RACE AGAINST TIME

For most of the past two decades Formula 1 has been an increasingly young man’s game – culminating in Max Verstappen getting a race seat before he passed his driving test. But now teams seem to be spurning youth in favour of experience. What have the likes of Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton got that the young hotshots haven’t? And for how long?

WORDS MATT KEW

FORMULA 1 INCREASINGLY FAVOURS the well-rehearsed. The implementation of a budget cap that trickles down to cover sick pay and catering makes it far harder for a team to sit idle as an inexperienced driver squanders points and precious pounds smearing their car into a wall. Employing a safer pair of hands behind the wheel slashes the likelihood of an upcoming upgraded front wing and revised floor edge having to be scrapped just so the accounts can stay in the black. See Haas flicking a 23-year-old Mick Schumacher after his second term in the top flight. The European F3 and FIA F2 champion arrived with a decent CV, but a 2022 charge dogged by two seven-figure car-snapping spills led management to get shot of him in favour of rescuing Nico Hülkenberg,…

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GP Racing UK (Digital) - 1 Issue, June 2023

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