How Ferrari offered Britain's next F1 prospect what Red Bull couldn't

Patience. It's something Callum Ilott needs quite a bit of right now. After finishing runner-up in Formula 2 last year, 
the young Briton was placed on the substitutes’ bench at Alfa Romeo. In the meantime, 
his fellow Ferrari Driver Academy member and the main rival for last year’s F2 title, 
Mick Schumacher, is already racing in F1 for Haas.

Apart from occasional free practice appearances, Ilott’s 2021 programme mainly consists of three elements. Those are: waiting, hoping and learning.

“I think I’ve toned down a little bit now,” Ilott tells GP Racing when asked about working with – and trying to learn as much as possible from – Alfa’s F1 engineers. “I had to kind of hold myself back because they’ve got a job to do on the weekend.

“I went with them to the test in Bahrain, which was really useful. You had time to speak with the other side of the team that wasn’t running and to understand a bit more about the programme. That was really useful to get all these questions out the way.

“I am obviously there to learn but, yeah, I try not to distract them as much anymore.”

There is also a GT programme on the side, which includes a debut in the Le Mans 24 Hours next month. Ilott is racing a Ferrari 488 GT3 in the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup, but a full season of that consists of just five race weekends. So, for the rest of the year, he is Ferrari’s test driver and Alfa Romeo’s additional reserve driver next to Robert Kubica, meaning that his chances of actually competing in
 an F1 race (for now at least) are very slim.

Test driver and additional reserve – not the most desired roles for someone who’s been racing for more than half of his life. But his junior career is virtually over, and now it’s up to external factors whether or not he makes F1 – hence the requirement for patience.

Ilott (right) has bedded well with the Alfa F1 engineers, including fellow Briton and head of race strategy Ruth Buscombe (middle)

Photo by: Alfa Romeo F1 Team

The lack of that – not from Ilott, but from an Austrian named Helmut Marko – was a complication at the start of 
his single-seater career.

Ilott is one of the few drivers to have been part of both Ferrari’s and Red Bull’s junior programmes. But he’d emerged on Marko’s radar at what was possibly the least opportune time – right after Max Verstappen had blazed his path from karting to F1, aged 17, via just a single season of European F3.

"Max did it the year before. And I didn’t disagree with it, so I think it was mutual in that sense. But to be honest, I didn’t really know what I was being thrown into" Callum Ilott

Ilott himself was a European champion in karting, and so Marko started him on the same path. Excluding the New Zealand-based Toyota Racing Series in the winter of 2015, Ilott virtually went straight from karting to F3.

“I remember it was at Silverstone the year before, 2014, I went there on the [British GP] Friday to have a meeting with him. He asked how old I was,” recalls Ilott, who was 15 at the time. “And then he’s like ‘OK, you’re doing F3 with Carlin’. OK. Sure.

“Obviously Max did it the year before. And, you know, I didn’t disagree with it. So I think it was mutual in that sense.

“But yeah, to be honest, I didn’t really know what I was being thrown into. Because I’d done well in karting, pre-season testing was going well. So I didn’t really realise how tough it would be.

“And of course, I’m not from a racing background. So, you know, ‘if you say I can do 
it, I can do it’, go for it.”

Ilott had a baptism of fire in 2015, and was given short shrift by Marko when he failed to emulate Verstappen's immediate success

Photo by: Motorsport Images

Ilott finished all 33 of the season’s races, but only 11 of those were points finishes, and only one of those was a podium. It wasn’t long until Marko lost interest and, at the end of the season, Ilott was released by Red Bull, the campaign having apparently proved to Marko that 
Ilott was no Verstappen.

“I don’t regret it,” he says of his short Red Bull spell. “I think that it’s fate at the end of the day. You get put into a position, and you just have to work on it.”

In his six years across Formula 3, GP3 and Formula 2, Ilott has raced for seven different teams, beginning each season with a new outfit. It’s a remarkable contrast to someone like Schumacher, whose five main campaigns in junior racing were all with Prema.

“I would have loved to have had a career like, for example, Mick, because you really learn to integrate well with the team,” says Ilott. “Obviously, if you build a good relationship with your engineer early on, you can continue all the way with him.

“But you know, it doesn’t always work like that. And, again, because I wasn’t from a motorsport background family, we had to learn and discover some things ourselves how motorsport works in a lot of ways.”

Ilott’s own switch to Prema in 2017 proved 
to be pivotal for his career, since it led to his first contact with Ferrari. Its former Academy chief Massimo Rivola would come
 to F3 to check on the progress of Ferrari’s now ex-junior Guanyu Zhou, but took note of
 Zhou’s team-mate instead.

“I remember speaking to him in… Pau,” recalls Ilott. “I crashed in one of the races when I was leading, and he was just like ‘you’re so fucking fast, you don’t need to even take risks, you just need to relax a little bit’. And then he was like, ‘I’d love to have you in FDA, maybe we should talk some time’.

“He showed interest early on that he wanted me on the programme. And obviously to be 
with Ferrari was a privilege. There’s no way 
I’d say no at all.”

Joining the FDA helped Ilott tame his 'fast but wild' tag, seen here at Silverstone in 2017

Photo by: Motorsport Images

By the end-of-year Macau GP, Ilott was already a Ferrari junior. He is now based in Maranello, living in close proximity to the Scuderia’s base.

“Red Bull had a lot of success with the junior drivers,” he says, “but it was very... you had a personal trainer who went with you, you
 would be doing a simulator and that. So it was very individual, you had to develop yourself
 and work like that.

"I haven’t got the stress of a full-blown championship, like I had with F2 every year, F3 every year, where you’re fighting for your life. So I’m quite enjoying that side of things just to relax and look at everything and learn in a different environment" Callum Ilott

“It works with a few guys, maybe not everyone, because everyone’s slightly different. For me, I was probably a little bit young to make the most out of it at the time, and I didn’t really fully understand what was needed.

“It’s now my third or fourth year living in Maranello. And I enjoy it. I think the programme with Ferrari was always to take time and to build up and learn. And, yeah, I think it’s worked out well for me.”

Third in GP3 and 11th in his first season in 
F2, Ilott came into 2020 facing what was probably his last chance to make a case for a promotion to Formula 1.

“I knew at the beginning of the season that if you’re winning the championship or you are at the top, that there was always going to be a very high chance that you will get a shot [in F1],” he says. “Obviously, finishing second, yes, it’s not winning, but I’d shown the whole way through that I was incredibly quick, and that I had more than enough talent to hopefully progress into it.”

It looked at one point as if Ferrari might promote Ilott at the same time as Schumacher. Instead, Antonio Giovinazzi kept his place at Alfa Romeo, and Ilott had to settle for the test role.

Ilott took F2 title fight with Schumacher down to the final round of 2020, but hope of joining the F1 grid had already passed

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

“Looking at the positive, it’s quite relaxing in a certain way,” Ilott says. “I haven’t got the stress of a full-blown championship, like I had with F2 every year, F3 every year, where you’re fighting for your life. So I’m quite enjoying that side of things just to relax and look at everything and learn in a different environment and in a different way.”

Now Ilott's future largely depends on what Alfa Romeo decides do with its driver line-up for 2022. From next year, it is free to decide both of its drivers, although Ferrari Driver Academy members will still be strongly considered. On the one hand, Giovinazzi remains the main hurdle for Ilott. On the other, Giovinazzi is maybe the best example of how long Ferrari can bide its time with a protege. He was runner-up in GP2 in 
2016, then spent two years waiting for his chance, having ceded a place to Charles Leclerc in the queue. But now the Italian is already in his third full year in F1.

Ilott doesn’t have a lot of opportunities this year to convince Ferrari and Alfa Romeo of his merits for 2022. What he can do is be perfect during the Friday practice runs he does get – but there’s 
also the matter of F2 having another Ferrari-backed title contender this year, in the form of
 Robert Shwartzman.

So, for Ilott right now, it’s about waiting, hoping and learning. And being patient, of course – which is a virtue Ferrari certainly seems to value.

Austria practice outing followed FP1 bow in Portugal

Photo by: Alfa Romeo F1 Team