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 Motorsport 
Thursday, October 20 2022
Two Aussies in the frame for Ferrari junior drive; gauntlet laid down for mature-age rookie: F1 Pit Talk

There are no names more famous in motorsport than Ferrari, and later this month two Aussie racing hopefuls will be donning the famous rosso corsa in a bid to join the prestigious racing marque.

Jack Beeton and Gianmarco Pradel have been announced as having beaten all-comers at Ferrari’s Asia Pacific and Oceania trials in Malaysia at the end of September and are packing their bags for the final round in Maranello later this month.

The Ferrari Driver Academy is more than a decade old and counts several F1 drivers among its alumni, including Sergio Perez, Lance Stroll, Zhou Guanyu, Mick Schumacher and, foremost amount them, Charles Leclerc.

Cracking Formula 1 is increasingly dependent upon the backing of a major team, particularly as the rate of driver turnover slows — and even then it’s no guarantee; just ask Oscar Piastri — but there’s no team more influential than Ferrari.

And with Australians having a high hit rate when it comes to the Ferrari scouting final, there’s every chance one of these Aussie young guns could be about to step onto the conveyor belt towards Formula 1.

Elsewhere, after a long and arduous junior career of his own, Nyck de Vries is set to step in an F1 seat next year, but he’s already being warned by incoming team principal Franz Tost to hit the ground running.

Elsewhere, Kevin Magnussen has confirmed he’ll spend some of his off-season racing cars of a different kind, teaming up again with his father, Jan, for an endurance race in Abu Dhabi he hopes might go more smoothly than their previous father-son effort.

TWO AUSSIES MAKE IT TO FERRARI DRIVER ACADEMY FINALS

Two Australians are among just six drivers to make it through to the final round of the Ferrari Driver Academy scouting program searching for the Italian marque’s next F1 star.

Jack Beeton and Gianmarco Pradel were the quickest drivers at the Asia Pacific and Oceania trials and will travel to Maranello at the end of October, where they’ll be up against four other young talents for a chance to join the prestigious driver academy.

Beeton, 14 years old, has only just graduated from karting, meaning he had only some private F4 testing to fall back upon.

“It feels absolutely amazing to be selected,” he told Motorsport Australia. “My expectations for Italy are that it will be an amazing experience no matter what and a great learning opportunity about what it takes to be a F1 driver.

“Of course I am hopeful of making the cut.”

Pradel is in his first year of the New South Wales Formula Race Car series, which has seen him compete in a Formula 3-spec Dallara chassis and where he’s currently fourth in the standings.

“It is a massive … and it is a huge opportunity for me — one that I am both stoked and thankful for getting,” said the 16-year-old.

“I don’t have any expectations now. I am just happy to be going and I will just try to keep preparing as much as I can in readiness for the event.”

The Aussie duo will be competing Finland’s Tuukka Taponen, the 2022 World Karting Championship runner-up; Mexico’s Jesse Carrasquedo Jr, a two-time NACAM Formula 4 winner; the UAE’s Rashid Al Dhaheri, the 2021 junior World Karting Championship winner; and Emmo Fittipaldi, a three-time 2021 Danish Formula 4 winner and son of F1 champion Emerson Fittipaldi.

The final will run from 24 to 28 October and comprise “a series of tests to assess their physical ability, their attitude and mental suitability to life as a professional racing driver both on and off track”, including laps around the hallowed Fiorano test circuit.

Ferrari engineers will subsequently decide if any of the drivers are suitable for inclusion in the Ferrari Driver Academy.

Australian James Wharton took out the final in 2020 to join the academy last year. He’s competed in the Italian, German and UAE Formula 4 series this year, collecting five wins for a best finish of fifth in the Italian series.

GAUNTLET LAID DOWN FOR 2023 F1 ROOKIE

Nyck de Vries won’t get much time to acclimatise to Formula 1 or his new AlphaTauri team in 2023, with team principal Franz Tost saying he expect the Dutchman to be up to speed from the first round.

De Vries will make his long-awaited full-time debut next season as the replacement for Pierre Gasly, who will switch to Alpine to fill the space left by Fernando Alonso.

But the 27-year-old is no regular rookie. Not only was he a Formula 2 champion, but he has years of experience in Formula E and sportscar racing, including the 2020–21 Formula E world championship. He also has his maiden F1 debut out of the way, having substituted the unwell Alex Albon in Italy this year.

Tost says for these reasons De Vries won’t be given much slack to bring himself fully up to speed.

“I expect that this learning period for Nyck will be reduced to a couple of tests,” he said. “That means I expect him to be very competitive from the first race onwards in 2023.

“I expect a lot from Nyck because he has experience from the racing categories where he won races and championships, and therefore, once more, if the car works, I think that we will have a successful year.”

Bu Tost admitted that he doesn’t expect to be able to field De Vries in any practice sessions this year owing to his contractual ties to Mercedes. Though he’s hopeful of securing him in time for the post-season young drivers test in Abu Dhabi, there’s a chance his earliest representative F1 run will be during 2023 pre-season testing, which runs for just three days and is split between both drivers.

The last driver to make a similarly sudden switch to Formula 1 with an established career outside the category was Brendon Hartley, who also joined Toro Rosso, as it was then known, at the end of 2017 ahead of a full campaign in 2018.

The Kiwi arrived in the sport as a junior champion and with two WEC titles and a 24 Hours of Le Mans win under his belt but was comfortably seen off by Pierre Gasly and was dismissed from the team at the end of the season.

He’s since won at Le Mans twice more and added a third WEC championship to his resume.

MAGNUSSEN AND MAGNUSSEN TO TEAM UP IN 12 HOUR

Kevin Magnussen and father Jan Magnussen will team up again in December to take on the Gulf 12 Hours in Abu Dhabi.

Jan Magnussen enjoyed a brief F1 stint in the 1990s, entering 25 grands prix with McLaren and Stewart, but has enjoyed a prolific sportscar career featuring four Le Mans class wins and a best overall finish of fourth in 2003 and 2006. He’s also a two-time IMSA Sportscar champion.

The father-son duo has competed together once before — at Le Mans last season in the LMP2 class along with fellow Dane Anders Fjordbach. The trio finished 17th in class after a horror run of bad luck that included being crashed into by a rival, suffering a puncture and then enduring engine problems.

It nonetheless launched Kevin into what would have been a sportscar career with Peugeot’s WEC hypercar project before Haas called him back to Formula 1 earlier this year.

Jan and Kevin, along with American racer Mark Kvamme, will share an MDK Motorsports Ferrari 488 GT3 at Yas Marina on 9–11 December, less than a month after Magnussen Junior competes in the F1 season’s final race at the same track on 20 November.

The race is the final round of the Intercontinental GT Challenge. The season started with the Bathurst 12 Hour in May and travelled to the USA via the 24 Hours of Spa in July and the Indianapolis 8 Hour in October.

“I am of course also grateful to get another chance to run a race with my father and maybe even try to win one,” Kevin said, per Drive It.

Magnussen is currently 14th in the drivers standings with 22 points.

TOTO WOLFF TEMPERS MERCEDES 2023 CHANCES

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff says he expects Red Bull Racing to be favourite for a double championship again next season as his team continues to struggle to understand its troubled W13.

Mercedes dominated the sport from 2014 until last year, winning seven drivers and constructors championship doubles. It split the teams title with Max Verstappen’s first crown in 2021.

But its ambitious car concept under new rules this year hasn’t paid expected dividends, and though progress has been made, Wolff says it hasn’t been enough to make him confident the team will be in title contention next year.

“Obviously we have missed a lot of development time to find out about bouncing and porpoising and all these things,” he told the UK’s Channel 4. “So it’s clear that Red Bull is in a very favourable position not only for this year but also for the start of next year.

“We’ve talked about over the last few years [how] every series ends one day. There is no team that is winning every single championship over its lifetime. And that has happened.

“It has happened because we got the physics wrong. There’s not nothing mystical about it.

“What we got wrong was just how the car works, but that gives us confidence to sort it out.

“In terms of losing, I think it’s important to acknowledge that we just haven’t just we haven’t done a good enough job, and the guys over in Milton Keynes and Maranello have done.”

But Wolff said that he was energised by the challenge of fighting back from a losing position, an unfamiliar posture for a team that’s had things all its own way for the best part of the last decade.

“We are eager to be part of the very front fighting for race wins and fighting for a championship,” he said.

“If we were to continue our understanding and development of the car, I think we can catch up quickly.

“This is a ‘learning on the job’ exercise at the moment.

“Our simulations don’t always give us the right results to what the car is going to do on track, but that’s what makes it interesting.

“There is no sense of entitlement for us to win every single championship because that would be foolish.”

Mercedes is 67 points behind Ferrari for second in the constructors standings with four rounds remaining.

DE LA ROSA: ALONSO’S NOT TOUGH, HE’S JUST MISUNDERSTOOD

Long-time Fernando Alonso ally and newly minted Aston Martin ambassador Pedro de la Rosa says Fernando Alonso’s reputation for being a difficult team member is overstated and down to a language barrier in a sport dominated by the British.

Alonso is one of Formula 1’s fiercest competitors, but that ferociousness has often spilt over into his own team, and he’s developed a reputation for sewing internal division and creating chaos.

He’s spectacularly fallen out with both McLaren and Ferrari, and he’s leaving Alpine under somewhat controversial circumstances, having given the team every impression he was intending to renew terms before going behind its back to sign a blockbuster deal with Aston Martin.

It’s led some to speculate that Alonso’s multiyear deal with the team will come crashing to a premature conclusion once he buts heads with billionaire team owner Lawrence Stroll, whose main aim in arriving gin Formula 1 was to secure his son Lance a seat.

But De la Rosa doesn’t see it that way and says perceptions of Alonso as a tough operator are largely down to a language and cultural barrier.

“I don’t think that Fernando is a difficult guy to handle,” he said. “He’s just very genuine, very honest.

“The fact that English is not his native tongue sometimes make him a bit harsh when he tries to describe things, but he’s very honest, and what he tells you is what he feels about the car, about the team, about how to be competitive.”

De la Rosa said it was up to the team to ensure the relationship stayed honest, with competition Alonso’s only motivator despite a long history of polemics.

“As long as you always tell him exactly what’s going on and what is the truth, you will never have a problem with him,” he said.

“But the moment you try to hide information or he feels that you are trying to keep some information aside, you will have problems.

“He is just a very competitive individual. That’s the reality. If you are as competitive as him, you won’t have any problem with Fernando.”

UNITED STATES GP DOWN A SUPPORT RACE AFTER W SERIES HITS TROUBLE

The all-women W Series has called time on its 2022 season three races early after running into financial trouble last month.

The category was due to travel to the United States Grand Prix on the Formula 1 undercard this weekend but has run out of cash after a deal to fund the sport suddenly collapsed despite contracts being signed.

A double-header finale at the Mexico City Grand Prix was supposed to follow the round in Austin, but instead the series has been declared after seven rounds, with Briton Jamie Chadwick declared champion for the third consecutive season.

Series CEO Catherine Bond Muir said the cancellation of the final three races would allow the sport to secure funding to ensure the 2023 season can go ahead as planned.

“As a start-up in only our third season of racing, we are always working hard to ensure regularity of funding as we continue to grow our business,” she said.

“We have worked hard to raise the required funding to enable us to finish the season. Unfortunately, it was not possible to do this in the short time frame required following the failure of contracted funds to arrive and the global economic downturn.”

Bond Muir said the sport’s highly publicised troubles have ironically attracted new potential investors interested in saving the series.

“It is well documented that women’s sports receive far less funding than its male counterparts, and W Series is no exception.

“We are incredibly thankful for the help and support we have received in recent weeks following the news of the financial difficulties we’ve been facing, which has accelerated our fundraising process and given us great optimism as we look to 2023 and beyond.”

The W Series operates with a unique business model designed to promote more young women into the upper echelons of the F1 feeder pathway.

Entry is free for drivers, and the winner receives US$500,000, with a further $1 million being split among the rest of the field.

The series has been criticised by some for separating women from mainstream motorsport despite racing being one of the few sports to allow competition between the sexes.

Chadwick, who has dominated the W Series from its inception, has become a member of the Williams driver academy but has thus far failed to move up the junior ladder. She is currently weighing up a move to the United States to compete in Indy Lights.

Posted by: AT 03:55 am   |  Permalink   |  Email
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