Who are the F1 stars of tomorrow?
After saying goodbye to Jacques Villeneuve, JP Montoya and Michael Schumacher in 2006, there will be a lot of new faces in Formula One racing next season. Robert Kubica, Heikki Kovalainen, Lewis Hamilton, Nelson Piquet Junior and Sebastian Vettel are the future F1 champions. The young guns can show what they are made of during the upcoming 2007 season.
The most surprising F1 rookie is GP2 Champion Lewis Hamilton. Everybody expected Hamilton to be the new test and reserve driver of the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes F1 Team, but Ron Dennis made the decision to team Hamilton up with Fernando Alonso, the two times World Champion. At the moment, Hamilton is intensively preparing for the 2007 season. The 21-year-old trains over four hours a day in the gym but he's also being trained mentally to be able to deal with the pressure.
Flavio Briatore has a totally different approach than Ron Dennis as he opts to let the drivers get to know Formula One and the car before letting them drive their first Grand Prix. When Fernando Alonso moved from Minardi to Renault, Briatore made him test and reserve driver for a year to get him to know the team, engineers and the car. As this approach obviously worked with Fernando, he also used it on Heikki Kovalainen, who will drive his first Grand Prix in Australia.
Kovalainen is especially known from his victory in the 2004 the Race Of Champions where he was faster than Rally Champion Sebastian Loeb and seven times World Champion Michael Schumacher in a head-to-head. After being in the Renault Driver Development Programme since 2002, the Finn was announced as the Renault F1 Team third driver in 2006 and as Fernando Alonso moved to McLaren, Kovalainen will team up with Fisichella during the upcoming season.
Kovalainen isn't the only young gun with Renault F1. Nelson Piquet Junior, son of triple World Champion, Piquet Sr., has signed a contract with the Championship team as test and reserve driver. In 2003, the 21-year-old, already landed a test with the Williams Team and after a successful year in GP2, the Renault F1 Team decided to sign the talented driver. Nelsinho may well be on his way to replace Giancarlo Fisichella after 2007.
Not only Renault has a nose for young talent as the BMW Sauber F1 Team also has two future F1 champions in its ranks: Robert Kubica and Sebastian Vettel. In 2006, Robert Kubica replaced Jacques Villeneuve during the last 6 races of the season. The Pole immediately showed his potential as he finished third in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza. According to Mario Theissen, Kubica is responsible for the strong second half of the season for BMW Sauber. Not only did the Pole perform better than expected, he also made Heidfeld perform better because of the competition between the two BMW drivers.
It seems that the only one that has to fear for his position with the BMW Sauber F1 Team is Nick Heidfeld as Sebastian Vettel seems ready to take over from his compatriot. The 19-year-old started with BMW during the Turkish Grand Prix as third driver and immediately impressed by clocking the fastest time during the second free practice session. At Monza, the German was fastest during both free practice sessions on Friday. In October, Vettel signed a new contract with the BMW Sauber F1 Team as third driver.
The change to a single tyre manufacturer may as well make it slightly easier on the men entering F1 as the tyres will be easier to understand with less evolution through the season. As such, it promises to be another exciting Formula One season after two tense championships won by another (not so) young gun.
