Franco Colapinto comes completely out of left field? I had not heard that they were considering him, but makes sense probably to get data on your own Academy driver when you can.
I guess Ralf Schumacher will whine again next weekend because it’s not Mick.
I’m honestly surprised it’s not Mick or Kimi (freshly 18 years old)
I think Merc learned their lesson about putting juniors into Williams when Williams blocked Russell from going to Merc in 2020
Fair point, always a risk If someone isn’t in your car. But if Merc drags their heels someone could always pick Kimi up first
Unless Toto somehow succeeds in his wild recruit-Verstappen goose chase I’d say it’s almost guaranteed that Kimi will be in the second Merc next year, so I don’t think the risk of losing him is all that high. Though yes, if Max goes Merc Kimi might look for other options.
That’s fair, I guess the seats are really narrowing down. I guess it’s more than Williams wants to be a legit team, not a stepping stone. Someone has to keep the seat warm and not crash it till Carlos gets in it
I guess they would really, really like it if their own academy driver is actually good, yeah. Considering both their seats are taken for the short term, it makes a bit of sense to get a gauge on whether Colapinto is worth investing in for the long term.
This seems super risky btw. Colapinto’s first few races after Monza will be Baku and Singapore. Not exactly tracks where you want a rookie to start his F1 career. Lawson was super impressive there, but is that reproducible?
And Colapinto’s junior career isn’t really more impressive than Logan’s…
(Also, different issue: argentinian fans coming newly into F1 could be ugly given what we have seen in recent years.)
argentinian fans coming newly into F1 could be ugly given what we have seen in recent years
I am missing context on this, or the coffee I just had probably hasn’t kicked in yet. Care to explain?
Colapinto is Argentinian. Argentinian sports fans have a certain reputation for bad sportsmanship. Seriously, you can google it and will instantly get articles and info on it. There have been scandals even with sportsmen themselves being racist. With argentinian drivers currently having a resurgence in motorsports, it seems that soccer fans are starting to watch motorsports and bring their bad behaviour here. In Indycar, Agustin Canapino’s “fans” have sent death threats to Theo Pourchaire – which Canapino denied in a weird public statement that led to him losing his seat. The year before his fans had attacked Calum Illot.
Holy! Thank you so much for explaining, didn’t know anything about this.
I don’t understand this. You replace a crash-prone driver with a complete rookie. You don’t even care about that rookie, you already have two drivers signed for 2025. So what’s the point? Money? How much money is he bringing then?
Money? How much money is he bringing then?
He’ll hopefully cost less than Sargeant
I wonder what Sargeant will do after F1.
IndyCar, probably.
Where he will likely make more money. It’s really difficult and financially unsound for most American drivers to go to Formula 1, unfortunately. Largely because they would need to be in Europe or Asia coming up, because there aren’t any good US junior series -> F1 pipelines.
Hell, you could be a prodigy who gets 1st in Indy NXT and then 3rd in your rookie IndyCar season and you wouldn’t have enough super license points to go to Formula 1. And even if you did well enough over three seasons to earn a super license, F1 teams wouldn’t pay you nearly what IndyCar teams would because you’d be relatively unknown. And you’d be in a garbage backmarker car.
Meanwhile if you’re good you can earn big money and win races in IndyCar rather than putzing around in the backmarkers in F1 (like Rossi, who went from scoring no points in a shitty Marussia in 2014-2015 to winning the Indy 500 in 2016).
Formula-E?
Who? I just checked, he doesn’t have a mathematical chance of placing higher than second. Tough luck. Also, who?
