Opinion: James Newbold

Backing lesser-known names isn’t a guaranteed means of success, but that doesn’t make Mclaren’s approach to its driver programme any less valid

Setting up a young driver academy is a proven method for Formula 1 teams to get their hooks into once-in-a-generation-talents before they get snapped up by their rivals. And in recent years, automotive manufacturers Mclaren, Aston Martin and now Bentley have jumped onto the bandwagon and set up schemes for youngsters looking to get a foothold on the professional ladder in GT racing.

Since 2017, Mclaren’s Driver Development Programme (DDP) has run two 570S GT4S via partner team Tolman Motorsport in the British GT Championship. Headed up by 2001 Renault Clio champion Danny Buxton, DDP drivers are assigned an experienced mentor from Mclaren’s pool of coaches who travel to every round, receive a modest salary and have all their expenses covered.

Although the disciplines are poles apart, the end goal for the DDP is no different than for any F1 academy – to find the best drivers possible to represent their brand in future. And it’s the‘future’element that is crucial in unpicking Mclaren’s choices for its 2020 intake (see left).

Compared to its outgoing contingent – which included Formula Ford Festival winner Josh Smith and Renault Clio Cup runner-up James Dorlin – Katie Milner, Harry Hayek, Michael Benyahia and Alain Valente have fewer standout moments on their CVS. Benyahia’s Formula Renault 2.0 NEC title in 2017, in which only three other drivers contested the full season and he failed to win a race, is the most significant accolade.

If Mclaren wanted to guarantee itself a first British GT title for the 570S – a race winner in every season since its debut in 2016 – then it could have taken the easy route and picked drivers simply based on their results. Among those passed over were last year’s BRDC British F3 champion Linus Lundqvist, Dean Macdonald – who scored with three fastest laps in British GT this year – and 2017 British F4 champion Jamie Caroline, all of whom could reasonably be expected to win races next year.

It could go further still by ditching the emphasis on developing future talents altogether and adopt the approach of keeping the same tried-and-tested line-up year in, year out. If Mclaren had retained Dorlin and Smith – arguably the fastest pairing in GT4 this season – for another crack next year in a team they know well, it would take a brave person to bet against them. After all, it was only because they retired three times this year when in winning positions that they lost any realistic chance of the title.

But that’s not why Mclaren runs the DDP. It’s not a contrived basis for ensuring GT4 domination – as Buxton puts it,“we give a promised one-year platform, what they make of it is up to them”– but an investment in the future. Picking drivers who are proven in other categories also means accepting any learned habits that have become ingrained, which is why, for Buxton, the established drivers with greater experience“have got to come in and really dominate to be picked”.

“What we really want is to get someone who has done half that and see where we can take them to,”he says.“the sky is the limit with these drivers. We can really push them with coaching, with engineer training, with testing, give them everything we need to see if we can take them past some of the more experienced ones.

“For Mclaren Automotive to get maximum exposure from it, what a great story to be able to take some of the lesser known people who have done tremendously well in the assessment and turn them into a GT superstar.

“A lot of these people haven’t had proper coaching before. So they come in and they’re OK, but they have proper debriefs where they’re pushed hard and suddenly you find massive gains.”

For that reason, it would be premature to weigh up the prospects of the 2020 intake just yet, but all have good potential. Valente,

23, has raced in GTS since 2016, including a season in GT3 in Italy. Both he and Benyahia, 19, were race winners in ADAC GT4 last year in the 570S, while Hayek, 21, whose 2017 British F3 season was curtailed by a back injury, came recommended“by several people”prior to the evaluation and“won everyone over”. Buxton was impressed too with the“very calm, unflustered”milner, 20. “She’ll surprise a lot of people, her pace was brilliant,”he says.

As Buxton admits, marketing considerations do come into the equation, and an intention to expand the global reach of the DDP is reflected in the nationalities of the drivers. In previous years, all four were British. Now only Milner is.

“We weren’t going to pick international drivers for the sake of it – they still had to deliver the goods,”says Buxton.“but we want to raise the profile of the programme and, by having the different continents represented, it goes a long way to doing that.”

But if that’s the difference between having a major manufacturer invest in a national programme and not, then some international flavour is surely worth having. Mclaren may not have picked the most obvious contenders for its

2020 intake, but that doesn’t make the DDP any less valid – or indeed, any less exciting.

“A lot of these people have not been coached before. Push them and there’s massive gains”