What to expect from F1's rookie trio in 2021

New faces have arrived in Formula 1 only sparingly over the past few seasons, thanks to tighter superlicence requirements and certain older drivers disobligingly refusing to take their leave. But this year there’s almost a glut of rookies, if three can be considered as such. To some extent, though, this influx isn’t particularly surprising.

One thing that can be relied upon in F1 is that vacancies will eventuate owing to the ruthless up-or-out ethos of Red Bull’s young driver programme; and this season the floundering Haas team has decided its previous line-up amounted to dead wood. Taking the axe to Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen, both of whom had arguably had their time in F1, has enabled Haas to forge closer ties with Ferrari and attract new investment in one hit. The three newcomers are therefore all doing a job before turning a wheel in anger.

On the face of it, Yuki Tsunoda – third in F2 in 2020 – is a left-field choice for the second AlphaTauri seat alongside Pierre Gasly. But, in the wider context of the Red Bull Junior Team finding itself temporarily short on F1-qualified drivers it actually rates, Tsunoda is releasing Red Bull from a Gordian knot of its own making.

At Haas, F2 champion Mick Schumacher is in essence acting as a figurehead for a wider transfer of brainpower and personnel from Maranello as Ferrari downsizes for the budget cap, while Nikita Mazepin brings a bag of roubles in the form of sponsorship from his father’s fertiliser company.

In promoting Tsunoda rather than holding on to Daniil Kvyat, who returned respectable if not outstanding results last season, Red Bull has at least one eye on the 2022 driver line-up across its teams. It’s also looking to break the cycle of having to fill gaps with drivers it has previously tossed on the scrapheap, such as Alex Albon (plucked from Formula E) and Kvyat himself (rescued from Ferrari’s simulator).

Yuki Tsunoda, AlphaTauri AT02

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

The mismatch between the rate at which new talent comes through the system and the speed with which Red Bull decides its drivers aren’t good enough is why the senior team has had to recruit an outsider, Sergio Perez, this season. The conveyor belt of talent has ceased to deliver when vacancies arise.

Putting Tsunoda through an experience cycle now makes sense because it will enable Red Bull’s other highly rated new talent, Juri Vips, to gain seat time after his 2020 plans were derailed by COVID-related cancellations. But for those, it might have been Vips putting his hand up for the AlphaTauri seat this winter.

Adaptability, a capacity to learn, and a willingness to identify and eliminate his weaknesses are what have earned Tsunoda his F1 shot, as well as a competitive turn of speed

This is not to undersell Tsunoda’s potential at all. The 20-year-old Japanese might enjoy Honda backing, but he has earned his promotions, veritably rocketing up the ladder. Arriving in Europe in 2019 as the Japanese Formula 4 champion, he established himself as a contender in both the Euroformula Open and the FIA F3 Championship despite his lack of experience at that level – or, indeed, with Dallara’s then-new F3 chassis. He may not have won those series but he merited promotion to F2, where he showed both speed and a propensity for self-improvement.

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Helmut Marko, who superintends Red Bull’s young driver programme with an iron fist, is a huge fan – to the extent that Tsunoda has leapfrogged Nobuharu Matsushita, Honda’s previous favourite, in the pecking order. Adaptability, a capacity to learn, and a willingness to identify and eliminate his weaknesses are what have earned Tsunoda his F1 shot, as well as a competitive turn of speed. In F3 he got on top of the quirks of the Pirelli tyres quickly, and in F2 last year a maturity emerged that suggested he had got over a tendency to become a slave to the red mist.

Marko publicly set Tsunoda the target of finishing fourth in F2 as a prerequisite for a move up the ladder. While that might have seemed a tall order – Matsushita had toiled so long in the category that he was virtually part of the furniture, and even the eventual champion Mick Schumacher had required a second year to get up to speed – Tsunoda claimed three victories on his way to third. The only reservation hanging over his full-season performance was an occasional tendency to underachieve in the reversed-grid sprint races.

Swapping Tsunoda for Kvyat has had an unintended consequence: at 159cm, Tsunoda is 23cm shorter than the driver he replaces and 18cm adrift of team-mate Pierre Gasly. AlphaTauri is having to make modifications to the car’s pedal box to accommodate him; fortunately, changes related to driver fit are excluded from the token system.

Yuki Tsunoda, AlphaTauri AT02

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Tsunoda recorded the second-fastest time on the final day of the Bahrain test, but keen-eyed observers pointed out that he was opening his DRS substantially earlier than would be permitted during normal running conditions. Nevertheless, he was pretty tidy given a number of issues, including those with his pedals, and he acknowledged that he faces a learning curve in terms of grip, particularly on the softer rubber.

By contrast, the two Haas rookies face a season-long slog in a car that will have no development resources allocated to it, since the team has decided to focus everything it has on the 2022 rules reset. While this may pay off for Haas in the long term, it could come at a cost in terms of driver confidence, particularly since one of them has demonstrated that patience is not his strong suit.

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Having a season to learn the ropes while expectations are tempered will suit Schumacher just fine. While his famous surname has opened many doors, it has also invited unwelcome comparisons with his father, who registered an instant impact in F1 after making rapid progress to the category.

By contrast, Mick has been a slow-burn talent at senior level, generally getting on top of each series in his second year. He learned in European F3 not to overdrive in pursuit of results but, having performed the necessary mental reset, he faced a new obstacle: innuendo.

After registering just one podium finish in 2017 and two more in the early phase of 2018, he embarked on a winning streak from mid-season, registering eight victories and four other podiums. Naturally, some of his rivals chafed at this turnaround and began tossing around suggestions that Schumacher was enjoying benefits that weren’t necessarily available to others, although no allegations were ever formalised via an official protest.

Rene Rosin, boss of Prema, which ran Schumacher to the F3 and F2 titles, says the keys to Mick’s successes are consistency, an ability to integrate with and get the most out of a team, and a rigorous work ethic – traits you can easily trace from his father. Schumacher himself has said that regardless of the prospect of toiling at the tail of the field this season, he intends to “work my ass off”.

Mick Schumacher, Haas VF-21

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

This was an unusually forthright comment from a driver who comes wrapped in the support mechanisms that also shielded his father from media attention. Indeed, Fort Knox is less well-guarded than Schumacher, who has been coached in the art of speaking without saying anything of note by his protective inner circle, which includes his father’s longtime ‘fixer’ Sabine Kehm and Ferrari spin doctor Luca Colajanni. He needs it because, like many offspring of famous sportspeople, he faces the challenge of establishing his own identity while showing due respect to his forebears.

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“I have never said that carrying the family name is pressure,” says Mick, “and I am pretty sure I will never say that because I am very happy to carry that name back into Formula 1.”

Another subject Schumacher has been called upon to swerve diplomatically is that of his team-mate Nikita Mazepin, a 22-year-old Russian who will race under a neutral flag owing to sanctions against his country as a result of state-sponsored doping activities. Mazepin’s father Dmitri attempted to buy the Force India F1 team in 2018 via Uralkali, his mining and fertiliser production company, but was thwarted by Lawrence Stroll’s consortium.

While public opinion concerning Mazepin’s lifestyle away from the track is unlikely to change, on track he can at least let his driving perform the heavy lifting of advocacy

Instead, some of those monies have rolled in the direction of Haas. Daubing the car in the colours of the Russian Federation has proved controversial, but no more so than Nikita’s behaviour both on and off-track: in 2016 he served a short ban after punching Callum Ilott in the face, and he earned penalties in the 2020 F2 finale for two separate instances of dangerous conduct. He has bridges to build off-track, too, having alienated a large segment of F1 fandom through his role in a sordid video that appeared on social media late last year.

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While public opinion concerning Mazepin’s lifestyle away from the track is unlikely to change, on track he can at least let his driving perform the heavy lifting of advocacy; and it’s in this arena that he urgently needs to transform the perception that he is a makeweight with a propensity to lose his temper.

Second place in GP3 in 2018 remains the highlight of his single-seater career so far, making him pretty much the least-qualified of this year’s rookies – this despite a great deal of testing in recent F1 machinery, including private sessions with Mercedes.

Nikita Mazepin, Haas F1

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images