From F1 to Le Mans and back
The most recent case we have of these situations is that of Nyck de Vries: in 2019 he was Formula 2 champion and later became Formula E champion with Mercedes, being a prospect closely monitored by the different teams and brands – already since his triumphs in Formula Renault 2.0 back in 2014, at the same time as Carlos Sainz won in 3.5 before joining Toro Rosso. At the same time that he occupied the Toyota reserve seat in the World Endurance Championship, he was able to test for different Formula 1 teams. After his 2022 Italian Grand Prix, replacing Alex Albon at the last minute and managing to score points with the Williams, he got a seat at Alpha Tauri by 2023, thus joining the Red Bull circle. A promising team…that practically fell apart in the first races of the season.
The performance of the Alpha Tauri was already disappointing, but that of de Vries himself, prone to errors and accidents as well as being below the pace of his teammate Yuki Tsunoda, showed that the Dutchman was not working. The talent could not have gone overnight, the expected fruits simply were not blooming. The fuses in the Red Bull environment are short (particularly that of Helmut Marko) and before his own home race, he was kicked out of the team. After months of uncertainty…Toyota promotes him to starting driver, forcing de Vries to leave one of the teams at the bottom of the F1 table to be able to compete in races and championships with the team that has been dominating the World Endurance Championship for years. In 2024 he will pilot the GR010 Hypercar, the favorite of the championship and the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Another paradigmatic case is that of Martin Brundle: he debuted in F1 in 1984, almost leaving his foot in that catastrophic accident in Monaco, but he continued racing for teams at the bottom of the grid in the 1980s. He decided to put F1 aside to focus on endurance, finding a seat at Jaguar with its monstrous naturally aspirated V12-powered Group C. He was world champion in 1988 and won Le Mans 1990 with Jaguar, which revitalized his career and led to a seat at Benetton in 1992 alongside an emerging Michael Schumacher, achieving several podiums and almost a few victories. He even replaced none other than Ayrton Senna at McLaren in 1994, but unfortunately coincided with the mistake of having the fragile Peugeot engines.
Today Brundle is known as a commentator for Sky Sports F1, but his reputation on the grid would not be what it is today if it were not for his successes with the endurance prototypes that relaunched his career in the late 1990s. eighty. Something similar can be said of fellow Brit Mark Blundell, whose 1990 Le Mans pole position with Nissan is still remembered for how brutal that lap was. Blundell would become a regular in F1 in the 1990s, teaming up with Brundle himself and racking up some podium finishes.
It is true that Jacky Ickx or Derek Bell were Formula 1 drivers, but above all they are remembered for the feats they achieved in Le Mans, thus going down in history as legends of the sport. The same can be said of André Lotterer (who only competed in one Formula 1 race and it literally lasted a breath), Emanuele Pirro, Allan McNish or someone who never even competed in a single race in the premier category: Tom Kristensen, today. today the driver with the most victories at Le Mans. Yannick Dalmas, Sébastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley, Kazuki Nakajima, Nico Hülkenberg, Johnny Herbert, Alexander Wurz and David Brabham are F1 drivers who have won at Le Mans, having much more success than in F1. It can be said that Hülkenberg has achieved just one more podium at Le Mans than in his entire F1 career.
Pechito López – who has been a winner at Le Mans and world endurance champion, but is considered even better in touring cars after his dominant 2014-2016 with Citroën – or the Spanish Antonio García, Miguel Molina and Albert Costa are other cases of great drivers , official for years (or that could have reached F1 in the case of Costa) but are far from the imagination of many Spaniards. Because motorsport is not just F1 – and, in fact, many have decided to take other paths and have longer and more fruitful careers.
