Why F1 needs more junior works teams

Last month, Ferrari president Sergio Marchionne revealed the company's Formula 1 team is considering turning Sauber into its junior team so that it can become a proving ground for members of Ferrari's young driver programme.

In Charles Leclerc and Antonio Giovinazzi, Marchionne feels he has two "exceptional" drivers who need to gain F1 race experience soon (and who, indeed, might start looking elsewhere if they don't get such an opportunity). But while Leclerc is showing his talent in Formula 2 by dominating the championship and Giovinazzi is gaining Friday mileage with Haas after stepping in for Pascal Wehrlein at Sauber for a couple of races earlier this year, Ferrari does not want to catapult either straight into a Ferrari cockpit.

This is no surprise. Ferrari is, and always has been, conservative. The only driver under the age of 27 to have driven for the Scuderia in the past 25 years was Felipe Massa, who was 24 when he got his Ferrari seat in 2006. Ferrari's current line-up of Kimi Raikkonen, 37, and Sebastian Vettel, 30, is one of the oldest on the grid.

Ferrari's logic has merits. The pressure of racing in a championship-contending car in a rookie season with a four-time champion in the garage next door could wreck a career before it has even started.

It also wants to protect itself. If a rookie were to be thrown into the deep end and sink, Ferrari might be criticised for having insufficiently attuned talent antennae. But if it puts a world champion in the car, the talent is proven and any lack of performance can be attributed to the driver or car under-delivering relative to established form.

Sauber, with its history of giving young drivers such as Massa, Raikkonen and Robert Kubica a chance, would be a more appropriate team with which to evaluate Ferrari's hopefuls at the top level. Honda, after all, planned to use Sauber as a way of giving Japanese drivers a chance in F1. In fact, Sauber is also one of its only options.

Haas team principal Gunther Steiner, whose American outfit has run both Leclerc and Giovinazzi in Friday free practice sessions, and which has a technical partnership with the Italian team, sympathises with Ferrari's quandary.

"I think they are both good guys, with very good potential," said Steiner said of Leclerc and Giovinazzi. "Between Ferrari and Mercedes, the next good guys will come out of one of them. [But] how they get into a seat is difficult, Formula 1 in that respect is very difficult.

"F2 to F1, it's a different ball game, it's such a big gap. You need a little bit of learning. To put Charles or Antonio straight away in a Ferrari, it's a big risk. It can go well, but there are bigger chances it goes wrong, because the expectations are so high, to make any little mistake. The sport is so complex, you make mistakes when you're young because you don't have experience. You cannot buy experience - you need time."

Manor was the closest thing F1 has had to Minardi in recent times. With it now gone, where can young drivers get a foot in the door?

The problem is exacerbated by F1 no longer having 'minnow' teams who would take a young driver in exchange for cash or some other quid-pro-quo deal. Behind the works outfits (Ferrari, Mercedes, Renault and McLaren-Honda), well-funded operations (Red Bull) and teams with budgets over £100m (Williams, Force India, Toro Rosso), only Haas and Sauber remain. Both of those have solid backing and do not require young drivers to make their business model work.

The promise of a budget cap meant Manor (formerly Virgin), Caterham (formerly Lotus Racing) and HRT could join F1 in 2010 and provide six seats where young drivers could realistically get a shot. Seven years on, with no budget cap in sight, not one of those teams has survived.

"The difficulty for young drivers is they need to be in the right time at the right place," adds Steiner. "There is nothing else you can do for it, at the moment you cannot even buy a cockpit. When Minardi was around, Minardi was maybe happy to be last, that was their duty to bring drivers up.

"Maybe they were not happy to be last but they could live with it because that was their business model: to develop drivers, that's a good business model. It's like when [Daniel] Ricciardo drove the HRT [in 2011], you knew he was not going to do anything but it gave him experience and that's not there any more. It's maybe a good thing we don't have these teams [running at the back], [but] maybe it's a bad thing..."

Minardi prided itself on giving young drivers a chance - Fernando Alonso, Giancarlo Fisichella, Jarno Trulli and Mark Webber are just a handful who drove for the team. All of them went on to drive for bigger outfits and all of them won races. Then-boss Giancarlo Minardi says it was "crucial" that he would sign young drivers based on potential rather than their backing. And to start with, that was the case.

That resolve was tested amid rising costs. In 2000 the team was forced to take Gaston Mazzacane, who brought backing with him from Argentina. But that was only a minor reprieve. Eventually the cost of competing in F1 became too much and Red Bull bought the team, transforming it into Toro Rosso.

Manor was the closest thing F1 has had to Minardi in recent times in terms of providing an entry point for young drivers, even if that was not its primary aim, and it proved to be a tremendous success. Ferrari junior Jules Bianchi was a prime example.

Mercedes juniors Pascal Wehrlein and Esteban Ocon also got their grounding there, earning precious experience behind the wheel of an F1 car in a low-pressure environment but surrounded by experienced mechanics and engineers. A year later, they find themselves racing for better-funded outfits in Sauber and Force India respectively, continuing their F1 education with the aim of one day progressing to the Mercedes works outfit.

With Manor now gone, where can young drivers get a foot in the door? Red Bull is the obvious choice. Minardi lives on in the form of Toro Rosso, and Red Bull magnate Dietrich Mateschitz made the acquisition in order to provide a conduit for members of his young driver programme to prove themselves in F1.

Toro Rosso debuted in 2006 and has run 11 drivers - Vitantonio Liuzzi, Scott Speed, Sebastian Vettel, Sebastien Bourdais, Jaime Alguersurari, Sebastien Buemi, Ricciardo, Jean-Eric Vergne, Daniil Kvyat, Max Verstappen and Carlos Sainz Jr.

Of those, four - Vettel, Ricciardo, Kvyat and Verstappen - have been promoted. That's around a 36% hit rate. Between them, those drivers have achieved four world titles and 44 wins for the Red Bull senior team.

"The target of Toro Rosso has been and still is to educate young drivers," says team principal Franz Tost. "We must not forget when Dietrich Mateschitz bought the Minardi team, he said we must educate the young Red Bull drivers. Nothing has changed from this philosophy, which means if there is a young driver coming up and we at Red Bull think he has the ability to become a successful F1 driver, then his first step will be at Toro Rosso."

One option would be to make running third cars mandatory for teams with a budget of over £150million

As Vettel, Ricciardo and Verstappen have proved, the Red Bull programme delivers a clear path to a team capable of delivering a championship-winning car. But that is the only pathway, something that is proving to be a hindrance for Sainz.

The Spaniard has shown impressive pace over two-and-half-seasons with Toro Rosso, to the extent that Red Bull wants to keep him in the family, warming the bench in case Verstappen or Ricciardo leave and they need to slot him in.

But he knows he can't hang around forever and a fourth season at Toro Rosso, which seems likely now, is not ideal for his career. Had he got his break at Minardi, like Alonso, he wouldn't have been limited to just one team to get his opportunity higher up the grid if he showed promise.

The counter argument, of course, is that he may never have got on the F1 radar without Red Bull's backing. Which leads on to the amount of money required even to buy a seat in F1 - a figure so large that many drivers have been priced out. This has come about because of the high costs of competing in F1.

Williams, a team with nine constructors' championships and seven drivers' titles, has turned to Lance Stroll, a driver who comes with significant financial backing from his billionaire father Lawrence. Force India has Sergio Perez, who commands one of the most attractive sponsorship packages on the grid. Marcus Ericsson has significant support from Swedish backers, too, which plays a part in his position at Sauber.

Raising more than £10m in this economic climate is almost impossible for most young drivers, but an increasingly common requirement from teams further up the grid.

For Minardi and Manor, their lower operating costs meant the figure required from pay drivers was lower and therefore more achievable.

So how does F1 boost the number of junior teams in F1?

Manufacturers Ferrari and Mercedes have the cash available to help young drivers get places further down the grid, but they have tended to favour cooperation with another outfit (such as an engine supply) rather than outright paying for a seat.

If Ferrari pushes through with its Sauber plan, that will instantly open up two more opportunities. Ferrari would benefit as it has a proper link into F1 for its driver academy. Sauber would gain more stability in the long term, having had its future on the grid threatened on multiple occasions over the past few seasons. And F1 would get the chance to see one, maybe two, young drivers fight for their F1 future.

Mercedes could follow that lead and tighten its relationship with Force India. It is already supplying it with engines, as part of a long-term deal, and has placed Ocon in one of the seats. So far that is working well. Formalising and increasing the relationship will only serve to benefit its own succession plan, while also strengthening Force India's armoury in its battle to be head the midfield.

Renault could forge closer links with Red Bull, which in turn could allow it to use Toro Rosso as a potential entry point for its own junior drivers. Or it could consider a tie-up with another team such as McLaren (which remains a possibility), or Williams, with whom it has had success in the past - and use those teams to loan out drivers.

Another option would be to make running third cars mandatory for teams with a budget of over £150million. Currently, that would mean Mercedes, Ferrari, Renault, McLaren and Red Bull would be required to do so. It would be compulsory for that seat to be allocated to a young driver, providing five spots each year. The third car would not score points in the constructors' championship, but they would be attributed in the drivers' standings.

Longer term, F1 bosses must find a way to bring costs down in a way that will enable new teams to join on smaller budgets, but that is unlikely to happen before 2021, when the latest draft of the agreements that bind teams to the championship will come into force.

Until then, junior teams or third cars are the way forward if F1 wants to generate stars of the future.