silly season 2018 - F1 driver line up

Not all of that time, he was on and off for 6 years, not done any while he was racing in WEC and dropped twice by Red Bull in favour of other test drivers. Gasly had done 2.5 years, Stroll did 2 years plus a lot of downtime private testing with an older car this year. Sirotkin has done 3 years as a test driver.

They'll be the youngest lineup, but with the amount of private testing from Stroll and his full season racing, that's a lot more experience than any simulator work and sitting in on technical briefings.
 
Assuming Leclerc joins Ferrari in the next couple of seasons then they haven't had a full-time driver of that age since 1962 (Ricardo Rodriguez, who was killed later that year - he debuted in 1961 at the age of 20, but wasn't full-time until 1962).

Every other driver in Ferrari's entire history has been at least 24 when they made their debut (Massa, Morbidelli, Lauda, Amon, Pedro Rodriguez, Brooks and Hawthorn) and by my reckoning they've had 76 drivers in F1 history (including part-time or short-term drivers); I find it quite remarkable that over all those years only one driver has been below the age of 24.

Leclerc has be the second, surely.
 
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With Kubica as reserve, which I wasn't expecting (thought it would be race seat or no seat).

Assuming he gets plenty of simulator time and the odd practice sessions, it should allow him to find his feet again and hopefully his pace with a full-time return looking much more likely.

Very risky strategy for Williams with two very inexperienced drivers though. When Stroll is good he's very good, but it's a rare event.
 
I assume the decision was mostly a financial one. I think they're taking inspiration from Red Bull and using Kubica as a backup. If one of their drivers is much behind the other or just not pulling their weight, they have nothing to lose by replacing them with Kubica. Which frankly, I'd love to see.
 
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This is floating around on Twitter with regards to them passing Kubica up, it's F1 $$ always wins.
 
It's all about the sponsorship. Williams have never liked paying much for drivers, and over the years this has eventually become the drivers paying Williams. I guess it doesn't matter if they have good drivers as they don't have the money to build a decent car. It's a shame that their glory days as a team are far behind them and they don't seem to be able to catch up.
 
Ok, so Kubica was SLOWER than Sirotkin at the Abu Dhabi test, once tyres, fuel loads and track temperatures were taken into account yet somehow Williams are choosing the faster Sirotkin because of money rather than picking the slower driver just because it would make a nice story? Get a grip people!
 
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