How an outsider demolished a rank of F1 juniors

Gregoire Saucy has been a familiar name in the junior single-seater ranks in recent years, but few would have picked him as one to watch amid the young prodigies and Formula 1 junior team stars. All that changed in 2021. The merger of Formula Regional and the Formula Renault Eurocup produced the Formula Regional European Championship by Alpine, and a grid flooded with talent, highlighted by a handful of youngsters already backed by F1’s biggest names.

Prema pair Paul Aron and Dino Beganovic represented the Mercedes and Ferrari junior programmes respectively, while R-ace GP fielded Hadrien David, a former Renault F1 protege, and Isack Hadjar, whose form in 2021 prompted his addition to the Red Bull Junior team. But none of them could put up a fight against Saucy. The Swiss built a dominant campaign with ART Grand Prix, winning three of the first four races from pole position, and even a heavy setback of no points in Monaco and a post-race disqualification after winning at Paul Ricard didn’t stop him.

Instead, he immediately scored another hat-trick of wins, before setting his sights on the big prize by picking up key results, including two more victories at Spa and the Red Bull Ring, to wrap up the title with three races to spare. All this from a driver who had never won a single-seater race since progressing from karting in 2016 against rivals tipped as future F1 stars, and in a championship creating new challenges in 2021 following the merger. Now he’s preparing to do it all over again as he remains with ART for the step up to the F1 junior protege-flooded FIA Formula 3 Championship.

In truth, Saucy’s adaptation for 2021 came easier than the majority of his competition. He’d already been at ART for the 2020 Renault Eurocup season as team-mate to champion Victor Martins. With FRECA retaining that series’ Renault engine, the only key change he had to adjust to was the switch from Hankook tyres to the Regional Pirellis. This is where the 22-year-old felt his title aspirations came together during pre-season testing, while developing an intricate understanding both inside the team and with the Italian rubber.

“In 2020 I was already with ART and I stayed for 2021, and we progressed well over that winter and the winter tests,” explains Saucy, fresh from a winter training camp. “I worked a lot with my engineers and with all of the team. When we arrived at Imola and Barcelona for the first two weekends it was really, really good. We managed to work a lot with the Pirelli tyres and, after that, it didn’t change a lot; we worked the same way as with the Hankook but we needed to adapt with the Pirellis. It wasn’t so big, the difference. When I was driving I just continued to say the same to my engineers, how the car was working and how the balance was, and afterwards we tried to correct it but we kept the same work process. That’s how we understood the Pirelli tyres.”

Gregoire Saucy mastered the Pirelli tyres, even when not in contact with the track, to set up his title charge

Photo by: Gherardo Benfenati

Unlocking the key performance from the Pirellis provided two clear benefits: maintaining optimum performance over a race distance and in qualifying, but more importantly making the laps count when most needed. At some rounds, the grid swelled to 35 entries, so that finding space on the track became a test in itself, and the advantage of a strong qualifying was heightened by not only the traffic but the inherent difficulty in overtaking with the Tatuus T-318 machinery. That’s why eight pole positions alongside eight race wins made Saucy unstoppable, since the opposition couldn’t match his speed and consistency.

“Sometimes it was really difficult,” he admits. “If we take Barcelona, for example, we had only one lap with the Pirelli tyres [before performance dropped in qualifying], and 35 drivers on the track made it really hard. We needed to really focus both on the driving side and the strategy to let a good gap open between each driver. The grid was quite high level too – I think if we take the 10 or 15 drivers in the front we changed a lot during the season; one driver would be in the top 10 one race and then on the podium in the second race.”

"My strategy stayed the same, to continue to work and to forget the past" Gregoire Saucy

What Saucy also had over his rivals was experience. That’s a rare trait in junior single-seater racing and it can be contradictory – drivers with a high tally of races to their name but who are still not at the front are probably lacking more than what experience can give them. Saucy, by his own admission, is an old hand despite his tender age of 22, with six years of single-seater racing under his belt.

He started in FRenault machinery in the V de V Challenge, before working his way into the Renault Eurocup, dropping into Italian and German F4. He then had a Toyota Racing Series campaign in New Zealand before returning to the Eurocup, and then everything finally clicked in FRECA last year. That experience particularly helped in those moments of doubt, for example a crash by a rival wrecking his Monaco weekend, or his post-race disqualification at Paul Ricard (a washer was fitted the wrong way round).

“Monaco was really bad as there was a crash – we had only one free practice so it was really hard to keep the focus for qualifying,” he says. “My strategy stayed the same, to continue to work and to forget the past. To do the qualifying it was really difficult in Monaco, but if we take Paul Ricard race one I got disqualified, so we needed to forget what happened in race one and do what we knew we could on the Sunday.” Indeed, Saucy never looked back after his victory in race two at Paul Ricard, adding a further four victories over the summer to storm the title and open up his future like never before.

The Swiss driver spent six years in single-seater racing without much success before his title triumph in 2021

Photo by: Formula Regional European Championship

ART clearly sees a gem of a driver, even if he is a late bloomer. The team immediately promoted him to its FIA F3 ranks last November after he had topped the post-season test at Valencia on his first outing in the category. With momentum from a title-winning season, and some impressive pace having been demonstrated already, Saucy can’t hide his confidence going into 2022. So, could lightning strike twice?

“It is always a boost to start a new season after winning a championship,” he declares. “We worked hard for that. I started from three years old in karting with my family and we worked our life to win a championship. And now I did it in 2021 so I will continue to work for more wins and championships. When I started karting, it was always fun – I have some pictures at home from when I started and it’s always funny to see it. When we start at three or four years old you look really small!

“The Valencia test was really, really good and now we need to wait until the test in Bahrain to see what kind of target we can take. But for sure the target will be to be at the front. It’s always good to have a high target but, as it will be my first season in FIA F3, I think to finish the best rookie and in the top five, that would be my goal.”

Whatever the future holds for Saucy, an old head on young shoulders – even if those shoulders are a little older than his contemporaries’ – will leave him in good stead, just as it did in 2021. While his ultimate dream remains to reach the very top and race in F1, he is sensible enough to know that trends and time aren’t on his side. After all, he’s the same age as Lando Norris, Mick Schumacher, Nikita Mazepin and Guanyu Zhou, and older than Yuki Tsunoda – that’s a quarter of the 2022 F1 grid.

Without stacking too many cards against him, Saucy’s chances of being picked up by an F1 junior team – drivers in programmes he’s already beaten to a title – are dwindling as the focus continues for younger drivers. But for Saucy, it’s all part of the challenge. “For now my goal is still the same, to go as high as possible and to try to reach F1,” he says. “But, after that, my real goal is to be a professional and to be paid to drive, if it’s in endurance or something like that. We will try to work a lot to achieve that and we will see if it will happen or not.”

Saucy will be one to watch out for on the 2022 FIA F3 grid with ART Grand Prix

Photo by: Gregoire Saucy