Photo: FIA

Renault has told Formula Scout that it is working on a new engine to be used in the second generation of Formula 4 cars.

Since 2014 there has been a single technical ruleset for homologating F4 cars, with an overhaul originally set for the start of 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic meant homologation of the next-gen cars was postponed, and the new era will debut at December’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

Three F4 championships use Renault’s 2.0-litre Clio-based engine, and a successor to that power unit is on its way.

“The Clio engine we have [for touring cars] is almost the same as we have in the F4,” Renault Sport Racing’s customer racing director Benoit Nogier told Formula Scout.

“Because we homologated almost two years ago now the engine for the F4 as well. So the Clio and the F4 are the same engine.

“Now we have the new turbo on the Clio in 2021. And we will homologate a new engine for the new generation of F4.

“The decision is taken now, and yes we will homologate again an engine to set with the new regulations of F4.”

Mygale, which supplies the chassis for the French, Danish and South East Asia championships where Renault’s engine is used, has already unveiled its second generation car (pictured).

The next-gen cars incorporate the halo cockpit protection device as a mandatory requirement and are designed to be suitable for the incorporation of hybrid systems.

Renault’s next engine won’t be giving drivers electrical power, but it’s not ruled out for further down the line as Groupe Renault’s electrification of its automotive endeavours will very likely lead to its Clio racing series – where the F4 engine is sourced – being all-electric in the future.

“It will not be hybrid, our solution will not be hybrid,” Nogier said of the incoming engine, which will hit the racetracks once French F4 decides to move to a new car.

“Even if the car is open for hybrid system, but us what we are going to homologate, it will not be hybrid. Even if with Oreca, because we work together with Oreca on these matters, Oreca is preparing a hybrid system as well.

“But the first one we will homologate, it will be just a normal engine.

The Formula Regional European Championship also uses a Renault engine that was originally seen in the brand’s Megane car and now also features in the Alpine A110 sportscar.

ACI Sport’s tender for its chassis and engine supplier for the next seven seasons of Italian F4 closes on July 28, and the series organiser has confirmed to Formula Scout that Tatuus will be the manufacturer of its next car and it will arrive in 2022 after some rumours it would not be introduced to the series until a season later.

Abarth is also set to continue as engine supplier once a deal is signed in the coming weeks, and an announcement confirming the continued partnership between the three parties is likely to come in October before the Monza season finale.

The post Renault committed to engine supply for future of F4 appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photos: Groupe Renault, Edits: Formula Scout

The prototype of an electric single-seater racing car in 1993 brought together the minds and companies that would one day work to create Formula E. But there was no intention to create such a competition at the time

Rounds 10 and 11 of the 2020-21 Formula E season take place this weekend in Brooklyn, New York City. The series’ title sponsor, electricals company ABB, will also be putting its name on the races themselves and reinforcing its presence at the heart of electric single-seaters. And in fact, it’s been invovled for far longer than people realise.

Long before becoming a powertrain supplier in Formula E and winning 16 races and four titles across three seasons from 2015 to 2018, Renault and its in-house design studio presented the first ever all-electric junior single-seater car to the world.

It was early 1993, and the series that would go on to become the French Formula 4 of today had just been launched as Formula Renault Elf Campus and was being organised on the ground by future Formula 3 dominator Signature.

Larger than most Formula Ford cars but smaller than what were at the time Formula Renault 1.7-litre cars, the Campus series’ chassis featured wings at both ends as well as sidepods and an overhead air intake to feed the small and simple engine at the rear. Once that design had been approved and sent off to be built, Renault went back to the drawing board and made it electric.

Rather than have any desire to duplicate its latest championship in a new zero-emissions form, Renault wanted to conduct a design study on electric vehicles and saw a relatively cheap-to-manufacture racing car as being the best platform to do that.

The Renault 4 and 5 city cars (being revived as EVs today) were sold as electric models in a limited run in the early 1970s, with bulky lead-acid batteries and a direct current motor powering the front wheels, and were design studies of sorts too. The results didn’t change Renault’s fossil fuel-powered direction, so it had little experience with EVs over the next 20 years.

That meant it had to team up or consult with several big-name companies with electrical expertise to create 1993’s ‘Elektro Campus’, which like later racing projects was backed by fuel supplier Elf, and the first of these was Swiss company ABB.

The regular FR Elf Campus car

In 1988, Ford had commissioned government-sponsored research into “the state of development of sodium sulfur traction batteries” after pioneering and then giving up on the automotive use of the technology two decades prior, and used ABB’s existing EV batteries as one of two leading examples for comparison. The research was picked up by others in the fields of energy and automotive, and there were further reports with the intention of tracking the development of the batteries of ABB and its rivals, where they could be headed next, and if sodium sulfur was suitable for road use.

There was obvious advantages to that battery type when it came to energy storage and recovery, and therefore performance too, but it had a high operating temperature that needed to be maintained and made it difficult to match to moving vehicles.

By 1993, ABB in particular had worked on not only improving the efficiency of its EV batteries – made up of the energy-storing cells, a temperature-maintaining casing and a heating system that both warmed the battery up and removed excess heat – but making them fit better around the design features of cars on the market.

The tubular shape and size of its batteries sped up development as it was now easier to integrate them into vehicles to test both passively and destructively. They were crash-tested, fire-tested, put into the extremes of several other elements, and prototypes with higher capacities (and therefore better performance) had already been approved for use on German roads while the United States heeded caution until more research was done.

Given most spec racing cars used road-derived components, it therefore meant the best place for Renault to find a suitable battery would be from the road. But on the road it was lead-acid batteries, with lower temperatures and performance levels but better suited for starting a car, that were more widely seen and therefore more appropriate for the project.

Consulting ABB’s R&D had been useful, but it was a 50Ah 12-volt lead-acid battery setup from Italy’s FIAMM – a brand that already had motorsport success and right now is a research partner of ABB – that ended up powering the motor in the Elektro Campus, and many more Renaults after that.

The setup for this within the car was by having a series of six ‘standard’ road car batteries fixed to the bottom of the sidepods on either side. Doing it this way rather than laying them out in parallel allowed the voltage to be built up from each cell when a constant current was used, providing the 12V number.

While the chassis was light, the percentage of the mass of the vehicle taken up by the batteries was incredibly high. However, with the batteries being positioned so low, the centre of gravity was not only lower than the petrol-powered car’s but also below the centre of rotation of the wheels (the height at which the axle meets the wheels and the point around which the wheel rotates). This would have made for great handling around corners, had it not matched F3 cars for weight.

At the back was a manual gearbox supplied by Renault and Siemens’ water-coooled alternate current 1PV5 induction motor with vector control. This also used up space as it was a form of power electronics (PE) making delivery of the power, and therefore the motor’s speed, more controllable when discharging the batteries for use. Even 15 years later when Formula 1 teams were developing energy recovery systems, PE could use up as much space as batteries and further compromised centre of gravity.

Siemens is another brand that has been heavily immersed in FE, as it actually supplied the twin electric motors for FE’s predecessor car – the Formulec EF01 of 2011 – and its computer-aided design (CAD) software was used by Andretti Autosport for its top single-seater programmes as well as Spark Racing Technologies to design the upgraded two-level front wing that FE introduced in its third season.

The electric racing car involvement of ABB and Siemens has led to both being consulted on car design to ensure seamless integration of powertrain components, and ABB has taken its experience developing electric infrastructure for buses to FE powertrain providers BMW and Porsche to work on super-fast charging at 450kW. FE cars currently race at 250kW, and are expected to jump up to 300kW when the ‘Gen3’ car, with ABB’s input, is introduced for the 2022-23 season.

Other names involved in the Elektro Campus project included Michelin, the spec tyre supplier of FE today, and Electricite de France which provided the hardware to charge the car from. So did it ever visit a track in anger?

There was at least one test in France, and a public unveiling, display and demonstration at the 1993 Monaco Grand Prix.

The display featured other EVs, and motorsport’s global governing body supported a public debate on electric car design at the Monaco Yacht Club that featured Renault’s R&D chief Jean-Jacques Pavan and famous Ferrari F1 designer Harvey Posthlewaite.

Renault claimed that the Elektro Campus would be capable of covering 250 kilometres on a single charge if driven at 40km/h, with a top speed of 170km/h (105mph), a maximum power output of 50kW through the wheels and 12.7kgm of torque before hitting the upper rev range using the old-school transmission. Its 0-62mph time was said to be 11 seconds.

Probably the only driver who can accurately comment on the performance figures is Renault’s World Rally Championship hero Jean Ragnotti – a two-time French Rally champion – as he was the one who got behind the wheel on the streets of the principality.

The car was presented in a rather predictable blue livery – which has long-held connotations with electric power – and it’s worth noting its upper intake features a logo strikingly similar in shape and colour to the one FE has used since its creation.

Beyond the names and the logo, really very little from this car transferred itself in any way to FE. Battery technology for automotive applications had switched focus to lithium-ion, which has massively improved capacity and density, the advantages of using twin traction motors were discovered (until FE stamped out Nissan’s design) and all motors are equipped to run in reverse for regenerative braking to put charge back into the batteries. Everything is cleaner, lighter, more efficient and simply more capable of holding up to the demands of FE’s street circuits across the globe.

The Elektro Campus, which had single shock absorbers for its suspension design, may well have exceeded the vibration limit of its motor had it really been put to the test in racing conditions and its low centre of gravity would likely have been ruled out on safety grounds due to how little protection there was between the batteries and the bottom of the tubular chassis.

Formula Scout hasn’t been able to track down where the car is now, although Signature’s Patrick Sinault suggested the chassis may have been converted to petrol-running trim and made use of at a racing school in the years after.

Electric racing cars based on road cars have higher centres of gravity because no matter how low engineers want to put the batteries, there is wiring and parts of the tub bolstered for safety that will line the floor of the car instead. Their transmissions are enclosed too, which for small single-seaters isn’t the case and means rear-end contact can easily be race-ending.

Although Formula Student and other electric car competitions exist, the Renault Elektro Campus is likely to be the closest an entry-level all-electric single-seater racing car that could be mass produced gets to a race track for a little while longer.

Firstly, the FIA would need to write up new regulations and homologation requirements for such cars and different training would also be required for those working on them. That applies equally to bringing in all-new spec cars to the junior single-seater ladder, but also to fully electrifying existing machinery.

F4 has already successfully raced with hybrid power, but the KCMG car designed specifically to encompass the more complex power unit was larger than other first-generation cars and the new-for-2022 second-gen chassis are all following the design direction of making the cars bigger to incorporate the halo cockpit protection device and adaption to hybrid spec.

The big difference between 1993 and 2021 is back then Renault had the finances and wanted to feed the interest, and now few have the finances (or the board’s approval) to make something similar but a lot of competitors have the interest.

The post How a 1990s Renault design study pre-empted Formula E appeared first on Formula Scout.

Recapping the junior careers of Formula 1’s 2022 grid, aided by photos of the drivers in their racing youth

MERCEDES-AMG

Lewis Hamilton was already a Formula 1 junior during his karting years, last millennium, and the support of McLaren took him from the international scene through to single-seaters in Formula Renault 2.0, Formula 3 and GP2. He started off in FR2.0 UK with Manor Motorsport and took his first win at Thruxton. He added another two wins during the season, but was more impressive in the Eurocup where he had the highest scoring rate of anyone in his part-season and was fifth in the points.

A second season resulted in a dominant UK title and the first F3 appearances for Hamilton, all with Manor, and in 2004 he was reunited with karting rival Nico Rosberg in the F3 Euro Series. It was the German who came out on top, but Hamilton ended the year with a rapid showing in the Macau Grand Prix and a stunning win in the Bahrain Superprix. A falling out followed with his McLaren boss Martin Whitmarsh, who tore up Hamilton’s contract when he and his father pushed for a move up to GP2.

A few weeks later Hamilton re-signed with McLaren after agreeing to another year in F3. A switch to Frederic Vasseur’s ASM/ART Grand Prix operation resulted in back-to-back titles in the Euro Series and GP2, and despite some testing struggles on Michelin tyres he was promoted to a McLaren seat in F1 immediately after. The rest is history.

Noted for his maturity from a young age, it was still difficult for George Russell to get noticed by F1. Highly-rated in karting where he won back-to-back European titles, his first year in cars was split between BRDC British Formula 4 and FR2.0 abroad, and it was the former where he won his first title. But it was the latter where he more frequently raised eyebrows, especially when a change of teams resulted in a Eurocup win.

He was in European F3 the next year, winning his second race but claiming just two other podiums. His second season was better, and with a less experienced team, and while he was overpowered by Stroll in the title race, Mercedes recognised his  potential and signed him up. Working with F1’s top team unlocked a new level of performance, and Russell brushed off unreliability to become GP3 and F2 champion with ART. He then sweet-talked Williams into handing him an F1 seat.

SCUDERIA FERRARI

In the face of frequent tragedy, Charles Leclerc was a wanted talent in every series he raced in, guided by established F1 driver manager Nicolas Todt since a glittering karting career. It was Fortec Motorsports that won out to run him in FR2.0 Alps as a single-seater rookie, when he was the best driver bar veteran Nyck de Vries, even on wildcard appearances in a packed Eurocup field.

That earned him a move to FIA European F3 with Van Amersfoort Racing, where some early wins and displays of wet weather ability initially put him in title contention, and despite a lengthy podiumless run afterwards he was signed by the Ferrari Driver Academy. That preceded a GP3 move with ART, which resulted in the title, and he was the class of the Formula 2 field with Prema a year later despite his fair share of bad luck.

Carlos Sainz Jr arrived in single-seaters during Formula BMW Europe’s ultra-competitive final season in 2010, and his rookie crown raised the stakes for the Red Bull protege. What followed was initially just as slick, winning the FR Northern European Cup and finishing second in the Eurocup. On moving up to F3, he again demonstrated the talent he’d inherited from his world rally champion father with four wet-weather wins in the British series, but underwhelmed at other times.

Red Bull moved him to GP3, where he struggled badly, finishing 10th in the points when team-mate Daniil Kvyat won the title straight out of FR2.0. Confidence-boosting Formula Renault 3.5 cameos with Zeta Corse led to a full-time switch to the series with DAMS, and he dominated the 2014 season. His F1 chance only came however when Sebastian Vettel left Red Bull for Ferrari, leaving a vacant Toro Rosso space.

RED BULL RACING

There’s not much to say about Max Verstappen‘s junior single-seater career, beyond it redefining what was expected of young drivers of the present day. The World Karting champion debuted in America in the Ferrari Driver Academy-organised Florida Winter Series, where he was up against some of F3’s finest. He took fastest lap in his first race, was on pole for his third, and a winner by his sixth.

This put expectation on him for European F3 with VAR, having shunned debuting in FR2.0 instead, and he delivered. After winning six races in a row and Masters of F3 he became a Red Bull junior and then days later an F1 driver. Having come third in the European standings, he ended his single year in the junior ranks with seventh in Macau from the back of the grid after crashing out of the qualifying race.

It wasn’t until his fifth year in single-seaters that Sergio Perez took an overall win, having spent his formative years dabbling in A1GP and the secondary class of British F3 as well as the more regular entry-level series. In F3 he did win the title though, and he stuck with the underdog T-Sport team for a season in the primary class where he won a respectable four races, regularly leading the championship before fading late on.

Wins in his debut GP2 Asia campaign that followed was false promise for the main series he stepped up to with Christian Horner’s Arden team, but his sophomore season featured five wins and the title runner-up spot against some quality but inconsistent opposition, earning his F1 break with Sauber and some Ferrari ties.

McLAREN

No other driver this century has had as successful a start to a single-seater career than Lando Norris, with an incredible five titles in his first three seasons. Following a circuit-learning Ginetta Junior campaign alongside his world championship-winning final year in karts, Norris started off with the British F4 title, as well as successful cameos in the German and Italian series.

He used his backing to contest a total of 61 races the following year, winning the Toyota Racing Series in New Zealand and then two FR2.0 titles in Europe, as well as four BRDC British F3 races in a part-season. In 2017 came his first role with McLaren and the European F3 crown – the first for Carlin after six years of Prema domination – and a sixth title just went amiss in his single year in F2.

Daniel Ricciardo raced in Australia, East Asia, Italy, the UK and across Europe for three years with little to show before a driver shootout propelled him into Red Bull’s books and top equipment. He started life as an F1 junior with the FR2.0 West European Cup title and a close second place to Bottas in the Eurocup, and followed it up with a romp to the British F3 title against an admittedly underpar field.

The step up to FR3.5 was therefore a truer test of his ability, and he came just two points short of title glory there too against series veteran Mikhail Aleshin. He returned to the series part-time the following year – winning the Monaco race for the second year in succession – working it around F1 practice outings before Red Bull found him a race seat at HRT.

ALPINE

Spotted by the late Adrian Campos in karts, Fernando Alonso was brought under his wing on a three-year plan. He debuted in FR3.5 predecessor Euro Open by Nissan in 1999 aged 17 and won on his debut weekend, adding five more wins and a title earned on dropped scores before moving to GP2 predecessor International Formula 3000.

Results were lacking at first, but Alonso jumped to fourth in the points with a first win in the final race at Spa. He was an F1 tester for Minardi too, and got a race seat there in his third year in single-seaters. He moved on to Renault with success, and returned there last year under its new name.

F1 had a close eye on Esteban Ocon from karting, when he was picked up by the Gravity management company tied to the Lotus team. His first year of car racing was actually way short of what was expected, but he picked up his game after that and succeeded a race-winning year in FR2.0 in 2013 with an era-defining European F3 title against Tom Blomqvist and Verstappen in 2014.

That crowning moment coincided with the tightening of belts by Lotus ownership, but Mercedes helped him into GP3 where he won another title, thanks this time to consistency more than speed. Then he was moved into the DTM for half a season prior to his F1 debut.

ALPHATAURI

Pierre Gasly raced only for French operations during his first three years in cars, which started with wins in French F4 that earned him some early attention from Red Bull. His rookie Eurocup season wasn’t enough to retain that initial support, but he somewhat unexpectedly won the title the following year, leading Red Bull to sign him outright to its junior team as he made the natural step up to FR3.5.

This marked the start of a lengthy winless spell. He was runner-up in FR3.5 with eight podiums, and took four podiums and three poles in GP2 a year later. Over 1000 days after his last victory, he escaped a road accident to win a GP2 race at Silverstone in 2016, and adding three more won him the title but not an F1 seat. Only an astonishing Super Formula campaign, in which only a typhoon denied him a shot at the title, was able to do that.

After tasting Japanese F4 in 2016, Yuki Tsunoda committed to the series in 2017 as well as contesting the more mechanically complex JAF Japan F4 series. He became grand champion in the latter, but also finished third in the FIA series. Focusing solely on Japanese F4 for 2018 lifted him further and he became Honda’s first champion.

Making the move to Europe, Tsunoda was placed in FIA F3 and Euroformula as a Red Bull junior for 2019, and his racecraft was brilliant in both. He won with a less-fancied team in FIA F3, and was rewarded with promotion to F2, where he surprised by fighting for the title and earning his 2021 F1 seat.

ASTON MARTIN

Like Hamilton, Sebastian Vettel is one of a rare few drivers that have been guided to F1 by a team all the way from karting. It was Red Bull who spotted Vettel’s talent, also very early in his career in the previous millennium, and he made the transition to cars locally in FBMW. It took him two attempts to dominate the ADAC championship, and he only found success in F3 once moving to ASM – by which point he was already an F1 test driver with BMW Sauber.

It was Vettel’s cameos that really caught in the eye in the lower formula, including Macau, Spanish F3 and FR3.5. In 2007 he was set for a full campaign in the latter, and was leading the championship with Carlin before he was plucked away into F1 with BMW Sauber and then Toro Rosso.

Lance Stroll won almost from the off in single-seaters and had Ferrari support from the off too, having been signed to its academy at the age of 11. His presence was almost certainly key to the creation of the Florida Winter Series and he showed well there before gliding to the Italian F4 title, where the combined might of Prema and Ferrari helped considerably with a brand new car.

Winning the TRS title a few months later, in similarly easy fashion, meant more of the same was expected in European F3. Against a talent-stacked field that was not the case as a rookie, especially when it came to his wheel-to-wheel form, which earned him plenty of critics after two significant crashes. He was still fifth in the points though, and he dominated his sophomore season while preparing with Williams to step up to F1. On the side, he also starred in a prototype in the Daytona 24 Hours.

ALFA ROMEO

Photo: ACI Sport

Valtteri Bottas had most of his junior series success with ART GP, as he won the Masters of F3 race twice and the GP3 title with the team. His early experience came in FR2.0 too, and he won Europe’s two biggest titles in 2008 with Motopark Academy, whose boss Timo Rumpfkeil orchestrated backing from Bottas’s future F1 chief Toto Wolff as well as Mika Hakkinen.

His second F3 season coincided with a shift in power from ART and Mercedes to Signature and Volkswagen, meaning he missed out on the Euro Series title. Hence the move to GP3, where he went from 10th in the points to champion after four wins in the final four rounds. Bottas’s F1 break didn’t come through a GP2 campaign, instead earning a promotion from test driver at Williams following a year out of racing.

China’s first F2 racer Zhou Guanyu benefited from Ferrari and Renault/Alpine backing prior to jumping into an Alfa Romeo seat this year alongside the team’s other new signign Bottas, and he’s entering F1 with one single-seater title to his name.

In 2021 he won the Formula Regional Asian Championship with Abu Dhabi Racing by Prema in between his second and third seasons in F2 with Virtuosi Racing. That title success earned him additional FIA superlicence points that were crucial for strengthening his bargaining hand in F1 silly season, and three wins in the first half of the F2 season helped him further.

His end position in the championship was third, an improvement on his previous two seasons, and also showing that he was able to be an equal to the more highly-touted drivers on the grid.

Prior to his F2 blossoming, Zhou claimed two wins from three years in European F3, was a TRS race-winner and perhaps most impressively was Italian F4 runner-up in his first full year racing cars.

HAAS

Efforts were made to hide Mick Schumacher‘s family connection early in his career to avoid media pressure, but his karting results, as well as Deutsche Vermögensberatung sponsorship, marked him out. VAR provided Schumacher with his first single-seater berth in F4, and winning in his first ever weekend suggested he would be one to watch. But the reversed-grid victory proved to be a false dawn for the rookie, and only found the pace and consistency needed in his second season.

That was the same in other series Schumacher entered: runner-up in ADAC and Italian F4, third in the MRF Challenge and winning the European F3 title in his sophomore season. Ferrari picked him up after that, and developed him over two years of F2 into an F1-worthy talent.

A late change means there’s no Nikita Mazepin alongside Schumacher, but instead Kevin Magnussen returns to the team after a year out racing in IMSA and IndyCar after he was replaced by Mazepin.

Magnussen followed a similar junior series path to his father Jan, also a former F1 driver, as he won the Danish Formula Ford title then after coming second in FR2.0 NEC went to race in F3. He was third in Germany as a rookie, then after some bad luck with engine issues was able to be runner-up to Felipe Nasr in the British championship in 2011 while also starring in European appearances.

He was a McLaren F1 junior by this point, and the team entered him into FR3.5 for his next step. A thought-provoking first season with Carlin, which did include a win, led him to working even harder and then obliterating the field through much of 2013 with DAMS. Those performances were enough to convince McLaren he was worthy of an F1 seat the next year.

WILLIAMS

Photo: Joe Portlock

A late start to karting, and a sideline in Porsches, are two of the oddities of Nicholas Latifi‘s pre-F1 path, and he has only got stronger with each category he has moved on to. He had an unconventional start in Italian F3, where he did win, then took the only poles of his racing career in British F3.

Seasons in European F3 and FR3.5 didn’t show signs of race-winning form, but upon making it to GP2 with DAMS he began to settle down. He finished second in his first race with the team, after imperious testing form, and finished fifth in the points in his second full season. Illness and a new car to learn held him back in 2018, but he did add another win and started the 2019 season on fire before his title campaign ran out of steam.

Despite a lack of titles, Alex Albon now has one of the most well-known paths to F1 in the modern era due to his early dropping by Red Bull and then invitation back to the brand in 2019 when it was in search of a driver to race for Toro Rosso.

The Thai started straight away in FR2.0, and a points-free Eurocup campaign led to him losing his Red Bull junior status. He still had enough money to race in the series, and on his return picked up a pole and four points finishes in 2013.

Another jump in performance put him third in the 2014 points, although he only had three podiums, and in the NEC he picked up his first car racing win. Joining a revived Signature team in European F3 was an inspired move for Albon’s next step, as he earned pole positions and podiums in a field stacked with future F1 talents.

There was no return for a title attack though, as he moved to GP3 with a plum ART GP seat and challenged Leclerc for the 2016 title. The team kept him for his move up to F2 the next year, but a training accident meant he missed a round and endured a difficult campaign. His budget was also not in place for a second season, and he did find a seat at DAMS for 2018 but only on a round-by-round basis. Three poles and a win in the first four rounds helped him secure a full-time berth, and the results he put in after then earned him a top Formula E seat with Nissan e.dams before Red Bull stole him for F1.

The post What the drivers of F1 2022 did first appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: Renault Sport

Guanyu Zhou will return to the cockpit of a Renault Formula 1 car in the official post-season test in Abu Dhabi.

The Chinese driver, who will be racing for third in the Formula 2 points this weekend, will be partnered by two-time F1 world champion Fernando Alonso in the team’s test line-up as the Spaniard prepares for his single-seater return in 2021.

Renault test driver Zhou was overlooked for a 2021 graduation to a F1 seat when the team signed its former driver Alonso earlier this year, but Zhou is currently not on target to secure a FIA superlicence anyway and is set to remain in F2.

“We would like to thank the FIA and F1 for their acceptance of our test plans, made in recognition of our commitment to young drivers throughout junior motorsport and to Fernando’s own dedication to furthering the careers of young talents,” said Renault team principal Cyril Abiteboul after it was confirmed Alonso could drive in the test aimed at ‘young drivers’.

“Zhou has experienced the benefit of the Renault Sport Academy, having joined its ranks last year.

“He has worked hard and made a genuine contribution to the performance of the team through his work in the simulator and test programme. I am delighted he can drive the R.S.20 to complement his journey so far.

“For Fernando this will be the next step in his return. He has worked tirelessly to make sure he is as ready as he possibly can be for 2021. He wants to contribute fully – not just to the team, but to the fans and the sport he has missed in the past two years.”

The post Renault calls up Zhou for post-season F1 test with Alonso appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: All-Japan Formula 3000

The probability that Yuki Tsunoda will race in F1 next season, or even in 2022, is sky-high. He’s backed by Red Bull and Honda, but manufacturer support doesn’t guarantee a seat. Just ask these fellow Japanese talents

At 20 years of age, Yuki Tsunoda has rocketed up the European single-seater ladder: In 2018 he dominated the FIA’s Japanese Formula 4 championship in his second full season of competition, but then jumped straight over to the FIA Formula 3 Championship in 2019 and massively outperformed the potential of a struggling Jenzer Motorsport squad – taking a win at Monza and all 67 of the team’s points for the season. At the same time, he was starring for Motopark in Euroformula.

And in 2020, of course, Tsunoda has been a revelation for Carlin, in amongst Formula 2’s strong rookie class: two victories, two poles, third in the standings with two rounds to go. He originally needed a top-four position to secure an FIA superlicense for Formula 1, although the requirements have been relaxed going into 2021 amidst the coronavirus pandemic.

He’s already privately tested for AlphaTauri, will do so again, and in all likelihood will partner Pierre Gasly at the team next year. If and when that happens, Tsunoda will be the 18th Japanese driver to enter a F1 world championship race.

Hiroshi Fushida was the first to make an attempt in 1975. Noritake Takahara, Masami Kuwashima, Masahiro Hasemi, and Kazuyoshi Hoshino were the local heroes on the grid for the famous 1976 Japanese Grand Prix at Fuji Speedway, and Kunimitsu Takahashi joined for the 1977 race. But it wasn’t until Satoru Nakajima debuted in 1987 that Japan had its first full-time F1 driver, making him a national racing hero.

Aguri Suzuki became Japan’s first F1 podium finisher, on home soil too, later to be joined by Takuma Sato and Kamui Kobayashi in the 21st century. Ukyo Katayama became the most experienced Japanese driver through the 1990s, but Naoki Hattori, Toshio Suzuki, Hideki Noda and Taki Inoue suffered much shorter and far less prosperous tenures in F1. In the late ‘90s, Nakajima protege Toranosuke Takagi and Shinji Nakano each showed flashes of brilliance, but neither stuck around.

The 2000s gave us Sato, Kobayashi and Kazuki Nakajima, the first second-generation Japanese driver in F1, but it also gave us Yuji Ide and Sakon Yamamoto.

Being able to race in F1 at all was a terrific accomplishment for all of these drivers, no matter what their results were. Recently Honda has sent many young drivers to Europe, and they haven’t reached F1: Nobuharu Matsushita has won many races in F2, Nirei Fukuzumi and Tadasuke Makino got to F2 too but couldn’t stay, Teppei Natori won in Euroformula, and what will the future hold for 2020 French F4 dominators Ayumu Iwasa and Ren Sato once Honda leaves F1 again at the end of 2021?

And while there was no racing abroad, two-time Super Formula champion Naoki Yamamoto was courted by Red Bull last year too.

Toyota’s F1 withdrawal at the end of 2009 meant its strong young driver programme academy will likely never send a driver to F1 again. The likes of current factory drivers Ryo Hirakawa, Kenta Yamashita, Sho Tsuboi, and Ritomo Miyata (and even Franco-Argentinian SF signing Sacha Fenestraz) all have the talent to be F2 frontrunners with a legitimate shot at an F1 seat.

Of all the Japanese drivers that never got to race in the pinnacle of single-seaters, but certainly had a legitimate chance of doing so at the peak of their abilities, who were the ones that demonstrated most what F1 was missing out on?

From the start of post-war Japanese motorsport all the way through to the 2010s, these are 10 of the best who didn’t make it:

Tetsu Ikuzawa 「生沢徹」

Ikuzawa was a national racing trailblazer. When he quit his factory racing contract with Prince Motor Company, and headed to the United Kingdom to race in the 1966 British F3 Championship, Ikuzawa became the first Japanese driver to race full-time in a European championship. He spent his first two seasons with Stirling Moss’ Motor Racing Stables, and picked up his first three wins in club races in 1967. Frank Williams hired Ikuzawa for ’68 and he enjoyed a breakthrough season with four wins taking him to fourth in the standings.

In 1970, Ikuzawa made the step up to F2 as a privateer, and in just his second European championship race at Hockenheim he came 0.3 seconds away from beating Clay Regazzoni to victory. It should have been the start of a journey that would make him the first Japanese driver in F1, but without the resources to match the more established European teams, it was high water for Ikuzawa. A move to Group Racing Developments in ‘72 had him sinking down the field, and he made the difficult decision to call time on his F1 racing ambitions in 1973, finishing his full-time driving career in Japan. By then, Ikuzawa had a young successor who was on a path to achieve what he came just short of accomplishing.

Hiroshi Kazato 「風戸裕」

Breaking into motorsport as a teenager, Hiroshi Kazato quickly grew to become one of Japan’s very best drivers in the early 1970s. After rapid domestic success in his privately-owned Porsche 910 and 908, Kazato made the brave leap to America to race in the Can-Am Series, and put in a strong account of himself as a 22-year-old rookie in a Carl Haas Lola-Chevrolet.

He came close to signing for the factory March team to race in European F2 in 1972, before being outbid by a young Austrian driver called Niki Lauda. Instead, Kazato raced a privateer March for Peter Bloore in ‘72, then became team-mates with his hero Ikuzawa in ‘73 for GRD Team Nippon – where Kazato regularly outperformed his more experienced countryman.

Kazato’s European F2 breakthrough came at Hockenheim in 1973, where he finished sixth. Two rounds later he was classified fifth at the iconic Monza Lottery Grand Prix, and he ended the season 23rd in the points.

For 1974, Kazato signed a contract with Chevron to drive for its works team as the second driver to James Hunt. But before he could ever make his debut with the team, Kazato’s life was tragically cut short in his last race before returning to Europe.

Kazato and veteran driver Seiichi Suzuki were killed in a multi-car accident in a sportscar in the Fuji Grand Champion Series (Fuji GCS). He was just 25 years old. The accident caused Fuji Speedway to permanently close its infamous 30-degree banked corner section. More importantly, one of Japan’s greatest drivers was taken down before he could realise his full potential.

Keiji Matsumoto 「松本恵二」

Hoshino and Nakajima were the Senna and Prost of Super Formula through the late 1970s and early 1980s. If anyone filled the Mansell/Piquet role during that time, as the one man who could consistently threaten their duopoly on the track, it was the smooth-driving, swashbuckling Keiji Matsumoto, who spent 16 seasons in the series as it evolved through F2 and Formula 3000 regulations from 1976 to 1992, winning 11 races and the 1979 title – by just a single point over Hoshino.

Matsumoto also thwarted Hoshino in a close fight for the 1983 Fuji GCS crown, but then the two joined forces in 1985 to win the infamous rain-blasted Fuji 1000km, making them and the late Akira Hagiwara the first Japanese drivers to win in the World Endurance Championship and at the peak of the Group C era.

Appearing on adverts of all kinds for Japanese tobacco brand Cabin made Matsumoto a popular, marketable (and handsome) superstar at home, but by the time Nakajima was on his way to racing in F1 at the age of 34, Matsumoto was already 38 and beginning his decline in the Super Formula ranks.

Matsumoto’s age was likely why he never received a legitimate offer from a F1 team. When he hung up the helmet at the end of ‘92, he spent his second career mentoring a generation of future superstar drivers – among them, Nakano, Juichi Wakisaka, and Ryo Michigami, were all disciples of ‘Matsumoto-ism’ in the years to come. Keiji Matsumoto passed away in 2015 after a battle with cirrhosis (scarring of the liver), and his presence is still missed to this day.

Hitoshi Ogawa 「小河等」

Photo: Nakai’s Scribble blog

Japanese drivers tend to be stereotyped as borderline reckless chargers, but Hitoshi Ogawa was so consistent and collected, that he became known as the ‘Japanese Prost’ or the ‘Japanese Boutsen’ during his peak years in single-seaters, touring cars, and Group C prototypes.

Within open wheelers, Ogawa spent the early to mid-’80s bouncing between Japanese F3 (now known as Super Formula Lights) and Super Formula, before finally settling into the top tier in 1988, and establishing his reputation for his sweet, cerebral driving ability. Ogawa only ever won once, but his famous victory in the penultimate round of the 1989 season at Suzuka proved to be the difference as he held off American Ross Cheever to take the title by just three points.

Off the back of his success in Japan, Ogawa was reportedly offered a F1 contract by two teams – the struggling Team Lotus, and upstart Minardi. Ogawa’s brief window for an F1 step-up was closed, however, when he couldn’t find the sponsors to secure a drive.

Two years later, on May 24 1992, he was involved in an accident with Andrew Gilbert-Scott in a SF race at Suzuka, which sent both cars plunging into the fence at the first corner. Ogawa died of severe head and neck injuries, aged 36. This came just a month after he took Toyota’s first WEC win at Monza, and a month before he was scheduled to start the Le Mans 24 Hours for the fourth time in his career.

Akihiko Nakaya 「中谷明彦」

Nakaya, still searching for an F1 seat in 2017

Akihiko Nakaya is not alone in being refused his application for an FIA superlicence – a similar fate befell fellow F1 prospect Katsumi Yamamoto, and of course, there’s the infamous tale of Ide’s superlicence being revoked four races into his career. But Nakaya arguably had the skill to at least give a good account of himself for what resources a cash-strapped Brabham F1 Team were preparing for him in 1992.

After all, Nakaya had been Japanese F3 champion in 1988, and won Super Formula’s first race at Autopolis in 1991. Nakaya also supplemented his single-seater successes with several victories in touring cars.

As Brabham were preparing for an uncertain ’92 season, they signed Nakaya to partner Eric van de Poele. But the FIA denied Nakaya’s superlicence application, having thumbed their nose towards Nakaya’s accomplishments in Japan, after showing no such hesitation for his peers such as Nakajima and Suzuki before him.

Nakaya, then 34, went straight back to SF and survived a terrible accident in the Suzuka season opener (just two months before Ogawa’s fatal crash), and arguably this began a freefall for Nakaya at the highest levels of racing. While he won the second tier of the Japanese Touring Car Championship alongside Gilbert-Scott in 1993, and is still semi-active in pro-am sportscar racing even in his 60s, his single-seater career ended after 1994, two years on from having the F1 door slammed shut.

The FIA’s decision looked worse in retrospect upon Giovanna Amati’s failure to qualify for the first three races of the ’92 F1 season after being named Nakaya’s replacement. She was then replaced by a young Damon Hill.

Nakaya is still technically a professional driver, but not a racer, as he’s a full-time automotive journalist who does driving reviews of new cars on his own YouTube channel.

Juichi Wakisaka 「脇阪寿一」

Photo: Toyota Gazoo Racing

If you’ve ever watched Super GT, Japan’s premier sportscar series of the 21st century, you likely know Juichi Wakisaka as a legendary driver – a three-time top-tier champion behind the wheel – and more recently, as a charismatic, expressive, and successful team manager, the series’ equivalent to the Premier League’s Jurgen Klopp or Pep Guardiola.

All of these title, including his 2019 success as manager of Team LeMans, came after he signed with Toyota at the start of the 2001 season. But in fact, it was Honda who gave him his first chance in Super GT’s top GT500 class – and it was Mugen-Honda who gave him his one and only F1 opportunity.

Wakisaka succeeded Pedro de la Rosa as Japanese F3 champion in 1996, and in 1997 he succeeded F1-bound Nakano at Dome Racing with Mugen in SF, under team director Matsumoto.

As a result of this seat, he got a one-off opportunity to test for Dome’s aborted F1 project in ‘96, and it was the Dome-Mugen connection that gave Wakisaka a F1 test driver role with Jordan in 1998.

Wakisaka attended Jordan’s grand launch at the Royal Albert Hall in London, got a handful of in-season tests in the race-winning 198 car, but after the conclusion of the season was dropped and never found his way onto another F1 squad.

He spent the remaining years of his racing career in the top Japanese championships – five victories from eight seasons in SF, and of course, the three Super GT title that led to him being nicknamed ‘Mr Super GT’ by the end of his career in 2015.

Satoshi Motoyama 「本山哲」

Photo: Toyota Gazoo Racing

Only Kazuyoshi Hoshino has ever won more in SF than Satoshi Motoyama, a 27-time race-winner. And only Hoshino and Nakajima have more title than Motoyama’s four. And in 2003, while honouring his late childhood friend and MotoGP rising star Daijiro Kato, Motoyama became only the second driver in history (and presently one of just four) to win the Super GT and SF titles in the same year. But unlike Hoshino and Nakajima, Motoyama never had a chance to race in F1 during his career peak.

His 2003 success led him to an in-season F1 test appearance with Jordan on the eve of the Japanese GP at Suzuka, where he was within a second of incumbent Ralph Firman in the one and only time he’d ever drive the team’s EJ13 car in anger.

Two months later he joined Renault for post-season testing at Jerez, a convenient tie-up with Motoyama as the star factory driver for Nissan in Super GT and a representative of the manufacturer since 1996, and Nissan being part of the same automotive group as Renault.

His laptimes were modest in comparison to Renault’s star driver Fernando Alonso, though there was room for improvement. But with Alonso as the centrepiece of the team and Jarno Trulli still as swift and experienced as ever at that point, Renault had no room for a prospective 32-year-old rookie on their team. And with no ties to Nissan’s Japanese rivals, or deep pockets to buy his way into a Jordan or Minardi seat, Motoyama never again pursued a F1 seat after the winter of 2003.

Success in single-seaters continued though, with the fourth of his SF titles coming in 2005 and still winning in the series in 2007. He remained a Super GT frontrunner until the end of 2018, when Nissan dropped the 47-year-old from its line-up.

That came as a shock within motorsport even beyond Japan’s borders, such was the longevity of Motoyama’s success, but he was promptly signed up as executive advisor of NISMO, Nissan’s motorsport division, and is team principal of B-MAX Racing’s SF programme.

Tsugio Matsuda「松田次生」

Photo: Toyota Gazoo Racing

In 1997, three drivers graduated with formula racing scholarships from the Suzuka Circuit Racing School. One was Takuma Sato. One was Toshihiro Kaneishi, who became the only Japanese to win the German F3 title in 2001. The third was 18-year-old Tsugio Matsuda, a local driver and a CIK-FIA Asia-Pacific Karting champion.

Days after his 19th birthday in 1998, he scored points on his SF debut at Suzuka. He raced in Japanese F3 full-time though, and didn’t genuinely step up to SF until 2000. In just his fourth career start, he took his first win at Mine Circuit driving for Satoru Nakajima’s team.

Then Matsuda went on a spell of five seasons without a SF win, but built up momentum as a factory Honda driver in Super GT, narrowly missing out on the 2002 title.

In 2005, Matsuda, now 26, was still one of Honda’s top talents – and off-season rumours suggested that he might be on his way to its F1 programme as a test driver, or to race in GP2 with Honda’s support. Instead, he departed Honda and signed to rival manufacturer Nissan for 2006.

In time, he set the record for the most Super GT wins, with his two titles in 2014 and ’15, and 17 of his 22 victories coming at the wheel of a Nissan. And his SF form did eventually arrive, as he claimed back-to-back titles in 2007 and ’08. But in a downward-spiralling economy and with few vacancies on the grid, Matsuda would never find his way into F1 despite his incredible skill.

Keisuke Kunimoto 「国本京佑」

Photo: Toyota Gazoo Racing

Only two Japanese drivers have ever won the Macau Grand Prix: Sato in 2001, and Keisuke Kunimoto in 2008. The latter’s was a milestone victory that followed up being Japanese F3 title runner-up to TOM’S team-mate Carlo van Dam and becoming the youngest ever Super GT300 race-winner, and winning the ultra-competitive Formula Challenge Japan title (the predecessor to Japanese F4) the year before.

As a Toyota junior, Kunimoto was seemingly on the fast track to following Kazuki Nakajima and Kamui Kobayashi to F1.

But just four years later, he had quietly retired from motorsport at the age of 23.

Kunimoto, of Korean descent, was set to be called up by the Carlin-run Team Korea to race in A1GP’s visit to Kyalami in South Africa in February 2009, but a shipping issue prevented his car from being in a condition to be raced.

He did a find a seat in a depleted SF field with Team LeMans that year, but struggled for results as a rookie and finished 13th and last in the standings. After that failure he contested the final two rounds of the Formula Renault 3.5 season and also languished down the field.

By 2010, Toyota was out of F1, and Kunimoto had acrimoniously parted ways with the manufacturer in the off-season.

Instead of accepting a drive in a domestic series, Kunimoto committed to remaining in Europe. The Epsilon Euskadi team that had given him his FR3.5 debut signed him for the full 2010 season, but he only made the points once. And by 2011, with no factory backing, no private sponsors – and no opportunities waiting in Europe or back home in Japanm he had fallen off the radar as quickly as he came on the scene.

His younger brother Yuji has had far more success at the higher levels. After winning the 2010 Japanese F3 title, he’s established a lengthy career in Super GT, won the 2016 SF title and is an outside bet for winning a second this year.

Toru Takahashi 「高橋徹」

Far too many young drivers were killed before they could make an impact in Japanese motorsport, but Toru Takahashi’s all-too-brief career showed enough promise that his peers believed he could have succeeded in F1.

He was 18 when he made his racing debut in 1979. By 1982, he was a title contender in SF, then run to F2 regulations, even outperforming team-mate Aguri Suzuki. It was a Fuji GCS test late that year that caught the attention of Hiroshi Tanaka, owner of SF’s top team Heroes Racing. And with Tanaka’s star driver Hoshino leaving the team to start his own squad, Tanaka made 22-year-old Takahashi his new number one driver for 1983.

In his very first SF race at Suzuka, Takahashi finished second behind reigning champion Nakajima. He qualified on pole position in just his fourth race. With how quickly Takahashi had achieved success, an F1 opportunity surely would have come to him in the near future.

Sadly, on October 23 1983, Toru Takahashi lost his life in the Fuji GCS season finale when his car spun out, went airborne and was crushed against the catch fencing. The crash also killed a spectator and injured three more. There’s no telling what Takahashi would have accomplished in the years to come, and his shortened SF season still resulted in fifth in the points, but like Kazato and too many others before and after his time, fate dealt a fatal blow to his aspirations of future success.

The post 10 outstanding Japanese drivers who never reached F1 appeared first on Formula Scout.

Fernando Alonso’s comeback means Renault has no place for academy drivers Guanyu Zhou and Christian Lundgaard in its F1 line-up next year. But just how good are they?

When the 2020 Formula 2 season finally got underway in Austria the weekend before last, two members of the Renault Sport Academy were looking to stake a claim for the vacant seat in the manufacturer’s Formula 1 line-up for 2021. By Wednesday of the following week, any such aims were dashed by the announcement that Renault was bringing 38-year-old double champion Fernando Alonso out of semi-retirement to fill the seat.

While the Alonso comeback was naturally well-received online by a strong legion of fans – as well as those who make a living out of writing F1 headlines – it was also greeted by plenty of dissatisfaction. While Alonso’s Marmite character can explain a lot of that, there was also an impressive show of sympathy for young drivers in general and Renault’s own junior drivers in particular.

The arguments against bringing back an aging champion are not limited to the specific cases of Renault-backed F2 racers Guanyu Zhou and Christian Lundgaard and their future prospects. The Alonso comeback flies in the face of the growing enthusiasm for the new generation already taking F1 by storm. In marketing material, for example, his face might force a Lando Norris or a George Russell out from alongside Lewis Hamilton – despite the fact that many potential teenage fans were not even born when Alonso last won a world championship.

Beyond that, Renault’s re-signing of Alonso raises general questions about the purpose of its young driver programme. These are questions that were already being asked earlier this year, given that the scheme in its current iteration (since 2016) has yet to produce a single F1 driver. The latest development doesn’t make a massive change to that argument, although Renault’s stated aim of getting a driver into F1 in 2021 does now rest solely on an opening being created outside of the factory squad, which will be difficult when it doesn’t have a single engine customer lined up for next year.

Much of the reaction though has focused specifically on the aforementioned F2 drivers, Zhou and Lundgaard. There are those excited by their potential and confident that one of them would deserve a place in the F1 team next year. There are also those who don’t believe either has proven themselves to be good enough yet. But how good are they really?

In terms of ability, it is very hard to argue that either Zhou or Lundgaard – or any current F2 driver – would be a match right now for Alonso, who was undeniably still very fast in his final year with McLaren and is unlikely to have lost much of that since, especially as he has continued to be an active driver. That’s not to say that driving ability is the only consideration one should have when signing Alonso, given the negative aspects to his F1 history.

But, disregarding Alonso and concentrating purely on Zhou and Lundgaard, how well do they stack up as young drivers looking to break through into F1 somewhere in the near future?

Of the pair, it is Zhou who has seemed to attract the majority of the public support in the Renault debate. To some degree, that’s only natural – it is Zhou who is the championship favourite in F2 this year having finished as top rookie in 2019. But it also represents an impressively rapid turnaround in reputation for a driver who was soundly beaten as a Ferrari junior while in his third season of Formula 3 just two years ago.

Zhou became the first serious F1 prospect from China to be signed to a team when he was added to the Ferrari Driver Academy in 2014. At the time, he was still in karting, where he had made waves by winning British and European titles in the Rotax Max Junior class following a move from Shanghai to Sheffield.

In 2015 he moved into Italian Formula 4 with Prema and quickly transferred his potential to cars, claiming a hat-trick of wins in only his second event at Monza. But those would be his only victories that season and he finished a fairly distant second in the championship to team-mate Ralf Aron, who had a year’s car experience in Formula Renault 1.6 machinery under his belt.

The move to F3 that followed for 2016 was arguably premature, particularly with the benefit of hindsight. Despite that, he again adapted quickly to the step up – a recurring theme in Zhou’s career – to score two podiums in his first two events. But no more would follow and he ended the year 13th in the standings.

A switch back to Prema (from Motopark) for 2017 didn’t yield a massive step forward with third place still his best result – albeit he managed five of them this time, and eighth overall in the points. Even allowing for a year’s less experience in F3, he seemed some way off his team-mates Maximilian Gunther and Callum Ilott, while also being clear of rookie Mick Schumacher.

That could have been it in F3 for Zhou, who together with Ferrari toyed with a move up to F2 for 2018. But he still had a lot to prove and returned for another shot in F3. There was an immediate step forward, with victory in the Pau season opener, and with improved qualifying speed he was a frontrunner in the title race well into the summer.

But two tangles with Schumacher at Spa-Francorchamps proved to be major turning point. Schumacher survived the second clash to take the first of eight wins in 12 races on his way to the title, while Zhou lost form (along with two of his team-mates, Ralf Aron and Marcus Armstrong) and got involved in yet more incidents. A lights-to-flag win at the Hockenheim finale salvaged some pride, but the championship result was still the same as the year before.

It’s in that context that Zhou’s first F2 campaign in 2019 was surprisingly impressive, as he took top rookie honours with a pole position and five podiums, comfortably shading Schumacher as well as GP3 graduate Ilott.

It’s important to note that Zhou had a bone-fide front-running car underneath him courtesy of Virtuosi Racing, a luxury that no other rookie had last year. But the way he made use of that package still made a considerable impression. He had the speed to worry his experienced-but-fast team-mate Luca Ghiotto (beating him to pole at Silverstone) and didn’t seem particularly fazed by the tyres, even though his lack of experience with them maybe did cost him slightly in some races.

Photo: Jerry Andre / LAT Images / FIA F2 Championship

Whether swapping Ferrari’s junior programme for Renault’s and returning to an English team made all the difference, or he just felt more at home in the faster car, it was clear that Zhou was now showing his true potential, even if both he and Virtuosi expressed surprise to Formula Scout this time last year at just how quickly he had got up to speed.

• From 2019: How Guanyu Zhou became F2’s surprise star rookie

Coming into 2020, there have generally been two schools of thought around Zhou. There were those who believed he can progress from last season into a multiple race-winner and a serious championship threat, and those who had their doubts about his ability to win races and felt he’ll be upstaged by a bigger and better class of rookies.

In round one at the Red Bull Ring, he produced a performance that went just about as far as possible to validate those who had faith in him and to convert the doubters.

The unique circumstances around the start of the 2020 season arguably made it the greatest test imaginable of a driver’s talent and their ability to jump in and get the job done. After all, teams and drivers had just three days of testing with the new 18-inch wheels and tyres – four months earlier. And Zhou rose to the challenge impeccably.

Pole position by 0.464 seconds was a huge margin on such a short track: the same gap covered the next 13 drivers. In the feature race, he battled his friend (and now team-mate once more) Ilott and his old foe Schumacher, and re-passed both of them after getting jumped in the pitstops. That maiden win was all but in the bag when a gearbox glitch slowed him.

One could argue that Zhou’s year of experience still gave him an advantage over the rookies when it came to nailing the lap in qualifying and executing the feature race as well as he did. But in the end, to outclass his peers as he did proved that he’s F1 material.

Photo: Formula Motorsport Limited

After a performance like that, it was maybe not surprising that Zhou garnered such support from motorsport fans around the world when the Alonso announcement came just a few days later. There is understandably concern over a lack of openings in F1 for Renault’s juniors but, in the case of Zhou, do we really need to worry?

Zhou has a valuable asset that no other driver contending for an F1 seat has right now: his nationality. A Chinese driver who can unlock his vast home market for F1 is always going to be attractive to the championship and its teams. Furthermore, Zhou already has some strong financial support for his F2 programme and can surely attract more of it in order to secure an F1 seat – the economic consequences of the coronavirus crisis notwithstanding.

Because of that, Zhou does not necessarily need to rely on Renault to provide him with his opportunity. Often, and especially in the case of Red Bull, junior drivers are tied in to their backer and unable to leave for a rival. But, while the exact terms of Zhou’s association with Renault are unknown, it seems unlikely that he wouldn’t have the freedom to break out at some point and take up a race seat elsewhere.

All things considered, it feels as though Zhou’s graduation to F1 is only a matter of time. And, given his mixed career history, it’s probably more likely to come not with a manufacturer team with ambitions of fighting for world championships, but with a smaller outfit that could benefit from the potential investment or sponsorship that Zhou could bring with him. Williams, for example.

It’s also not impossible that a new team could be created around Zhou – after all, he is tied to the same SECA sports agency behind the Techeetah Formula E team. Establishing an F1 team would be a step up from that, but so would the marketability of a Chinese F1 driver. No such project is going to spring up and go racing within a matter of months, though.

The most important hurdle for Zhou to overcome is to secure the necessary superlicence, which will come if he finishes in the top four in F2 this year, and that’s where his focus lies for now.

“We had a good chat [with Renault] before the announcement,” he said last weekend in the aftermath of Alonso’s return being confirmed. “It was nice that they told me everything and that they told me the plans of the team for the future.

“Obviously for myself the key this season is getting the superlicence points. That would be the most important thing. So, if I can achieve that – I’m now working as hard as ever trying to reach that – obviously when I reach that I think there will be quite a lot of opportunities for me.”

For all the public clamour around Zhou, is he even the strongest F2 driver in Renault’s academy? As a newcomer at F2 level, Lundgaard is lesser known among F1 fans, but his record suggests that he’s the greater prospect.

Renault cannot be accused of lacking enthusiasm in Lundgaard’s abilities. There is good motorsport pedigree in the Lundgaard family – father Henrik is a former European Rally Champion and touring car racer – but not a lot of financial resource. After all, his older brother Daniel didn’t have the budget advance his career beyond his native Denmark, where he was a champion in both Formula Ford and F4.

A European junior karting champion in 2015, the younger Lundgaard was picked up by Renault ahead of his maiden season of single-seaters in F4 in 2017, where he went on to win both the Spanish championship and the SMP Racing-sponsored North European Zone series driving for MP Motorsport.

In doing so, he repeated what Richard Verschoor had done as a Red Bull junior a year earlier, albeit with less of a dominant margin over his rivals. But Lundgaard was far more impressive than his predecessor when he stepped up to Formula Renault the following year. MP had struggled on its return to the category the previous season and Lundgaard wasn’t satisfied with his initial testing form, but he got right up among the frontrunners before the Eurocup season began.

• From 2018: The double F4 champion out to further impress Renault in its own series

What followed was a serious impressive campaign with four victories, and he only missed out on the title to second-year driver and fellow Renault junior Max Fewtrell after a double retirement at the penultimate round at Hockenheim.

Then came the move up to the new-look FIA F3 Championship last year with ART Grand Prix. As a direct graduate of Formula Renault, Lundgaard had no business being up front with top drivers moving over from ‘proper’ European F3 like Robert Shwartzman, Marcus Armstrong and Juri Vips. But he won the very first race at Barcelona – until a penalty for a safety car infraction demoted him to second.

The rest of the campaign was tough as ART struggled to keep up with the likes of Prema at the majority of the circuits. But Lundgaard still led team-mate Fewtrell home in one-two finish from pole at the Hungaroring, and claimed a further pole position at Monza. Sixth in the standings still made him the top F3 newcomer, but most importantly he convinced Renault and ART that he was ready to step up to F2 at the first opportunity rather than needing to stay behind for a title tilt.

It means he’s reached F2 in just his fourth year in car racing, just as Charles Leclerc and Lando Norris did – as well as his ART team-mate Marcus Armstrong, who is a whole year (minus six days) older than Lundgaard. But it’s Norris who Lundgaard has the chance to really emulate by spending one year each in F4, Formula Renault, F3 and F2. Of course, he doesn’t have the same number of titles to his name, but nor has he had the same level of opportunities afforded to Norris, even if Renault’s support has been beneficial.

Any hopes of Lundgaard graduating from F2 in a single season had appeared slim until a couple of weeks ago. Before the coronavirus pandemic closed motorsport down entirely for several months, it trapped Lundgaard (along with Formula Renault racers Caio Collet and Hadrien David) in a Tenerife hotel under quarantine for two weeks in March following a Renault Sport Academy training camp. It meant he missed the one and only F2 pre-season test in Bahrain, which was the only chance to drive with the new 18-inch wheels and tyres being introduced for this season.

While ART and Renault drafted in Sergey Sirotkin to gather crucial data, Lundgaard himself was left with no practical experience with such a fundamental change until the 45-minute practice session on the Friday morning of the opening round in Austria. After that, he went straight into qualifying and placed his car a rather remarkable fourth on the grid. He finished in the same place after a full feature race distance on the Saturday, on the tail of Armstrong and Shwartzman.

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

He was just as impressive a week later at the Styrian Grand Prix. In the worst of the conditions at the start of the rain-delayed feature race, he was the driver most on the move, climbing from eighth to fourth, ahead of the eventual winner Shwartzman. An off through the gravel later on as he tried to pass Ilott left him sixth at the finish, but he converted that into a win from third on the grid in the sprint race. With Lundgaard only set to turn 19 next week, he is the championship’s second-youngest winner since it began as GP2 in 2005, behind Norris.

• Analysing the start of F1’s support seasons in Austria

Lundgaard’s performances over two weekends in Austria, regardless of the circumstances, suggest that he is indeed capable of fighting for the title this year and effectively ‘completing’ the junior single-seater ladder in only four years.

As with Zhou and anyone else on the F2 grid, winning the title would undoubtedly deserve a place on the F1 grid. But in Lundgaard’s case, such a meteoric rise through the ranks would arguably warrant more than any old seat – he would surely deserve a place in a competitive, midfield team. A team like Renault.

Clearly, with Alonso signed and Esteban Ocon also under contract for 2021, that is unlikely to happen however strong Lundgaard performs over the rest of the season. But, unlike with Zhou, it’s also hard to see where else an opening for Lundgaard could come given that he doesn’t have the same personal backing or commercial attractiveness.

It’s also unlikely that Renault would want to let him go given what it has invested into him. It clearly already rates him highly, as demonstrated not only through the annual promotions it has secured for him, but also by testing his skills in older Formula 1 machinery alongside Zhou’s private testing programme.

Lundgaard is surprisingly relaxed about the situation. He can often come across as a very driven individual, but on this topic he denies that he ever expected to be under consideration for the seat that’s gone to Alonso.

Photo: Formula Motorsport Limited

“Because of the crisis we’ve got around the world, I wasn’t really expecting to even have a chance for next year, to be honest,” he said following his win in Austria.

“Because I knew that I didn’t have the superlicence, and I knew the team that is not going to wait until say after Monza to decide – because I need to be sure to be in the top four to have a superlicence.

“Considering that, I mean obviously Fernando coming back, I haven’t really got much detail on if it’s a one or two or more year contract, but for me it’s always just to focus on my own job. And then see what the future brings after that.”

Alonso is indeed signed through until the end of 2022, and given his age and his willingness to walk away if he doesn’t see an improvement, Renault would be wise to have a replacement ready to replace him at that point should it still be in F1. But on current evidence it certainly doesn’t look as though Lundgaard is a driver who will take three years to get through F2. Renault will need to either find something productive for him to do or let him go, and neither of those things will be easy.

With Ocon’s deal only running to the end of 2021, there’s also the possibility that Renault will respond to the pressure to promote an academy driver by doing so at the expense of the Frenchman. That would be foolish, as anybody who followed his rise through F3 and GP3 knows that he too is a very talented young driver.

With two members of its academy capable of becoming F2 champion this year and no obvious seats for them at the top table, it’s clear that Renault could soon have a headache. But rather than Zhou, maybe it will be a Lando-like rise from Lundgaard that really needs rewarding.

The post How Zhou and Lundgaard have proven their F1 credentials appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: Formula Motorsport Limited

Renault Formula 1 test driver Guanyu Zhou has revealed that the team informed him of Fernando Alonso’s 2021 comeback in advance to explain its future plans.

Alonso, who took back-to-back world championship titles with the Enstone-based team in 2005 and 2006, was revealed to be making an F1 comeback as a Renault driver last week ahead of the Styrian Grand Prix.

Renault’s leading juniors Zhou and fellow Formula 2 driver Christian Lundgaard were linked to the team’s vacant seat alongside Esteban Ocon, but were overlooked to sign Alonso.

Neither currently holds an FIA superlicence required to race in F1, but could do so by the end of 2020 given many of their race programmes have only started in the last fortnight.

Renault’s move attracted some criticism, not least on social media, and means its young driver programme is yet to guide a driver into F1 since its return in 2016.

“Obviously we had a good chat before the announcement,” said Zhou when asked about Alonso’s signing after he finished second in the F2 feature race on Saturday.

“It was nice that they told me everything and that they told me the plans of the team for the future.

“Obviously for myself the key this season is getting the superlicence points. That would be the most important thing.”

“So, if I can achieve that – I’m now working as hard as ever trying to reach that – obviously when I reach that I think there will be quite a lot of opportunities for me.”

Zhou also explained that Alonso may have an active role in Renault before his race return, but the 21-year-old is still expecting to have his own F1-related work to do through 2020 and beyond.

“It’s nice to see Alonso to be back, helping the team to develop their cars. But at the same time I think I’ll be doing quite a lot of F1 testing as well and just to be ready for a seat once everything comes together.”

Lundgaard – who is now third in the F2 standings after winning Sunday’s sprint race at the Red Bull Ring – said he did not expect to be considered for the F1 drive for 2021.

“Because of the crisis we’ve got around the world, I wasn’t really expecting to even have a chance for next year, to be honest,” he said.

“Because I knew that I didn’t have the superlicence, and I knew the team that is not going to wait until say after Monza to decide – because I need to be sure to be in the top four to have a superlicence.

“Considering that, I mean obviously Fernando coming back, I haven’t really got much detail on if it’s a one or two or more year contract, but for me it’s always just to focus on my own job. And then see what the future brings after that.”

The post Renault spoke to Guanyu Zhou before announcing Alonso F1 return appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: Mercedes-Benz AMG F1 / Wolfgang Wilhelm

Formula 1’s cost reduction measures have been made stricter by the coronavirus pandemic. Could it boost single-seater racing elsewhere?

The writing has been on the wall for Formula 1 for a while now: adapt, or fail to survive for much longer. That harsh reality came before the world ground to a halt due to the coronavirus pandemic, and the events of recent months and the economic consequences in their wake has forced the big players to tie their hands behind their backs even more merely for F1’s survival.

Whether you are a F1 fan or not, nobody wants to see the top level of a sport to collapse. When a series goes under, it puts many jobs at immediate risk – and, in the case of F1, well over 10,000 would face that. Unfortunately, the $175 million cost cap for 2021 initially agreed on and other changes to the world championship were always likely to result in job losses.

In something totally unprecedented, the teams have come together not just for Project Pitlane – which aims to assist in the treatment of those with the virus by using the exceptional engineering knowledge within F1 – but also to secure the long-term future of the series itself. By cutting the cost cap further – to £135m by 2023, F1 and its 10 teams have achieved just that.

The reality is that this will result in more job losses than originally estimated, at the expense of maintaining all of the other jobs around the series. And there could be an unexpected silver lining from all of this.

A lot of money goes into making F1 cars go fast – millions will be spent just to find that extra tenth of a second. The ‘haves’ of the series – the likes of Mercedes-Benz, Ferrari, Red Bull, and to a lesser degree McLaren and Renault – are able to hurl money at a project to find that extra advantage that across a lap is worth less than a blink of an eye.

The ‘have not’ smaller outfits – the likes of Haas and Racing Point – have to be smarter with their money to find those gains. From 2021 onwards, it will be those who are better at managing their resources that will benefit most. That’s not to say that Sergio Perez will be 2022 world champion, but it is very conceivable that the gap will close to the current big teams.

Photo: Scuderia Ferrari

So, what of the money saved by this enforced cost cap? Some of that will disappear as a result of a fairer distribution system that is likely to see the end of Ferrari receiving vast sums of money simply for turning up. However, what may not be allowed to be spent within F1 could well be placed elsewhere.

Ferrari has started discussions with IndyCar regarding becoming its long-awaited third engine supplier. This would be a huge move for the series that has been promising a new name to join Honda and Chevrolet for years following the woeful Lotus project that fell flat during 2012.

IndyCar already has McLaren on its books as a team, and Red Bull Technologies as the designer of the new aeroscreen, but not even names as synonymous with racing as those can match the history and the passion of Ferrari.

This would be great for the series from an international perspective and could give vindication to Ferrari’s Driver Academy – which has placed five drivers in F2 this year. With Ferrari controlling its own two seats and one at Alfa Romeo Racing, it’s simply impossible for all of its juniors to make F1, but IndyCar project could provide more of them with a home within the Scuderia.

The price of entering IndyCar is, while still very expensive, minuscule compared to F1. That should also hold true even when the series goes hybrid as expected in the next few years. In addition, if IndyCar’s big teams do start moving into Indy Lights as is being planned, then having Ferrari and McLaren join them there will be an enormous boost to the struggling category which has had to cancel its 2020 season on the basis of too few entrants amid coronavirus complications.

Photo: Red Bull Racing

And that’s just in America. F1’s big names could also decide that sportscars is the place to spend, with the World Endurance Championship’s planned hypercar regulations imminent. Both Ferrari and McLaren have very successful GT programmes already but have toyed with the idea of returning to the top class.

That would, therefore, be an adequate compromise for those within a team’s junior ranks that might just miss out on F1. Williams has already started a partnership with top prototype sportscar team Rebellion Racing in the Esports arena, and that could expand into the real world.

What is to say that other names don’t get in on the action as well? Red Bull has scoped out the hypercar world through its Valkyrie project with Aston Martin, or it could make a long-awaited return to IndyCar as a sponsor. It’s ruled out supporting drivers there in the recent past really on marketing groundds, but the series is only growing its audience share.

Renault is in a difficult position right now, with parent company Nissan set to cull 15,000 jobs. However, it has committed to F1 for the foreseeable future, and what’s to say that it won’t look at other categories on top of F1 and Formula E? It does, after all, have a driver programme that is in serious need of a success story.

If you want to go totally out there, why don’t more teams explore Super Formula – as McLaren and then Red Bull has done with their juniors while using Honda power?

F1’s necessity of slashing costs may well prompt other series to follow suit, as expensive operations with a fraction of the exposure that F1 gives will become very unpopular very quickly – especially in a post-lockdown world. Other series have followed F1 trends in the past, so this long overdue cost cut may come at an ideal time for other series facing a difficult time.

Photo: FIA Formula E

Limiting costs has been instrumental to series like FE, which can boast an enviable number of manufacturers both big and small in its ranks. That is a series that needs to consider its support bill, following the collapse of the Jaguar I-Pace eTrophy.

Alternatively, F1 teams could simply invest more in their young driver programmes. The coveted once-in-a-generation talents may become more sought after as drivers become a greater differentiator of performance in grid where the gap from the front to the back is smaller, and money could well become the driving factor in getting the next Max Verstappen. Whether you believe junior programmes are important for teams or merely vanity projects for them, there is no questioning that their existence is critical for many drivers continuing up the motorsport pyramid.

COVID-19 has proven to be tragic for over 400,000 families around the globe, and that number continues to grow. The after-effects will be felt globally for a long time as well. But there will be positives to come from all this. F1 coming together for the greater good of the world is one such story, and that it and its teams have been open and honest about putting aside their own agendas for what is good for the series could well trickle down into other areas of motorsport.

Ideally, no job will be truly lost as a result of all this – just that similar roles will sprout up in other series, disciplines or sectors. Whether that scenario is realistic or not will be decided by time. This pandemic is arguably motorsport’s greatest challenge. But it has shown that it is willing to look beyond self-interest not just the long term, but the short and medium terms too.

The post Why F1’s survival move might be a gift to rivals, and young drivers appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photo: McLaren

Carlos Sainz Jr is the first product of Spain’s ‘Fernando Alonso generation’ to make it to Formula 1, and is now emulating his hero by moving to the Scuderia. It’s a signing of great importance to Spanish motorsport

Prior to Fernando Alonso’s upheaval of Michael Schumacher as the best Formula 1 driver in the world in the mid-2000s, Spain was very much a motorcycling country when it came to motorsport. It wasn’t often reflected in individual popularity, although Angel Nieto’s run of 13 titles in what’s now Moto3 (and the defunct 80cc class) between 1969-’84 mostly on Spanish bikes made him a national icon. Moving around or competing on two wheels was firmly part of the public consciousness.

Grassroots racing in Spain only started in the early 1970s, with the launch of single-make trophies like Copa Renault 8TS and Formula Nacional 1430, which used Formula Ford chassis with stock SEAT engines. Unfortunately the economic slowdown at the end of the decade, in the early years of the country’s transition to democracy, put the clock back a decade for motorsport.

The world championship-winning exploits of Carlos Sainz gave rallying a boost through the 1990s, but there was no real single-seater success besides singular F1 points finishes in backmarker cars for Luis Perez-Sala in 1989, and Marc Gene and Pedro de la Rosa in 1999. That same year, Oriol Servia claimed the Indy Lights title without a single win to his name. All four had been products of the “Catalan school’ and driver programmes promoted by the RACC.

Club-level investment in motorcycling increased off the back of Alex Criville becoming the first Spaniard to win the MotoGP title, also in 1999, and Nieto was joined by 1987 Moto3 champion Jorge Martinez in mentoring the young talents inspired by his feats. Within a decade there were title-contending Spaniards in all three world championship tiers, with six of the top 10 in Moto3 being Spaniards.

Spain’s single-seater stars of the past

Fernando Alonso – 2005 & ’06 F1 champion, 2nd in 2010, ’12 & ’13 F1, 3rd in 2007 F1, 4th in 2004 & ’11 F1, 5th in 2008 F1, 29th in 2017 IndyCar, 1999 FV8 3.5 champion, 4th in 2000 Int. F3000 – 2018-19 WEC champion, 2019 Daytona 24 Hours winner
Emilio de Villota – 40th in 1977 F1, 1980 British F1 champion, 3rd in 1978 & ’79 British F1, 5th in ’77 Shellsport Int. Series
Adrian Campos – 28th in 1987 F1, 34th in 1988 F1, 27th in 1986 Int. F3000, 3rd in 1985 German F3, 8th in ’85 FIA Euro F3 Cup
Luis Perez-Sala – 22nd in 1988 F1, 28th in 1989 F1, 2nd in 1987 Int. F3000, 4th in 1986 Int. F3000, 7th in 1985 Italian F3
Pedro de la Rosa – 11th in 2006 F1, 16th in 2000 & ’01 F1, 1997 Super Formula champion, 1995 SF Lights champion
Marc Gene – 17th in 2003 F1, 18th in 1999 F1, 19th in 2000 F1, 1998 FV8 3.5 champion – 2009 Le Mans 24 Hours winner
Jaime Alguersuari – 14th in 2011 F1, 19th in 2010 F1, 13th in 2014-15 FE, 6th in 2009 FV8 3.5, 2008 British F3 champion
Roberto Merhi – 19th in 2015 F1, 3rd in 2014 FV8 3.5, 12th in 2018 F2, 6th in 2010 GP3, 2011 F3 Euro Series champion
Adrian Valles – 2009 Superleague Formula champion, 4th in 2008 Superleague Formula, 2nd in 2005 FV8 3.5
Borja Garcia – 10th in 2008 Superleague Formula, 2nd in 2006 FV8 3.5, 10th in 2007 GP2, 2004 Spanish F3 champion
Andy Soucek – 6th in 2010 Superleague Formula, 4th in 2006 FV8 3.5, 2009 FIA F2 champion, 2005 Spanish F3 champion

Alonso’s back-to-back F1 titles in 2005 and ’06 had the same immediate effect, and came just before the global recession hit.

Spain’s portfolio of circuits increased, and more money was spent on karting and entry-level single-seaters by aspiring racers.

Master Junior Formula was launched in 2005, and made specifically to be the bridge to get Spain’s talented but underfunded karters into single-seater racing. It was centrally run by the De Villota driving school, founded by 1980 British F1 champion and two-time world championship starter Emilio de Villota, used Formula BMW cars and catered for racers aged 14-24.

In 2008, the 13-year-old son of Carlos Sainz got his first taste of single-seaters by testing one of the MJF cars. The junior karting star, who’d decided on emulating Alonso rather than his father after meeting him at the 2005 Spanish Grand Prix, was coached in that test by fellow second generation talent and experienced Spanish Formula 3 racer Maria de Villota.

De Villota went on to become a tester for the Marussia F1 team, and sadly lost her life prematurely in 2013. Upon accepting to become ambassador for the Legado legacy programme in memory of her life, Sainz Jr recalled that first test.

“Those first laps in a car were a dream come true,” Sainz said. “I think I did about 10 to 20 laps behind Maria. I will treasure them forever, they are engraved like gold in my memory.”

Sainz Jr was old enough to race in single-seaters come 2010, and finished fourth in the points in his primary campaign of FBMW Europe. He claimed a first win at Silverstone, and took wins at Sepang and Macau in the equivalent Pacific series. At the end of the year he stepped up to Formula 3, joining De Villota Motorsport in Euroformula for two rounds. Despite his inexperience he fared well and claimed a podium at Barcelona in his third race.

“I have witnessed Carlitos’ first steps at the wheel of a single-seater in our school and I remember Maria serving as a guide for him, driving a similar car ahead of him to show him what to do and increasing the pace progressively,” team boss Emilio said this week.

“Later, we helped him preparing for the Red Bull selection at Estoril, and he made his first races in F3 with our team, at Jerez and Barcelona, in European F3 Open.”

Sainz maintained a friendship with Maria and her family after that, winning a title in Formula Renault 2.0 and starring once again in F3 over the next two years as the Red Bull junior realistically emerged as his country’s only F1 hope. A move across to GP3 dented those chances in 2013, but a FR3.5 stint with Zeta Corse enabled him to regroup and turn the next year into a title-winning one in the series with DAMS.

It was an impressive mental comeback for a driver to accomplish, especially in wake of Maria’s death (whose life he honours to this day by racing with stars on his helmet), and he did so even as Red Bull overlooked him for a Toro Rosso seat. The reason he did end up on the F1 grid for 2015 was down to Sebastian Vettel leaving Red Bull Racing for Ferrari, and the German’s departure from the Scuderia is why Sainz is heading there next year.

It’s not only the memory of de Villota’s contribution that makes Sainz’s move to F1’s most famous team for 2021 so important to Spanish motorsport, but as evidence of the investment in the ‘Fernando Alonso generation’ wasn’t wasted.

The Great Recession in Spain lasted from 2008 to 2014, and not only ended the racing ambitions of most of the Alonso-inspired youth before they had even started, but led to a major employment crisis the country is still reeling from today.

Photo: Fotospeedy

It came down to the likes of Emilio de Villota and his F1-experienced team boss counterpart Adrian Campos to keep Spanish talent on the single-seater map as participation dropped. Campos Racing carried IndyCar-bound Alex Palou from karting all the way to Formula 2 against the odds, while Red Bull’s interests in the Sainz clan meant the younger of the two had perhaps more wriggle room than most in the energy drink brand’s junior team at the time when it came to spells of underperforming.

“[The appointment by Ferrari] is great news for the entire Spanish sports,” de Villota added. “I just phoned Carlos and his father to congratulate. To get to Ferrari is a dream for any driver and I think Carlitos and Charles Leclerc will make a great pair, stimulating each other.”

De Villota ended his congratulations by mentioning how Sainz Jr “has grown as a driver and a person” since the start of his car racing career, and the 25-year-old has repeatedly shown himself to be a fighter in getting to where he is today.

Yes he had Red Bull’s backing from the beginning, but being a ‘chosen one’ is not always an easy path. Once he got to F1, he was pretty much an equal to Max Verstappen at Toro Rosso but couldn’t make his way into a Red Bull Racing seat and left for Renault. He established himself even better there but got shunned once again, and kept himself in F1 by moving to McLaren.

Not only does it mirror the career path of icon Alonso, as Toro Rosso operated out of the factory used by the Minardi team that handed Alonso his F1 debut aged 19, but Sainz’s fight to get in a frontrunning car will resonate with Spanish fans and help inspire the next generation of single-seater talent. Alonso may return to F1, but it’s Sainz who now has the nation talking.

The notion of the fighter is of huge cultural importance in Spain, with bullfighters considered heroes when in the arena. Just like F1, it’s a risk-filled artistry where the consequences can be brutal when the smallest of errors are made.

In days gone by, the horse-bound picadors were given top billing over their fellow matadors when facing the bulls, although could become unpopular when it looked like they had too easy a time of it. Sainz will no doubt be relishing the chance to not only fight Red Bull’s Verstappen on equal terms once more in 2021, but to make the Prancing Horse a champion one again.

For more on the youth-led superteam that Sainz will leave behind at McLaren, click here

Photo: Dutch Photo Agency

The post What Sainz’s Ferrari move means to Spanish motorsport appeared first on Formula Scout.

Photos: Renault Sport

Following the news that Renault has lost Daniel Ricciardo to McLaren for 2021, it’s natural to assume that the team will be looking for a high-profile replacement. In the long term, youth could be the answer it needs

Sebastian Vettel’s decision to not agree to a new contract with Ferrari for 2021 has thrown Formula 1’s driver market wide open, with moves for Carlos Sainz Jr (to Ferrari) and Daniel Ricciardo (to McLaren) already agreed.

While there are many drivers out of contract elsewhere at the end of this year, the focus for now is on who will complete Renault’s line-up alongside the returning Esteban Ocon. The Frenchman has two-and-a-half seasons of race experience under his belt with Manor and Racing Point, and will plan to establish himself again on track and at Enstone this year.

Four-time world champion Vettel and former Renault drivers Fernando Alonso (a two-time champion with the team) and Nico Hulkenberg are already being linked to the second Renault seat, as is talent from within the manufacturer’s own under-pressure driver development programme.

Other drivers to have previously raced for Renault in F1 include Alain Prost, Rene Arnoux, Jean-Pierre Jabouille, Eddie Cheever, Patrick Tambay, Jarno Trulli, Jenson Button, Jacques Villeneuve and Robert Kubica.

Formula Scout presents five young drivers, and an older Renault-known star, who should be in consideration for a 2021 seat…

Guanyu Zhou CHINA 20y/o
2020 F2, 7th in 2019 F2, 8th in 2017 & ’18 FIA European F3, 8th in ’17 Macau GP, 6th in 2016 TRS, 2nd in 2015 Italian F4

Photo: F2 Media Service

Photo: Renault Sport

A former member of the Ferrari Driver Academy, Guanyu Zhou was a surprise package of 2019, when he took it to the established Formula 2 stars in his rookie campaign. He is one of the many drivers on Renault?s books and is now its official test driver, making this move the most logical.

He showed consistent progress in his three years in FIA European Formula 3, but didn’t leave the series with many expecting him to perform as strong as he did in F2. His first year with Virtuosi Racing featured five podiums, and a pole at Silverstone, and while victory never came his way he did put in one of the performances of the season in the Barcelona feature race.

Now, to convince Renault he is F1 standard, he needs to show that he can win races on a regular basis at that level. It won’t just be a case of making the most of when he is in a winning position, but taking strong results when luck isn’t going his way.

Of the few times where he could have won in 2019, Barcelona was the clearest case and he led on merit. Unfortunately those occasions did become less frequent as the year progressed.

Zhou not only has a year of F2 experience under his belt now, but put in more laps than all but the Prema drivers during pre-season testing. This will be crucial with the time spent out of the cockpit due to the current coronavirus crisis, as adapting to the changes that F2’s new 18-inch wheels bring will be all the more important with a lack of factory simulator access.

Talking of simulators, Zhou won F1’s first Virtual Grand Prix for Renault. And in real life he would become China?s first F1 driver ? an important market for both the series and the manufacturer. It would make for a much-needed feel-good story within F1, would strictly speaking be the first driver to progress into the series having impressed on the game and the sponsorship potential that comes with it could be crucial to Renault?s long-term presence in the world championship.

Christian Lundgaard DENMARK 18y/o
2020 F2, 23rd in 2019 F2, 4th in ’19 Macau GP, 6th in ’19 FIA F3, 2nd in 2018 FR Eurocup, 2017 F4 NEZ champion

Photo: F2 Media Service

Photo: F2 Media Service

In the discussion of underrated drivers in the junior ranks, Christian Lundgaard is regularly named. The Dane was on the pace immediately in FIA Formula 3 last year and would have become the series? first winner were it not for a penalty.

While finishing sixth in the FIA F3 Championship standings does not sound particularly impressive on paper, there are a fair few caveats to consider. Lundgaard was inexperienced at F3 level in comparison to many of his contemporaries, and his ART Grand Prix team did not turn out to be the title-challenging force it had been for in predecessor series GP3.

In fact, no driver was really going to get a look in to the top three in the F3 points last year such was Prema’s dominance, and Lundgaard was therefore only one point off being second best of the rest.

Renault placed its faith in Lundgaard during his rookie car racing season, in which he dominated the North European Zone and Spanish Formula 4 championships, and getting him all the way to F1 with the works team from there would be a good justification for a junior programme which is yet to create an F1 graduate.

The 18-year-old’s impressive maiden F3 campaign ? in which he firmly shaded Renault stablemate Max Fewtrell after losing the Formula Renault Eurocup title to the Briton as a rookie the year before – had cemented his place as one of the top drivers on the team?s books and bagged him a move up to F2 before Fewtrell.

Going against Lundgaard for an F1 drive though is of course his lack of F2 starts. We should have had a picture of his place in the order by now, but the delayed season and his failure to attend pre-season testing due to being quarantined means we only have two starts from last year to go off. They were tricky, but not discouraging, and like Zhou he has already been called up to test for Renault in the real world and race for the team in the virtual one.

Jack Aitken BRITAIN/SOUTH KOREA 24y/o
2020 F2, 5th in 2019 F2, 2nd in 2017 GP3, 15th in ’16 FV8 3.5, 2015 FR Eurocup champion, ’15 FR2.0 Alps champion

Photo: F2 Media Service

Photo: Williams Racing

Jack Aitken was a Renault test driver until last winter, when he left the team to take on a reserve role at Williams.

He was inducted into the Renault Sport Academy as one of the founding members in 2016 as reigning Eurocup champion, but could not see a way into a race seat as the team brought in Ricciardo and Ocon. But perhaps the greater opportunity to step up now lies at his former team.

Last year was one of his most impressive on track, taking a resurgent Campos Racing to the top step of the podium three times in F2 and coming sixth in Formula Scout’s end-of-year top 50 list of junior single-seater drivers.

He is popular, marketable (as a British-South Korean) and is one of the more experienced drivers on this list. The drives he produced to take victories at Baku, Silverstone and Monza in 2019 were all classy for vastly different reasons ? and included F2’s overtake of the year to win at home.

Sticking with Campos for this season was a risk given a title campaign would still be an act of giantkilling on Aitken’s part, but that’s the kind of performances that earn F1 seats and would strengthen the leadership credentials that Renault sorely needs.

Aitken knows the team at Enstone well, as well as the race-side operation, and is of the same mould as some of Renault?s recent drivers, making him a strong figure to place into the car.

Going against him is having to rebuild the bridge with Renault ? having left for a team he must have felt more confident of getting a race seat with. However, the kind of behind-the-scenes efforts that would be required to bring the two parties back together would be exactly the sort of story that Renault could do with right now, having changed its F1 line-up every year since its 2016 return.

Pascal Werhlein GERMANY/MAURITIUS 25y/o
18th in 2017 F1 – currently 14th in 2019-20 FE, 12th in 2018-19 FE, 2015 DTM champion, 2nd in 2012 F3 Euro Series

Photo: Manor Racing Press

Photo: Mahindra / Spacesuit Media

Pascal Wehrlein has some unfinished business with F1, and is still young enough for a return to generate a legitimate buzz.

He was brought into F1 originally by Mercedes-Benz through the DTM, a touring car move which came at the expense of an impressive-looking FIA European F3 campaign, and was placed at backmarker team Manor in 2016 when he was 21 years old.

His unconventional path mirrored Paul di Resta’s, a driver who perhaps should have also had another proper F1 opportunity.

When Wehrlein earned his F1 promotion, Ocon was the driver who was put in Mercedes’ DTM line-up in his place. That only lasted half a season, as he was then also promoted to a Manor seat, and immediately outshone team-mate Wehrlein.

Werhlein was no slouch, with a DTM title and an F1 points finish already to his name, but it was Ocon who earned a move up the grid to Force India for 2017. Nico Rosberg’s retirement also briefly put him in contention for a factory Mercedes seat.

Instead he bounced back at Sauber, although started badly with a pre-season injury, and had little say in keeping his seat for a second year as the team strengthened ties with Ferrari. That prompted a DTM return and an inspired move to Formula E.

While recent results have not been stellar, primarily due to the Mahindra team slipping down the order, Wehrlein has been a star of the series and made a big impact when he debuted with a near-win on his second start and a pole position.

It’s unfortunate that he still does not to have a win to his name, and he richly deserves one, and he has been stronger than ever since leaving Mercedes at the start of last year to join Ferrari’s F1 fold as simulator driver. A reunion with Ocon at Renault could bring both drivers and the team up to new heights.

Sacha Fenestraz FRANCE/ARGENTINA 20y/o
2020 SuperF, 2019 Japanese F3 champion, 6th in ’19 Super GT300, 3rd in 2018 Macau GP, 2017 FR Eurocup champion

Photo: Super Formula

Sacha Fenestraz is another former Renault junior with unfinished business and with a return story with feel-good elements.

He’s half-French, which makes him desirable to a team that wishes to promote talent from its home country (at least on the engine side) and wants someone who integrates well into the squad and as team-mate to Ocon.

The 20-year-old spent one year as a Renault junior in 2018, a place earned by winning the previous year’s Eurocup title, and his departure was as a result of being dropped after one underwhelming season in European F3 and a Macau Grand Prix podium.

Fenestraz needed to rebound last year, and did it in style. He moved out of the Surrey apartment he shared with Lando Norris and relocated to Japan to tackle Japanese F3 with debuting team Motopark. Five wins in the first six races marked him out as title favourite, and a continued podium presence made him a dominant champion.

Adding a sportscar campaign with Kondo Racing in Super GT’s secondary GT300 class helped build up a reputation that meant all of the local manufacturers were wanting his signature for 2020.

He settled on Toyota’s offer, and will race this year for Kondo in Super Formula and for TOM’S in Super GT’s top class. These are seats that are not only very well deserved, especially after what was arguably a harsh drop by Renault, but could also realistically carry him to the title as a rookie in either category.

It is a bit of an outside bet for him to be considered by Renault, but not one that would be totally unusual given Japan’s premier single-seater series has been used as a holding ground in recent years for F1-bound talent. Fenestraz also didn’t entirely end his links with Renault at the end of 2018, as last year’s GT3000 drive came in a car provided by partner manufacturer Nissan.

And one that missed the boat…

Pierre Gasly FRANCE 24y/o
2020 F1, 7th in 2019 F1, 15th in 2018 F1 – 2nd in 2017 SuperF, 16th in 2016-17 FE, 2016 GP2 champion, 2nd in 2014 FV8 3.5

Photo: Red Bull Content Pool

Photo: Red Bull Content Pool

Another young Frenchman who could have been in the frame is Pierre Gasly. However the 24-year-old has had a publicly known feud with Ocon in recent years, which might be too much to overcome to make this move across the F1 paddock likely.

Gasly?s 12-race stint with Red Bull Racing last year does not do him justice, but nor did it rid his reputation as a choker, yet his performances with AlphaTauri either side of that drive show he is more than deserving of being an F1 driver.

The resilience he showed from his failed stint at the A-team should make a transition to the higher-pressure environment of Renault easier than he found his last shot at machinery with podium potential, but would come at the cost of his relationship with Red Bull’s engine supplier Honda and the energy drink brand itself – an already flexible tie that doesn’t need to be cut.

He does have experience in the Renault ladder, having won the 2013 Eurocup and finished runner-up in FR3.5 a year later, and fits the bill nicely (Ocon situation aside) for what Renault actually needs. Such a move would also make him the third driver in as many years that Renault has poached from Red Bull, following on from McLaren-bound Ricciardo and Ferrari-bound Sainz.

And one that should have been on this list…

The unfortunate omission from this list is Anthoine Hubert ? a promising driver who was hot property in F2 last year but was tragically killed at Spa-Francorchamps. Hubert was bound for a seat at a top team this season and would have been a title contender, and it would have been exciting to see how he would have added to his two 2019 wins at the struggling Arden.

Given Ricciardo’s frustrations from his first year with Renault, and the slim chance of him being in a race-winning car this year, the Australian may have left the team even if Vettel’s Ferrari departure hadn’t occurred, and Hubert would have taken his place.

Additional?reporting by Elliot Wood

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