At the end of Red Bull’s debut year in F1, the Austrian company bought the cash-strapped Minardi team. The Italian minnows struggled on and off track for over a decade; Red Bull saved them and rebranded them Toro Rosso. This move’s thinking was for Red Bull to blood their young academy drivers into F1 without placing them in the spotlight. Since that time, several F1 teams followed Red Bull by developing their driver academies. Suddenly, the brightest stars from karting were getting scouted and signed by F1 teams. It inserted these drivers on a fast-track to F1, teams would spend millions of pounds on developing the future stars. Since 2005, only two driver academy graduates would become World Champions despite all that money. It’s time to assess whether they are worthwhile or not.
Why They Are Worthwhile
One of the big pluses that came with driver academies was the slow elimination of pay-drivers. Those are drivers who generate large sponsorship critical to a team’s financial sustainability; arguably, many of them weren’t fast enough to be on the F1 grid. Gaston Mazzacanne, Pedro Diniz and Alex Yoong were all paying drivers who had no business driving an F1 car. Pay drivers take a spot away from a faster driver who may not own the funding required to get a seat in F1. Due to teams funding young stars, the sponsorship caveat gets avoided.
Drivers such as Lando Norris, George Russell and Lewis Hamilton wouldn’t have made it into F1 if there were no academies.
It is not just those three drivers, however. Charles Leclerc, Carlos Sainz, Sebastian Vettel, Daniel Ricciardo and Pierre Gasly all emerged out of driver academies. As the F1 teams expanded their academies, the quality of drivers on the grid improved massively. Driver academies ensured that the best young drivers come into F1, regardless of how much money they may generate. That, in turn, created an incredible level of depth in F1, there are superstars everywhere. That is a marked improvement from fifteen years when the grid boasted journeymen and drivers out of their depth. The end product is a more dramatic, exciting F1 with better drivers racing each other. It is no surprise that, in my opinion, 2020 and 2019 were two of the most incredible seasons over the last decade.
Why They Aren’t Worthwhile
The counter-argument to driver academies hinges on one point; the academies only produced two world champions. Lewis Hamilton got backing from Mclaren at the age of 12. That support saw him rise into F1 and become a world champion with Mclaren in 2008. Sebastian Vettel is the only other driver to come through the ranks. He did so at BMW, before going on to win four world titles between 2010 and 2013. Those two are examples of success; unfortunately, there is a laundry list of drivers discarded by their teams. Jaime Alguersuari made his F1 debut as a 19-year-old for Toro Rosso. The young Spaniard was part of the Red Bull umbrella; he got thrown out within three seasons. Alguersuari is now a DJ in Ibiza.
Red Bull, in particular, displayed ruthless decision-making when it came to their academy graduates. Sebastian Buemi (Le Mans Winner) got shown the door, as did Formula E champion Jean-Eric Vergne. This year saw Red Bull drop Alex Albon from the team altogether; the Austrian outfit continually looks for the silver-bullet driver. They employ a scatter-gun approach to signing young drivers, only to toss them out like rubbish when the results take a turn for the worse.
It is not just Red Bull, Ferrari, Mclaren and Alpine all displayed the same ruthlessness with their young drivers. In 2011, Ferrari decided that Sergio Perez needed to go. Mclaren gave up on Stoffel Vandoorne after two-years in a lousy car; the Woking-based team didn’t even give F2 champion Nyck De Vries a shot at a practice session, never mind a full-time race seat. Alpine announced their 2021 academy drivers last week; however, we’ve yet to see any graduates rise into F1. Like Red Bull, these teams pumped millions of dollars into their programs, only Lando Norris, Charles Leclerc and the late Jules Bianchi got drives in F1.
It is very rare for young drivers to debut in F1 and drive quickly. They need time; sadly, for those drivers, the F1 teams are only searching for superstars. Those drivers that start slowly need time, conversely, in the world’s fastest sport, time is the one thing everybody is racing; there is no time, no maturation process. Drivers in their late-teens and early-twenties must be fast from the start. In the eyes of the teams running these programs, it is justifiable to spend a lot of money to find one Leclerc, Verstappen or Russell, even if they must go through ten others to find them.
Then there is the logjam that gets created once a team unearths a star. Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc are entrenched at their respective teams. The world views them as the future of F1; they are not going anywhere.
Therefore, they’ve created a young driver logjam for those teams. For Mick Schumacher, Robert Schwartzman and Juri Vips, it will prove very difficult to break into Red Bull and Ferrari. One could argue that the driver academy served its purpose and is no longer worthwhile.
The biggest issue with driver academies is that some teams hoard too many drivers. Ferrari and Red Bull, in particular, own too many drivers in the lower categories. In 2020, Ferrari had Callum Ilott, Mick Schumacher, Marcus Armstrong, Robert Schwartzman and Giuliano Alesi in F2. With Schumacher taking the Haas seat, there is nowhere for these drivers to go. Contrast that to Mercedes focusing solely on George Russel; which means that one can make a solid argument that the scatter-gun approach is not the best method.
Alpine are facing a different giant iceberg sized caveat: Alpine doesn’t own a second-team like Red Bull and Ferrari do. The French team are hoarding drivers and have no opportunity to place their young drivers in a race-seat.
The amount of money and time teams pour into academies is staggering, given that the return is minimal. In their desperation to find the next big thing, F1 teams blocked the route into F1 for their own young drivers.
So, Are They Worthwhile?
From a financial standpoint, only if they find a driver who will win world championships. In the history of F1, there are only 33 world champions out of the hundreds that drove an F1 race. The numbers suggest that it isn’t worthwhile. Nevertheless, from a fan’s perspective, driver academies raised the talent level on the grid. There are young superstars all over the grid in 2021, that will provide entertaining and exciting racing. The days of the journeymen racers are gone, now they are all the fastest, bravest and best drivers racing in F1. What the new-era of drivers bring to F1 is invaluable; it is a golden era of talent. Analyzing through that prism, then yes, driver academies are worthwhile.
