Motorsport Analytics

Were they marked for the big time from the beginning?

It’s not much of a secret, I imagine, that I’m a big fan of the young French driver Doriane Pin and think she’s one of the two most exciting talents in sportscar racing at the moment (the other being Malthe Jakobsen). However, she seems to have decided to turn to single-seater racing this year with, to date, somewhat mixed results.

I’m not much of a fan of the switch, partly because I strongly prefer sportscar racing to single-seater (or formula car, neither of which are particularly good terms for the discipline) racing, but also because based on what I’ve seen so far I don’t subjectively think she’s anywhere near as exciting a talent in single-seaters.

But the point of this place is data-driven insights, so is there any way to be objective about this yet? So far Doriane’s participated in nine F4 races, is that enough to form meaningful opinions?

If it is, then it must be the case that there are some marks of success common to top-level single-seater drivers which are apparent even as early as their first ten races. So I took a look at the first ten events of the 22 drivers who raced in the 2023 Formula One World Championship – supposedly the race seats everyone in single-seaters wants, plus Alex Palou who is often talked of as being somebody who’d be competitive in F1 if he got the chance (I tried to look at Scott Dixon, but information on 1990s New Zealand Formula Ford is thin on the ground). Are there signs of their future success even at these early stages?

In a word: No. Or at least, not reliably.

In some more words, here’s a quick rundown. I’ve gone in mostly championship order, lacking a better idea. There’s a couple of exceptions for reasons which will hopefully be obvious when I get to them.

Max Verstappen

Max’s first ten single-seater races were in the one-off 2014 Florida Winter Series, a Formula Abarth event set up as a warm-up by the Ferrari Driver Academy for a fairly all-star cast of drivers including two others who’d go on to F1, two who’d race in IndyCar and three who would race in WEC (though two of them were the IndyCar racers). Max had two non-finishes and four podiums, including a win.

Average finishing position: 4.0
Average finishing position counting a DNF as 20th: 7.2

Lance Stroll

Yeah, he’s an exception to the championship order, and it’s because his first ten races were also in the Florida Winter Series. Possibly not surprisingly, he didn’t do quite as well as Max, sharing the two non-finishes but only having two podiums and no victories. He would then proceed to absolutely dominate the following season of Italian F4, mind, to the extent that he was injured for the final round, missed the last three races and still won the title by 94 points.

Average finishing position: 4.6
Average finishing position counting a DNF as 20th: 7.7

Sergio Perez

Perez’s first significant races were in the 2004 Skip Barber National Championship, and they didn’t go particularly well for him; a highest finish of 6th isn’t a great return. It wasn’t a particularly high-class field either – Marco Andretti won the championship, but behind him there’s not much other than a 13-year-old John Edwards. Perez’s first podium wouldn’t come until the second race of his 2005 season, which was in Formula BMW ADAC – and he wouldn’t get a second podium until 2006.

Average finishing position: 11.7
Average finishing position counting a DNF as 20th: 11.7

Lewis Hamilton

Lewis showed flashes of promise in his first races in Formula Renault 2.0, with three podiums including a win in his first ten races. But he also had a DNF and a pair of 15th-place finishes. His team principal made impressed noises when asked about him in 2021, but, well, you would, wouldn’t you?

Average finishing position: 8.2
Average finishing position counting a DNF as 20th: 9.4

Fernando Alonso

The results of the 1999 Euro Open by Nissan (the series that would eventually become the World Series by Renault but definitely wasn’t there yet) make for some fascinating reading. Alonso had six DNFs, three wins and a second place in his first ten races. Given it was a one-make series in a Coloni chassis I don’t rule out some of those DNFs being mechanical but it’s still pretty wild.

Average finishing position: 1.25
Average finishing position counting a DNF as 20th: 12.5

Charles Leclerc

Leclerc’s first ten results – in his case in Formula Renault 2.0 Alps – are the sort of results I was expecting to see when I did this. Starting with a couple of non-finishes, he improved steadily, scoring three podium finishes and winning races nine and ten. By that time Nyck de Vries had pretty much run away with the championship though he did beat George Russell (speaking of which…).

Average finishing position: 3.0
Average finishing position counting a DNF as 20th: 6.4

George Russell

I’m gonna deviate from championship order again since that FR 2.0 season was also George Russell’s first. However it’s not quite that simple as he was also racing in BRDC F4 at the same time. So his first ten races were the first four rounds of FR 2.0 Alps and the first six of BRDC F4. He did rather better in the F4 races, winning three times and getting another podium whereas in the Formula Renault races he had one DNF and a best finish of fourth.

Average finishing position: 3.8
Average finishing position counting a DNF as 20th: 5.4

Lando Norris

Lando actually started in Ginetta Juniors, which for these purposes doesn’t count because this is clearly a sportscar:

and obviously the point here is the drivers’ first races in single-seaters. So for these purpose we’re looking at Lando’s 2015 F4 season, in which he raced in one of the two British F4 series (don’t ask), ADAC and Italian F4. In practice though nine of his first ten races were in the British series with the tenth being his first race in Italy, from which he retired. The nine British races turned out better though, with three wins and a third place (beating, amongst others, Colton Herta and Dan Ticktum, at least when the latter wasn’t being disqualified for overtaking a train of cars under safety car to deliberately crash into a rival).

Average finishing position: 5.0
Average finishing position counting a DNF as 20th: 6.5

Carlos Sainz Jr.

Carlos was a bit all over the place in the 2010 season of Formula BMW Europe, recording four podiums including a win, but also a 10th and an 11th – two results which start to sound worse when you learn there were only 16 drivers. He did finish out the season top rookie, though (beating Daniil Kvyat in the process).

Average finishing position: 5.4
Average finishing position counting a DNF as 20th: 5.4

Oscar Piastri

Oscar’s first ten races were, helpfully for the purposes of comparison to Doriane Pin, in UAE F4 (though it was the first season, and had a much smaller field). He was remarkably consistent, never finishing higher than third (which he did twice) or lower than sixth. It seemed to have been that sort of championship though, as he was outdone in both results and consistency by…

Average finishing position: 4.6
Average finishing position counting a DNF as 20th: 4.6

Logan Sargeant

It was Logan’s first races too, though he raced in all of them whereas Piastri only ran from the fourth through the fourteenth events. As for Logan’s results, well, he was second (behind Jonathon Aberdein, who’d had a season of F4 experience already). In all ten of them. Over the course of the full season he would throw some third place finishes and non-finishes in, but was comfortably second in the overall championship.

Average finishing position: 2.0
Average finishing position counting a DNF as 20th: 2.0

Pierre Gasly

Pierre’s another one like Charles Leclerc (maybe it comes with being French) who improved as he went along. His first season in French F4 started with a pair of DNFs, which he followed up with a pair of 10th-place finishes. Things improved though, and he grabbed podium finishes in races 5 and 9 before winning in race 10 on his way to finishing third overall (behind Matthieu Vaxiviere and Andrea Pizzitola, who’ve both had some success in sportscars).

Average finishing position: 5.9
Average finishing position counting a DNF as 20th: 10.1

Esteban Ocon

I’m guessing if you told Esteban I was writing this article he might have a list of excuses ready and waiting. To be fair, 2012 Formula Renault Eurocup was stacked, containing no fewer than four future FIA world champions (three in Formula E and one in Rallycross), five future F1 drivers (not including Ocon) and multiple WEC and IMSA race winners. Still, his best finish in his first ten races was fifth, he only had one other top 10, and overall he was 14th in the championship. He can’t blame the equipment either since team-mate Daniil Kvyat won seven races on his way to second. Still, it went better for him than…

Average finishing position: 16.2
Average finishing position counting a DNF as 20th: 16.6

Alex Albon

It’s fair to say that Albon was a slow starter in motorsport. He was one of the five future F1 drivers who entered Formula Renault Eurocup in 2012 alongside Esteban Ocon (the others were Stoffel Vandoorne, Daniil Kvyat, Nyck de Vries and Pierre Gasly). It, um, went poorly. To the extent that treating his DNFs as 20th-place finishes actually improves his average position. To be fair, his EPIC Racing team-mates combined for a grand total of one point, so he was not exactly in the best situation. That said, things didn’t improve that much in the somewhat more competitive KTR team the next year, with his first podium finish not coming until his third season. Some people just turn out to be better suited to higher-end machinery.

Average finishing position: 20.9
Average finishing position counting a DNF as 20th: 20.7

Nyck de Vries

Yeah, it was his first season too. Though unlike Albon and Ocon he also raced in the FR 2.0 Northern European Cup, so his first ten results are a mix of the two series. These started off with a spectacular 32nd place finish at Hockenheim, though he did immediately follow it up with a sixth (and, um, then a 22nd). He did manage a pair of seconds and a third in the first ten races overall, on his way to fifth overall in the Eurocup series. Just goes to show that lower formula performance isn’t always predictive of F1 performance.

Average finishing position: 11.6
Average finishing position counting a DNF as 20th: 12.4

Yuki Tsunoda

Japanese F4 is a bit of an odd duck by European standards, with a fair smattering of amateur journeymen drivers, occasional repeat champions, and also not running a Tatuus chassis unlike almost every other F4 series. Still, Yuki ran well enough, with a win and a trio of other podiums in his first ten races on his way to an eventual third place behind Ritomo Miyata (who was repeating as champion – to be fair, Formula Regional Japan didn’t exist yet, but it still seems weird to me).

Average finishing position: 4.7
Average finishing position counting a DNF as 20th: 6.2

Valtteri Bottas

Valtteri’s another one in the Piastri category of “very consistent without actually winning”; across his first ten races his lowest place was sixth and he had two seconds and a third. Once he did win a race, mind, he then won four of the next five across the 2007 Formula Renault 2.0 Northern European Cup and UK Winter Series.

Average finishing position: 4.2
Average finishing position counting a DNF as 20th: 4.2

Nico Hülkenberg

Nico’s stellar junior formula career began in Formula BMW ADAC (that is, Germany) in 2005, with four wins and four more podiums in his first ten races on his way to edging out Sebastian Buemi (who had a year of experience behind him) for the title. I was semi-expecting that every F1 driver would have results a bit like this, and as you can see by now it turns out that they very much don’t.

Average finishing position: 2.1
Average finishing position counting a DNF as 20th: 2.1

Daniel Ricciardo

I’ve included him here for completeness but in practice I don’t actually know what the results of his first single-seater races were. He finished eighth overall in Western Australian Formula Ford in 2005, but the only set of results I can find for it contain point scores that shouldn’t be possible based on what the rest of the webpage says. It’s also not clear if he didn’t race in the first three events or just didn’t score. So I’m not going to invent some numbers here.

Average finishing position: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Average finishing position counting DNF as 20th: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Zhou Guanyu

It’s increasingly popular for well-funded drivers to appear in both ADAC and Italian F4 to maximise their track time, and that’s what Zhou did in 2015. This did get him the second lowest classified finish of anyone in this article – a 28th place at Oschersleben - but he also won his ninth and tenth races and got three other podiums (though two were in the Italian F4 Winter series which only had ten drivers in it).

Average finishing position: 7.6
Average finishing position counting a DNF as 20th: 7.6

Kevin Magnussen

We’ve now entered the short “wait, that’s even a championship?” section of the article, as Kevin Magnussen won seven out of eight races in 2008 Danish Formula Ford while also crossing the southern border to record a couple of second places in ADAC Formel Masters. That wasn’t the best set of results, though, because of…

Average finishing position: 1.6
Average finishing position counting a DNF as 20th: 1.6

Liam Lawson

It’s well known that Lawson tends to win on his debut in a new formula, but in the case of his first races in New Zealand F1600 he also won the next five. And then the three after that brief interruption of a second place. I’m not sure there’s much more to say about it.

Average finishing position: 1.1
Average finishing position counting a DNF as 20th: 1.1

Alex Palou

Palou actually has one of the better first ten races of any of the people we’ve looked at here – though on the other hand, if you’ve heard of anyone else who was in the 2014 Euroformula Open series I’m impressed (and surprised). Anyway, Palou had one DNF and one fourth, and was otherwise on the podium in all of his first ten races, with two wins.

Average finishing position: 2.3
Average finishing position counting a DNF as 20th: 3.8

Doriane Pin

Doriane looks thoroughly mid-pack in this group.

She’s got one win and three other podiums, all in a fairly weak F4 South-East Asia field, one non-points finish in F4 UAE (courtesy of some dubious racecraft, having seen the race) and some lower top-10 finishes. Of course, those results are also common to hundreds of drivers who didn’t make it to F1.

Or in other words, despite my uninformed impressions, it’s still way too soon to start forming opinions about her single-seater career. Particularly since she hasn’t even done ten races yet (race ten will be this coming weekend as UAE F4 continues).