British motorsport may look in good shape this year, with UK drivers winning or finishing runner-up in F1, Champ Car and IndyCar, but one blogging racing driver is warning that many promising youngsters find the road closed ahead of them.
In a guest column on F1 Fanatic, Formula Vee driver Ben Evans says that up-and-coming drivers are battling their hearts out in junior formula despite knowing full well that funding will stop them progressing.
He writes: “More than ever budget is the sole arbiter of career progression, and with £200k required to go Formula BMW racing, many never leave the starting blocks.”
He praises the recent Formula Palmer Audi Shootout, a low-cost event which offers a guaranteed place in the McLaren Autosport BRDC Young Driver of the Year final, but feels that many other existing scholarship schemes are pitched at drivers who perhaps need the financial support less as they have already made the expensive step up to series such as Formula BMW, Formula Ford Duratec and Formula Renault.
He concludes:
“An [Formula Palmer Audi] budget is well out of reach for your average Formula Jedi, Formula Vee or Formula Ford 1600 driver, and these are the battlegrounds on which some of the most talented young drivers cut their teeth, often in the knowledge that the money isn’t there to move onwards and upwards. Scholarships to place some of these drivers in FPA or Duratec could prove to be money very well spent.
“Lewis Hamilton has been a phenomenal success in his first year of F1, I just hope that it is enough to incite backers to start supporting talented young drivers who may just follow in his footsteps.”
You can read the whole of this interesting view from behind the steering wheel here on F1 Fanatic.