Junior drivers are often judged broadly by success/time. Rapidly winning championships in lower divisions or races in series beyond one’s development curve is a proven formula for reaching Formula 1. This begs the question: what does the normal progression of a driver throughout the open wheel ladder towards F1 look like? How does this progression compare with successful F1 drivers. Formula 1 has extreme outliers as recently as Max Verstappen and as old as Alonso, Button, & Raikkonen from the turn of the Millennium. We have other top drivers that did not follow this trend in Hamilton, Vettel, & Ricciardo whom do not have rapid trajectories by F1 standards.



F1Metrics has done a great job at putting numbers to the success/time abstraction applied to junior drivers climbing towards F1. His solution is to tally the finishing position of a given driver, modified by the level of the particular series and how long that given driver has raced at the level of that series. Secondarily, to focus on the “time” aspect of the equation, he divides the total sum of the drivers achievements by the sum of the appropriate seasons that the driver competed in. Quick, simple, gets the job done of evaluating a driver in just a couple of minutes. It has a high correlation with successful drivers in this metric reaching Formula 1.

My aim is to look at things from a different angle. If one were to make a similar metric, one should consider age, starting location, and other opportunities off the track as factors of development. Instead of worrying how many seasons a driver has competed in, which can vary from 6 races to 36, irregular distribution of drivers varying rates of international participation. One should consider how many years a driver has competed in since they moved from karts to cars and abstract this step farther.

Minimizes the dilution that occurs from a driver running simultaneous seasons.

It won’t skew drivers if they run out of funding/get injured at or past halfway.

It emphasises time over irregular seasons as the factor of development.

Abstracts development of a driver further, including testing roles taken by drivers.

Drivers are not directly biased by racing with weaker teams.

Important questions to consider; Do drivers benefit from starting their careers earlier? Are drivers affected by changing continents in their late teens? Is it, or was it more attractive for teams to develop drivers as test drivers/3rd drivers instead of having them race in a top tier? These are perhaps better answered by abstracting development simply as a measure of time.

Starting age is determined by when their birthdate falls in the year of their first competitive season. If a driver was born in May or June, their age after their birthday is considered. This is a good way to round up age to fit experience. Drivers who start with end of season races or winter series are ignored. These series often lack complete competition, schedules, or both. Recently the TRS in New Zealand is an exception, but no current driver as started there. The length of their junior career simply is the year they enter F1 part time (3 or more races) minus the year they started in Cars. A half year will be added for drivers who promoted mid season, such as half the Red Bull juniors.

For the sample, I want to restrict it to modern drivers. The farther back one goes, the more irrelevant the driver’s junior careers look. Opportunities varied much more as Sports Cars and other continents were more common points of entries. Drivers traditionally would start at a later age. For relevance, I’ve restricted the data to F1 drivers who started their junior careers in 2001 or later. This allows them to reach the top tier in 2005, the start of the GP2 era. Timo Glock & Tonio Liuzzi reached the top tier earlier, which is fine. Both of them had what can be described as successful careers. 3 years is an appropriate abstraction of how long it takes to establish stability in the sport. Even if it’s a less exciting pay driver such as Sutil or Maldonado, they can stick around well past their welcome by fans. If a driver is able to reach 3 consecutive seasons with 1 team but can not continue, such as Paul Di Resta, they will not be included. I excluded Ide & Bourdais because they both had long traditional junior careers and then full time professional experience.

There are still drivers in F1 that have been in the sport since the turn of the millennium, and thusly approaching retirement. These drivers such as Alonso, Button, Massa, Raikkonen, along with their contemporaries that have had successful grand prix careers are included in the data. The definition for a successful career is a driver who competed in more than 3 consecutive seasons or 100 races. These drivers will not be included in the comparisons of age groups, because they come from a time where it was less common to start racing cars at age 15 or 16. Button & Raikkonen, both of whom had exceptionally short junior careers, were likely more than ready to jump into cars at 16. However, they may not have been financially ready or culturally expected to make that jump. This didn’t mean their development stagnated though, and when they did move to cars they may have adapted faster than a typical 16 year old would.

Name 15 year & under 16 years 17 years 18 & over Outside of Europe Post Millenium plus Contemporary Successful drivers Min 4.5 1 4 4 4 1 1 Lower Quartile 5.25 5.25 5.25 5 6 5 4 Median 6.5 6 6.25 5 7 6 5 Upper Quartile 8 7 8 5.75 8 7 6.5 Max 10 10 10 9 10 10 10

There is a common thought that drivers should make the switch to cars as soon as possible, usually at 14-15. The drivers that have done this, however, are not the most successful. Only three drivers in recent times have made it to F1 after moving to cars at 14; Alexander Rossi, Sergio Perez, & Max Chilton. Perez & Rossi ran the USA Skip Barber championship, which had a minimum age of 14. Perez performed poorly at this level and had a dreadful introduction to Europe, nearly destroying his career. It wasn’t until his 2nd year of GP2 when he looked remotely like a contender for F1 race seats. Ironically, he is the most successful F1 driver who had started racing cars at 15 years of age or younger. Considering the nature of this group of drivers, it’s unclear that they had less successful junior careers because of their age.

Occasionally, teams will delay promotion of drivers to F1 or skip a rung of the ladder all together. Valtteri Bottas skipped GP2 with Williams, devoting an entire season to friday testing. Jolyon Palmer employed this strategy in 2015 hoping for Maldonado to run out of oil as he eventually did. Many drivers entered arrangements like this before the FIA restricted testing. Nelson Piquet Jr., Heikki Kovalainen, and Robert Kubica are other examples of drivers who spent a year between their last junior series and their first F1 season dedicated to testing. Many more drivers, including Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa, spent a year test driving while transitioning from back marking teams to top teams. Alternatively, younger drivers do this to keep their fledgling careers alive such as Hulkenberg, Gutierrez, and, unsuccessfully, Giedo Van der Garde.

The path in years that most young drivers take seems consistent across all age groups. There has yet to be an exciting, clearly successful junior to reach F1 starting at the age of 14 or 15. Those who do may have more trouble with early results and by the age of 21 or 22, they should be as close to ready as ever.

Drivers that start their single seater careers outside Europe have a harder slog. Including the contemporary F1 drivers that developed successful careers, the box shifts farther for them. This is after adjusting both Mark Webber’s and Juan Pablo Montoya’s careers to accommodate missing years for other circumstances. Webber missed a season when his sports car program was suspended. Montoya had a contract with Williams, but was exchanged with Zanardi for financial reasons. The fact these drivers were unable to start in Europe may indicate a lack of initial funding as well, which in itself can delay careers drastically if not end them outright regardless of talent. It’s worth concluding such drivers can take an additional year to develop.

Some teams do odd things with their junior drivers because of lack of available seats. Stoffel Vandoorne has been strung along by McLaren for a while now despite having results that clearly indicate he is ready. Pascal Wherein was intentionally moved to DTM despite a successful traditional feeder series route. After finishing last in his first season and first in his 3rd and hopefully final DTM season, he has been placed at Manor. With Esteban Ocon being put on this track as well as Di Resta taking that path, its hard to say this is necessarily a bad path. There is a limit to how much professional racing experience outside of F1 one can conclude as “junior series”. Sebastian Bourdais spent 8 years vying for an F1 seat before giving up and moving to American open wheel racing. Only to get a chance with Red Bull Toro Rosso 5 years later. Yuji Ide thought it might be fun to race in F1 after 3 seasons of Super Formula, and 12 years of total experience. He was so out of his depth he lost his super licence before he could get properly sacked. When a driver gets to a certain age and the doesn’t get results, they probably never will. For this reason Bourdais & Ide are excluded. It will be interesting if Jolyon Palmer, the current outlier of F1, can buck this trend. Otherwise 10 years of junior experience from the age of 15 seems like a conservative upper limit.

It’s normal for Successful drivers in the sport to have shorter careers than pay drivers. From this batch of modern F1 drivers, we can conclude that 6 years in junior series is a pretty good goal to shoot for in terms of having a successful career. Drivers often need 2 seasons in at least 1 series, often in the top tier with either formula V8’s or GP2. They typically do not run more than 3 or 4 unique series, starting region dependent among other things. As such, the 6 years can be divided evenly with stricter time restraints on results earlier when competition is dispersed. When competition is stiffer, drivers can be excused for maybe taking a 3rd year to clinch a championship or to secure funding for a higher category. Visibility bias is just as common in junior championships as it is at Grand Prix.

The F1 driver market has been static the last few years with few drivers retiring. The only real movement was from the loss of Jules Bianchi who was being groomed for promotion to Scuderia Ferrari possibly this year or the next. The entry of Haas Automation into the grid, four drivers likely to retire in the next 3 years, and several pay drivers liable to being disposed of and forgotten, indicate we are on the cusp of seeing a new generation. Young drivers have an excellent opportunity to establish themselves and thus exciting times ahead!