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Mario Pazos tells: Doohan and Colapinto, from karting to F1. Does money or determination count more?
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MARIO PAZOS TELLS:
DOOHAN AND COLAPINTO, FROM KARTING TO F1. DOES MONEY OR DETERMINATION COUNT MORE?
To get to F1 you need money. And you need a lot of it, there is little to go around. What we sometimes forget, though, is that money alone is not enough. You need talent (sure), the right “nudges” (obvious) and-if you are lucky-even a “heavyweight” surname in motorsport (maybe!) that can help open the heavy doors of the top open-wheel category.
Yet all this is not enough, you can be sure. Because you can also have all three “ingredients” mentioned but if one in particular is missing... All the others risk proving totally useless. What this “special and indispensable ingredient” is, Mario Pazos reveals to us through the unpublished and exclusive story about two drivers, Jack Doohan and Franco Colapinto, who just this year achieved the goal of their lives: to land in F1. But who already as teenagers had shown that they had in their keys that very special endowment
According to the increasingly nauseating chatter on social media – where the comments of “know-it-all” gentlemen abound – the drivers who nowadays arrive in F1 are all devoid of talent and their only quality is that of having a huge amount of money capable of buying him that place in the top category of motorsport. The only deserving ones to make it to F1 probably should have been them, the “know-it-all” gentlemen, only “I didn't have enough budget.” Too bad we forget that F1 every year “trumps” drivers with any kind of experience (see Daniel Ricciardo), with any kind of financial backing (see Logan Sargeant) or with any lofty surname (see Mick Schumacher). Getting there and staying there, then, is the stuff of the few, of people with the right attributes. August 2024 celebrated precisely the arrival of two newcomers to F1. On August 23, in fact, the BWT Alpine F1 Team announced that Jack Doohan, son of legendary Australian MotoGP rider Mick, had joined the starting driver line-up for the 2025 season. Only a few days later, on August 27, Argentine Franco Colapinto was named to replace Logan Sargeant in the current season behind the wheel of Williams Racing, starting with the 2024 Monza Grand Prix. What is so special about these two former kart-racers that they deserve access to F1, Mario Pazos, now contributor of TKART but for a lifetime professionally involved in the world of top-level karting, explains. “During my more than 30-year career in karting, I met many parents with the classic attitude of 'My son is the next Ayrton Senna.' Then they went on to say he was 'Equal to Schumacher' and finally 'Better than Max.' I never understood this confidence: why they referred to Verstappen by calling him only Max, while for the others they used the last name... Maybe they were friends or relatives? Who knows!
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