Backmarker wrote:mario wrote:Shadaza wrote:I hope Vandoorne defeats da Costa in FR 3.5
I am getting really tired of Autosports continued hyping of AF da C.
The last qualifying report for example had a paragraph and a half talking about da Costa taking P4 whilst, Sirtokin and Zanella in 2nd and 3rd were covered with a tag on sentence.
The problem is, da Costa has the might of the Red Bull Racing Young Driver PR machine behind him for several years whereas drivers like Zanella don't (and Vandoorne only won support from McLaren's Young Driver program barely a month ago), so automatically he has the advantage that there are other parties that can hype him up on his behalf.
Equally, there is another odd quirk about FR 3.5 - before Bianchi was hired by Marussia this year, the last non Red Bull backed driver to graduate directly from FR 3.5 to Formula 1 was Robert Kubica, who went from there to his role as a BMW-Sauber test driver. FR 3.5 has become Red Bull's preferred driver training scheme for F1, so a promising talent associated with them is more likely to attract speculation about a potential move to F1 - particularly given that Red Bull expects a lot from its current drivers at Toro Rosso and has shown a willingness to hire and fire drivers at that team pretty rapidly.
Until Giedo van der Garde, the last Formula Renault 3.5 champion to graduate to F1 was Robert Kubica. Even counting since vdG, that's 4 champions who haven't made it to F1 - there's a far better recent record of runners-up graduating to F1: Ricciardo, Vergne, Bianchi. Of course, for Ricciardo and Vergne there was a clear reason they got to F1 over the champions. So AFDC can continue this fine tradition, whereas if Vandoorne wins it's harder to see where he fits in - no seat at McLaren (presumably), so Marussia or Force India? Or getting passed-over by F1, and ending up in DTM, LMP, GT1 etc.
It's not just that the champions themselves, but in fact pretty much the entire FR 3.5 grid, have been passed over. Right up until Bianchi (and, I suppose, Frijns), Kubica was the only non Red Bull driver to go from Formula Renault 3.5 to Formula 1 full stop - all the other drivers that raced in FR 3.5 that moved up to F1 had to go through GP2 in between (e.g. Chandhok - who was himself formerly backed by Red Bull - went from FR 3.5 to GP2, as did Pic, Maldonado and van der Garde), because GP2 was intended to be the "accepted" way into F1.
Even most of the young test drivers, like Turvey or Bird, have had to go through GP2 before getting a test driver contract with a major team, whilst Bianchi's move into F1 as a test driver was only because Ferrari were pushing incredibly hard to find him a seat (and even then, Bianchi's seat at Marussia was because Razia's sponsors defaulted on their commitments).
As an aside, though, I wonder if Bianchi's promotion to F1 might actually be beneficial for the FR 3.5 field in the longer term? The fact that Bianchi has astounded most of the grid with his raw speed in the car (to the extent that it is beginning to worry Williams), might wake a few teams up to the fact that there does seem to be a lot of potential talent in the FR 3.5 series that they can tap into. The fact that McLaren now seem to be giving that series patronage too, through drivers like Vandoorne and Kevin Magnussen, might also help raise FR 3.5's stock - the fact that it is also substantially cheaper than GP2 might also make it a lot more attractive for teams to put their drivers through that series instead (I believe that the cost of a car is about a tenth of that of GP2, since FR 3.5 permits third party suppliers to supply standardised parts whereas the GP2 series doesn't, and is therefore notorious for price gouging for spare parts).
As to where Vandoorne could fit in, well, it's true that McLaren are unlikely to have a seat in their team available any time soon - Button's current contract expires at the end of 2014, I believe (I think that the contract he signed in 2011 was for three years), although it may be that he has an option in that contract to extend it further. As for Perez, whilst I don't recall the exact length of his contract being announced, it was said to be a multi year contract - he may be struggling a little at the moment, but I expect him to improve and can't see his performance being bad enough for him to be fired on those grounds either.
As you say, it is possible that he might end up at either Marussia or Force India in the future given that both teams have links to McLaren, although that would probably be as a reserve driver, perhaps with FP1 practise sessions, rather than as a front line driver. Equally, it is possible that McLaren might keep him in house as their own reserve driver rather than farm him out to another team - failing that, though, I think that a career in GT racing is possible, again through McLaren, or possible sports cars - DTM is perhaps a little less likely given that McLaren's relationship with Mercedes is no longer as cordial as it once was.
