Jamie Chadwick - First competitive female driver in F1?

[TheDeuce]

Yazza54 said:

Sandpit Steve said:

TheDeuce said:

Sandpit Steve said:

Yazza54 said:

A pennyless generational talent wouldn't even be able to afford karting at a level where there's anyone watching that can help them. This is the problem. Motorsport is eye wateringly expensive at every level.

Wasn’t there a karting thread on here some time back, that discussed some parents putting £100k a season into UK cadets? Fulltime mechanic, big motorhome truck, and loads of new parts for every race to try and get an edge. That’s totally nuts. One can understand that if you’re in European juniors aged 14 or 15, the bills come in thick and fast, but such a high price of competitive entry for the eight-year-olds seems totally bonkers.

But if you have £100k to spare.. why not?

Although in most instances I imagine the availability of such money has more of a detrimental effect on how hard a young driver applies themselves to developing. Lewis must have know he had to perform constantly to reward his fathers efforts and to have any hope of getting signed ahead of the money they did scrape together simply running out.

Yes, Lewis was awfully lucky, he’d competed on a shoestring and eventually got the attention of Mr Dennis.

The fairytale story is that LH walked up to RD at the annual awards, where he was picking up a the kadet championship trophy, and said that he wanted to drive for McLaren, and Dennis replied that Lewis should come and see him next year. Then Lewis won the championship the next year in juniors as a 12-year-old, and went back to say hi to Ron at the awards, after which he got signed as a McLaren junior and had the rest of his karting and junior car racing career paid for with decent entrants.

This is a fairytale one in a million story with I reckon a lot of artistic licence used particularly around what daddy Hamilton's shoestrings were like. Maybe they put a hell of a lot of borrowed coin into it that wasn't really his but money is money

The truth is more likely to be that Lewis's talents were fairly evident and probably attracted a lot of attention fairly early on - people do tend to notice if a kid suddenly starts doing something remarkable and many of the 'nobody's' Lewis encountered in his very early days probably had connections to 'somebodys' in motorsport that had gone on to work at higher levels of the sport and had more influence.

If Ron hadn't found him/been there to be approached, it's likely soon enough someone else would have shown some interest.

It won't be as clear cut as the fantasy diamond in the rough tale, it never is. All that we know for sure is that F1 teams know how valuable snapping up a future talent is and they're on the lookout. If a young driver (and their Dad) is also doing all they possibly can to display their talent and make connections, it's likely the two will eventually have an encounter.

[Yazza54]

TheDeuce said:

Yazza54 said:

Sandpit Steve said:

TheDeuce said:

Sandpit Steve said:

Yazza54 said:

A pennyless generational talent wouldn't even be able to afford karting at a level where there's anyone watching that can help them. This is the problem. Motorsport is eye wateringly expensive at every level.

Wasn’t there a karting thread on here some time back, that discussed some parents putting £100k a season into UK cadets? Fulltime mechanic, big motorhome truck, and loads of new parts for every race to try and get an edge. That’s totally nuts. One can understand that if you’re in European juniors aged 14 or 15, the bills come in thick and fast, but such a high price of competitive entry for the eight-year-olds seems totally bonkers.

But if you have £100k to spare.. why not?

Although in most instances I imagine the availability of such money has more of a detrimental effect on how hard a young driver applies themselves to developing. Lewis must have know he had to perform constantly to reward his fathers efforts and to have any hope of getting signed ahead of the money they did scrape together simply running out.

Yes, Lewis was awfully lucky, he’d competed on a shoestring and eventually got the attention of Mr Dennis.

The fairytale story is that LH walked up to RD at the annual awards, where he was picking up a the kadet championship trophy, and said that he wanted to drive for McLaren, and Dennis replied that Lewis should come and see him next year. Then Lewis won the championship the next year in juniors as a 12-year-old, and went back to say hi to Ron at the awards, after which he got signed as a McLaren junior and had the rest of his karting and junior car racing career paid for with decent entrants.

This is a fairytale one in a million story with I reckon a lot of artistic licence used particularly around what daddy Hamilton's shoestrings were like. Maybe they put a hell of a lot of borrowed coin into it that wasn't really his but money is money

The truth is more likely to be that Lewis's talents were fairly evident and probably attracted a lot of attention fairly early on - people do tend to notice if a kid suddenly starts doing something remarkable and many of the 'nobody's' Lewis encountered in his very early days probably had connections to 'somebodys' in motorsport that had gone on to work at higher levels of the sport and had more influence.

If Ron hadn't found him/been there to be approached, it's likely soon enough someone else would have shown some interest.

It won't be as clear cut as the fantasy diamond in the rough tale, it never is. All that we know for sure is that F1 teams know how valuable snapping up a future talent is and they're on the lookout. If a young driver (and their Dad) is also doing all they possibly can to display their talent and make connections, it's likely the two will eventually have an encounter.

Have you done any racing?

[kimducati]

TheDeuce said:

The truth is more likely to be that Lewis's talents were fairly evident and probably attracted a lot of attention fairly early on - people do tend to notice if a kid suddenly starts doing something remarkable and many of the 'nobody's' Lewis encountered in his very early days probably had connections to 'somebodys' in motorsport that had gone on to work at higher levels of the sport and had more influence.

If Ron hadn't found him/been there to be approached, it's likely soon enough someone else would have shown some interest.

It won't be as clear cut as the fantasy diamond in the rough tale, it never is. All that we know for sure is that F1 teams know how valuable snapping up a future talent is and they're on the lookout. If a young driver (and their Dad) is also doing all they possibly can to display their talent and make connections, it's likely the two will eventually have an encounter.

Whilst this may have been a possible scenario twenty five years or so ago (when Lewis was in karting) I really don't see it happening now.
Money will trump talent - the 'top' teams, those with the ear of the manufacturers, and who get all of the latest upgrades are unaffordable for all but the seriously rich nowadays.
The seriously talented, but cash poor privateer doesn't have a hope of anything other than the occasional day of glory. It has always been thus.
I seem to recall that Martin Hines of Zip Kart was the conduit between Lewis and Ron Dennis. He (Dennis) and Martin Hines apparently went back a long way which may explain why Lewis was given that chance.
Kim

[Kart16]

Sandpit Steve said:

Wasn’t there a karting thread on here some time back, that discussed some parents putting £100k a season into UK cadets? Fulltime mechanic, big motorhome truck, and loads of new parts for every race to try and get an edge. That’s totally nuts. One can understand that if you’re in European juniors aged 14 or 15, the bills come in thick and fast, but such a high price of competitive entry for the eight-year-olds seems totally bonkers.

You can spend easily 350k euro per year on a 12/15-year old kid if he/she races the European championships.

Edited by Kart16 on Thursday 16th May 18:00

Edited by Kart16 on Thursday 16th May 21:24

[Kart16]

SpudLink said:

I'm sure I watched sometnig where Jos Verstappen effectivly created a professional karting team to support Max at the start.

Not really. In the beginning Max raced under the Pex racing team, a family run team whose current owners are Max childhood friends. Later, when Max was racing in the European championship, he joined regular factory teams.

Edited by Kart16 on Thursday 16th May 21:26

[Yazza54]

Kart16 said:

Sandpit Steve said:

Wasn’t there a karting thread on here some time back, that discussed some parents putting £100k a season into UK cadets? Fulltime mechanic, big motorhome truck, and loads of new parts for every race to try and get an edge. That’s totally nuts. One can understand that if you’re in European juniors aged 14 or 15, the bills come in thick and fast, but such a high price of competitive entry for the eight-year-olds seems totally bonkers.

You can spend easily 350k euro per year on a 12/15-year old kid per year if he/she races the European championships.

Edited by Kart16 on Thursday 16th May 18:00

And this is the sort of level you need to be at to get anyone worth taking note to do so.... Hence my comment about relative shoestrings. One man earning 500k a year and spunking 350k if it on his kids racing may consider that a shoestring when he's up against the Mazepins of the world.. but Mr 500k is still a long way away from normal


It's clear who in here has been on the inside of the racing world and who hasn't. Not trying to divisive or aggressive but the rose tinted views really wind me up.

Edited by Yazza54 on Thursday 16th May 18:14

[isaldiri]

Yazza54 said:

It's clear who in here has been on the inside of the racing world and who hasn't. Not trying to divisive or aggressive but the rose tinted views really wind me up.

Hush now - can't have you puncturing that nice story by pointing out shoestrings in the motorsport world still means rather serious amounts of dosh right.....?

[RacerMike]

isaldiri said:

Yazza54 said:

It's clear who in here has been on the inside of the racing world and who hasn't. Not trying to divisive or aggressive but the rose tinted views really wind me up.

Hush now - can't have you puncturing that nice story by pointing out shoestrings in the motorsport world still means rather serious amounts of dosh right.....?

Yeah and definitely don’t mention the fact that Lewis’ Dad worked multiple jobs to bolster his fairly decent salary as an IT consultant so they could buy brand new karts, engines and a motor home because that definitely doesn’t sit well with the ‘poor kid from Hertfordshire’ vibe!

Sadly to get ‘spotted’ you need a great deal of money. I spent a solid £50-60k racing Caterhams to then luck into some proper sponsorship money, and I’d have never even been on anyone’s radar if I hadn’t been in the position I’d put myself in. And once that sponsor had to pull out, I didn’t have a queue of prospective people lining up to replace him despite relative success and apparent talent/pace.