While the three-weekend break since the Australian Grand Prix will have been a strange pause for seasoned Formula 1 types, it may have come at exactly the right moment for the sport’s three rookies in this mammoth 23-race season.
Oscar Piastri, Logan Sargeant and Nyck de Vries all came up through the single-seater ladder via Formula 3 (or GP3) and Formula 2, and all had some level of F1 experience from inside a team before making their debuts this year.
But each brings a dramatically different background to the sport. Piastri has been heralded as a potential great for the scale of his junior exploits. Sargeant is battling the perception of being promoted to F1 a season to early. De Vries arrives with a world championship already under his belt.
With three races in the books — a small but nonetheless useful sample size — we are starting to see how their backgrounds are shaping their performances. Just as they undoubtedly have, we can take stock on how they’re faring after their first steps in F1 — and where they stand relative to one another ahead of the sport’s resumption this weekend.
1. OSCAR PIASTRI
Race head to head: tied 1-1 with Lando Norris when both have finished
Qualifying head to head: 2-1 to Piastri
Average qualifying margin: 0.029 seconds to Piastri
Piastri debuted in Formula 1 under a spotlight even bigger than his outstanding feeder formulae results should have warranted thanks to his high-profile acquisition by McLaren last year.
His mission to make good on his junior promise was made even more difficult by the team delivering a car less competitive than last year’s already disappointing machine.
But despite circumstances being stacked considerably against him, Piastri has made the most of his chances, and we’ve already seen some good glimpses of his enormous potential.
In Bahrain qualifying he would have matched teammate Lando Norris in Q1 but for a mistake at the first turn, which set up all the almost half-second deficit that left him 18th. Norris just squeezed through to Q2 before qualifying 11th, exaggerating the gap.
Neither driver scored in a disastrous race of technical failure.
Piastri absolutely flew in Saudi Arabia, qualifying ninth and starting eighth in McLaren’s only Q3 appearance to date on an evening Norris crashed trying to access the same level of performance around the challenging high-speed track.
Piastri was blameless in the small first-lap crash that unexpectedly put both McLaren drivers out of the points and his pace in the race was strong. He finished 15ht and two places ahead of Norris.
Qualifying in Australia was another what-if, with a mistake at turn 11 almost doubling Piastri’s deficit to Norris to 0.4 seconds and knocking him out in Q1.
But his race was solid while so many other drivers lost their cool around him, facilitating his maiden points with an eighth-place finish two spots behind Norris.
On the surface it looks like a reasonable if unspectacular set of results, but there’s much more to Piastri’s rookie campaign than meets the eye.
“Certainly what we see is that Oscar is close to Lando in most of the corners,” team boss Andrea Stella said. “I would say this year the closeness between the two drivers is certainly much better than what we saw last year.”
Even Norris admitted to feeling challenged by Piastri’s out-of-the-box speed.
“From both sides, the off-track and the on-track, it’s a good start. He’s keeping me on my toes,” he said.
Piastri himself has been cautious not to read too much into his own results, emphasising that he’s still on a steep learning curve.
But everything he’s demonstrated so far bodes very well for Australia’s next F1 hope.
2. LOGAN SARGEANT
Race head to head: 1-0 to Alex Albon when both have finished
Qualifying head to head: 3-0 to Alex Albon
Average qualifying margin: 0.570 seconds to Alex Albon
American rookie Sargeant is still rough around the edges, but he just edged De Vries in this ranking for the signs of serious speed we’ve seen as he attempts to adjust to life as a Formula 1 driver.
His teammate Alex Albon is no slouch, having taken the Formula 2 title down to the wire against George Russell and Lando Norris, and the Thai driver is capable of great things when he gets even the relatively uncompetitive Williams car into the sweet spot.
But already Sargeant has shown he has the pace to match — sort of.
In Bahrain he missed out on Q2 after setting an identical lap time to Norris, with the regulations giving the berth to the McLaren driver by virtue of completing the lap first. He started one place behind Albon, who did make it through to the second segment.
In Saudi Arabia he set a Q1 time faster than Albon’s and good enough for an easy Q2 spot — but then he clumsily crossed the pit entry line out of the final corner, forcing the FIA to delete his time.
Had the lap stood, not only would it have reduced his qualifying head-to-head deficit to 2-1 against him, but his average margin to Albon would have been slashed down to a much more respectable 0.289 seconds.
He crashed trying to match the lap in the dying seconds of the session, and his race was lacklustre on Sunday, beating only the downtrodden Norris and way-off-the-pace Valtteri Bottas.
In Australia he was genuinely no match for his teammate, and he exited the race in a clumsy crash with De Vries that some will justifiably argue should see him demoted to third in this ranking.
But, similar to Piastri even if to a lesser degree, there’s clearly more to Sargeant’s results than you’d think at first glance. He’s also up against an underrated competitor in Albon, who hauled the car into Q3 in Melbourne and Q2 in Bahrain as well as scored improbable points via the first race of the season.
Considering Sargeant was a close call for promotion this season owing to having completed only one so-so Formula 2 campaign, he’s doing enough to prove wrong the doubters of his early call-up.
3. NYCK DE VRIES
Race head to head: 3-0 to Yuki Tsunoda
Qualifying head to head: 3-0 to Yuki Tsunoda
Average qualifying margin: 0.421 seconds to Yuki Tsunoda
Nyck de Vries may well be thankful that Piastri has stolen headlines as the year’s highest profile rookie, because by rights it should be the Dutchman under the spotlight.
De Vries arrives in Formula 1 as the best decorated rookie in years as both a Formula 2 champion and, more impressively, Formula E world champion. His performance substituting Albon at last year’s Italian Grand Prix and scoring points was the killer supporting argument he needed to attempt to transfer those successes to the pinnacle of motorsport.
AlphaTauri boss Franz Tost also set expectations extremely high during the pre-season, likening his raw racing ability to that of Max Verstappen.
The hype was so significant that the pressure was thrown back onto Yuki Tsunoda to save his career.
And perhaps it’s partly thanks to a corresponding lift by the Japanese driver that De Vries is ranked last among the rookies, because his first three grand prix — admittedly a small sample size — suggest he’s yet to fully grasp the challenge of Formula 1.
While the gap has come down from a mammoth 0.721 seconds in Bahrain to a more respectable 0.236 seconds in Australia, his performance in Melbourne included the benefit of AlphaTauri’s new floor, which the team thinks could be worth up to 0.2 seconds. Tsunoda was using the old floor after damaging his example during a practice session.
Of course De Vries is also in the least favourable team for a debut. While McLaren is still bobbing in the midfield and Williams is buoyed by discovering its car is better than expected, AlphaTauri has sunk towards the back after a worse start to the year than hoped and is battling to catch back up.
It’s interesting in that context that both team staff and Tsunoda himself have praised De Vries’s technical feedback in that process.
But it’s also true to say that he’s yet to truly trouble Tsunoda, whose consistency looks like it’s finally a match for his pace after some gutsy defensive drives to score the team’s sole point this season.
That could be a real problem for De Vries come the end of the year, for while there are advantages to making a debut away from the spotlight, it’s also much harder to establish yourself without a regular shot at points. Every standout Tsunoda performance will hit double.
