McLaren team principal Andrea Stella believes Formula 1’s current driver crop is better than ever, as his drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri battle for the world title.
No fewer than 10 current drivers – half the field – are grand prix winners, with 10 polesitters and a whopping 15 podium finishers. That’s everyone but Yuki Tsunoda and rookies Oliver Bearman, Liam Lawson, Gabriel Bortoleto and Franco Colapinto.
Last weekend’s Brazil Grand Prix was another sign of how competitive F1 has become, with all 10 cars (representing seven different teams) within 0.528s in Q3 on an admittedly short Interlagos track. An almost identical gap separated the top 14 drivers in Q1 and in Q2.
“I think what we see in this season in Formula 1, in terms of competitiveness – and this is something that you may pick for a little bit of analysis – I don't recall that there was such a competitive pool of drivers in any other season,” Stella said.
The battle for the title mainly involves the McLaren drivers, with European F3 champion and F2 runner-up Norris facing back-to-back Formula Renault Eurocup, F3 and F2 champion Piastri.
However, Stella believes seven or eight drivers are talented enough to win the world championship – which, according to him, is testament to the quality of F1’s feeder series.
“The new generation of drivers, they're just so good, and now you have seven, eight drivers which are at world championship level. Like I say, I'm not sure this has happened before,” the Italian added.
“Potentially this is because of how good the junior categories now are. These guys, they go karting and they have the data. They train at a certain level when they are adolescents. This has made the competitive field extremely, extremely tight, and therefore the difference is in this last one percent.”
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