Career-killers

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midgrid
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Career-killers

Post by midgrid »

So I started thinking today about cars that ended their drivers' careers, i.e. all of the drivers who competed in the car did not take part in another F1 event afterwards (excluding as a third/reserve driver on Fridays). I've come up with the following list (which also excludes private entries using customer chassis, ignores the distinction between A, B etc. specification cars within a single season and ignores cars that were only ever driven by a single driver):

2013
Caterham CT03 (Charles Pic and Giedo van der Garde)*

2012
Hispania F112 (Pedro de la Rosa and Narain Karthikeyan)

2011
Toro Rosso STR6 (Sébastien Buemi and Jaime Alguersuari)

2008
Super Aguri SA08 (Takuma Sato and Anthony Davidson)

2004
Minardi PS04B (Gianmaria Bruni and Zsolt Baumgartner)

2002
Toyota TF102 (Mika Salo and Allan McNish)

1998
Minardi M198 (Shinji Nakano and Esteban Tuero)

1992
Jordan 192 (Stefano Modena and Maurício Gugelmin)

1991
Coloni C4 (Pedro Chaves and Naoki Hattori)

1990
Life L190 (Gary Brabham and Bruno Giacomelli)

1963
Scirocco (Tony Settember and Ian Burgess)

* As a sidenote, only Heikki Kovalainen's two appearances as a Lotus supersub in 2013 prevent the entire Lotus/Caterham team from being a career-killer, as Jarno Trulli, Vitaly Petrov and Karun Chandhok have also failed to find other race seats since driving for them.

There may be more examples, but it gets very confusing in the 1950s and 1960s!
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midgrid
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Re: Career-killers

Post by midgrid »

So which of these cars was the most obstinate immovable object to the irresistible force of its drivers? I'll rank them by the drivers' combined total number of participations.

11. Coloni C4 - 15
10. Scirocco - 27
9. Minardi PS04B - 38
8. Minardi M198 - 49
7. Caterham CT03 - 58
6. Life L190 - 84
5. Toro Rosso STR6 - 101
4. Super Aguri SA08 - 106
3. Toyota F102 - 128
Image

2. Hispania F112 - 155
Image

1. Jordan 192 - 179
Image

So, despite Eddie Jordan's claims that he helped many young drivers into F1, he also was responsible for the most career-damaging F1 car of all time! :P
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Yannick
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Re: Career-killers

Post by Yannick »

I would not yet rule out Giedo van der Garde getting a Sauber race seat for next year.

Also, de la Rosa and Karthikeyan were already near the perceived "age limit" for F1 race drivers when they ran for HRT. So the blame is hardly on the car.

Super Aguri produced much better results in their 2nd year with Sato and Davidson than in their 1st year. Only ask Franck Montagny and Yuji Ide about this. It's about time somebody from this board through social media gets to interview Ide on his career and how it was influenced by having been thrown into the deep end at the Honda B-Team. Sato's career tilt came in that year when he won the Reject Of the Year Award, presented by this very website. The talents of Anthony Davidson, Franck Montagny and James Rossiter were sadly wasted on test drives and simulator work in F1. They are all very good racers who didn't get to join the race teams who brought them to F1 in the first place. They are the Badoers of the Friday tester era, and they are not the only ones. None of them lost their F1 ride due to a bad car, but all of them because they didn't get a proper ride in the first place before their affiliated manufacturer pulled out of F1. Actually, Mike Conway was kind of lucky that Honda pulled out, otherwise his career as a driver might have gone in the same direction as that of the other Honda test drivers. Instead, he followed the example of Ryan Briscoe who went to IndyCar where both are race winners.
As spectators, we can be lucky that Kamui Kobayashi was promoted to the Toyota race seat before that manufacturer pulled out. That way, he could be discovered by Sauber who had an opening in their driver lineup. Him and Chequeo have been the best driver pairing with Sauber in recent years. They brought back fond memories of that season when Sauber ran Heidfeld and Räikkönen. Unfortunately, then Chequeo moved up to McLaren where he got a bad car that is not on this very list here and had to move again, bringing his considerable talents to Force 1ndia who gave him a better car than last year's McLAren. Money woes then forced Sauber to go for pay drivers and let go of Kobayashi. And now, he is at Caterham who most likely will replace him with a pay driver for next year. Here's hoping that another midfield team is going to sign Kamui at the end of the year but unfortunately, it does not look like it. Maybe a year as a Pirelli test driver? Here's hoping we will see him compete on the international stage.

Buemi and Alguersuari were just not picked up by other teams, having been sacked by Dr. Helmut. The only guy who ever got a decent race drive after having been sacked by Dr. Helmut is Tonio Liuzzi who shone brightly on his comeback drive for Force 1ndia at Monza until his car expired but won this very site's Reject Of the Year Award in the season that followed.
That doesn't speak too well about the Red Bull junior drivers who are not invited to join the A-Team. Here's hoping Verne will have a drive with another F1 team after Nürburgring next year because he is just too good a driver not to.

However, the others in this list seem pretty much accurate.
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"You will never see a Mercedes using a Ferrari engine or the other way round."
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Re: Career-killers

Post by FullMetalJack »

Before reading the opening post of this thread, I immediately thought of Toyota.

None of their drivers bar Kobayashi went on to do anything in F1 afterwards.
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Re: Career-killers

Post by Butterfox »

FullMetalJack wrote:Before reading the opening post of this thread, I immediately thought of Toyota.

None of their drivers bar Kobayashi went on to do anything in F1 afterwards.

Well, Trulli did drive for Caterham afterwards.
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Re: Career-killers

Post by Salamander »

This wrote:
FullMetalJack wrote:Before reading the opening post of this thread, I immediately thought of Toyota.

None of their drivers bar Kobayashi went on to do anything in F1 afterwards.

Well, Trulli did drive for Caterham afterwards.


Glock also drove for Virgin/Marussia.
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Re: Career-killers

Post by FullMetalJack »

Salamander wrote:
This wrote:
FullMetalJack wrote:Before reading the opening post of this thread, I immediately thought of Toyota.

None of their drivers bar Kobayashi went on to do anything in F1 afterwards.

Well, Trulli did drive for Caterham afterwards.


Glock also drove for Virgin/Marussia.


I'll rephrase, nobody bar Kobayashi had any success in F1 after driving for Toyota.
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Yannick
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Re: Career-killers

Post by Yannick »

Seems like new teams have a better chance of economical and sportive survival in F1 if they prefer signing backmarker drivers over former front-runners:

It's kind of interesting to note that, in their first few seasons, none of the successful (read: durable) new arrivals amongst the teams in F1 in the recent decades (Jordan, Sauber, Stewart, Force 1ndia) have run drivers that were out of their league, whereas the new teams who did, either haven't been successful or disappeared (Toyota, Jaguar, Caterham, BAR before Honda).

Jordan hired drivers with backmarker experience from previous years De Cesaris and Gachot in their 1st year, then midfielders Modena and Gugelmin (which did not work out so well) and then brought a debutant with Barrichello. Luckily, they let go of Capelli quickly: he had just retired from one of the big teams.

Sauber had Karl Wendlinger gaining experience in a March before debuting themselves with him at the wheel. They hired a former Scuderia Italia driver in JJ Lehto for their 1st season, and in their 2nd season, they brought in debutant Heinz-Harald Frentzen. Later, when they had former No. 2 drivers of front-running teams like Herbert and Alesi, the team stagnated. Yet, their debutants from later years such as Massa, Räikkönen and Perez all achieved great things.

Stewart is not so good an example since they were sold off twice in a pretty quick succession.

Force 1ndia is kind of like the "House that Adrian Sutil built". And Let's not forget Markus Winkelhock's stunning performance at the Nürburgring in the wet when that team was still called Spyker.

On the other side, you have Jaguar with Eddie Irvine and Rubens Barrichello who only won his first race a while after joining Ferrari. And Toyota who started out promisingly with Mika Salo, hired mid-fielder Olivier Panis and brought in their own Cristiano Da Matta from ChampCar (a risky move back in the day), later were stuck with one-time winner and Briatore's persona non grata, Jarno Trulli, who had what it takes to rival Fernando Alonso in the same car and might have a title to his name had he not been booted by Benetton-Renault, and former front-runner Ralf Schumacher who hasn't driven the same after his heavy crash in the Williams at Indianapolis' Turn 1.
Then, there is BAR, the team formed for and around former World Drivers Champion Jacques Villeneuve which went nowhere with him, in kind of a Copersucar Fittipaldi flashback. Yet with Panis and Button on board, things got better.
And Caterham, well, they also started out under a different name but the same ownership with former front-runners Heikki Kovalainen and Jarno Trulli. Notably,the first guy from their own driver development program to steer a car, in Friday free practise no less, was none other than A1 GP Team Malaysia race winner Fairuz Fauzy. Caterham later signed popular mid-fielder Vitaly Petrov who went nowhere with them, and promising backmarker Charles Pic from Virgin/Manor/Marussia. And they brought back the guy who didn't want to be a SuperAguri test driver, Giedo van der Garde. But it seems like it was too little, too late for that team since it's now been sold.
"I don't think we should be used to finance (the manufacturers') R&D because they will produce that engine anyway" said Monisha Kaltenborn.
"You will never see a Mercedes using a Ferrari engine or the other way round."
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Re: Career-killers

Post by CoopsII »

Image
:lol:
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Bleu
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Re: Career-killers

Post by Bleu »

If neither Sutil or Gutierrez won't participate any F1 race after this season, Sauber C33 is set to take second place here. Currently Sutil and Gutierrez have combined a total of 162 Grand Prix's and the number will be 166 if both drivers start races in Interlagos and Abu Dhabi.
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Rob Dylan
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Re: Career-killers

Post by Rob Dylan »

With both of their replaced for next year I think that 2014's Sauber was definitely a career killer :P
And after being sidelined again, for now the promises made to Sirotkin of a career (at least there) in Formula 1 have been dashed.
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Re: Career-killers

Post by Dj_bereta »

Rob Dylan wrote:With both of their replaced for next year I think that 2014's Sauber was definitely a career killer :P
And after being sidelined again, for now the promises made to Sirotkin of a career (at least there) in Formula 1 have been dashed.


If we count Simona too, four drivers (two without a single race).
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Re: Career-killers

Post by MorbidelliObese »

Dj_bereta wrote:
Rob Dylan wrote:With both of their replaced for next year I think that 2014's Sauber was definitely a career killer :P
And after being sidelined again, for now the promises made to Sirotkin of a career (at least there) in Formula 1 have been dashed.


If we count Simona too, four drivers (two without a single race).


If we're counting actual cars rather than teams in general, I think she only drove the 2012 C31, I may be wrong on that one though.
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Re: Career-killers

Post by watka »

Dj_bereta wrote:
Rob Dylan wrote:With both of their replaced for next year I think that 2014's Sauber was definitely a career killer :P
And after being sidelined again, for now the promises made to Sirotkin of a career (at least there) in Formula 1 have been dashed.


If we count Simona too, four drivers (two without a single race).


And van der Garde...
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Bleu
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Re: Career-killers

Post by Bleu »

Since the last post following cars can be added

Marussia MR03 (2014, Jules Bianchi and Max Chilton)
Sadly it was the car in which Bianchi had his fatal accident.

Marussia MR03B (2015, Roberto Merhi, Will Stevens and Alexander Rossi)

In these cases I don't think there is realistic chance of anyone returning to F1.

As of now, Alfa Romeo C41 is on the list too (2021, Kimi Räikkönen, Robert Kubica and Antonio Giovinazzi)

Without Magnussen's comeback this year Haas VF-20 could have been on the list (Romain Grosjean, Kevin Magnussen and Pietro Fittipaldi)
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Re: Career-killers

Post by Har1MAS1415 »

The 1979 Merzario A4 for Arturo Merzario.
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