Quote:
Originally Posted by Greem
Everyone recalls Scott Speed, right? Primarily, overwhelmingly, chosen because of his nationality (Red Bull backed him as an upcoming breath-of-fresh-air young charger and made great play of him being American).
That ended well.
Hopefully this new chap fares rather better!
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Helmut Marko also backed mediocre F1 drivers who weren't from the United States, like Enrqiue Bernoldi and Christian Klein. So I don't 100% follow your point in that way.
"Primarily, overwhelmingly, chosen because of his nationality" This is also debatable. It says that Speed finished third in his rookie season of GP2 in 2005, which would have made Speed the most qualified Red Bull junior driver for promotion to Toro Rosso at the time -- far from being promoted merely for nationality.
Speed was then transferred to the troubled (and long discontinued) Red Bull NASCAR team where Speed did relatively well given the limitations of the Red Bull machinery IIRC.
Quote:
Originally Posted by peebee2
I suspect the American angle is the single reason why he's been chosen.
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de Vries already signed for AlphaTauri, Drugovich (a third season F2 driver anyway) already signed for Aston Martin, out-of-form veteran Ricciardo seems uninterested, and fellow F2 rookie Jack Doohan (who could be loaned from Alpine) doesn't seem to be doing significantly better than Sergeant anyway.
So who else exactly could Williams sign?! If top 3 as a rookie in F2 is not enough for a Williams junior program driver to be promoted to F1, what more do they need to do?!
[Should Antonio Giovinazzi or Mick Schumacher be Williams' number one choice? The former seems a mediocre choice, while a case could be made for the latter especially in combination with 1&1 sponsorship. Although the points don't show it, Schumacher has largely been matching Magnussen for the last 4-5 races IMO.]