Francesco Bagnaia has a hand on the world championship, though Ducati couldn't make up its damn mind in Sepang. The Moto2 championship saw another massive pendulum swing, as Ai Ogura fell while battling for the lead on the final lap, handing the championship lead back to Augusto Fernández entering the Valencia finale. There was a lot of downtime in Austin before Max Verstappen won a single-season record-tying 13th grand prix in comeback fashion after a slow pit stop. A few drivers are more egomaniacal than we first thought. A familiar name won in the World Rally Championship. You can spin cars on pit lane in NASCAR with no reprimand. Here is a rundown of what got me thinking.
Missed Talent
Nyck de Vries will be full-time next year in Formula One driving for AlphaTauri. It was a long-time coming.
Results suggested de Vries was always capable of reaching the highest level. He won the 2014 Eurocup Formula Renault 2.0 championship, 137 points ahead of Alexander Albon, who was third in that championship. De Vries also won the Formula Renault 2.0 Alps Series that year, 101 points clear of Charles Leclerc and 177 points clear of George Russell in fourth.
Leclerc made his Formula One debut in 2018. Albon and Russell debuted in 2019. What took de Vries so long to get his test of Formula One?
He had won the 2019 Formula Two championship, but as a Mercedes junior driver, there was no room on the Formula One grid, leaving him to be placed in Mercedes' Formula E program while also competing in sports cars.
But persistence paid off. The opportunity finally came to de Vries when Albon was ruled out of this year's Italian Grand Prix after undergoing an emergency appendectomy prior to the race. A ninth-place finish on debut led to greater interest in de Vries' future service. Enter AlphaTauri, and now de Vries will get a full-time shot.
If Albon's appendix had not burst, would the same fervor had been there for de Vries? Probably not. Maybe de Vries would have settled for a Williams seat in 2023 or maybe he would continue to be a Mercedes reserve driver, racing in other series, and we would still be wondering what he is capable of.
All it took to change perceptions was one race, the least thing any driver can ask for, but even that is something most do not get. If Italy doesn't happen, de Vries might never run a grand prix. His career could take him elsewhere and we would never know what he could do in a Formula One car.
Is Formula One the collection of the best drivers in the world or the collection of the best drivers trying to be there?
There are thousands of drivers competing in motorsports in a variety series, from tin-tops to open-wheels, electric to petrol, off-road to asphalt, ovals to street courses. Only 22 drivers have started a Formula One race this year. Dating back to the start of the turbo-hybrid era beginning in 2014, only 53 drivers have started a Formula One race.
In nine seasons, just under five-dozen drivers have started a Formula One race. That is not many. For comparison, shift 50 years in the past and from 1964 to 1972, 122 drivers started a Formula One race. There were 112 races in that nine-season period. In the turbo-hybrid era, 162 races have been contested with three more left to run in the 2022 season. About 36% more races and yet about 53% fewer drivers competing.
De Vries got his chance. Many will never get even a straight-line test in a Formula One car let alone a race.
Nearly all the drivers in Formula One were champions at some level, but all of them have also been defeated at some level. None of these drivers have spotless junior records. Some went years without championships before getting that one title. Some won early and didn't win as they moved up the ranks, but were still competitive enough to justify a chance at the highest level. Some never quite got a championship, but were constantly in the top five.
Other drivers had near identical records to de Vries, but never got that call. Never became a reserve driver. Never got a testing opportunity. Never was on the Formula One radar. It doesn't mean they weren't capable of reaching Formula One. They just didn't attract such an offer, and there are numerous drivers who stand out as missed talent.
Take Max Verstappen. His only season in Formula Three saw Verstappen finish third in the championship. Esteban Ocon won the championship. In the middle of those two was Tom Blomqvist, whose career took him to Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters and then Formula E, and this year Blomqvist became the IMSA Prototype championship with Meyer Shank Racing while also testing an IndyCar.
Motorsports is filled with drivers that we wonder what they could have done if they had gotten a call to drive in Formula One.
António Félix da Costa basically lost a coin flip with Daniil Kvyat for the second Scuderia Toro Rosso seat in the 2014 Formula One season. Da Costa never ran in Formula One, but he has been a winner in Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters, a Formula E champion and a winner in sports cars.
Sam Bird was 20 points shy of the 2013 GP2 Series championship. Bird was a Mercedes development driver and did some testing for the team, but he never even got a Friday practice. Onto sports cars he went. He won the FIA World Endurance Championship LMP2 championship. He has been a regular Formula E race winner.
Bird's Jaguar Racing Formula E teammate Mitch Evans was the 2013 GP3 Series championship and won races in GP2, but Evans couldn't get a sniff of Formula One. To Formula E he went and he is coming off a vice-championship season in 2022.
Nick Cassidy has won practically everywhere he has raced. Cassidy only had one season in the European Formula Three championship and he was fourth behind Lance Stroll, Maximilian Günther and George Russell. But from there Cassidy went to Japan and won a Super GT and Super Formula championship, and he has since own in DTM and Formula E.
Felix Rosenqvist might be the greatest of the misses. Rosenqvist was in the top three of the European Formula Three championship in three of four seasons, including the 2015 championship ahead of Antonio Giovinazzi, Charles Leclerc, Lance Stroll, George Russell and Alexander Albon. He has since won in Formula E, was third in the Super Formula championship, 4.5 points behind Pierre Gasly, and Rosenqvist has since won in IndyCar.
Then there is Álex Palou, an IndyCar champion who took his first laps in a Formula One weekend this past Friday at Circuit of the Americas driving for McLaren. Palou was never a highly sought after when in European junior series. He won in GP3, significantly performing better than his equipment, but his career took him to Japan where he won in Super Formula and challenged for a championship before moving to IndyCar.
Confined to the medium tire compound, Palou's time were never going to be blisteringly quick in the first free practice, but the Spaniard ran comparable lap times to McLaren's Lando Norris on the same compound. He was in the ballpark. It was one 60-minute session, but for one hour, Palou showed he belonged. Whether he gets more opportunities or greater opportunities remains to be seen. Whether or not other drivers like Palou and de Vries get that Formula One taste is a matter of time. Some will, most will not.
Based on numbers alone, it is unfathomable that Formula One, a series of 20 drivers has the best 20 drivers in the world competing in each race. Is it realistic that the top 20 landed in these 20 cars? Basic logic suggests the top 20 are spread among many different series? Formula One has some, probably a good number of the top 20, but not the top 20, especially when teams are employing drivers for payment to keep the team on the grid.
If Formula One really was the collection of the top 20 drivers on the planet, the hiring practices would be more open than what we currently see. We would see more drivers like de Vries getting hired after a few years in Formula E and sports cars. Scott Dixon would have gotten a call years ago. Shane van Gisbergen would be on teams' radars. Sébastien Buemi would have made a comeback around 2017. Honda would have made sure Naoki Yamamoto was on the grid. We wouldn't still be wondering about what Da Costa, Bird, Evans, Cassidy, Rosenqvist and many more could have done in Formula One. We would have already seen it.
It is fantastical to believe Formula One is the motorsports Mount Olympus, a collection of the best that exist, but it isn't. It never will be. Plenty are forgotten in the world of Formula One. Nothing suggests Formula One teams will become more critical in their driver selection process in the future. As much as they want the best drivers, they really want the best driver they can develop under their own thumb, a driver they can meticulously condition into learning the team's method and vocabulary and falling in line when the master snaps his fingers.
As with most things in life, decisions are made about control. Driver selection is about control as much as it is about winning. In the 21st century, the team managers at the back of the garage or on the pit wall are less inclined to hire an outsider who has succeeded elsewhere and has his own recipe for success. They want to win, but they want to minimize headaches as well.
This ethos isn't changing anytime soon, and we are more likely going to see drivers missed because they weren't selected for a team's driver academy at 15 years old, because as you know 15 years old is the ripe age for a driver's potential, or because they didn't have a multi-billionaire father who never said no because, again avoiding headaches. When you have the money, it is easier, and quicker, to throw $80 million at your child than to deal with a temper-tantrum.
A few will get their chance, but they will remain few, as few as we are accustomed to seeing. Most will find careers elsewhere, winning championships elsewhere. They will make comfortable livings and find happiness, even if they will always have that thought of what could have been had a Formula One team ever given them a call.
Champions From the Weekend
Red Bull Racing clinched the World Constructors' Championship with Max Verstappen's victory and Sergio Pérez's fourth-place finish in the United States Grand Prix.
Winners From the Weekend
You know about Max Verstappen, but did you know...
Francesco Bagnaia won MotoGP's Malaysian Grand Prix, his seventh victory of the season. Tony Arbolino won the Moto2 race, his third victory of the season. John McPhee won the Moto3 race, his first victory since September 13, 2020 at Misano.
Kyle Larson won the NASCAR Cup race from Homestead, his third victory of the season. Noah Gragson won the Grand National Series race, his eighth victory of the season. Ty Majeski won the Truck race, his second victory of the season.
Álvaro Bautista (race one and race two) and Toprak Razgatlioglu (SuperPole race) split the World Superbike races from San Juan Villicum. Dominique Aegerter swept the World Supersport races.
Sébastien Ogier won Rally Catalunya, his first victory of the season, his 55th career victory, and this is the tenth consecutive season Ogier has won a World Rally Championship round.
Coming Up This Weekend
Formula One heads south to Mexico.
NASCAR heads north to Martinsville.
Super Formula concludes its season with a doubleheader at Suzuka.
Supercars has its penultimate round at Surfers Paradise.
