Logical The real deal pourchaire is only 17 years old and as already stated by Vasseur on French television it would be a mistake to put him in a Formula one too quickly. But his first Formula one test in Budapest impressed a lot the team. Who knows ?
F1 is incredibly tough to get into. Only so many seats and often money and extended contracts can be a big blockade in a star driver not getting in. When Max was even younger, he was 16 when he signed for Red Bull/Toro Rosso. Mercedes was one of the other teams involved as well but couldn't guarantee a drive as quick (which in itself begons the question what could've happened after Rosberg retired in 2016? Max after 2 years of presumably Williams to Merc?). I specifically mention Max because we're talking about very young drivers. Pourchaire clearly is very talented, and if offered a drive for next year, he should take it. Like with Max, if he shows promise, he'll be given more than a season to prove himself. I respect Vasseur a lot but I think he's simply wrong claiming Pourchaire (already 18) is too young. He's older than Max was (by a full year) when Max entered and has 4x as many seasons of single seater experience. Pourchaire will be ready. What is he to do? Another year of F2....no. Get to F1. Then again, I do understand Vasseur needing to take 30 million for a season. Sadly.
But you can't compare Max with Pourcharire, they are not at the same level. Max was world champion in both KF/OK karts (no gearbox, no front brakes) and KZ (gearbox and front brakes). At the top level, drivers become specialists in either one or the other, it's very difficult to be good at both. Not only that, but the KZ is mostly a category done only by professional drivers, with +10 years of experience and Max was able to beat them all in his first try. In that year, 2013 if I'm not mistaken, a lot of people in the paddock said, including the Mercedes talent scout, "he can be the new Senna". In the following year, with no single seater experience, he was able to rank 3rd in the most competitive single seater championship at that time (F3 Euro). Pourchaire is super talented and deserves that Sauber seat much more than Zhou, but he is not a Max Verstappen.
It's funny that you ask that. Max got really shaken by his defeat in 2011 to Leclerc on the KF-Junior championship. I don't remember the details because I haven't been to that event specifically, but from there the rivalry between them just grew. 2012 was their first year on KF, the top category, and in 2013 they both raced in KF and KZ, and Max completely broke all records of the sport. Leclerc came 2nd on the KZ championship, but was not successful on the KF. In summary, they were already super talented drivers, and in 2012 my feeling was that Leclerc was a little more inteligent during the race when it came to "choose your fights", but 2013 was the year when "he is the new Senna" was heard for the first time. Vertappen > Leclerc.
I have a good story somewhat related to this photo... Leclerc raced for the "X" team, and was already managed by Nicolas Todt (All Road Management). "X" was a highly innovative chassis manufacturer that took the sport by storm. They were initially just a factory for kart parts such as plastic fairings, hubs, steering wheels, etc., and all of a sudden came up with their own chassis in the 2000s. In a market highly dominated by very traditional brands such as Tony Kart, Birel, and CRG, the newcomers simply smashed the competition and people couldn't figure out why. The most commented and highly probable reason was that they were cheating: their homologated chassis on sale for customers were made of normal steel tubes, but the chassis for their own racing team was made of exotic materials, which is against the rules. The owner also hired ex world champions and he had a surprising success for such a new brand. His business was doing so well that he got contracts with other chassis brands to take over their production. Once upon time he was manufacturing karts for 4 different brands, plus the ton of parts they already produced, and thus became the biggest kart factory in the world and the first to use robots in the production. Their success was huge, they got dealers all around the world, and even the US championships started to have a lot of drivers using "X" chassis. It was really an incredidle "business case". However, gossip in the paddock said that he was not paying suppliers and employees because he blew all his money sniffing... Not long after that, he was forced to sell his gigantic kart factory to an Eastern European entrepreneur, maintaining only the "X" brand rights and the racing team. He ("Mr X") apparently recovered after that and although not having the factory anymore, was able to put a very decent racing team again where the likes of Albon, Leclerc, and even Russel raced with. Fast forward to 2012, Leclerc moved to the newly created kart team, ART Gran Prix, owned by Nicolas Todt, and to his vacant place Mr. X offered a contract to Verstappen to race for free (think that a season costs 150k euro). Well, another gossip grew on the paddock that Mr X were sniffing again and that he wasn't able to pay suppliers, to the point Max arrived for a race in Italy and they didn't have parts to go to the track!!! Because of that Max moved to the team where a friend of mine was racing, which also had Stroll, Mazepin, Ticktum, and Illot. No way I would ever imagine back then that they all would reach F1...
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A good point I hadn't considered. I do think Pourchaire (now in his first full season of F2 but already had some races last year) will be ready for F1 next year if he gets a drive. Flavio, your karting insights never fail to amaze me! I do love hearing these stories that are largely unknown to most racing fans, even the ''hardcore''! Thanks for taking the time to write this.
Thanks. I know more about that specific year because I travelled to watch around 5 of my friend races. Guess who is the girl on the last seconds of the video:
Sure. Porchaire, Piastri, etc., are great talents. Zhou, on the other hand, is just a good driver with a lot of experience and money.
