carlos signs to me is the absolute perfect candidate as either Alonzo's replacemen or Alonzo's teammate the team currently has Felipe dragovic on their books and in the one practice session that he did with Lance stroll last season he finished ahead of and looked more than respectable when he won his F2 title in 2022 dominating the likes of te porer Liam Lawson and Logan Sergeant it was in his third season in the series which I think is why in the eyes of some of the teams he didn't immediately then warrant a seat in Formula 1 but I think his bigger problem is both timing and also the team that he's aligned with Aston Martin barely have one seat available if L stroll is kept on and I also don't see Aston Martin being able to pull strings by finding dragovic a seat in one of the other teams another driver who's coming under a bit of pressure after the opening few races is Daniel Ricardo iiam Lawson is the young driver who would be Ricardo's obvious replacement given how impressive he was in the few races that he did last season even when Ricardo was announced for 2024 there was still quite a few fans that felt it wasn't fully Justified given Liam's performances Ricardo was kept on at RB partly because commercially he's very valuable to the team but mostly because he's being assessed as a potential checko replacement at Red Bull for 2025 however for that to even be a possibility he's not only got to be beating Coda he's got to be dominating him and so far it has been the other way around with Ricardo's raw pacing qualifying looking very worrying and reminiscent of his time at McLaren when you have a genuine young driver who deserves a chance although people love Ricardo for the character that he is and the driver that he was if he isn't able to find that form and beat Yuki then I do think he starts to fit into that category of older drivers who are taking seats away from younger and more deserving drivers the next driver under obvious pressure is Kevin Magnuson and now the tricky thing about km mag is that he actually helped the team during a very difficult time when they were struggling with their previous Young Drivers Nikita maip and Mick schumacker that prompted H to basically abandon Young Drivers alt together when giner was still the team principal in favor of a more sensible and experienced driver lineup with hulkenberg joining the team in 2023 however after impressing in 22 km mag then really disappointed in 23 to the point where he definitely is a driver under pressure now even in jeda as good as his Drive was holding up half the grid to help his teammate it lets not forget that the reason why the team could put him in that position in the first place was because he himself got 20 seconds worth of penalties and ruined his own race and now olle bman is the obvious candidate for that has seat and even team principal aayu KATU said that despite the fact that he couldn't watch Ban's race for himself because he was obviously busier watching his own team's race after his free practice outings last year for the team they already knew that bman was a very special driver who's going to be on their r for 2025 and now bman can't let all of this attention get to his head too much I think that Fred Vasser with all of the experience that he has of working with young drivers like Lewis Hamilton in the lower formula has done the absolute right thing by playing down expectations and telling bman to fully focus on his formula 2 campaign you don't want a young driver to lose that hunger after one impressive performance and let all of that praise and adjuration get to their head bman has firmly put himself at the front of the shop window with his incredible Ferrari debut but he can't just relax and think that he's already guaranteed a seat for next year another young driver who revealed his frustration of not being given an opportunity is Teo Porche who was the 2023 Formula 2 champion and is also a Saba Academy driver and now when it comes to Saba's lineup we already know that the team is chasing the likes of Carlos SS to be the next star driver for when Audi come in but when it comes to their current driver lineup of botas and Joe or whilst I'm not saying that there aren't better drivers out there I think the team is letting them down more than they're letting the team down botas I still think is perhaps even an underappreciated driver when he's actually given a decent car and I also think Z has developed into a really solid driver and has actually had a quietly strong start of the season if you've been paying attention I think the bigger problem at saber isn't the driver it's the team over the past 3 years their car has been really uncompetitive strategically the team makes a lot of mistakes reliability has been awful for both of the drivers and on an operational level they've already had two disastrous pit stops in two races that screwed both of their drivers this is one of those teams that I wouldn't blame for replacing either of their driver for someone younger or better but they themselves haven't put their own drivers in a position to SU suceed enough to Warrant dropping either those are just some of the younger and older drivers that are fighting out for seats in 2025 but now it's over to you who do you think is holding up a seat on the current grid that perhaps doesn't deserve it and which Young Drivers stand out to you right now in the lower formula as ones that you feel deserve to be considered for a seat in 2025 well there you have it if you did 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Channel: Aldas

Views: 90,014

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Id: j4IRbkLO6E0

Length: 11min 14sec (674 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 15 2024