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View Full Version : The debuts of rookie drivers - let's recall the past



jens
22nd April 2015, 22:16
The debut of Max Verstappen and to a lesser extent Carlos Sainz and Felipe Nasr has been one of the stories of the season. Especially Verstappen - can we read anything from his performance that he could look good for future greatness?

As some of the rookie debuts have been memorable this year, I thought I'd take a look back and recall some other debuts. I am not going back to Senna or Schumacher, but generally recall more recent drivers, who were highly regarded or caught attention early in their careers. Even if they did not go on to be a great. But were still good drivers.

So the impressive debuts of the last decade – how do the rookies of 2015 compare?
2006:
Nico Rosberg – finished 7th on his debut despite first lap incident. Got fastest lap. Then qualified third in his second race in Malaysia. Later in the season had a slump in performance, but if debut indicated anything, he certainly had the speed! And now he has established himself at the front of the field.

Robert Kubica – third in his third race in Italy. His other races in late 2006 contained lots of mistakes, but one was sure – he was very fast. Shame that the rally accident destroyed the F1 career of a genuinely great talent of modern F1.

2007
Lewis Hamilton – no comments. Gave a run for double WDC's money at least from the third F1 race onwards.

Sebastian Vettel – struggled to get up to speed after getting thrown into F1 in mid-season, but came to his own in late 2007 by competing for podiums in wet races in his Toro Rosso. Was also very young at that time – 19.

2009
Kamui Kobayashi – impressed in only his second race by finishing sixth and beating team-mate Trulli in Abu Dhabi. Was a great talking point late that year. Alas he wasn't fast in qualifying – outside top 10 on both occasions. And this remained Kamui's achilles heel for the rest of his career.

2010
Nico Hülkenberg – very highly regarded and one of the more talented drivers to debut in the last 5 years. However, it took him a while to get up to speed and started matching Barrichello only in the second half of the season. But took an amazing pole in Brazil.

2011
Sergio 'Checo' Pérez – seventh in Australia, showing good tyre management already on his debut. Sadly got DQ'd. However, he could not beat this result any more that year and his next stunning drive took place more than a year later, when he fought for victory in wet Malaysia. Perhaps all this was a sign of his inherent inconsistency.

Daniel Ricciardo – nobody remembers the debut of one of the best drivers of recent years, because it was in a rubbish HRT. But thought I'd mention it. He beat Liuzzi pretty convincingly there, even if it is not saying much. Then next year in his first race for Toro Rosso finished 9th.

2014
Kevin Magnussen – fourth in his first ever F1 qualifying, went on to finish an even more impressive 2nd in the race, ahead of Button. His rest of the reason did not match up to that standard though, so he got the boot.

A curious case
Romain Grosjean. Made his debut in 2009, but without any testing or prepration was nowhere, lacked speed and was spinning around. When he made a proper entrance to F1 in 2012, he stunned the field immediately by putting Lotus third on the grid in Australia! Though much of the rest of the season was mired by accidents.

Other less memorable cases, but still worthwile to recall.
Several of them the Toro Rosso drivers.
Bourdais retired with a blown engine in Australia 2008 from fourth. Did not replicate that sort of drive.
Buemi was twice in the points in the first three races of 2009. Didn't surpass this during the rest of his career.
Vergne finished 8th in his second race only – a wet Malaysia. He proved to be a bit of a wet weather specialist, but dry performance wasn't convincing enough to have a long career in F1.

Both Paul di Resta (2011) and Daniil Kvyat (2014) started out solidly, getting some points and outracing their much more experienced team-mates (Sutil, Vergne) early on. Di Resta didn't rise above them, with Kvyat we still have to see.

Bottas' debut fell very much under the radar, as the car was so bad. Only on two occasions did he come to the fore - 3rd in Canadian qualifying, 8th in USA. Much like Ricciardo, he started getting notice once he got a proper car.

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Verstappen finished 7th in Malaysia, qualified 6th in the wet, plus has twice retired from top 8 positions with a blown engine. Add to that he is mindblowingly inexperienced for someone at that level.

Nasr delivered 5th place on a debut in a good Sauber (2011 and Pérez anyone?). Has been inconsistent since, but still sits 8th in the championship.

Sainz has twice made it into Q3, 8th on his debut qualifying. And scored 8th as a race finish in Malaysia.

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As we see from historic evidence, several rookies have had memorable debuts, but not all of them went on to become consistently good drivers. Some remained showing „flashes of brilliance“ only sometimes, and this cost them the career.

Robinho
23rd April 2015, 05:49
I recall Button had a pretty decent debut for Williams, was heading for points in his first race until the engine blew 11 laps form the end and picked up points in the 2nd race in Brazil, youngest poi ts scorer ever at the time. Consistently close to Ralf Schumacher all year, scored 12 points to Ralf's 24 (back when points were difficult to come by)

Sent from my 0PJA10 using Tapatalk

rjbetty
23rd April 2015, 09:50
Very nice thread guys. Thanks for the cool post Jens.

Well since I started watching F1 in 19967 with 1998 my first full season, I'd like to start from there.

My first experience being somewhat impressed with a rookie was Tora Takagi qualifying 13th in Australia (repeated in Argentina).

1999 ramped this up with impressive de la Rosa scoring on his debut and being close to Takagi. Zonta only qualified 19th but had a great start to 10th and ran there throughout, pretty much. Stéphane Sarrazin made waves in Brazil by replacing Luca Badoer, well beating Marc Gené but spinning 10(?) times in a race crash!!

Given that the above had been my only real experience of rookie drivers, I was stunned at the season of Jenson Button in 2000. I don't know how it was in other countries, but in the UK, in my perception, his season was huge! I had never seen anything like it at the time.

I often have thought 2001 could be called the year of the rookies. In any usual season, Enrique Bernoldi could have been said to have done fairly well, outqualifying Verstappen (Jos) 9-8, but he was completely overshadowed by Montoya, who could maybe have won 6-7 races(?) - Incredible. Out of that huge limelight, Kimi Raikkonen was probably even better. If Jenson's debut throrhoughly wowed me, Kimi took it to another level imo and did even better! It was Kimi who stood out all season for me by being so close to an on form Heidfeld. Even more out of the limelight and (in hindsight) even better still was a certain Senor F.Alonso, 19yrs old, outqualifying Benettons, Arrows, Prosts, Jaguars and BARS in a nowhere Minardi.

2002 didn't reach the rookie heights of 01 but we still had Massa, though Webber was better imo. Sato and McNish had their moments.

A few barren years till 06 where I then agree with Jens' thiughts.

denkimi
23rd April 2015, 13:02
Raikkonen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOLzZ0xn2B0

journeyman racer
23rd April 2015, 13:08
The city went mental after Webber finished 5th at Albert Park in 02. I was filthy! I hate Mark


- can we read anything from his performance that he could look good for future greatness?

Nup.

Osella
23rd April 2015, 19:47
2007
Sebastian Vettel – struggled to get up to speed after getting thrown into F1 in mid-season, but came to his own in late 2007 by competing for podiums in wet races in his Toro Rosso. Was also very young at that time – 19.


If you wanted Vettel you should refer to his debut..
2007 - thrown in mid-season to a BMW drive after Kubica's Canada accident with just a few days' notice. Qualified 7th on the grid with teammate Heidfeld 5th. Had a decent race, with one small spin, but finished in the points (just) on debut.
Clearly though a star of the future, and promoted from Renault 3.5 to run the rest of the season with Toro Rosso (alongside FRenault!)
2008 after a tough start including 4 first-lap incidents in the first 4 races (and on the verge of being dropped!) he recovered to score points in Monaco (of all places!) and then podiums and THAT win in Monza. But it all stemmed from that debut drive with BMW.

Osella
23rd April 2015, 20:16
I recall Fernando Alonso's debut too, putting that Minardi in places it had no right to be.. He showed a huge capacity for driving under pressure too..
Magnussen etc is not worth talking about in the same way, as Jacques Villeneuve's debut was pretty impressive in terms of result and performance, but you should expect that in the car he had!
Jos Verstappen was VERY impressive in his first races with Benetton replacing Lehto - he got a lot of comment for his cool reactions to the crash in Brazil (looking round for who hit him as his car was spinning to a halt in pieces) and his speed up from F3, but then Jos clashed with Briatore who didn't like his attitude, and he never showed to be much faster than Lehto, so he got dropped.
He then had a couple of stunning races in '95 for Simtek in the rain, almost getting points, and an incredible race for Arrows in Canada 2000 but never had more than just these few flashes in the pan. Sutil & Di Resta are quite similar cases.

Mika Salo was very impressive on his debut, very controlled, no stupid mistakes, and made his teammate look average - no surprise he made his way to the top, but perhaps just not quite aggressive enough as a character to convince a top team to give him a real chance.
Mika Hakkinen got a lot of praise for his speed and maturity when he made his debut in 1991. In Belgium he qualified the car which others had been struggling to do (Bailey, Bartels) and when told to go to the wrong grid position by marshals he refused as he knew he would get disqualified.
I'm too young to remember Jean Alesi's debut, but the videos of some of that are pretty stunning!

What must be remembered however is that a lot of people talk about guys like Alesi, Schumacher, Hakkinen, Vettel, Bottas, Pizzonia, Alonso, Modena, as being 'definite future champions') but it doesn't always work out..

Go look at Ukyo Katayama's 1994 season (and the car he was in!) or Stefano Modena's 1990 season; and what happened to them within 2 years - and then perhaps hold fire on some of these average wannabe's like Nasr or Ericsson..

I can't say what these debuts look like to some others, as I always watch a lot of FR3.5, GP3, GP2, F3000, AutoGP, A1GP, LMP2, FFord, FVauxhall, FRenault etc.. I saw guys like Webber, Montoya, Ambrose, racing in FF & FVauxhall Opel in 1994-96.
They stood out, really stood out as awesome drivers so to see them in F1 or V8 Supercar, or Indycar doing what they did - it's not a surprise. Olivier Panis, Alessandro Zanardi, Fernando Alonso - it was clear from F3000 that these guys needed to be in F1, so their excellent performances in early races might surprise those wearing F1-only blinkers, but shouldn't surprise anyone else. Jolyon Palmer for example is waaay better than Ericsson, and also at least as good as Nasr. Ericsson does not deserve F1, he showed all through GP2 he was exceptionally average, but had money.. However Marcus was VERY quick in F3 & FBMW, so he does have some talent, but he is not good enough on talent alone I would say. He was nowhere near the level of Gutierrez, Van der Garde, C. Pic or Razia.
Then there are guys like Pizzonia, who was stunning in '99 FRenault (and later F3/F3000), and Raikkonen, who quit 'cos he wasn't fast enough..
Raikkonen then came back the next year, wiped the floor with everyone in the new chassis, & bounced to F1..

My take on this 'looking back' is that it shows it's not worth wetting your pants over hapless average drivers like Marcus Ericsson just off one or two races. Even Verstappen, (fast though he is) just like his dad, Jan Magnussen, Ivan Capelli, Jarno Trulli; it might not get any better for him..
Watch more GP2 & GP3, Indycar, F3, DTM & everyone will gain a much better sense of perspective over just how good (or not!!) some of these F1 debutantes really are...

jens
23rd April 2015, 22:04
Osella.

As you are already talking about feeder series...

From what I have read, people have been super-impressed with what Max Verstappen did in F3. Red Bull certainly was and hired him for the Toro Rosso seat immediately! For someone at his age and inexperience, everything so far in his career has been stunning. I think that's saying something! It was largely Max' debut, which motivated me to create this thread, as I believe Max' debut is up there with the best debuts I have ever seen. And this is after putting everything into context - context is his vast inexperience and of course car performance (regularly blown engines).

However, that's true that neither Nasr nor Ericsson were convincing in smaller formulas. In fact, Sainz wasn't either before winning FR3.5 last year.

Osella
23rd April 2015, 22:30
Sure, they were. But he still got beaten - and beaten handily by Ocon.. (who has more car experience, but less years in Karting beforehand..) Ocon also impressed hugely in testing - but he's not marketable in the same way..

Max is in a Red Bull programme - a programme which is supported by a manufacturer of products that is under attack in many, many countries by organisations who have either tried, or trying to prevent its sale to under 18's, under 16's, or (in France) they tried to stop it altogether. These same organisations are also trying to get Red Bull (& Rockstar, Monster etc) sponsorship blocked from events where under 18's compete. Hiring Verstappen is not a coincidence.
Red Bull didn't only promote Max for his merits (great though they are) but also because he was offered a Mercedes F1 test drive for this year, and only a race seat beats that - so that's what Red Bull offered; not because they really wanted to, but because they had to outbid Mercedes.

Sainz was also winning before last year, he was actually very successful against Antonio Felix Da Costa in FR3.5 in 2013 and in F3 in 2012, but got promoted above others (Juncadella, Wehrlein) because of his marketability. That's my point about Junior formulae; if you watch you can see McNish, Kristensen, Brack, Jorg Muller, etc and often see how they miss out on opportunities given to those less deserving because of money.
I think Verstappen deserves (obviously!) a place in F1 and has a good opportunity & made a great debut - but let's not get sucked into believing that it was all about merit only, and not about money & marketing.

jens
23rd April 2015, 22:58
Going back to your earlier comment.

I am surprised you mentioned Jos was impressive in Benetton, because from what I remember he was nowhere near Schumacher and struggled to get even into points most of the time. He seemed more impressive later in his career. But was thrown into deep end in Benetton and didn't swim.

I do remember Salo being pretty impressive in the Tyrrell, beating the highly rated (based on 1994) Katayama, though arguably Katayama was suffering from health problems too from 1995 onwards.

Katayama's 1994 was good, but not his debut season. Modena remained somewhat inconsistent all throughout, while his best season was probably 1991 in a decent Tyrrell. I don't think Nasr is going to be great. I think he'll fit together with Magnussen and Pérez - impressive start, but remains inconsistent. Hope you got the point.

I am not convinced in Palmer. He is like Leimer, Valsecchi, etc. Stayed in GP2 for eternity before rising to the top on the back of excessive experience over the field.

Jan Magnussen was disappointing in F1 from the get-go. No comparison to the impressive debutants though.

jens
23rd April 2015, 23:04
Sure, they were. But he still got beaten - and beaten handily by Ocon.. (who has more car experience, but less years in Karting beforehand..) Ocon also impressed hugely in testing - but he's not marketable in the same way..

Max is in a Red Bull programme - a programme which is supported by a manufacturer of products that is under attack in many, many countries by organisations who have either tried, or trying to prevent its sale to under 18's, under 16's, or (in France) they tried to stop it altogether. These same organisations are also trying to get Red Bull (& Rockstar, Monster etc) sponsorship blocked from events where under 18's compete. Hiring Verstappen is not a coincidence.
Red Bull didn't only promote Max for his merits (great though they are) but also because he was offered a Mercedes F1 test drive for this year, and only a race seat beats that - so that's what Red Bull offered; not because they really wanted to, but because they had to outbid Mercedes.

Sainz was also winning before last year, he was actually very successful against Antonio Felix Da Costa in FR3.5 in 2013 and in F3 in 2012, but got promoted above others (Juncadella, Wehrlein) because of his marketability. That's my point about Junior formulae; if you watch you can see McNish, Kristensen, Brack, Jorg Muller, etc and often see how they miss out on opportunities given to those less deserving because of money.
I think Verstappen deserves (obviously!) a place in F1 and has a good opportunity & made a great debut - but let's not get sucked into believing that it was all about merit only, and not about money & marketing.

Contacts (famous dads/relatives) and lots of money always help. For starters you need to be at least from upper middle class to have any kind of a shot at racing career, as already professional karting is very expensive and you are unlikely to find big outside sponsors at that stage unless you have got your family/relatives business behind you.

So yeah, from that point of view drivers have to be lucky guys. Still doesn't devalue talent among those, who got the opportunity. There are lots of young drivers from famous backgrounds - the Brundle, Mansell, Prost, Piquet, Senna, etc juniors. But none of them have caught the attention of Max. Considering Mercedes and Red Bull were fighting over the services of Max, speaks volume. No other driver has caught such attention at the age of 16, even if they had famous name or were good for marketing.

Ocon is pretty talented. Let's see, if he finds an opportunity. Which sadly didn't happen with Robin Frijns, who I think is very talented.

jens
23rd April 2015, 23:14
Very nice thread guys. Thanks for the cool post Jens.

Well since I started watching F1 in 19967 with 1998 my first full season, I'd like to start from there.

My first experience being somewhat impressed with a rookie was Tora Takagi qualifying 13th in Australia (repeated in Argentina).

1999 ramped this up with impressive de la Rosa scoring on his debut and being close to Takagi. Zonta only qualified 19th but had a great start to 10th and ran there throughout, pretty much. Stéphane Sarrazin made waves in Brazil by replacing Luca Badoer, well beating Marc Gené but spinning 10(?) times in a race crash!!

Given that the above had been my only real experience of rookie drivers, I was stunned at the season of Jenson Button in 2000. I don't know how it was in other countries, but in the UK, in my perception, his season was huge! I had never seen anything like it at the time.

I often have thought 2001 could be called the year of the rookies. In any usual season, Enrique Bernoldi could have been said to have done fairly well, outqualifying Verstappen (Jos) 9-8, but he was completely overshadowed by Montoya, who could maybe have won 6-7 races(?) - Incredible. Out of that huge limelight, Kimi Raikkonen was probably even better. If Jenson's debut throrhoughly wowed me, Kimi took it to another level imo and did even better! It was Kimi who stood out all season for me by being so close to an on form Heidfeld. Even more out of the limelight and (in hindsight) even better still was a certain Senor F.Alonso, 19yrs old, outqualifying Benettons, Arrows, Prosts, Jaguars and BARS in a nowhere Minardi.

2002 didn't reach the rookie heights of 01 but we still had Massa, though Webber was better imo. Sato and McNish had their moments.

A few barren years till 06 where I then agree with Jens' thiughts.

Yeah, Takagi qualifying 13th in the Tyrrell on his debut as well as Tuero qualifying 17th in the Minardi must have been some incredible anomalies! Because based on debut qualifying they looked like stars, but neither were going to mount to much.

I also remember Button was a kid of rookie not seen a few years. An addition to the somewhat impressive list of 1996-97 rookies of Trulli, Fisichella and R.Schumacher, who all caught attention in 1997 certainly. The hype around Button was huge, and I felt over the top at that time as well. 2000 was the time, when people were asking - who is going to be the next star after Häkkinen and Schumacher? Because they had been top dogs for 3 years, and the era had to end some time. So Button seemed like an answer to many people. But 2001 changed this perception quickly...

It is always the matter of whether and how much to get carried away with rookie performances. There have been lots of debuts. For me it is the matter of taking into account everything. Not just results and race performances, but also age, experience, team, and general impression. It is a huge puzzle.

In the past I have often been carried away with rookie performances, only to find out later that the driver didn't turn out to be that good and remained inconsistent. So it is important to be somewhat selective.