7 replies to this topic

[Arion]

Anyone knows, beside Hamilton, who are the drivers who have been in the McLaren Young Driver Support Programme and what they are doing now?

[PassWind]

http://www.mclaren.c...oung_driver.php


Then google is your friend, Nick Hiedfield is one of the drivers you know where he is obviously.

[Arion]

Thank for the link. Heard about Nick Heidfeld, they formed a team for him to compete in Fomular 3000, didn't they?

Only three were mentioned in the website, I guess the others never made it into F1, it's really tough to get into F1 even when you have the backing of a F1 team. Looks like some of those who didnt' make it were farmed out to DTM.

[Ross Stonefeld]

Hamilton, Rowland, and the other guy who didn't make it are the main ones to be "McLaren Drivers" the rest were picked up at various stages and usually supported by McLaren. I think Heidfeld had done a year of F3 before Merc/West paid his way. So he did 3 years with the team like any standard Junior Team setup. Likewise van der Garde, he did one year and raced with a Merc engine in F3 but that was about the extent of the involvement.

[noikeee]

Wasn't Minassian part of it too, or did he just become randomly Heidfeld's team-mate in F3000?

Is it still active? Are McLaren supporting anyone in the youth ranks to become the "next Hamilton"?

[cheesy poofs]

I don't see the point for them to have such a program. Other than LH, historically, they've never really hired young drivers in the first place. They've always gone for seasoned veterans to drive for the team.

Ferrari is the same, and that's one team that could easily afford to put such a program on...but they don't. They just go and hire the best driver around.

[LB]

Originally posted by cheesy poofs
I don't see the point for them to have such a program. Other than LH, historically, they've never really hired young drivers in the first place. They've always gone for seasoned veterans to drive for the team.

Ferrari is the same, and that's one team that could easily afford to put such a program on...but they don't. They just go and hire the best driver around.

There are more than just race drivers, though this started basically as a Lewis Hamilton help vehicle.

The original six that were supported in 1998/9 were Lewis Hamilton (at 13) and Westley Graves (at 12) in Karting, Nick Heidfeld, Nicolas Minassian, Ricardo Zonta in f3000 and Norman Simon in F3.

Graves is unemployed and lives with his parents in Leicester quite a sad story really.

Heidfeld we know

Minassian we should know about (funnily he was born two days before me so its quite a surprise he was regarded as a young driver in 1999 age 26), but for those that don't Minassian went from 2nd in F3000 in 2000 to Champcar with Ganassi raced there for a year and did indy too. Was dropped and went to win the ASCAR championship in the Uk in 2002 then went to sportscars, he raced for Peugeot at Le mans

Zonta well we should know, raced for BAR, Jordan, Toyota in F1 tests for Renault.

Simon I don't know much about - he did do F3000 in 1999 and the some ALMS stuff in 2000 seems to have raced in touring cars since

[Certified Half-Wit]

I believe they have been training:

Jim "Cat Burglar" Smith
Eddie "The Spy" Jones
Fred "Safe Cracker" Bloggs
Tom "Computer Hacker" Brown
Simon "Espionage Expert" Harris
John "Crow Bar" Robson
etc...