MN’s editor takes a look back on some of the bear traps that laid in wait for some previous up-and-coming racers
Conducting the Readers’ Questions interviews for Motorsport News is always a pleasure. It is time to take a deep-dive into the background of some of the sport’s best-loved racers and gives the space and time for some proper behind-the-scenes stories to be told. There is one common thread that has emerged, particularly among the racers who blazed their trail in the 1980s and 1990s, that was highlighted once more in this week’s piece with the 1986 British Formula 3 title-winner Andy Wallace. It is something the modern-day racers simply don’t have to contend with.
The golden ticket in the multi-chassis junior single-seater categories back in that era was getting your backside into the right chassis at the right time. From Formula Ford right up to the coat-tails of Formula 1 in Formula 3000, a driver had to make sure that they were in the right seat at the right time.
So often the trajectory of a promising career – particularly one where the participant was scraping around without the necessary deep pockets – could be derailed by the wrong choice at the wrong time.
If they had one shot to make it big in the next category on their path to the top, getting into an uncompetitive machine at just the wrong moment could sap all of the energy and excitement out of their predicted rise to the top, and many drivers have fallen foul at this stage. It was not only about being in the right chassis either: the engine tuner had to be right, the team and, in some classes, the tyre firm had to be the most competitive one as well. There was so many pitfalls to avoid.
In Wallace’s case, his promotion to Formula 3000 in 1987 came in a March, a car that, as you can read in his interview, almost stymied him due to its restraints. It wasn’t that the car was a bad one, but it was just a bad one for him.
His Madgwick team swapped to a Lola before the end of the campaign and it turned his pace around.
It happened to many drivers. Think of future World champion Damon Hill’s initial steps into International Formula 3000. Without the backing and after a brief foray in a Lola at the end of 1988, he made a switch to the ungainly looking Mooncraft chassis for the latter rounds of 1989 in which his best result was 14th. Luckily, his determination prevailed but it is a snapshot example of what can happen.
This is a dilemma faced drivers all the way up the ladder but, as ever, there was also the rub.
If a driver was struggling for budget, then the seats which were likely to be less competitive were perhaps the most attainable. It was a bit like gambling on a horse in the Grand National. An outsider could be enough to get a competitor in the game and there was a chance, however slim, that it could upset the formbook. But the odds were generally stacked against that happening.
This wasn’t unique to Formula 3000 either: the Dallara revolution in British F3 in 1993 was a staging point and even series dominator
Paul Stewart Racing was forced into a midyear chassis swap from a Reynard to the allconquering Italian machine to galvanise its title attack (rivals Edenbridge Racing and WSR did the same thing too). That had come in the decade after the Ralt vs Reynard wars, and that too provided season-by-season pitfalls.
Of course, there are other factors in play now in the mostly one-make junior single-seater ranks that didn’t affect the up-and-comers of a bygone era.
The magic bullet right now is for a rising star to earn a shot at a big firm’s young driver programme. Being spotted by something like a Red Bull, Ferrari Driver Academy or Mercedes, for example, can be the leg-up that is necessary to reach the top and that simply wasn’t available a few decades ago. That means that a teenaged talent is scrutinised to the nth degree and there is no room to hide. Those lucky selected drivers can be on the scrapheap before the reach the age of
20 if they haven’t met the high standards demanded of them by the paymasters.
So which era was kinder to ambitious young racing drivers? The simple answer is that progressing to the top of motorsport is just as hard as it has ever been, even though the obstacles might be very different today.
“The magic bullet for any young driver now is a driver development scheme”