yannicksamlad wrote:...Meanwhile those drivers who've been in F1 for 5 years or so, can feel safer knowing that many new entrants will never get the chance to develop and possibly challenge them .
And further on that point, although I know some of you may disagree with me on this, I think for a long time there was a really bad combination of 1.) not enough seats to allow drivers to grow and improve, and 2.) teams at the front being far too conservative in their pickings. The most obvious example of the last decade was Ferrari, who kept Massa despite his complete uselessness all the way from late 2010 to the end of 2013. Instead of hiring Hulkenberg, who was a promising prospect who could quite clearly wring out good results from subpar machinery, they hired a deflated Raikkonen who couldn't get a win out of a top-two chassis until 2018, and then when the car was totally illegal.
There will always be cases in F1 of people being kept on for too long despite being useless (Grosjean since 2017 or so), and it made me think about Jenoch's old article from 2013 that discusses this very thing.
Even back then we were saying how all these drivers who have risen through the ranks 20 years ago are still hanging around taking up seats: Kimi is in his 19th season and started two decades ago; Hamilton and Vettel are both in their 15th seasons and both look to be hanging around a few more years at least; Alonso has made a comeback, and while it's going well, it's still one of only 20 seats being taken up by someone who has long ago proved themselves as an all-time great. Not saying that there's no room for all-time greats on the grid, but it would also be nice if there was room for those who were on their way to score a fantastic 4th place one day in their career. The crazy, and most important, thing for me is that it seems that there is nothing forcing these older drivers to retire. There seems to be no end to the number of seasons they could do if they wanted to keep driving (and Kimi clearly does). Teams like Alfa seem more than happy to keep him in spite of his complete sub-par quality, and he could go on to hold every "number of races" record for the next two decades at this rate.
Seeing as Verstappen will likely be on the grid forever at this rate, he'll be easily able to beat the current season participation record of 19. In his 20th season he'd be "only" 36/37, and if he wanted to drive into his 40s he could surpass that. I don't think anyone would make 30 seasons (famous last words), but 25 would be more than possible if everyone starting F1 these days is 21 or younger.
But at least she has had a couple of outings in the W Series to supplement her year.
