I see that Scott Speed is following in the footsteps of Montoya and Villeneuve by entering American stock car racing, as expected. He will be driving for Eddie Sharp Racing in the ARCA series, a preparation for the Nextel stock car series. His first race will be in early October.
Scott Speed
All of Scott's previous experience has been in open wheel racing so this will be a new learning curve for him. He is ready for the challenge, however, and I will be watching his progress with interest. I guess this means I will have to extend my knowledge of the various NASCAR series which, at the moment, seem to me as complicated as the European system of formula this and formula that. And I don't even want to think about the complexities of the karting scene!
As regular readers will know, I am of the opinion that Scott was a far better F1 driver than anyone realized. This is becoming apparent now that Sebastian Vettel is proving unable to equal Scott's results with the Toro Rosso, let alone beat them. So I would not be surprised if Scott proves to be pretty good at stock cars, although it is a very different form of racing. Montoya's performance in the Nextel Cup series shows that even the acknowledged stars of F1 cannot expect to be kingpin as soon as they enter NASCAR and no doubt Scott will have an even more difficult introduction to the sport.
But I think he will do well. He has the determination to succeed and many of the skills he developed in F1 are bound to be relevant in any form of racing. The team he will be driving for, Eddie Sharp Racing, is one of the better teams in ARCA and Scott retains his Red Bull backing, so things augur well for him at present.
From there, it is likely that he will make the step up to the Nextel cup, as Montoya has done already. With Jacques Villeneuve racing in the Craftsman truck series, also in preparation for Nextel, there could be three ex-F1 drivers in the top NASCAR series next year. That is bound to raise the profile of NASCAR in other countries and, who knows, we could see the series going the way of Champ Cars and the IRL, with non-American drivers proliferating and eventually dominating the sport.
Derek Warwick started out in stock cars in Britain; Dan Gurney and Mario Andretti had a go at them too. So it is not unheard of for F1 drivers to come from that arena - it just hasn't happened for a while. Maybe the future will see other more diverse forms of racing supplying F1 with drivers, rather than the standard route of karts, open wheelers, F3 and GP2.
Scott Speed
All of Scott's previous experience has been in open wheel racing so this will be a new learning curve for him. He is ready for the challenge, however, and I will be watching his progress with interest. I guess this means I will have to extend my knowledge of the various NASCAR series which, at the moment, seem to me as complicated as the European system of formula this and formula that. And I don't even want to think about the complexities of the karting scene!
As regular readers will know, I am of the opinion that Scott was a far better F1 driver than anyone realized. This is becoming apparent now that Sebastian Vettel is proving unable to equal Scott's results with the Toro Rosso, let alone beat them. So I would not be surprised if Scott proves to be pretty good at stock cars, although it is a very different form of racing. Montoya's performance in the Nextel Cup series shows that even the acknowledged stars of F1 cannot expect to be kingpin as soon as they enter NASCAR and no doubt Scott will have an even more difficult introduction to the sport.
But I think he will do well. He has the determination to succeed and many of the skills he developed in F1 are bound to be relevant in any form of racing. The team he will be driving for, Eddie Sharp Racing, is one of the better teams in ARCA and Scott retains his Red Bull backing, so things augur well for him at present.
From there, it is likely that he will make the step up to the Nextel cup, as Montoya has done already. With Jacques Villeneuve racing in the Craftsman truck series, also in preparation for Nextel, there could be three ex-F1 drivers in the top NASCAR series next year. That is bound to raise the profile of NASCAR in other countries and, who knows, we could see the series going the way of Champ Cars and the IRL, with non-American drivers proliferating and eventually dominating the sport.
Derek Warwick started out in stock cars in Britain; Dan Gurney and Mario Andretti had a go at them too. So it is not unheard of for F1 drivers to come from that arena - it just hasn't happened for a while. Maybe the future will see other more diverse forms of racing supplying F1 with drivers, rather than the standard route of karts, open wheelers, F3 and GP2.