Another way to fix the F1 ladder

Structure exists to serve a purpose. But too often, it becomes an end in itself rather than the means to achieve the real objective.

Max Verstappen's lightning-fast rise from karting to Formula 1 in 2015 without ticking many of the junior-formula boxes has led to criticism, but instead should the issue not be about what the single-seater ladder is there to achieve?

The Formula 3 European Championship ace will make his grand prix debut next year for Scuderia Toro Rosso at the age of just 17, having raced in cars for the first time this year. The gut reaction is that it's an idiotically hasty move with the potential to destroy a driver of huge promise.

But, logically, the question has to be not simply whether he has passed through the levels in the single-seater ladder that convention indicates he should have. Rather, it is whether or not he is prepared for the step to F1.

For years, there have been complaints about the crowded marketplace in the feeder series. The demand is always to streamline, to offer a clear progression between karting and grand prix racing.

Formula Ford was created to provide a first rung on the ladder to F1 © LAT

There are those who, with misty eyes, recall the days when it was so simple, with drivers going from Formula Ford/Formula Renault 2.0, to Formula 3, to Formula 2/Formula 3000/GP2 and then to the top level.

That is, of course, a very simplified and sepia-tinged view of things. After all, in Britain alone, at times, there were multiple championships for FF1600 and F3. But it is fair to say that, today, there are too many championships offering much the same thing and competing for the same drivers.

The real question has to be the educational needs of the driver. And in evaluating this, karting is too often overlooked.

In the case of Verstappen, he started driving about in karts at the age of four. A few years later, he was racing, and he has been doing so ever since. In karting, he will have experienced set-up work, chassis development, tyre testing, countless races and myriad different machinery. That's one hell of a foundation.

After all, top-line karting is well-funded and brutally competitive. When Verstappen won the KZ world championship last year, among his rivals were not only fellow hotshoes, but experienced drivers such as Jaime Alguersuari and karting superstar Davide Fore, at 40 a multiple world champion and someone with over three decades of competition under his belt.

So when drivers start out in car racing today, the vast majority are already hugely experienced. Realistically, only the absolute best could ever contemplate jumping from karting to top-line F3, as Verstappen has done, so perhaps the ideal first step is to move to the entry level in FR2.0 or the developing Formula 4 category.

Clearly, there is still much to learn for such drivers. Although the skill sets are similar, the techniques required in cars can vary dramatically, which explains why so many karting aces fail to translate their ability to long circuits when they graduate.

Bruno Senna reached F1 despite a lack of karting experience © LAT

Drivers have to learn with racing much heavier, full-sized cars rather than karts. There will also be new circuits to learn and vehicle dynamics to become accustomed to. And they will have to deal with longer races than normal.

But things are very different to how they were, say, at the start of the 1980s. Drivers making F1 without serious karting careers are vanishingly rare these days, the last being Bruno Senna. The vast majority start off, perhaps not quite as early as the age of four, but certainly between eight and 10.

Given the quality of that school, you can argue that there is little need to take pigeon steps to the top through three levels. This idea of a three-tier approach (perhaps exemplified by FFord-F3-F2) has become so entrenched that it, or something like it, is seen as the gold standard.

In the specific case of Verstappen, the main things he would learn from doing GP2 or Formula Renault 3.5 before F1 is dealing with longer races. Compared to an F3 race at around the 35-minute mark, a GP2 feature race is about an hour, with FR3.5 races lasting 40-45 minutes.

But as Daniil Kvyat has proved this year after stepping up from a combined F3/GP3 programme to race for Toro Rosso, with the proper physical preparation, the jump to F1 is perfectly doable. And if you can excel in F3 and GP3, history shows that graduating to F1 is achievable.

Magnussen has proved himself to be a match for veteran team-mate Button © LAT

As for the rest of what he will pick up in GP2 or FR3.5, a driver who has competed in European F3 will have already raced against a high-quality international field in both karting and cars. The main thing that a multi-year (for that is what it is now becoming) stint in GP2 would teach him will be tyre management.

Arguably, that can be learned quicker and better on the job in an F1 seat in less than half-a-season, as Kevin Magnussen has shown this year. And seriously good F3 drivers, the kind who should be getting F1 seats, won't be overawed by getting behind the wheel of grand prix cars. They are simply too well-schooled now, especially with the chance to hone their skills in simulators.

Then there's the question of handling increasingly quick cars. Junior-category cars today are significantly faster than their equivalent levels of 25 years ago anyway. But while there is the argument that drivers need to acclimatise to different levels of speed, it all seems a little too incremental.

FASTEST LAPS AT SPA 2014

So around Spa, presuming you start off in Formula Renault 2.0, by the time you get to F1 your laptime will be around 25 per cent faster. It seems reasonable to ask whether there's a need to have those three steps considering the level that drivers emerging from karting are operating at.

Clearly, you need to have the progression, and there's a very strong argument to say that having a variety of choices allows you to better tailor a driver's progress to suit their rate of learning.

But it's worth questioning whether we need to see this as a traditional three-tier ladder to F1, or it could be consolidated into two levels? This doesn't necessarily mean wiping out the level immediately below F1, even though the cost and/or limited running they offer are both negatives, but it does suggest that history is not necessarily the best basis for judging how best to develop a driver.

None of this means that 17-year-olds graduating to F1 off the back of nine years of karting and a year of F3 either should or will become the norm. But it is bizarre to see the response it has provoked.

Max Verstappen will be out to prove his critics wrong when he joins F1 in 2015 © LAT

While Jacques Villeneuve made some valid points about the principles involved, he's wrong to suggest having a 17-year-old on the grid somehow undermines F1.

Did it undermine football when Pele scored twice in the 1958 World Cup final at the age of 17? Did it ruin tennis when 17-year-old Boris Becker won Wimbledon in 1985? What became of cricket after Sachin Tendulkar made his first test century against England in 1990 at, you guessed it, 17?

All are legendary names of their chosen sports whose performances reinvigorated the existing fans and inspired new ones.

There are plenty of signs that Verstappen might well prove to be exceptional, a once-in-a-generation prospect who will go on to win world championships. If that's the case, it will be great news for F1.

If he proves to be merely good, like some Red Bull prospects have been in the past, then it will still not be a disaster either for him or grand prix racing.

For all the mirth surrounding his ding during the Rotterdam street demo last weekend, Verstappen is an exception who has what it takes to face down a challenge in F1 that would crush most.

But while his path is not going to work for the majority, it does hint at the possibility that there is a better way where the needs of the driver, not the needs of history and the wallets of series organisers, is the prevailing market force.

It might just be that two steps are far better than three. Obviously, this would require a little repositioning of the existing categories rather than simply eliminating the sub-F1 step, which certainly has a value, and would therefore need to evolve over years rather than being instant.

So while Verstappen is far from the ideal model, his rise has perhaps pointed to a way forward for an increasingly crowded marketplace.

It could simply be that the talk about narrowing the options on the single-seater ladder misses the point and that the real key is to shorten it.