The over the pond factor.

[Super Tourer]

With news that Scott Dixon has signed a long term deal with Ganassi to stay in the IRL, presumably having failed to impress Williams sufficently, what is it between IRL/CART drivers and F1?

To add to the list, it's rumoured that Da Matta will be shown the door at Toyota after failing to deliver on early promise. If we cast our mind back further to the Andretti/McLaren season - that also failed to deliver.

Even Zanardi came back to F1 from Ovals and found the transition very difficult.

Yet if we reverse the situation, the Brit's are doing rather well in the IRL, despite all of them coming from a European career background.

Wheldon is delivering in the IRL and on the front row for Indy, Franchitti was a star in CART although has had an up and down time in IRL. Mark Taylor won the Indy feeder series and Darren Manning got the coveted Ganassi drive after his good rookie season in CART.

What's the factor that makes European 'trained' and therefore circuit as opposed to oval experienced drivers, do well on the ovals - whilst US trained (if you like) Oval based drivers seem not to gel in F1?

Is it purely down to the yawning gap in technology between the series - including tyres and braking?

Is it lack of circuit experience in general, a situation that the F1 calendar exacerbates through drivers not getting enough testing mileage?

Or should a quick driver, be a quick driver period - regardless of the car or clasification he races in?

As a footnote, it's also noticable that some of the Red Bull driver search winners placed in European junior series have not figured all that much.

Over to you.

[BootsOntheSide]

Talking about da Matta coming from an 'oval background' is nothing short of ludicrous either - he's never raced mroe than 6 ovals in a year, and did F3000 before CART. And I think he's done a good job, and Toyota is one of the hardest seats for anyone to keep cpnsidering their ambition, wallet and impatience.

Don't forget that CART no longer has much oval racing - and even when Zanardi and Montoya came through from it, they mad eup less than half the schedule. Zanardi's main problem in F1 was getting used to the cars, specifically the narrow style and the carbon-fibre brakes. Andretti simply didn't put enough testing time in and should've based himself closer to the action in Europe.

[Snrub]

There is no European factor. It's a myth perpetuated by people who don't really understand what happeneds in North American racing. No offense intended to you, but to link JPM, CDM and Zanardi (JV should be in the list too) with oval racing simply reinforces my assertion of there being no European factor.

Dixon wasn't that great in CART and there are better in the IRL. Dario has never been as good on ovals as he was on road/street courses, that's why his IRL success hasn't matched his CART record. As for Andretti, after watching some of the races from the '93 season it's clear that Christian Fittipaldi had better performances than Andretti. Later in CART (they were team mates for a number of years) Andretti was MUCH faster, proving that he was a lot better than his F1 performance showed.

I don't know why Zanardi didn't do well in F1. I think part of it is that there is a much different atmophere in F1. In other words from a driver perspective there is a pyschological difference between F1 and other types of racing. While I think that for most top level drivers experience from one car to another translates, sometimes certain attributes help more in one series vs. another. Look JPM passing at Monaco. F1 doesn't normally have much competitive passing so this is a skill that doesn't elevate him as much.

[Super Tourer]

OK - I probably didn't make my point too well - forget about the oval scene for a second and think of it this way.

If we look at it as two way traffic, the point I was making is that many European based and experienced drivers are seemingly able to do well, despite having never seen an Oval or the US scene before. Whereas traffic the other way from the US has been less successful in F1.

[KC]

I think there are a lot of reasons. I agree with Snrub, about the European factor. A racer is a racer is a racer.

I think while Zanardi was gone, F1 changed into an entirely different kind of racing. When he left the cars had active suspension and lots of grip. When he came back the cars were narrower, with grooved tires, and infinitely more difficult to drive. I think that CART spoiled him. If you ever saw him blitz the field from a lap back to win at Cleveland; or saw him go off twice in Vancouver, bending the front suspension and getting back into position to win; then you know he can drive. He was able to take the car by the wheel and drive the hell out of it. He could force the car to his will. That is not possible in F1. The car must be setup one particular way or it will not work. The CART car could be setup to suit the driver's style while the F1 car requires one setup the driver must live with.

When was the last time you saw an F1 driver actually having fun? I mean just hanging out with the other drivers, laughing, having a good time. They don't. Instead of hanging out or playing pranks on one another they spend their time either sulking in the motor home, hunkering over telemetry displays or verbally sniping at one another in the press. Its a totally different atmosphere, and one I think that does not help a driver who is far from home and may not completely understand everything the team is requiring him to do. Just about the only time you see any joy out on F1 driver is if he won the race.

The reason why european drivers can come to the US and do well on ovals is that it is a simpler process to setup and drive an oval car than it is a road course machine. That doesn't make racing them easy, but it is a much easier process to do. Oen thing you will notice more times than not about non-American oval racers is that they are usually unbelieveably fast until they have that one 65g shunt that illustrates to them just how mortal they are when travelling at 200+ mph inches away from the immovable object. More often than not, every driver who has that inevitable shunt loses that reckless abandon they have when starting out, no matter where you come from. Most American driver already have the benefit of having had the big one earlier in their careers and so it does not surprise them as much. There is a huge difference between hitting the concrete at turn four in Indy and striking a tire barrier or earthen berm on a road course.

I also think that F1 has moved into a "what have you done today" mentality for young drivers. It doesn't matter if the car won't finish the race or literally is 5 seconds a lap off of the pace of the best, the drivers are replaced if they don't win more often now than in the past. You see it with a lot of fans and the mass media who immediately slag off a driver for a miserable season, when he's had 10 mechanical failures and one crash in a season. I think a lot of the team principals have grown lazy and take the easy road and blame the driver for the lack of pace when they have an engineering staff of hundreds who work for a year and cannot produce a car that will pass crash testing or make a start without expiring.

Another large difference between American and European racing is the disparity between the cars. There isn't really any CART or IRL team that has the same massive advantage in performance over their rivals as Ferrari does over the F1 field. This extends back into the European feeder formula as well. Unless you race for a top team then you'll probably not get a sniff of the podium in Europe. In the US, a truly great driver can take a modest team ahead of the top teams in the standings. Sam Hornish proved this by dominating the IRL racing for tiny Panther Racing (tiny compared to Ganassi, Penske and Andretti-Green). That would be akin to Sauber dominating in F1. Not even MS could consistently move that team up past this years Ferrari, BAR and Renault efforts. So when a new racer arrives at the modest European team and he doesn't know the tracks that his rivals have been racing on for 5 or 6 years, and he doesn't have 1/10th of the support group that a home grown driver has, and the cars are not like what he has raced in the past, then he is definitely behind the curve and then the team principals sack them and they get slagged off as not good enough when they probably never stood a chance to begin with regardless of driving skill.

[Super Tourer]

Good Post KC - well put

[mountainstar]

I wouldn't place any blame on da matta, it's clear Toyota needs to pull it together.

For whatever part of the sport you want to be a pro in, I think you have to go to where the roots of the sport are to start. For instance, if a european really wanted to race Nascar, working his way up through F3 and f3000 wouldn't make sense, he ought to be over here learning his trade on the short tracks. Likewise the same for those here in the states that want to race F1. F1 bosses aren't looking at Formula Mazda for the next hot talent.

As I stated in another thread, F1 is so much on it's own level that one really has to have heaps of testing experience to be successful in their first F1 season. Look at wilson and firman last year, damn good drivers both of them, but they didn't have the experience to make it happen.

[BSchneiderFan]

Did da Matta really compete in F3000?

[mountainstar]

Originally posted by BSchneiderFan
Did da Matta really compete in F3000?

If I remember correctly he did one year in 1996 before moving to lights for 1997. Someone help me out here.

[Jordi]

Yes, Cristiano did do F3000 in 1996.

[GP Racer]

Really, its probably just a numbers game, and by that I mean, there are simply a heck-of-alot more European drivers coming this way, with alot more seats available, and there really are a scant few of us going the other way, unfortunately. I mean I can count on one hand, the number of American drivers trying to make it in F1 right now, and the odds are so stacked against you, that I think many won't even try. Our best talent is all going to NASCAR, where you can make alot of money, and be a star.

On the other hand, the IRL and CART and our sports car series, are chock full of European drivers. The competition is alot more even here, especially the IRL, where any number of cars have a good shot to win. Plus, all the Brits you mention, have top rides there, which ticks me off just abit, because American veterans with great accomplishments in the series, for some reason, seem to have no shot at those seats.

All that said, I wish we could get somebody from here into F1. Its been over 10 years now, and thats simply to long IMo...

[Snrub]

Great post KC.

Another thing worth mentioning is that open wheel car similar to F1 and road racing is a lot bigger in Europe than in the US. Hense you get a surplus of international people comming to the CART & IRL, but they tend to be people who were perhaps overlooked somewhere along the ladder to F1.

As for the "traffic from F1" or European road racing being more successfull than those going the other way, here's a list of former F1 drivers that didn't do well in CART:
Johannson, Magnusson, Marques, Blundell (poorly considering he was one of the top F1 drivers), Christian Fittipaldi (did alright, but certainly look poor compared to how fast he was in F1), JJ Lehto, Gugelmin (mediocre CART career at best), Nakano. I'm sure there are more, but if you can get to the series that is suppose to have only the world's best drivers then you should be able to run reasonably competitively in CART.

[jj2728]

Originally posted by Super Tourer

Or should a quick driver, be a quick driver period - regardless of the car or clasification he races in?

i tend to go with that and maybe then some....a quick driver is a quick driver irregardless of what classification he races in, but there is something else and i cite 3 clear examples:
mansell
j.villeneuve
montoya

1 has won the indy 500, the CART and f1 championship...
all 3 have won the CART championship....
2 of the 3 have won both the f1 championship and the CART championship...
2 have won both the indy 500 and the CART championship....

the 'something else' that i refer to is, for lack of a better word, ruthlessnes and an all comsuming drive to succeed...of course it didn't hurt that all 3 drove (drive) for highly succesfull teams....

[BSchneiderFan]

Originally posted by Snrub
here's a list of former F1 drivers that didn't do well in CART:... Blundell (poorly considering he was one of the top F1 drivers...

Mark Blundell achieved more in CART than he ever did in F1, not least several race wins. "One of the top F1 drivers" is rather generous.

[Homer Simpson]

Da Matta competed in F3000, just like JPM did before going to CART. Truth is, so many drivers in the American open wheel scene come from the European feeder series. I agree with what others have previously said, namely that it is just a numbers game; with so many well-trained drivers in Europe competing for a limited amount of seats, some are bound to end up in the U.S.
Then again, Mountainstar is right and it really is a matter of going to the heart of the sport. Senna, JPM, Barrichello, and Sato are just a number of drivers who left their homelands in order to pursue their F1 dreams in Europe. Imagine how things would have turned out if the premier feeder series to F1 resided in the United States instead of Europe.
It's interesting that the RedBull driver search program was brought up. I recently took a course at the Jim Hall Karting School here in Southern California, and one of our instructors had nothing but bad words to say for the program. It seems that some of the terms of the contract they wuold have to sign if chosen were extremely draconian, and many of the more talented drivers refused to sign on. He mentioned that the selection process itself seemed quite unfair (one of the drivers who set the fastest time was reportedly not chosen because he had more experience was thus expected to do better).
Of course, here in the U.S. open wheel racing is not what school kids aspire to become. Back in college, I knew of only one fellow F1 fan (most have not heard of F1, and most have just the vaguest idea of the American open-wheel series).

[mountainstar]

I think the whole problem with americans going the other way to F1 is the sheer cost of just getting started. Just doing formula ford in the UK is a $150,000+ issue, whereas for far less in the states you can be racing on local short tracks every saturday night and have a chance to get some decent prize money and maybe pick up some sponsors to offset the cost. And if you are good there are plenty of opportunities to move up.

The nascar route is the easy way out and if you don't have a rich father or trust fund you are out of luck if you want to go F1. Even if you find a sponsor to pick the tab up, living expenses are high in the UK and most 18-25 year olds don't have that kind of cash stuffed down the back of the couch.

Believe me I know as I have tried to get started for years and now that I am finally getting to the point where I can afford to do some races to test the waters, I'm now considered an old geezer by those in the sport even though I'm still in my 20's. But hey who cares, I'll still have fun when I finally make the grid, somewhere, someday.

[Skam85]

Originally posted by Snrub
As for Andretti, after watching some of the races from the '93 season it's clear that Christian Fittipaldi had better performances than Andretti.

I agree. IMO Fittipaldi deserved a chance for a better drive in 94. The 1993 Minardi was probably the best Minardi build (still not of high-grid standard, but definitely a 'mid-gridder') and Fittipaldi took it P4 twice that year.

[Snrub]

Originally posted by BSchneiderFan
Mark Blundell achieved more in CART than he ever did in F1, not least several race wins. "One of the top F1 drivers" is rather generous.

F1: 7th in '93 out of 24, 12th in '94 out of 28, 10th in '95 out of 24.
CART: '96 16th, '97 6th, '98 18th, '99 23rd, 2000 21st.
(total number of drivers not listed because I can't tell who was full time)

I suppose I was a bit generous, but not ridiculously so. He was in the top group. Yes he had more success in CART, but that's because it's not so elitest and almost everyone stands a chance of winning, while in F1 only a the top two or maybe three teams stand a chance.

[fog_shadow]

CDM should have been able to cut it by now. from what i see, OP is a better driver of the 2.

i had a lot of hopes on CDM considering JPM came from a similar background. but while JPM continues to set the F1 world on fire, CDM has just faded away.

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