Formula 1's talent logjam
With veteran drivers' F1 careers lasting longer and fewer small teams to give newcomers chances, rising stars are finding they have nowhere to go after GP2 - and Marcus Simmons reckons that's bad news for the sport
YouTube is a horrendous timewaster; a couple of weeks ago I found myself watching footage, on a whim, of the 1975 British Grand Prix - the first Silverstone round of the world championship I attended as a young lad.
While watching it I realised that, barring Mario Andretti, not one of the 26 qualifiers for the race had been in F1 for more than five years and two months. And Andretti's participation since 1968 had only been intermittent.
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Marcus Simmons is the Deputy Editor of Autosport magazine. As a child he was a regular on the chalk banks of Thruxton – hence his unhealthy obsession with 1970s Formula 2 and F3 – before he became an MSA timekeeper at the age of 17. At 19, his reporting debut for Motoring News arguably overshadowed Maradona’s ‘Hand of God’ goal as the sporting moment of June 1986, and he joined the staff in 1990 after graduating from his degree course in Plymouth. A parallel Formula First career – which was as incident-packed as his childhood exploits in show-jumping and hunter trials – finished when he wrote off his car and put himself in hospital in 1991.
Marcus moved to Autosport in the summer of 1996. Since then he has had two stints as a freelancer and a brief spell as editor of Motor Sport magazine, during which the revered green cover was revived, before he rejoined Autosport in 2008. He lives in Teddington with his wife (who, gratifyingly, grew up within earshot of Castle Combe), daughter, stepson, dog, cat and guitars, and additionally has an adult daughter and stepson.
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