Rookie drivers: a suggestion

[Suzy]

Hi folks

Something has been bugging me about F1 recently and it concerns young drivers coming in without enough experience of driving F1 cars.

Let me explain - using 2002 candidates first:

Takuma Sato dominated in Formula 3 (in the UK) last year, but has had an enormous amount of crashes in Formula One.

Felippe Massa: came charging into F1 last year and didn't do too badly, but has managed to upset quite a few drivers this year.

Enrique Bernoldi: drove well in British F3 but was somewhat unreliable at first in the Arrows

Alex Yoong: not really doing as well as he should, e.g. lots of unforced errors

Going back a bit, we had Burti and Haberfeld struggling too. Burti has become a test driver now and is gaining valuable experience (albeit with Ferrari so there is no chance of him being allowed to outpace a certain driver!) which will serve him well should he decide to return to F1. Mark Gene is another example - he is learning so much at Williams and I believe that he will be a big star if he can get back into F1 as he's learned about driving these cars properly. I won't even start on Mazzacane, Tuero, Lavaggi, that one who kept getting run over, and who was that really awful guy in 1995 - Delatraz?

I came to the conclusion that perhaps what is needed is the chance for those rookie drivers to have more experience of driving a Formula One car; e.g. compulsory time as a Formula One test driver first. Those drivers who came into F1 after doing a lot of testing, e.g. Villeneuve, Coulthard, Webber, etc. have fared far better than those who did one F1 test and then got a contract on the strength of that alone.

Of course you're going to get exceptions to the rule: look at Button and Raikkonen; however, by and large, those drivers are exceptional.

The other problem is that it is very rare for F1 official test drivers to get a chance to drive in F1. Look at the likes of Anthony Davidson - what chance has he got of getting to F1 even with hundreds of miles of testing under his belt? Olivier Panis was an exception - his time at McLaren revolutionised the world of "test drivers" but even so, he was in danger of losing out to an up and coming youngster with plenty of money but not necessarily the experience.

Maybe a period of between 6 months to 1 year's compulsory test driving is required which would teach these drivers to handle a Formula One car and get used to it. I wouldn't get into a strange car before I was comfortable with it and how it works; and I would drive it somewhere quiet first to get used to it before going on the open road with other driver's around.

I'd be particularly interested in the thoughts of other racing drivers actually; is F1 in danger of becoming overrun by inexperienced rookies or has it always been the case?

[Nicholas]

I think testing before going to race is a good idea. A lot better than trying to do a Panis, where most of them are just going into a black hole and not coming back. Like Ricardo Zonta, he managed to do a couple more races, now I don't know where the hell he is (racing in one of those European series?).

[Jordi]

Zonta is racing in the Telefonica World Series, an Spanish based series with spec Dallara chassis and Nissan V6 engine, just a bit slower than F1 and way much cheaper.