F1 and Haas are wrong to ignore America

This might annoy a few Americans, but if I had to choose between Romain Grosjean and Alexander Rossi to lead Haas F1, I'd go with the Frenchman every time.

"There's nobody out there at the moment," Gunter Steiner said when he ruled out the possibility of having an American driver for the American-owned team's inaugural season next year. And when you consider the specific needs of a fledgling team, he's right.

History would suggest that Haas is going to have enough stacked against it next year as it is; going down the A1GP route of selecting a driver based on their passport would be at best precarious, and at worst idiotic.

And it would be counter-productive to both sides: the team would not get the leadership it needs from the cockpit; the driver would be setting themself up for a season of misery from which their stock might never recover.

Instead, Haas needs to go into its first year with a line-up led by someone who has deep F1 experience, solid testing and development chops, and who can be relied on to get the car as far up the grid as it is capable of going. In opting for Grosjean, the team has made the right call.

It's a similar story for the second car. Rossi will no doubt learn a lot during his stint with Manor, but whether it's enough to make him better-prepared than someone like Kevin Magnussen is doubtful.

But are there Americans - other than Rossi - capable of racing in F1?

That is a different question, with a very easy answer: yes, there are. Just as there are drivers in Europe who can do well in the US. All it takes is enough time to learn the intricacies of the respective disciplines, although time can be in short supply no matter what side of the Atlantic you're on.

Many of Andretti and Hunter-Reay's IndyCar rivals have European pedigree © LAT

Marco Andretti has expressed an interest, and tested a Honda a couple of times at Jerez during the 2006/07 off-season.

But were he ever to seriously look at a switch, his best chance would have been back then - he turns 29 next year, which might be pushing it when you consider that the average age of this year's rookies (including those who only did a part-season) is a whisker over 22.

And, theoretically, there's no reason why someone like Ryan Hunter-Reay or Graham Rahal couldn't get up to speed given a proper chance. At the end of the day, an F1 car is just a race car, and both of those two can probably stake a stronger case for a seat than half the current F1 grid on the basis of pure talent.

But for various reasons neither driver is a viable longer-term proposition for Haas, so we switch our focus to those who could be: Josef Newgarden and Conor Daly. And, as a wildcard, we'll throw Spencer Pigot in for the hell of it.

All have hurdles to overcome. Funding is such an obvious one that it's barely worth mentioning - Daly can't even afford an IndyCar drive.

The first problem would be superlicences: under the usual rules, none of these three are eligible for one. Enough has already been written about the shortcomings of the overhauled system (suffice to say that neither Kimi Raikkonen nor Jenson Button would have been eligible to make their F1 debuts, and they both turned out alright).

This could be overcome. The rules also allow for a candidate to bypass the points eligibility system with the unanimous agreement of all FIA members, and neither of these guys are Sergey Zlobin. Newgarden matched Rahal, Juan Pablo Montoya, Will Power and Sebastien Bourdais for IndyCar race wins in 2015, and topped the entire field for laps led over the course of the season.

Daly's resume is shorter, but he made five IndyCar starts this year - one of which he only found out about the morning of first practice - and managed a sixth place in Detroit, which is a far more treacherous street circuit than anything F1 has to offer.

Newgarden and Daly first headed to Europe in 2008, for the Formula Ford Festival © LAT

That doesn't tell you much, but it's a sign that he's capable of handling an F1 car without being a danger to himself or others, which is what the superlicence rule is supposed to ensure.

In both cases they'd also need to hit the minimum mileage in an F1 car, but for the sake of argument we'll assume that they have some pre-season testing built in to take care of that.

Superlicence aside, both have the same foundations of junior category pedigree boasted by some of the current F1 grid. Newgarden spent his early years racing in the UK and was on the grid for the first season of GP3. His results weren't great - Carlin took a while to get a handle on the car - and he returned to the US at the end of the season (and won the Indy Lights title the following year).

Spending multiple years in a junior category was once frowned upon, but nowadays it is commonplace. And as such, it's unfair to judge his F1 potential by that season alone. If he'd stuck around in Europe, showing the same, steady, year-on-year progress that has elevated him to his current status as IndyCar's brightest young star, who knows where it might have led?

Daly spent a few years doing a bit of everything. His three seasons in GP3 were dovetailed with part-time campaigns in Indy Lights, but each showed the sort of improvements that suggested good returns from a proper swing at GP2: 17th in his first season, sixth in his second, third in his third, with a couple of wins along the way.

Unfortunately, the GP2 chapter of his career was limited to a single season with Lazarus. That's a good situation for gaining experience, less so for making an impression.

But probably the biggest problem either would need to overcome is one of perception.

It's been well over a generation since someone from US racing has transitioned successfully to Formula 1, and that creates an assumption that there's some fundamental reason why an American driver, couldn't - within whatever limitations their cars might have - hold their own in the world championship.

There's not. We live in a world where Pastor Maldonado can win a grand prix. These guys would be absolutely fine.