Six of the 20 Formula One drivers this year are rookies. This is a whole new reality.

Copyright © HT Digital Streams Limit all rights reserved. Joshua Robinson, The Wall Street Journal 3 Min Read 28 Apr 2025, 09:25 PM is so far, each of them started with the races to count the time they learned to count. (AP) Summary These F1 beginners are young and not familiar with the spotlight. Their lives have been increased. To become a Formula One manager is to find membership in one of the most exclusive clubs in the world. At any given time, there are only 20 people who can truly say that it is their job to chase F1 cars. If a beginner or two arrives on the scene, it never becomes unnoticed. And this year there are six – more than a quarter of the drivers who will be ready for each race. “Everyone in the world wants a seat,” said Jack Doohan, a driver for the Alpine F1 team. Doohan is one of the lucky few who got one this year during a wild outdoor season of F1 music chairs. Teambase chose the newcomers from the most promising stars of the lower race categories and from the talent marinating in each team’s management development programs. Dooohan, 22 years old, is joined by the co -smokes Kimi Antonelli, Ollie Bearman, Gabriel Bortoleto, Isack Hadjar and Liam Lawson. These six have an average age of 20. The 18-year-old Antonelli earned his license to drive only weeks before making his F1 debut for the Mercedes team. To come so far, everyone started with the chases around the time when they learned to count. Yet no amount of racing could prepare them for the formula that is formula. The newcomers mostly tackled or went to this point in darkness. Now they are in a world of multimillion-dollar interests, constant investigation and even reality TV as the latest cast of Netflix’s ‘drive to survive’. They don’t just need to know how to handle a car at 200 miles per hour; They are also expected to maintain the glamorous image of the sport, which includes speaking various languages, the role in photo shoots and is fluent on social media. “Life has definitely changed,” Bearman says. How long they sting around depends on how quickly they can adapt to the grind at the pinnacle of car racing and for cars they barely rode. Pre-season test management is limited to a handful of days, which means most of the newcomers came to the first race in March’s first race, after spending at least twice as many hours to simulators as in the cars they would drive. Through the first five races, Antonelli delivered the best performance of the Rookie class and finished four times in the top six times. That is not a minor achievement considering the pressure he undergoes, as the driver was selected by the Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff to take over the seat evacuated by Lewis Hamilton when he left. Wolff made the choice to bet his team’s long-term future on a teenager with great confidence and great expectations. “I made my decision at five minutes after Lewis Hamilton told me he was going to Ferrari,” says Wolff. Defeat and dismantling on the other side of the spectrum has had a difficult time so far this season than Liam Lawson, the 23-year-old New Zealander who was dropped in the second seat of Red Bull Racing to participate with four-time world champion Max Verstappen. His tenure with the team has lasted two races. Lawson crashed from the seasonal opener in Australia and then finished 16th in China, more than a minute behind the leaders. At that point, the Red Bull buyer decided he was not good enough. The team demoted him after his secondary F1 outfit, known as Racing Bulls, where he could continue to gain experience in a less leading position. Many F1 observers saw the switch as an incredible lack of patience with a manager who graduated from Red Bull’s own junior programs. But the principal of Red Bull Racing, Christian Horner, knew that with ten millions of dollars in the season’s team’s scoring there was no time to lose. “It was difficult to see Liam struggling” in the first two breeds, says Horner. “It’s a pure sports decision.” Joshua Robinson is an editor of Wall Street Journal in New York. Send ‘Ne -mail to joshua.robinson@wsj.com. Catch all the business news, market news, news on news and latest news about Live Mint. Catch the direct action on IPL 2024 with the full IPL schedule, and their IPL points tab, also know who is currently holding the IPL Purple Cap and IPL Orange Cap. Download Themint News -APP to get daily market updates. More Topics #News Mint Specials