The lost F1 drivers who only got one shot at glory

Formula 1 is a ruthless business. A reminder of that fact was dealt this week by the news that AlphaTauri had dispensed with Nyck de Vries's services just 10 races into the 2023 campaign.

The Dutchman therefore becomes the latest talented driver to see their F1 aspirations shut almost before they’d had time to get their feet under the table, for a variety of reasons often not of their doing. However, he doesn't technically qualify for inclusion in this list of drivers, given he made his debut with Williams at Monza last year and his brief F1 career therefore spans two calendar seasons.

1950 - Raymond Sommer

Sommer's death in 1950 cut short the career of a popular and idiosyncratic giantkiller

Photo by: Motorsport Images

A fiercely independent streak meant Raymond Sommer won fewer races than perhaps he should have done. As such it’s difficult to say what he might have achieved, beyond his tally of three points from five world championship appearances, had he not crashed fatally aboard a Cooper in a minor event
 at Cadours in September 1950.

But the two-time Le Mans victor had a giant-killing streak that he’d displayed in defeating the mighty Alfa 158s with his private Maserati
 at St Cloud in 1946. And when the world championship began in 1950,
 Sommer even led at Spa aboard his privately entered Talbot-Lago after
 the hitherto dominant 158s pitted for fuel. It prompted panic and even disbelief from the Alfa pits, who lobbied the timekeepers that he couldn't possibly be on the same lap.

The inaugural BRM driver, whose V16 never made it off the startline at the International Trophy, Sommer was respected enough to have driven for all
 the period’s top-line manufacturers and scored Ferrari’s first grand prix podium as a constructor in 1948. He just preferred to drive his own car.

1973 - George Follmer

Follmer's single F1 season for Shadow stands as something of an outlier in a strong career racing a variety of machinery Stateside

Photo by: David Phipps

Time wasn’t on George Follmer’s side when he made his F1 debut with Don Nichols’ new Shadow team in 1973. A latecomer to racing, the former insurance salesman was already 39 and had a short window of opportunity
 to impress aboard Tony Southgate’s DN1.

But, despite team-mate Jackie Oliver’s superior experience, it was the versatile Follmer – reigning champion in Can-Am and Trans-Am, plus a
 previous winner in Indycars and F5000 – who delivered Shadow’s landmark first point and podium. Attrition aided the Californian’s rise from 21st to sixth on debut at Kyalami and from 14th to third at Montjuic Park. Oliver won their qualifying head-to-head 7-6, but the pair were often closely matched and on nine occasions split by two or fewer cars.

Follmer didn’t score again in Formula 1 as he juggled a race-winning
 Can-Am title defence. The ire he received from Francois Cevert for doggedly
 defending in Spain likely underlined his feeling of being a fish out of water,
 so it was unsurprising that Follmer returned to and focused on lucrative domestic competition thereafter.

1975 - Tony Brise

Brise was widely tipped for greatness and would surely have added more points to the single top-six he scored at Anderstorp

Photo by: David Phipps

The single point achieved in F1 by Tony Brise prior to his death in an aircraft accident (which also claimed Embassy Hill team boss Graham Hill and four other team members) does a disservice to a driver tipped by many to be set for the very top. Stirring Formula Atlantic performances had prompted Frank Williams to give Brise his F1 break for the ill-fated Spanish GP at Montjuic Park, where he was set for points until being hit by Tom Pryce.

Soon picked up by Hill to replace the injured Rolf Stommelen, Brise wasted no time, qualifying seventh for his maiden appearance with Hill at Zolder, then finishing sixth in his second outing at Anderstorp despite losing fifth gear. He outshone team-mate and future world champion Alan Jones, then returnee Stommelen, and had Mario Andretti beaten in a superb F5000 Long Beach cameo before being sidelined by a driveshaft failure.

Brise’s self-confident manner meant he was often characterised as arrogant. But Williams never shared that view and, in David Tremayne’s
 Lost Generation book, stated “he would have been an English great”.

1983 - Danny Sullivan

Sullivan's best showing in a points-paying grand prix for Tyrrell was at Monaco, but he shone in the non-championship Brands RoC event before heading for Indycars

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“I don’t think I’d impressed enough to make somebody say, ‘let’s grab him,’” was Danny Sullivan’s verdict on his sole F1 campaign with Tyrrell on a recent Beyond the Grid podcast.

Over a decade after he’d been a team gopher as a young Jim Russell scholar, Sullivan had earned his shot having risen through the ranks in Europe and produced winning performances in Can-Am.

The DFV-powered Tyrrell 011 was in its third season of service,
 but still had enough life to win with Michele Alboreto in Detroit.
 Sullivan’s peak was a more modest fifth at Monaco after taking
 slicks for the damp start, but he was second at the non-championship Brands Hatch Race of Champions.

PLUS: Ranking the 10 best 'point-less' F1 races

Tyrrell’s loss of Benetton backing to Toleman meant staying on was never an option as Sullivan instead headed to IndyCar and famously
 won the 1985 Indianapolis 500. Now a regular FIA steward, Sullivan believes he “could have won races” in F1, but a return wasn’t on the cards: “Why am I going to leave something that I’m winning in to go struggle when you’re 35 years old?”

1986 - Johnny Dumfries

Dumfries was very much the second driver at Lotus, and bore the brunt of its reliability woes

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Ayrton Senna vetoing Team Lotus’s hiring of Derek Warwick for 1986 left Johnny Dumfries in an unenviable position as second-choice number two. “Making his F1 debut in circumstances where the management of his team has lost the respect of everybody involved in motor racing,” was James Hunt’s typically forthright verdict in Autosport, and the affair cast a shadow that the 1984 British Formula 3 champion and ex-Ferrari tester struggled to escape.

Insight: How Dumfries’s Lotus F1 dream turned into a nightmare

His debut in Brazil set the tone. Dumfries was set for points until a misfire brought him in for an  unscheduled service; Senna’s imminent arrival meant he was waved off for another lap with his Renault V6 stuttering before he was allowed back in for a belated cure. Ninth was scant reward.

Confidence eroded by failure to qualify at Monaco after a practice shunt was exacerbated by a proliferation of mechanical dramas (more than once related to the fickle six-speed gearbox), which curtailed seven of his 15 starts. Tellingly, Dumfries’s best finish of fifth came in Hungary – a new destination for all. The future Le Mans winner was jettisoned as Lotus signed Satoru Nakajima in 1987 to secure Honda engines.

1993 - Michael Andretti

Andretti's sole F1 campaign with McLaren didn't go to plan, although he ended it on the podium at Monza

Photo by: Ercole Colombo

“I never wanted to give up. I never gave up. I never will give up.” Unfinished business hinted at by Michael Andretti in a 1994 Autosport interview is likely a factor in his determined pursuit of a future F1 team entry. His first go was an unmitigated disaster as the 1991 Indycar champion walked away from McLaren after scoring his best result of 1993, third at Monza.

Andretti contests the often-propagated view that not living in Europe and commuting from the States demonstrated a lack of commitment, but what can be quantified is his on-track struggles. Ayrton Senna was always going to be tough to emulate on tracks Andretti didn’t know, but he did himself no favours with a proliferation of incidents. Andretti managed four racing laps from the opening three grands prix and even his Monza peak required others to hit trouble after an early spin dropped him to last.

The nadir was a run of six races qualifying outside the top 10 in an MP4/8 Senna took to five wins. Andretti’s replacement, Mika Hakkinen, immediately showed what McLaren had missed, outqualifying the Brazilian in Estoril.

1995 - Jean-Christophe Boullion

Brought in part-way through 1995 to replace Wendlinger, Boullion's biggest impression was sixth at Monza before he lost his seat

Photo by: Rainer W. Schlegelmilch / Motorsport Images

Joining Sauber four races into 1995 as Karl Wendlinger struggled to
 rediscover the spark he’d shown before his Monaco 1994 shunt, Williams test driver Jean-Christophe Boullion found himself ushered out before the campaign’s end for the very driver he’d replaced. Not until 2000 would another reigning F3000 champion be given an F1 shot the year after their coronation.

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Boullion was completely overshadowed in his 13 grands prix by team-mate Heinz-Harald Frentzen and couldn’t emulate the German by cracking the top 10 in qualifying. Both his points finishes – peaking with fifth at Hockenheim – came in races of attrition, although Boullion earned credit at Monza (where
 he took sixth) and the Hungaroring (10th after struggling with cramp) for plugging away in the spare prepped for Frentzen.

In mitigation, Sauber’s C14 was powered by a Ford V8 engine that was heavier, longer and had to be mounted higher than the Mercedes the car
 had been designed for – which upset the weight distribution and handling.
 But Sauber evidently shared Autosport’s verdict that Boullion had proven
 “a consummate disappointment”.

2002 - Allan McNish

McNish should have scored points in Malaysia but for a pitstop mix-up

Photo by: Rainer W. Schlegelmilch / Motorsport Images

He arrived in F1 a decade after he should have done and exited prematurely. But Allan McNish has few regrets about his time at the brand-new Toyota team before he and team-mate Mika Salo were ejected at the end of 2002. The three-time Le Mans winner believes few combinations would have fared much better under the circumstances.

PLUS: The single F1 season of a British sportscar great

McNish had been on the fast-track to F1 with Marlboro backing and a McLaren test deal until momentum was wrecked by Lola’s terrible 1991
 F3000 chassis and a mystery virus the year after. The Scot therefore had to pay his dues in sportscars – including a 1999 Toyota cameo at Le Mans –
 and was 32 when his F1 chance finally came.

The TF102 was at least reliable after a year of testing, but Toyota was operationally inexperienced and struggled to combine racing with development. Aero was severely undercooked. The edgy car didn’t respond well to set-up tweaks either, a point McNish took longer than veteran Salo to recognise. McNish also believes Salo’s debut point after a first corner pile-up in Australia unrealistically raised expectations.

Formula 1’s loss proved sportscar racing’s gain…

2003 - Justin Wilson

Five races at misfiring Jaguar wasn't enough time for Wilson to show what he could do

Photo by: Rainer W. Schlegelmilch / Motorsport Images

Many expected Justin Wilson to be effectively excluded from F1 by his 6ft3in frame, but it was a disappointing five-race stint at Jaguar in 2003 that curtailed his dreams. The 2001 F3000 champion caught the eye in the first
 half of the year with Minardi, as superb opening laps became a trademark,
and jumped at what on paper appeared to be promotion to a team solidly in the midfield when Jaguar ditched Antonio Pizzonia.

Top 10: Ranking the greatest Minardi F1 drivers

But Wilson’s gamble in learning a new car, team and tyre supplier – Jaguar used Michelin, Minardi Bridgestone – ultimately backfired. He struggled to get close to team-mate Mark Webber and lacked mileage thanks to early exits from Hockenheim and Monza. A point for eighth at Indianapolis brought hope, but it didn’t help that Wilson had to face questions about his future as early as Hungary when corporate politics wrought havoc in the boardroom.

Losing sixth in the constructors’ standings to Sauber by a single point, combined with Red Bull offering a £9m sponsorship package for Christian Klien, meant Wilson headed Stateside for 2004 and never found a way back in.

2010 - Lucas di Grassi

A car designed without seeing a wind tunnel that had inefficient aero and a small fuel tank wasn't the ideal vessel for rookie di Grassi

Photo by: Charles Coates / Motorsport Images

The arrival of three new teams for 2010 facilitated the debut of 2007 GP2 runner-up Lucas di Grassi. But the future Formula E champion’s season was destined to be one of toil given his Virgin-Cosworth VR01’s deficiencies. The first F1 car designed entirely using CFD, its detailing was risibly poor; among other shortcomings, the fuel tank was too small. “The car had a lot of flaws,” he tells GP Racing with some understatement.

Di Grassi reckons his weight gave him a disadvantage of three tenths of a second per lap to team-mate Timo Glock. This, combined with the ex-Toyota driver’s previous F1 experience, meant Glock got any upgrades first.

His one-year deal was not renewed, but di Grassi says his huge sighting-lap crash at Suzuka – where he’d outqualified Glock in the wet, but was caught out by an incorrect ride height setting on his first attempt at 130R with full tanks in the dry – had no bearing on the call since Jerome d’Ambrosio was already lined up for 2011.

Becoming Pirelli’s tester was a dead-end for further F1 opportunities but di Grassi proved his technical competency to Audi, which hired him as an LMP1 racer.

2013  - Giedo van der Garde

Qualifying heroics in mixed conditions at Spa were perhaps the high point of van der Garde's Caterham season

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

One of the most peculiar contractual sagas of recent times meant Giedo van der Garde didn’t get a second crack at the whip after his 2013 rookie season at tail-ender Caterham.

The 2008 Formula Renault 3.5 champion had plugged away for four more seasons of GP2 before an F1 seat became available, and he fared well alongside sophomore Charles Pic. Eye-catching qualifying performances to reach Q2 in Monaco and at Spa (after going third-fastest in Q1) were the high points as he won over the team’s engineers to change set-up direction, one even Pic followed.

Believing his best chance of moving up the grid lay in taking a step back to a test role with a team that had better prospects, the Dutchman agreed a deal with Sauber for 2014. The situation then got messy. Believing he had done a deal to race in 2015, van der Garde was surprised when Sauber announced Marcus Ericsson and Felipe Nasr.

Friday favourite: Giedo van der Garde picks his favourite car

The drama played out in public at the season-opener in Australia, where a court ruled he had a valid contract and came close to impounding Sauber’s cars. Van der Garde later reached a private settlement. Now a fixture in endurance racing, he tells GP Racing it was “the most difficult time ever in my life”.

Wearing Ericsson's overalls in the Melbourne paddock was about as close as van der Garde got to racing for Sauber in 2015

Photo by: Charles Coates / Motorsport Images