Why are there no Swedes in F1 anymore?

[chunterer]

Having come across Sonic's thread about '87 Brit F3, I immediately thought of Thomas Danielsson and what a shame it was that he never got the opportunity to progress to F1 due to eye problems. I know he reappeared in Japanese 3000 but never managed to shake it off.

What is he doing now?

Rickard Rydell was also a top driver and carved out a career in touring cars quite nicely but he surely would have cut the mustard in F1?

Other than Bjorn Wirdheim, no other Swedish driver has actually got close to an F1 drive in two decades!

Alx Danielsson has left the World Series to go to the States, Robin Rudholm and Robert Dahlgren have disappeared off the radar, (and there was a guy who progressed from karting quite late to German F3 in '98/99, multiple champ, can't remember his name??)

So is it a lack of budgets that is responsible for the lack of current talent, or is it that the drivers that have appeared most recently aren't good enough?

Surely there must be a budding Ronnie Petersen or Thomas Danielsson out there to uphold tradition and take on Kimi and Hekki in the battle of the Scandinavians?

[sonic]

I think you may mean an awesome karter called Jonny Mislijevic who won the world champs a couple of years after Trulli, but he just sort of vanished. weird.

[chunterer]

Originally Posted by sonic

I think you may mean an awesome karter called Jonny Mislijevic who won the world champs a couple of years after Trulli, but he just sort of vanished. weird.

Bingo!!! That's the fella, good one Sonic

[EERO]

These things run in cycles. Where were the Danes until Magnusson appeared? Then Kiesa all had a shot at F1 and Watt (until his tragic accident) and Kristiansen seemed likely to give it a go.


For the record, Finns are not Scandinavian. Nordic, yes, but Scandinavian refers to peoples who speak North Germanic languages descended from Old Norse.

[rustyfan]

Since motorsport isn't considered to be as "nice" as other sports in Sweden, corporate sponsors prefer to put their money elsewhere.

[Russfeld]

I wasnt under the impression there were ever that many Swedes in F1.

[rustyfan]

Originally Posted by Russfeld

I wasnt under the impression there were ever that many Swedes in F1.

Not really, no, but some of them, and one in particular, left an impression.

[EERO]

Originally Posted by Russfeld

I wasnt under the impression there were ever that many Swedes in F1.

Jo Bonnier, Ronnie Peterson, Reine Wisell, Gunnar Nilsson, Connie Anderson, Stefan Johansson, Slim Borgudd. Don't think I've forgotten anyone.

[Dutton]

Originally Posted by EERO

Jo Bonnier, Ronnie Peterson, Reine Wisell, Gunnar Nilsson, Connie Anderson, Stefan Johansson, Slim Borgudd. Don't think I've forgotten anyone.

In terms of drivers to start a GP, there are also:

Bertil Roos
Torsten Palm

Wirdheim doesn't count, really, seeing as he didn't actually race IIRC.

[BootsOntheSide]

When you've only had 9 in 56 years, it isn't that surprising to not have any at present, especially as so may of those emerged in a cluster in the early 70s. Obtaining sponsorship could be the problem however.

[EERO]

Originally Posted by Dutton

In terms of drivers to start a GP, there are also:

Bertil Roos
Torsten Palm

Wirdheim doesn't count, really, seeing as he didn't actually race IIRC.

Bertil Roos, geez I'd forgotten his brief foray. I remember him runninfg away with the Formula Super Vee crwon in the early 7o's, no one could touch him. He seemed slated for big things and never managed to break through.

[Bononi]

My first and one of my all-times favourite was Ronnie Peterson, really good memories, but this thing of nationality really depends on the support and where drivers get more successful. Brazilians dominated the late 70's and the 80's, being 91 the last championship for a brazilian. The last decade, they became more successful in american series and now the last driver's generation seems to be more focused in local categories who have reached a level similar to those in USA and Europe. The consequence is less drivers getting into F1. I think reasons vary from case to case, but usually are nothing related to driver's talent.

[chunterer]

EERO, apologies for my geographical oversight!

Generally what has been said so far seems right, although i hadn't realised there had been that many Swedish drivers in the 70's!

As Bononi said however, the paucity of drivers coming through must be money related as closer inspection reveals that even in the late 80's and early 90's there were still a lot of talented guys coming through who never made it to F1 yet seemed well on track for it at some point.

IE, Kaiser, Danielssson T, Rydell, Andskar, Brack, Nilsson J, Blom, Ekblom, Aslund, Olsson

A lot of these guys managed to get funding upto F3000 level but was there a cut off point a couple of million that prevented firms sponsoring them at the top level or something?!

Since that period and other than the handful i mentioned to open the thread there's hardly been anyone since.

Is there anyone on the radar at the moment?

[N I Tram]

Finland not being in Scandinavia is news to me, thanks. Other than Kenny I'm not sure any of those guys were F1 class anyway.

[ASCII Man]

Originally Posted by sonic

I think you may mean an awesome karter called Jonny Mislijevic who won the world champs a couple of years after Trulli, but he just sort of vanished. weird.

Johnny did do some German F3 in 1998 with the Benetton Junior team, but wasn't impressive at all...
He's doing something with Tonykart USA nowadays..

[chunterer]

Originally Posted by N I Tram

Finland not being in Scandinavia is news to me, thanks. Other than Kenny I'm not sure any of those guys were F1 class anyway.

Well that's what i would say too?!

No, i doubt all of them were ultimate aces deserving of F1 drives, although both Danielsson and Rydell were almost certainly top calibre. My point is why were there so many trying to get back then and not now?

I'll also add Niclas Schoenstrom to that list as well (although he didn't understand that it was Martin Donnelly being quicker and not the chassis that was his problem in Brit F3 in '87!).

One link between them is that nearly all of those drivers had funding from some kind of Swedish telecomms firm or other, an industry that was enjoying something of a boom at the time. Major internationals bought them out though i think so that would have had an adverse effect on sponsorship availability?

[Bezzen]

We had a couple of promising drivers in the late 90's-early 00's that were destined for big things: Dahlgren, Goransson, Wirdheim and Rudholm.

Wirdheim managed to get quite far but money problems seem to put him out of a second champ car season. Formula Nippon seems to be an option for 2006.

Dahlgren ran out of money for his single seater campaign and managed to get a seat in the the Swedish Touring Car championship where he was second in his rookie season. He was said to be the driver in the swedish A1GP squad, but there was not enough sponsorship for sweden to have a team. There are rumours going around that he may race single seaters again this season, F3 or Toyota Atlantics. My guess is he can't find the money though.

Goransson moved to the STCC as well and got the championship in both 2004 and 2005 and the ETCC (Cup) champion of 2005. Has his eyes set on the WTCC.... but... money...

Rudholm made one season in STCC. Then became the Carrera Cup Scandinavia champion. And then ran out of money. Spent last year in karting winning the Swedish championship. Was going back to STCC this year but his sponsor backed out.

As for future prospects, I'd say:
Alx Danielsson
Sebastian Hohenthal
Daniel Roos

and as a wildcard:
Martin Kudzak

[EERO]

I was always disappointed that Brack never made it to F1. But at least I got to cheer for him on this side of the pond in Champcars and the IRL.

Brief History lesson for those who will bear with me re: Finland and Sweden. Finland for many years was a part of the Kingdom of Sweden and even today, about 10% of the population of Finland are ethnic Swedes. During the Napoleonic Wars, Sweden allied with the French and battles fought in Finland between the Russian Army and the Swedes led to annexation of Finland by the Russians where it remained an autonomous Grand Duchy until the collapse of the Russian Empire following WWI.

Finland and Sweden are culturaly similar, both countries are primarily Lutheran, (Orthodoxy under the Russians never took hold) leading to a somewhat dour world view.

Swedish is of course similar to Norwegian and Danish (and Icelandic and Faroese), and actually gramaticly very close to English. Finnish is not even an Indo-European language, being close to Estonian, distantly related to Hungarian and to several obscure languages spoken by nomadic tribes stretching across the northern part of Russia to Siberia.

Therefore in the crudest of stereotypes, Swedes are drunken Vikings and Finns are drunken riendeer herding nomads who carry pukka.

As an American Swede married to an Amreican Finn, I worry about the pukka.

[chunterer]

Interesting and informative insight there EERO!

As EERO has pointed out, Brack is indeed a good case - wasn't he involved in the 1996 scrap between Kristensen and Muller in 3000 and wasn't he then signed as an F1 team test reserve driver, but the deal fell through for some reason or other?

[Jackman]

Money is definitely the problem for Swedish drivers - it is effectively impossible to find any there, which is why so few drivers make it out of the Swedish scene in open wheel racing.

I know that Wirdheim did well in karting which prompted his dad to try and help him move up the ladder, but he was unable to find any sponsorship to pay for his drives. He wasn't a very rich man, but because he believed in Bjorn's ability he sold his business (an insurance brokerage, I think) and they had a five year plan to get to Formula One.

It worked, insofar as Wirdheim was third driver for Jaguar after dominating Formula 3000, and they figured that he would be able to show what he could do there. In a way he could - despite running in an old chassis with Webber's engine from the previous race, any time they ran at a circuit he had driven an F1 car at he was faster than Webber on Friday - but there weren't many people looking.

He had an option for 2005 with Jaguar, but they sold the team to Red Bull and that was that - Wirdheim had to scrabble for a drive in America, without any budget, and HVM was the best he could do. Motorsport is pretty tough like that, more often than not. He's looking for a way back now, but it's just as hard to find a budget now as it was before.