The 20-year-old Briton joined the Alpine Academy – the marque’s Formula 1 junior team – for 2022 as he stepped up to F2 with Campos Racing. He came 21st in the standings in his rookie seaon, scoring twice but getting a race ban.

In WEC he will share an Alpine A470 (which is a rebranded Oreca 07) with the marque’s two-time Le Mans 24 Hours winner Andre Negrao and four-time Grand-Am champion Memo Rojas, a new signing.

“I am really excited to be joining Alpine Elf Endurance Team for the 2023 FIA World Endurance Championship,” said Caldwell.

“This is a big change of direction for my career, but I’m looking forward to taking on a new challenge, alongside the familiarity of being part of the Alpine programme and continuing to develop my relationship with the global Alpine brand.

“I can’t wait to get out on track for the first race in Sebring, plus racing on new tracks such as Fuji and Le Mans is going to be a real highlight for me. I’d like to thank everyone at Alpine for this opportunity, I’m sure together with my new team-mates we can push to achieve some great results.”

It was decided at the start of this year that Caldwell would switch to sportscars full-time, having racing intermittently in closed-wheel cars in the past. His car racing debut back in 2016 was in Ginetta Junior, he won the Gulf 12H’s GT4 class in 2018, did practice for the 2020 Bathurst 12H before his team-mate wrecked their GT3 car in qualifying and they had to miss the race, then made his WEC and LMP2 debut in the 2021 Bahrain 8H.

Caldwell’s single-seater career included singular wins in FIA Formula 3, Formula Regional Europe and ADAC Formula 4, and three wins apiece in Italian F4 and F4 United Arab Emirates. His WEC move marks a graduation from the Alpine Academy.

Meanwhile new Red Bull junior Sebastian Montoya is headed to the European Le Mans Series’ LMP2 class with DragonSpeed. The 17-year-old will be driving in the same car as his father Juan Pablo and Henrik Hedman.

The trio contested the IMSA Endurance Cup together last year. Montoya’s primary programme then was FREC, and for 2023 his focus is his rookie FIA F3 season with Hitech GP.

The post Alpine-backed Olli Caldwell moves from F2 to marque’s WEC line-up appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: Red Bull Content Pool

The third edition of the Virtual Le Mans 24 Hours is taking place next weekend, and will feature 14 junior single-seater racers.

During the first global lockdown period of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Le Mans 24 Hours organiser ACO approved and helped run the inaugural edition of the Esports race, which had a 50-car entry list and was won by Rebellion Williams.

The official Le Mans Virtual Series has run since, and the final round of the 2021-22 season was the 24-hour race. One of the drivers of the winning car, entered by crack Esports squad Team Redline, was Felipe Drugovich.

Since then he has won the Formula 2 title and become Aston Martin’s first ever Formula 1 junior, and he is back to defend his victory in one of Redline’s LMP2 cars.

In the sister car is GB3 champion and Aston Martin Autosport BRDC Award winner Luke Browning, who will be sharing driving duties with three other drivers including reigning F1 world champion Max Verstappen.

Vanwall, a former F1 manufacturer whose name has recently been revived by the ByKolles team to compete in sportscars, has FIA Formula 3 stars Franco Colapinto and Jonny Edgar in its two cars, while Alpine is fielding its two juniors Victor Martins and Olli Caldwell in the same entry.

Panis Racing has Formula Regional race-winner Pierre-Louis Chovet, GR eSports has signed Team USA scholar Andre Castro and Fordzilla has brought in British Formula 4 racer Georgi Dimitrov.

There are more junior stars in the GTE class, with Super Formula-bound FRegional Americas champion Raoul Hyman driving for Proton Coanda Esports in a virtual Porsche 911 RSR.

Red Bull Racing will also be using that car for its own team, and among the drivers is its junior Ayumu Iwasa who is currently racing in F2.

For the second year running, German automotive parts company Mahle is fielding its own Esports team and once again has W Series star Beitske Visser in its BMW M8, while SF Velas and Romain Grosjean’s R8G team are both using Ferrari 488s and have hired F2-bound Ferrari junior Ollie Bearman and FIA F3 race-winner Alexander Smolyar respectively.

The post Alpine, Ferrari and Red Bull enter their F1 juniors into Virtual Le Mans appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: Red Bull Content Pool

Zandvoort will trial a different type of gravel trap at this weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix, with epoxy resin used to glue the gravel to the ground alongside turn 12.

The downhill left-hander (pictured above with AlphaTauri Formula 1 driver Yuki Tsunoda on the strip of secured gravel) precedes two fast right-handers that complete the lap and loose gravel pulled across on to the track proved disruptive in last year’s track sessions. That problem, plus that of drivers exceeding track limits, is intended to be solved with this change.

Formula 2 and FIA Formula 3 drivers were asked about the gravel after completing their track walks.

“Last year there was some red flags in free practice,” said Prema’s F3 rookie Ollie Bearman. “Which is not the best, you want to maximise the running, and when there’s a red flag in practice the clock is still ticking so you’re losing valuable [time].

“Maybe it can help with the gravel actually being on the line because I remember last year even in Formula 4, one lap was completely fine and then the next lap you’re the first guy to hit the gravel and you completely lose loads of time in sector three. I think it can help, but there’s still a lot of gravel just next to it like half a metre away. So I don’t think it’s solving an issue but maybe it’s helping slightly.”

His title rivals had similar views, with ART Grand Prix’s Victor Martins saying “it will be interesting to see how it goes” as “last year was just a mess in that corner with the gravel always when you were coming, lap after lap” and estimated two to three tenths of a second in laptime were usually lost to running over dust and gravel on the track there.

He was enthused by the idea of it reducing the chance of red flag interruptions in practice and qualifying, and also pondered if the cars from the supporting Porsche Supercup may still pull the secured gravel up, something F2 drivers considered too.

“It’s quite interesting actually to walk on it, it’s very firm,” said Carlin’s Liam Lawson.

“I think it will definitely help the issue that potentially we could have with the gravel being pulled all over the track. The only thing I’m slightly worried about is I don’t know how – it feels very strong, but if part of it breaks off or something like that, a car goes through and it breaks off it could be quite big bits of it or chunks of it could come on the track. But so far looking at it, it looks like quite a good idea.”

Campos Racing’s Olli Caldwell added: “I was looking and imagining a car driving over it with hot tyres, and it just sort of rolling itself around the tyre as the car goes over it, which I hope doesn’t happen. I mean, let’s see how it works and if it’s a good idea or not.”

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Photo: Formula Motorsport Limited

Alpine Academy driver Olli Caldwell has become the second Formula 2 racer to receive a one-round ban this season after collecting his 12th penalty point in Hungary.

The Campos Racing driver will be forced to miss the next event at Spa-Francorchamps after reaching the maximum number of permitted penalty points.

As with Amaury Cordeel, who was suspended for the Silverstone round earlier this month, Caldwell has picked up many of his 12 points for track limits offences, which the FIA has policed more strictly this year from Formula 1 downwards.

In the Hungaroring feature race, stewards determined that Caldwell left the track on four occasions “without justifiable reason”, handing him a five-second time penalty during the race and adding the 12th penalty point to his record for the season. Campos will be able to select a replacement driver for Spa.

Caldwell had been one point away from the ban since a similar track limits offence in the sprint race at the Red Bull Ring. He followed that by finishing sixth in the following day’s feature race – dominated by track limits penalties for other drivers – to score the first and only points of his first full season in F2.

The British driver joined the Alpine Academy at the start of this year and took part in his first F1 test at Silverstone last month.

Caldwell’s team-mate Roberto Merhi received a reprimand following the Hungaroring feature race after creating an “unsafe” situation during his pit-stop. Stewards found that due to a misunderstanding, the ex-F1 driver “engaged the clutch, thereby turning the rear wheels, before the left rear tyre changer had secured the wheel. The wheel came off the hub and had to be remounted and secured as a result.”

Roy Nissany is now only one point away from a one-round ban after contact with Merhi during the race. Stewards found Nissany “wholly responsible” for the collision at turn one, giving him a 10-second penalty (dropping him from 16th to 18th in the results) and adding two penalty points to his tally, which now stands at 11.

The post Alpine junior Caldwell picks up F2 ban for Spa appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: Joe Portlock / Formula Motorsport Ltd

Theo Pourchaire has lost his podium in Formula 2’s Paul Ricard sprint race to a penalty, dropping him behind title rival Felipe Drugovich.

The pair finished third and fourth on the road, split by just 0.283 seconds, but Pourchaire has now been put down to seventh place in the final race results due to a five-second penalty for forcing Marcus Armstrong off at turn 11.

He also picks up a penalty point for the violation, and as Drugovich moves up to third place it means that his championship lead grows by three points to a 42-point margin over Carlin’s feature race poleman Logan Sargeant.

Speaking before he met with the stewards, Pourchaire said: “I don’t know what they [the stewards] are going to say to be honest because I kept it on the track. It was a fair move and I think he’s [Armstrong] also under investigation for something else. So, yeah, anyway, I saw his race in front of me and it was not very fair so…”

Three other drivers were given the same penalty for similar offences. Before being passed by Pourchaire, Armstrong forced Prema’s Jehan Daruvala off while fighting over second, and Juri Vips later forced his Hitech GP team-mate Armstrong off but at turn 15. The penalties move them from ninth and sixth in the results to 14th and 11th, costing Vips three points and promoting Sargeant into a points-scoring position.

Charouz Racing System’s Enzo Fittipaldi had a clash with Campos Racing’s Roberto Merhi at turn eight and he has been handed a five-place grid penalty for the feature race, meaning he will start from 17th on the grid, and two penalty points.

Merhi’s team-mate Olli Caldwell also got summoned to the stewards after Campos did not ensure his rear-left wheel was laid flat following a pitstop. The team has been fined €1000, and Caldwell escaped any kind of sanction but still remains one penalty point away from a F2 race ban.

The post Pourchaire loses Paul Ricard podium to penalty, Drugovich extends lead appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: Campos Racing

Olli Caldwell has revealed that having Ralph Boschung as team-mate influenced his decision to join Campos Racing in Formula 2 this year, and detailed the impact of Boschung’s injury-induced absence.

Boschung has been at Campos on-and-off since 2017, contesting the majority of that year’s F2 season then returning to the team for the 2020 season finale not long after he signed to race full-time in F2 for the next year.

Before that season was done he had already committed to another year with Campos, and Caldwell joined as his team-mate for the final in the Middle East then was announced for 2022 in February of this year.

“It was really unfortunate what has happened to Ralph. He has had this injury, which was very sudden and unexpected. I really hope that the injury that he has can be fixed, so he can get back to racing and hopefully finish the season,” Caldwell said of his usual team-mate, while he is currently partnered by Roberto Merhi due to Boschung’s prolonged neck injury.

“One of the reasons I’ve signed for Campos [for 2022] was Ralph was going to be here. He’s a very experienced driver, so it was great to have an experienced reference in the other car as a rookie to show what the car can do.”

Boschung has only been able to contest half of the 16 races held so far this season, and had been the sole contributor to Campos’s points tally until the most recent round at the Red Bull Ring where Merhi made the podium and Caldwell scored.

“So, to miss him for those few rounds was really tough not having a reference,” Caldwell added. “There were some new circuits I’ve never driven at like Monaco, Baku. It certainly didn’t help me and I don’t think it helped the team morale either.”

Caldwell expanded on that point, adding: “First of all, to have a team-mate come in for the full weekend [last time out] was a morale boost in itself, and then for both of us to achieve very good results has obviously brought the team really back up to where we were before. The whole team feels great, we’re all looking to keep improving and keep doing these results more often, and hopefully that’s what we’ll do.”

However there is a bit of tension for the rookie, as his “main focus” in the Paul Ricard round this weekend will be “not getting that one [penalty] point” as he is one penalised infraction away from a race ban.

“I don’t entirely agree with what those points were given for, but I can’t change it. So, just trying not to get any extra ones.”

The post Caldwell: Boschung influenced my decision to join Campos appeared first on Formula Scout.

He explained to Formula Scout how the test with Alpine came about, and how he became an Alpine junior, during the most recent round of his Formula 2 campaign.

“It was back sort of midway through last year. I think conversations between Alpine and my manager started around Budapest of last season,” he revealed.

“There were a few performance clauses in there for last year and then I signed with them. I can’t remember when, it was quite early and then the announcement was in January. But I guess the conversation started in that initial signing. So, I’d say around December, January, that was when I was pretty sure I was going have a [F1] test.”

His test in the 2021 Alpine A521 came on June 15, with high-profile tyres fitted to the car, and Caldwell said “the downforce and the capability of the car in high-speed” as the biggest challenges.

“Honestly, I very quickly got to grips with low-speed, which at Silverstone there isn’t much of, there’s only T3, T4 and the last T16 and 17. In those corners, the braking, I was very close to the reference, but in the high-speed [corners] it’s a world of difference compared to F2.

“Driving on those tyres with the smaller 13-inch rims, you can really combine a lot on those tyres. So, the combined load of the car, T9 at Silverstone in the F1 car is flat, and that in F2 is a big brake and a lift. So, that was the area where I wouldn’t say struggled the most, but it was where I had to learn and adapt the most compared to the F2 car.

“Before anything, I drove the F1 2021 game around Silverstone,” Caldwell confessed about his test preparations. “Then, I went to the Alpine simulator for a full day of driving their simulator around Silverstone, which was awesome in itself.

“In terms of how the simulator felt, the way the car was behaving, it was very realistic to the simulator. So, I had a very good idea of how the car was going behave in the first few runs.

“The main thing we also targeted in the simulator was to learn the possibility of changing the way the car behaves on the steering wheel. Because in the F1 car you have many switches and dials to change.

“It was all very realistic from that point of view, but in terms of g-force, obviously, in a simulator you cannot replicate 6G or 7G through Maggots and Becketts.”

On-track, Caldwell focused on “getting comfortable in the car, completing as many laps as possible without any issues”.

“The other focus was learning the different modes on the wheel between the power modes between quali and race modes. We did two or three race runs really changing a lot of stuff on the switches and the dials, going through the fails on the wheel, learning all those buttons.”

He may get another chance to learn them, as “if there’s another test, it will come in the summer break or later in the season”.

The post From F1 game to reality, a look at Caldwell’s first F1 test appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: Formula Motorsport Limited

Theo Pourchaire was surprised to be summoned to the stewards after Formula 2’s sprint race at the Red Bull Ring, and it turns out he was mistakenly called over violating track limits.

Pourchaire “was alleged to have exceeded track limits on more than three separate occasions”, with drivers getting three warnings before they are investigated under F2’s sporting regulations.

The ART Grand Prix driver finished second, and with the result being provisional at the time of the post-race press conference he was asked about his impending stewards trip.

“I don’t know why I’m under investigation to be honest,” he admitted. “They say track limits, but I have three warnings so I don’t know. We will talk with the stewards but I don’t know why I’m under investigation…”

Only three drivers went without qualifying laps being deleted over track limits, and Pourchaire had one lap deleted.

“It’s very, very difficult [to stay in the limits],” he said. “Yesterday, I only had only the one track limit for the whole day, I was too safe and today I wanted to push the limits a bit more and I had three. It’s tough because you need to push and the car is sliding and with tyre degradation, it’s not easy. But it’s a good challenge.”

Once Pourchaire’s feature race violations were taken to the stewards, it turned out his surprise was not misplaced.

“Having considered the matter extensively, the stewards determined that the third track limit violation of the driver was inadvertently displayed twice on the messaging screen, bringing the total count to four infringements, but in fact the driver had only left the track on three occasions,” read the stewards’ decision.

Pourchaire’s team-mate Frederik Vesti and Campos Racing’s Roberto Merhi and Olli Caldwell all got 5s penalties in-race for track limits violations, with Caldwell now one penalty point away from a race ban.

Amaury Cordeel also got a 5s penalty and one penalty point for exceeding track limits, and later “overtook in a double waved yellow flag zone at Turn 2 after the chequered flag was displayed” and was given a further 30-second penalty and three more penalty points.

That second penalty drops the Van Amersfoort Racing driver, who is returning this weekend from a race ban after picking up 12 penalty points in 2022, from 16th down to 18th place.

DAMS duo Roy Nissany and Ayumu Iwasa also got into trouble, with Nissany reprimanded over “driving unnecessarily slowly whilst exiting the pit lane on two reconnaissance laps prior to the start of the sprint race” and Iwasa dropping from eighth to 10th with a 5s penalty for forcing Carlin’s Logan Sargeant off on lap one.

Charouz Racing System’s Enzo Fittipaldi inherits the point for eighth place as a result.

In F3, Carlin’s Enzo Trulli got a 30s penalty post-race for pitlane speeding and Campos’s David Vidales was given a 10s penalty and two penalty points for colliding with Charouz’s Zdenek Chovanec, but Campos won its appeal against that decision as it turned out there had been no contact.

The post Pourchaire keeps Austria podium after erroneous penalty message appeared first on Formula Scout.

Alpine junior Olli Caldwell completed his first F1 test at Silverstone this week, a proud moment not just for him but for Kevin Korjus and Matt Parry, two former F1 juniors who have coached his car racing career

We were at, I think it was the Hungaroring. We’re at the side of the circuit and we were watching, and I’m pretty sure the conversation was we were discussing our careers and thinking a little bit like ‘how the hell are we here? At the side of the track watching cars go around?’

That’s Matt Parry’s recollection of the starting point of a conservation with fellow racing driver Kevin Korjus that would go on to become the incentive to set up a company now working across junior single-seaters: Peak Performance Management.

I didn’t have anyone looking after me [one-to-one when racing], which I think I was lacking. And I think for Matt a bit the same way, so we were just laughing, we were joking around that maybe we should try to help young drivers from our experience. First it was just a joke, but then a few months later we got the idea ‘maybe let’s give it a try’, and that’s how it started. 

And that’s Korjus’s memory of how it all began.

Now 29, Korjus was a teenaged sensation during his racing career. Aged 17 he became the youngest ever Formula Renault Eurocup champion with Koiranen GP, won on just his second start in FR3.5 aged 18 and tested for the Renault Formula 1 team later that year, and the year after that he was Lotus’s reserve driver for the Italian Grand Prix.

He was part of the Gravity Sports Management driver development company that ran Lotus’s junior team, and Parry describes that position as being “very much on that pedestal of nearly making it”, which he was on himself.

Photo: mattparryracing.co.uk

Parry had raced in Formula Ford and won Britain’s Formula BMW-based InterSteps series, but he didn’t truly put his name on the map until he turned 18 as he became an F1 junior with Caterham then won the FR Northern European Cup and the McLaren Autosport BRDC Award. That was achieved in 2013, and his F1 test debut with McLaren came a year later

“We were in that let’s say inner circle, or bubble of these prospects that were potentially going to F1,” Parry explains.

“Obviously there was a big road still to get there, but we at least got into that bubble of winning our junior championships etc. So years later we were on the side and thinking ‘fuck, how did this happen?’ to a degree. We’d taken our different routes: he’d done some stuff in the Renault Sport Trophy [sportscar series], I’d done the GT3 stuff.

“We both had parents that were very much disinvolved with the day-to-day running of motorsport because they had businesses or other commitments. How good would it have been if we’d had managers that we’re not here commercially finding sponsorship – obviously if we today have that opportunity we can try to engage that – but we’re not particularly there [for that with PPM], we’re there as a performance base. So we were talking about that, and how good that would have been if we had someone like that. That’s what a lot of these new management groups are, they’re very performance-focused.

“Looking at the driver, looking at how their career’s going and where best to place them, so to the right team in the right year with the right championship with the right opportunity to maximise results. Results obviously being the main thing that talks. And then from that, finding their inner circle as well. What best people can we put with them, whether that’s driver coaches, physios, all these different people that we can bring together and make a really good inner circle, a really good team surrounding the driver to maximise their performance.”

Parry pays credit to the work of ADD Management (behind Lando Norris and Sacha Fenestraz’s careers) and Infinity Sports Management (George Russell, Logan Sargeant) that “basically laid the pathway” for driver management becoming more centred on performance than finances, and thinks PPM has a distinct quality from its industry rivals.

Photo: ACI Sport (L-R: Parry, Caldwell, Vesti, Aron)

“Where we come with a uniqueness is if you look at all the guys who are doing this, me and Kevin are the only guys who have actually done that pathway [as drivers ourselves], to a degree. Who else, in terms of you look at the big guys who are doing this, have actually gone halfway through that process, or three-quarters of the way [to F1].

“[Former BMW Sauber tester] Marko Asmer looks after Juri very much and taking that one-to-one stage, but he hasn’t set up let’s call it a camp across [series]. So after I think we come in with our uniqueness if that we’ve been there, been in that position, know what it’s like when we’ve made the mistakes for the team [in this environment].

“We’ve gone through that process where we were not picking the right team and the right championship, and have the right people around us. So that’s sort of our tact and our angle and our objective when we sat there was ‘we’re going to do this, we’re hopefully going to be able to bring the experience that means that these drivers don’t make the same mistakes we did’.”

After both Korjus and Parry’s single-seater careers fizzled out following seasons in GP3 with Koiranen, the pair ended up in driver coaching in Formula 4 and then the FR Eurocup before setting up their own business venture. They’re still very busy with one-to-one coaching, but also have a pool of contacts that includes the likes of Esteban Ocon’s trainer Tom Clark and his colleagues at the Formula Performance coaching consultancy to call upon for other driver support services away from the race track or at it too when PPM’s lead pair simply can’t be at multiple race tracks at once. Travelling to all the tests and races obviously costs a lot, but PPM didn’t need any start-up finances before it started attracting clients.

“We didn’t need anything to set up, obviously the value becomes, without sounding big-headed, me and Kevin anyway. Our family, other investors, and sponsors had already invested heavily on that experience, so we didn’t need to pay any more.”

PPM therefore is a secondary return for all the years previously invested in Korjus and Parry’s own careers, with both spending time where they were reliant on the backing of F1 teams – a position earned through talent – to continue racing.

Photo: World Series by Renault

Korjus reveals “after two rounds I didn’t have any money left” during his title-winning Eurocup campaign and was able to continue it as “because I had budget for the first two rounds, and I was leading the championship after those two, and it was a new team, then they let me keep driving because they wanted promotion as well”.

It ended up being a record-breaking season, with nine wins from 16 races, and becoming champion meant Korjus got Renault backing and €500,000 for his step up to FR3.5. The contract he signed also guaranteed that Renault would pay for all of the costs of his racing for 2012 too, an unusual step. Gravity chose Korjus’s team for his rookie season, sending him to Tech 1 Racing. There was six days of pre-season testing, all paid for, and then nine race weekends.

Korjus retired from his debut race at Motorland Aragon, a “miserable” encounter in which locked up several times and got a puncture, but then the next day took victory, continuing strong form at the track after he won in the wet and dry there during his maiden Eurocup weekend. It was also where he claimed his sole RS Trophy win in 2016 in his last year of racing.

After a zero-to-hero first event in FR3.5, it was back to zero at Spa-Francorchamps with a double retirement. In race one he had a technical issue, then in race two he “I got hit at the start and my rear wing flew off in Blanchimont” he recalls.

“I saw something was wrong because the rear wing was [sloped], dropped from like seventh maybe down to 15th, but I had massive straightline speed because the wind was there – and I kind of got carried away, entered Blachimont. It’s easy flatout, but I turned in and the rear wing flew off and straight into the wall. A massive shunt.”

Korjus’s fortunes flipped again in round three at Monza as he won, despite worsening tyre vibrations, but then at the start of race two his rear-right tyre punctured in an opening lap incident with Red Bull juniors Daniel Ricciardo and Jean-Eric Vergne. It was Vergne who was at fault, and received a 10-second penalty that was later rescinded after appeal. It was a lesson learned.

“He called me actually a few weeks later, and apologised,” reveals Korjus. “I remember I was 18, I was going to the beach in Estonia, driving the car with somebody, and some French number was calling me. And it was Jean-Eric calling.”

Kevin Korjus

After fourth place in Monaco, Korjus came third in the opening race at the Nurburgring and then remarkably won race two.

“I got spun on the first lap, and I was 25th and last after three corners, but good pace and good timing with the pitstop. It eventually started raining last two laps as well actually, and I managed to win from last place.”

One of Parry’s backers in his career was Sport Wales, the national development and funding body for sport in his home country. He says it was “so influential” in his career, and using its facilities and focus on the physical side of performance not only guided his vision for PPM but also led to him moving to live in Cardiff’s Sophia Gardens where Sport Wales is based.

It’s outside of race weekends where Parry says most of PPM’s work is done with its clients, with FIA Formula 3 racers Nazim Azman and Oliver Rasmussen and Formula Regional European Championship rookie Joshua Dufek its focus in single-seaters with Caldwell coached through F4, FREC and FIA F3 before he ‘graduated’ to Formula 2 this year with Alpine and Infinity’s support.

“We do all the testing. The testing is actually where the most of the work is, and very much the race weekend is all about just keeping those cues up. So in a test perspective there could be a certain area you needed to work on, you worked on a cue with them in terms of whether it’s as simple as ‘this particular corner, make sure when you’re feeling the level of grip you’re turning in late enough, you’re not creeping into the corner too early’. Just this stuff.

“But then you’re utilising those things you’ve learned in the testing through the race weekend. But it’s obviously a very short snippet of information there because firstly the environment changes very quickly from qualifying to the racing, so the approach is very different because with qualifying it’s that one-lap, ultimate pace, and then the race is about managing traffic, all the cars, overtaking and track position and stuff.

“It’s a small snippet of information [we deliver to them], but those are the main things what we do attending, is the driver gains all the information from the test, then it’s all about executing that information from the test into the race weekend.

“So then our job is a lot more simpler in that sense. It’s just about keeping the driver [calm], making sure they’re managed there in terms of everything around them then. Making sure, even the simple stuff, like drinking enough water and having an effective warm-up before the race and then keeping them calm and relaxed and ultimately enjoying the racing as well; that’s always the best way to get performance out of them too.”

Both Korjus and Parry emphasise how much they wish they had equivalent one-to-one support, and over a decade on from when their car racing careers began, “the guys are ultimate professionals even at the age of 14, 15 now [at car racing’s entry level]” according to Parry and “they’re fucking on it” describes Korjus. So driver coaching companies now focus on that, without dominating the little free time young drivers have to still keep up an academic education or a paying job or anything that would be considered a more ‘traditional’ lifestyle than racing.

“The fantastic thing with motorsport is ultimately you’re learning so much as a young driver,” Parry says enthusiastically.

“Whether that’s motorsport-specific or just life in general. Look at the different people that we’ve got here, within this Argenti Motorsport tent [in the British F4 paddock]. Say Aiden Neate, he has to engage with [lots of people], at different levels of almost intelligence he is as well. You’ve got engineers who have been to university and they’re very much hanging on to your feedback to then adjust the car.

“Motorsport is an expensive learning place to be, but ultimately it’s one of the best lessons you can learn as a youngster: to engage, communicate, how to effectively use the people around you. You’ve got your mechanics, engineers, data engineers, tyre guy, you’ve got all these different people, all these different roles within it that you’ve got to kind of maximise each individual. Driver coaches, physios, managers, you’ve got everything. So you’ve got to be able to communicate with them all effectively, and it’s all different types of people. You won’t get that in a school. Ultimately maybe I’ve got a biased opinion to a degree because I love the sport.”

Photo: Zak Mauger/GP3 Series Media Service.

“You’d have everyone in the same same age, same setting [at school],” Parry adds. “It’s all about learning in that sense of everything’s on a whiteboard etc, whereas this is real life. This is very much how do you maximise the people around you. I mean it’s one of the greatest skillsets you can learn, isn’t it? How to talk and communicate effectively with various people in different roles and different capacities.”

School, at least in Britain, is usually delivered in a one-to-many format where a teacher gives out information and a group of students consume it with some relation back to assess if they have learned it. But racing has a full two-way communication flow, and as Parry says it’s the ability to maximise that – in addition to learning about driving and the car – that can make as much different to your ability to win a race. Look to F1, and it’s the drivers who have been able to maximise the people around them and help lift the team such as Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher that have gone on to find that extra level of performance when the margins are tight.

There’s a danger that drivers become mono-focused on achieving their motorsport dream, particularly when it doesn’t work out, but Parry knows the lessons of racing have enough applications outside of the driving seat for further down the line.

“I go back to that lessons learned, there’s so much that you can correlate down to everyday life. Look at me for example. Obviously I stayed within motorsport, but I’m in a completely different form of life, and still all those skillsets when I was younger put me in a position now to be able to do what I do and still be involved very heavily in motorsport on lots of different capacities as well. Whether it’s driver coach, driver manager, just life coach in general. I think it’s all been very much related.”

Aside from the obvious, his McLaren F1 test, there are two highlights for Parry in his motorsport career. The first, from his time driving, is his FR NEC title. And the second, from his time coaching, is Caldwell’s first FIA F3 win at Barcelona in 2021.

“Winning NEC with the guys at Fortec, with Alex [Ridge], he was my engineer then. Ben Salter, who was the other engineer. That team dynamic was really, really good, and that was a mega year. We had some really good standouts.

“We should have won Pau too, we had a really good working relationship and the year was mega in general. So I’d still go back to that as well as that’s a great if you wanted to look at the accumulation of the results and the season. Like that one special moment, of course the McLaren Autosport Award, but that whole build up from the whole season, winning the championship with guys that I really respected was probably still very much a standout. I learned a lot from Alex, particularly, Matt Howson as well who we had as the driver coach. It was a special team.  When I look back at that, that was a key moment in terms of my learning stage on and off-track.”

And an explanation of why Caldwell’s win, in the end his only one from two years in the series before stepping up to F2, also means so much.

“In a coaching perspective, winning the first round of FIA F3 last year was a pretty special moment because of all of the hard work that went into that. We had came off quite a difficult year with Trident in 2020, and he managed to really piece together – even from that off-step, straight away in the race, he actually ended up winning the race.

“It was a really solid weekend and he came away P2 in the points. It was just a combination of all of the hard work over the course of the winter. And we obviously came there better prepared than everyone else, and of course Prema are fantastic, and we all know it too. Olli did an unbelievable job that weekend, actually I don’t think got enough praise for that weekend himself, just in his driving, his positioning. There was that big accident in the race, and he managed to avoid that and calculate that well and it was a really strong race from him, mega pace. So that was probably a standout moment, all that work [amassing]. He’s on like the world stage of being like the top junior guy [that weekend], to win was special definitely.”

Korjus has already described his FR3.5 wins, which along with his Eurocup title are highlights, and unfortunately there wasn’t much to celebrate after that. In his second season he enjoyed being team-mate to the more experience Jules Bianchi at Tech 1, and pleased himself with how he was able to match his pace early on and feature highly in an ultra competitive season for the series. However, and key to what sent Korjus on to a life where he does not race any more, was how his sophomore FR3.5 campaign then unravelled.

Photo: World Series by Renault/DPPI

“The level was amazing, so anyway [round three at] Spa I go to qualifying and I didn’t have any gears. So I start 24th, I go the grid and I didn’t have any clutch. Second day, again something with the car, so zero points. Monaco was still OK, I was P4, Jules was P2. And after that it was just a shocker. My car didn’t shift gears properly, there was some differential issue and until the fourth round I lost close to – I think the maximum was 9kph to Jules on the straight line. I checked the data, and I asked [Tech 1] if they could do anything about it and it went on for three, four rounds. The only way was to buy a new engine. And neither Lotus or me had the money. Like Kevin Magnussen had the problem, he bought the new engine: boom, back in business. I didn’t have the same thing.”

FR3.5 had introduced an all-new car for 2012, and while it proved popular it also had unreliability issues that influenced the career prospects of several drivers over its first two years of use.

“The first year there was a massive issue with the engine. I can’t remember what was the exact condition. But I did the last three rounds with [the Charouz Racing System-run] Lotus, and Marco Sorensen was my team-mate. Before I joined he had won a race. And first race weekend at Hungaroring he was a bit quicker than me, but then Paul Ricard and Barcelona I was quite a lot quicker than him in the dry. So we finished the Barcelona weekend, the season’s finished, then it’s Monday off and Tuesday is the post-season test. They changed the engine on my car, then I think Marlon Stockinger jumps in and he beats Marco by several tenths. First ever time in the car, and Marlon was not a fast driver. And then they’re thinking like ‘man, this guy is a superstar as Marco is normally top three in Barcelona and this guy’s just beat him’.”

Off the back of that, Stockinger was signed by Lotus to be a junior while Korjus was dropped by the team.

“They stopped the data because one car had changed the engine and one didn’t, and it was like 8kph again like the difference in the speed. So Marco stopped the test day, changed his engine, next day’s Marco P1. And on the race weekend he was P11 or P10. And it was just such an unlucky season for me with the wrong time at the wrong place.”

Korjus was able to continue racing as Koiranen moved into GP3 and called upon his services for 2013 (and wanted him for longer than that), then switched to sportscar racing with ART Grand Prix the year after but retains the links to his old team.

“That’s where I met Matt. I hadn’t driven single-seaters for one-and-a-half years, but there was one pre-season test and Koiranen was lacking one driver and asked me if I want to come driving. So I said ‘okay, why not’, I did one test day and I met Matt because he was then racing with Koiranen.”

For the pair, the target is still F1 and Caldwell’s recent test – despite him having now moved into Infinity’s driver roster – brings them one step closer to that.

“As neither of us made it to F1, our goal now as management is to get a driver into F1,” Korjus concludes.

The post The GP3 duo who made Caldwell F1 test-ready appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: Formula Motorsport Limited

Formula 2 newcomers Jack Doohan and Olli Caldwell have been added to the Alpine Academy line-up for 2022.

Caldwell has announced his deal to race in F2 for Campos Racing full-time after he debuted with the team at the end of 2021.

The Briton contested the final two rounds of last season with the team, and claimed a best finish of 12th from six starts. He then remained with Campos for post-season testing.

His primary programme in 2021 was FIA Formula 3 with Prema, and he came eighth in the points with one win. It was his sophomore season in the championship, having come 16th in the standings in 2020 while racing for Trident.

“I’m really excited to join the Academy as this is one of the biggest steps in my career so far,” said Caldwell.

“All the support that comes with it does add a bit of pressure, but that’s good pressure to have in order to keep pushing. I can’t wait to get started and I’m looking forward to seeing how I can improve and perform in the years ahead.

“I get on really well with Campos Racing and especially with Ralph [Boschung]. The car is looking very strong and I think we can definitely achieve some very good results this year, I can’t wait to get going.”

Doohan announced his full-time move up to F2 with Virtuosi in December after also contesting the final two rounds of last year, in his case with MP Motorsport.

He had been affiliated to the Red Bull Junior Team since he debuted in car racing in 2018, having already had ties to the energy drinks brand while karting. In 2021 he finished runner-up in the FIA Formula 3 Championship to Dennis Hauger, who like Doohan was competing with Red Bull support but not as a full-blown Junior Team driver.

While Hauger will be one of five drivers racing in Red Bull colours in Formula 2 this year, Doohan and Caldwell will be Alpine’s sole representatives in the series.

Last year Alpine had three drivers in F2, but Oscar Piastri can’t return after winning the title and will serve as the team’s Formula 1 reserve driver, Guanyu Zhou will race in F1 for Alfa Romeo and Christian Lundgaard has switched to IndyCar.

“We are only measured by our success on track and our goal as an Academy is always to win the championships our drivers are competing in,” said Alpine Academy director Mia Sharizman,

“Jack is fresh from finishing as runner-up in Formula 3 showing his raw speed in the championship and again in his debut in Formula 2 last year, while Olli comes into the Academy after a solid year in F3 where he managed four podium finishes and a race win.

“We accept it might take a few races for the two of them to adjust to their new surroundings, but we’re confident they will hit the ground running towards the second half of the season.”

Alpine also retains Victor Martins and Caio Collet who will remain in Formula 3 for another season.

The post Jack Doohan and Olli Caldwell join Alpine Academy ahead of F2 moves appeared first on Formula Scout.