Formula 1: Renault made a complete 180-degree turn
By Asher Fair
Renault said multiple times they wanted a young driver to add to their 2021 Formula 1 lineup. The 38-year-old and retired Fernando Alonso doesn’t quite fit that bill.
You almost need more than one hand to count how many times Renault managing director Cyril Abiteboul stated that he wanted to pair a younger driver with Esteban Ocon for the 2021 Formula 1 season.
The Enstone-based team signed the 23-year-old Frenchman last season to replace the 32-year-old Nico Hulkenberg ahead of the 2020 season alongside Daniel Ricciardo, who left Red Bull Racing after the 2018 season and joined Renault on a two-year deal. Ocon signed a two-year deal with the team.
Even before the 2019 season ended, despite the fact that Ricciardo had been outperforming Hulkenberg, the sport’s reigning “best of the rest” driver at the time, Abiteboul hinted that the team may release him after the 2020 season in favor of a younger driver.
Not even one year into his two-year deal, the writing was on the wall, despite his solid performance.
Here is what Abiteboul had to say at the time, according to RaceFans.
"“It was important when given the opportunity to seize the opportunity of a complete driver in Daniel last year and we don’t regret that at Renault. Just like right now we think it’s the right moment to start having some fresher blood.“I think it’s a trend actually you can see in several teams. We are also interested in young drivers with our academy. We hope and expect to have possibly one driver from that academy by 2021. So it’s also a shift of dynamic to start really welcoming young drivers in our line-up.“It’s not something that we would have been capable of doing two years ago but I think with more maturity in the team we can now envisage that. And that would be a good test to see if we are capable of also managing that because it’s a different type of management. Managing some who is 20, 22 or in his thirties, that’s different.”"
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As expected, Ricciardo did not renew his deal with Renault over the offseason and was slated to begin the season as one of the many drivers without a contract for next year.
Such was the case for four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel at Ferrari. Amid many driver movement Silly Season rumors, the 33-year-old German was linked to a Renault move, with Ricciardo potentially replacing him alongside Charles Leclerc at Ferrari.
Again, Abiteboul all but eliminated this possibility based on the fact that Vettel is not what he considers to be one of “tomorrow’s” drivers.
Here is what he had to say, according to Autosport.
"“[But] I rather aspire to work with tomorrow’s drivers than yesterday’s. … We need to keep this in mind, as we created this academy in 2016 with the goal of having a driver graduate to F1 in 2021. Now 2021 is coming, we have to acknowledge it. Typically, there’s Christian Lundgaard. He’s an option among others: he’s got his F2 season to do, we’ve got our own season to do with Daniel.”"
At this point, the season had been suspended indefinitely due to the coronavirus pandemic. It took two months, but the moves finally started to happen in mid-May.
Ferrari and Vettel confirmed that they would be cutting ties following the 2020 season. Shortly thereafter, the Scuderia confirmed McLaren’s Carlos Sainz Jr. as his replacement.
McLaren signed Ricciardo away from Renault, a move that nearly happened ahead of the 2019 season before Renault swooped in and picked up the 30-year-old Australian whom they claimed to want to build a future around at the time.
Perfect. While it was already May, Renault still had a full season to select which younger driver they wanted to replace Ricciardo so they could do what they had planned on doing for several months: build a lineup of “tomorrow’s” drivers around Ocon.
As Abiteboul mentioned when all but ruling out Vettel, Christian Lundgaard was an option. The 18-year-old Dane is a member of the Renault Driver Academy who is in his first full season competing in Formula 2 for ART Grand Prix. Through four races, he sits in a second place tie in the driver standings with a victory and no finishes outside of the top six.
Another driver in the mix and considered the favorite to replace the Honey Badger was Guanyu Zhou.
The 21-year-old Chinese driver is the Renault Formula 1 test driver, and he is in his second season competing in Formula 2 for UNI-Virtuosi Racing after finishing in seventh place in the driver standings last year with five podium finishes in 22 races. Through four races this season, he sits in sixth in the standings with one podium finish.
So what did Renault end up doing?
They signed a driver who has been alive nearly as long as Lundgaard and Zhou combined.
Renault signed the 38-year-old Fernando Alonso, making him the oldest driver under contract for next season. Alfa Romeo’s Kimi Raikkonen is 40 but does not yet have a deal to compete next year. Aside of him, the oldest active driver is 35-year-old Lewis Hamilton.
The two-time world champion and twice former Renault driver retired from Formula 1 at the end of the 2018 season.
Sure, there were rumors of it happening. But since when has an Alonso rumor ever amounted to anything?
Of course, in a way, this is still Renault looking to the future. Due to the pandemic, the Formula 2 schedule no longer looks like it once looked, and giving drivers such as Lundgaard and Zhou only a limited amount of time to prove their worth before making the jump to Formula 1 may not have been a good idea.
Plus, giving Alonso, an experienced veteran, time to work with the young Ocon may not be a bad idea.
But couldn’t a four-time world champion have done the same? Couldn’t Ricciardo, who was all but written off for a 2021 contract nearly months before even the 2019 season ended, have done the same (like he is doing now)?
Hiring a driver who will have been retired for more than two years after saying you don’t want to work with “yesterday’s” drivers is a bit ironic. But at least Alonso hasn’t been completely away from racing, having won last year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans and 24 Hours of Daytona as well as the 2018-2019 World Endurance Championship. He even competed in this year’s Dakar Rally for the first time, and he is set to take another crack at the Indianapolis 500 in August.