Re: Williams looking to kill another Senna?


forty wrote:

I don't know that Andretti is a fair comparison. Little Mikey grew up in
the North American racing scene and didn't adjust to the European
environment. His refusal to move to Europe hurt him as well. Other than
that, his erratic driving style was more of an issue than a lack of
experience in high-horsepower race cars.
And he was hurt by lack of testing in the car. Testing at races was
curtailed in 1993, and McLaren had 3 drivers signed and thus gave
Hakkinen the majority of the testing Kms - not that Andretti was around
to do a lot of testing.

Contrast Andretti's experience with that of Jacques Villeneuve who made
sure that he got 1000s of Kms in the car before the first race of the
season and was willing to relocate to Europe so that he could continue
to test between races.

That said, there's no magic formula. Ayrton Senna went straight from F3
to F1. So did Nelson Piquet. So did Mika Hakkinen. So, IIRC, did Jan
Magnussen. Kimi Raikkonen didn't even get as far as F3.

Coulthard, Panis, Herbert, Barrichello, Christian Fittipaldi and Damon
Hill all did it the "proper" way going to F3000 after F3. The results
were variable. Coulthard and Hill also had testing contracts with F1
teams prior to actually racing in GPs.

There's no one way to do it. There might be a way that is perceived to
be prudent, but not all drivers have that path available to them and
some have jumped several rungs of the ladder and done quite well.

Williams is saying all the prudent, sensible things, but he knows that
there's really only one way to find out how a driver will go in an F1
car.

.

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