Where is the next British Formula 1 star?
Next year Jenson Button will not be on the Formula 1 grid and Lewis Hamilton will be 32, so who could be Britain's next star at the top of the sport?
Question: who's the most recent British driver to take his maiden Formula 1 win?
Chances are you've had to think about this, but of course it's Lewis Hamilton, way back on June 10 2007 in the Canadian Grand Prix. Over nine years have elapsed since then, in which time Hamilton has accumulated three world championship titles and almost a half-century of grand prix wins. But in his wake? Nobody.
Which is not to say that the UK has been entirely deprived of promising drivers entering F1. The most recent is Jolyon Palmer, who as a GP2 champion automatically must be considered as worthy of an F1 seat.
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Marcus Simmons is the Deputy Editor of Autosport magazine. As a child he was a regular on the chalk banks of Thruxton – hence his unhealthy obsession with 1970s Formula 2 and F3 – before he became an MSA timekeeper at the age of 17. At 19, his reporting debut for Motoring News arguably overshadowed Maradona’s ‘Hand of God’ goal as the sporting moment of June 1986, and he joined the staff in 1990 after graduating from his degree course in Plymouth. A parallel Formula First career – which was as incident-packed as his childhood exploits in show-jumping and hunter trials – finished when he wrote off his car and put himself in hospital in 1991.
Marcus moved to Autosport in the summer of 1996. Since then he has had two stints as a freelancer and a brief spell as editor of Motor Sport magazine, during which the revered green cover was revived, before he rejoined Autosport in 2008. He lives in Teddington with his wife (who, gratifyingly, grew up within earshot of Castle Combe), daughter, stepson, dog, cat and guitars, and additionally has an adult daughter and stepson.
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