Why Formula 1 isn't actually failing young drivers

It has become conventional wisdom that Formula 1 is failing young drivers. That Williams brought 35-year-old Felipe Massa out of retirement to take the seat vacated by Mercedes-bound Valtteri Bottas is regarded as another symptom of this problem.

This year's grid features just one rookie: Lance Stroll. But there's plenty of evidence this is a temporary anomaly and the trend for new opportunities in the last decade has been more encouraging than you might think.

In this post-truth world, it's more important than ever to drill down into the facts and ask what they bear out. After all, we've seen one of the most exciting young talents in a long time break through in Max Verstappen over the past two years, and it's not enough simply to dismiss him as a trend-bucking outlier. And in this case, there are some surprising findings.

Since the creation of the world championship in 1950, and excluding the anomalous points-paying Indianapolis 500s of the first 11 seasons, the average number of debutants attempting to qualify for a grand prix in a season is 10.86.

By ignoring 1950, when all 47 drivers were technically rookies because it was the first year of the world championship, and 1952, when 48 drivers made their debuts, a number inflated by the swathes of one-off appearances caused by the temporary switch to Formula 2 regulations, you get the more representative figure of 9.7 debutants per season.

In 2016, five debutants appeared. This is defined as drivers who attempted to qualify for a grand prix, and excludes those running during Friday practice.

That's not a bad number, especially given it represents 20.8% of the total drivers who appeared in F1. And most are sticking around, too, with Pascal Wehrlein, Esteban Ocon, Stoffel Vandoorne and Jolyon Palmer all having landed race seats for 2017 and only Rio Haryanto frozen out.

It might come as a surprise to learn that, of the previous seven season, only once has there not been five debutants. This was in 2012, when only two drivers (Jean-Eric Vergne and Charles Pic) made their bows.

While only 13 seasons have had fewer debutants than last year, the percentage figure is more significant because it shows how many chances the available slots were filled by newcomers.

Ranged against that is the fact that, if there are no driver changes during the year, 2017 will actually be the worst year for debutant numbers, with only Williams newcomer Stroll on the grid.

Currently, the worst season for rookie opportunities was 1985, when just two drivers made their debuts. And even then, Ivan Capelli (Tyrrell) and Christian Danner (Zakspeed) entered a grand total of four races between them.

The evidence suggests 2017's singleton rookie situation is an anomaly, caused partly by the change to new regulations and the resulting conservatism of some teams - and with just one start to his name so far, Vandoorne is effectively a newcomer too. Similarly, Manor has fielded three rookies in each of the last two seasons, but will not be on the grid this year, taking with it two more full-time opportunities.

Looking at the past 10 seasons, covering a span of 2007-16, gives a good overview of the number of rookie opportunities available in contemporary F1.

DEBUTANTS BY F1 SEASON
2007 6 (23.1% of field)
2008 2 (9.1%)
2009 4 (16.0%)
2010 5 (18.5%)
2011 5 (17.9%)
2012 2 (8.0)
2013 5 (21.7%)
2014 5 (20.8%)
2015 5 (22.7%)
2016 5 (20.8%)

So opportunities still exist. Whether they always go to the correct people is another crucial question, but given last year's crop included two GP2 champions, a European Formula 3 and GP3 champion, a DTM champion and a GP2 race winner, that's hardly cause for alarm.

If anything, the introduction of the points required to gain a superlicence based on championship positions in the junior formulas should shore that up. As the under-fire Stroll keeps, quite rightly, pointing out, he has qualified for a superlience by this means and is hardly a no-mark who has never achieved anything in racing.

You can argue the way the points are awarded isn't perfect, but it's a system that, properly enforced, will ensure a moneybags no-mark will not be able to get on the grid.

What it is true to say is that there have been times in the past when the number of chances has been greater. All the way back to 1995, the number of debutants has never exceeded six, but if you go back to the season before that the number is a very high 14.

A good thing? Well, this is the point where we have to consider the quality of the opportunities available.

Of the 44 drivers who made their debuts from 2007-16, only six of them did not get a full season. Now let's look back at our 1994 case study. Of the 14 debutants, only three had a full season - Taki Inoue, Olivier Panis and Heinz-Harald Frentzen.

The others - Philippe Adams, Olivier Beretta, David Coulthard, Jean-Denis Deletraz, Franck Lagorce, Andrea Montermini, Hideki Noda, Roland Ratzenberger, Mika Salo, Mimmo Schiatarella and Jos Verstappen - did not get the luxury of a full campaign.

And looking five years earlier at 1989, when there were 39 seats and 13 drivers made their debuts, was that such a great situation for rookies? Enrico Bertaggia, Volker Weidler and Joachim Winkelhock never even qualified for an F1 race in their careers - hardly a great opportunity.

So the point here is that quantity of opportunity does not necessarily equal quality of opportunity. From 1996 to 2016, the number of drivers attempting to qualify for a grand prix in a given season has stayed relatively stable, at between 22 and 28 drivers, with an average of 4.6 rookies per season.

How to assess quality of opportunity? Well, you could argue that a driver getting a full season in their rookie year is a good place to start.

Only 92 rookies in world championship history have entered every race in their first season. And 27 of those were from 2007-16, so those making their debuts in recent years are getting a decent crack of the whip.

What's more, look at the drivers making their debut who go on to contest a full season in F1 at any point in their career - astonishingly, it wasn't until 1985 that all of drivers making their debuts in a given season ever had a full season in F1. And that was the aforementioned Danner/Capelli year of just two newcomers.

The first real success in this regard was '88, when Julian Bailey, Mauricio Gugelmin, Oscar Larrauri, Luis Perez-Sala, Pierre-Heri Raphanel, Bernd Schneider and Aguri Suzuki all had at least one full season in F1 before dropping out.

Again, looking at the last 10 seasons, the quality of opportunity is sky-high. In half of those seasons, every driver making their debut in a given year had at least one full season in F1.

The average rate over that period is 84.3%, a figure that rises by a further 2% when you consider both Vandoorne and Ocon will, barring something going unexpectedly wrong, complete full campaigns this year after part-seasons in 2016.

Of the best dozen years in world championship history in terms of quality of opportunity, eight of them were in the previous 10 seasons. Even making allowances for the fact the world championship was a little more disparate in its early decades, that's very positive.

So in terms of number of decent opportunities, recent years have been far from terrible. That's reflected in the drivers breaking through, with Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo emerging as genuine aces in the past three seasons.

That's not to say there aren't problems. It's clearly a problem that none of the top three in last year's GP2 championship are making the step up, although Red Bull protege Pierre Gasly is following Vandoorne's path of being parked in Super Formula for a year to keep warm while waiting for a space in F1.

While there have been no examples of genuinely offensive pay drivers making the grid in recent years (Haryanto, for example, was fourth in GP2 in 2015), there has been an unhealthy emphasis on drivers of reasonable quality with cash behind them over the best available options.

F1 drivers should be a commodity teams fight over for only one reason: their ability. Sadly, the days when McLaren could loan out Vandoorne to a small team for a few years without having to spend vast sums to do it are long gone. Even Red Bull, which has its own junior squad, didn't have space to accommodate Gasly at Toro Rosso this year.

With Ross Brawn recently floating the vague idea of an F1 draft (an interesting idea explored in depth here by Autosport's Scott Mitchell) there have been plenty of suggestions of how to guarantee succession.

One idea is the GP2 champion should be guaranteed a place on the grid. But that's not a tenable solution, requiring either F1 itself to pay a team a vast sum of money to take the driver or even operate a team itself. Neither of those things should be something F1 is doing.

The saying all roads lead to Rome applies here, as once again we find ourselves drawn towards the thorny issue of costs, and team payments, in F1. If teams could be guaranteed to operate at a profit (assuming they are well run) and perhaps ways were found to reduce the brute force spending war being the name of the game, drivers would be one of the key performance factors.

A decade ago, when manufacturer involvement in F1 was formidable, there were a large number of drivers bankrolled by these companies in the junior formulas. Many never made it to F1, but they were funded to show what they could do in such categories.

Today, Red Bull is the only organisation with a full-blown junior scheme guaranteed to bring drivers into F1, although McLaren deserves credit for its programme, which promoted Kevin Magnussen in '14 and now Vandoorne.

But if all teams could operate on that basis, and have to fight hard for the genuinely good up and comers, it would not only ensure the best thrive, but that they will get opportunities.

The trickle-down effect could be enormously powerful. Competing in GP2 is very expensive, but don't make the mistake of thinking every team operating that level is coining in vast sums. The lot of the junior team is an uncertain one, and if the top level can get its house in order, this could make an unstable existence a little easier for such teams as well as working well for drivers.

There's also problems with the amount of testing available. But let's not fool ourselves into thinking every driver who made their F1 debut before in-season testing was reduced had vast mileage. Some did, but it was far from unusual 30 years ago to be flung into a car with no experience and little time to impress.

The flow of high-quality young drivers into F1 is important to F1. After all, these are the superstars of the future and drivers remain the focal point for the majority of those watching.

More can and must be done, but a look at the facts does suggest F1 isn't doing quite as badly as it is perceived to be in terms of giving opportunity to new drivers in F1. And, even more importantly, good quality opportunities.