While the 2025 Formula 1 season is heralded as having the finest rookie intake in years, teams are scouring the karting scene trying to unearth the next raw diamond.
The upcoming season will feature no less than five full-time rookies, with a lot of attention on Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton replacement Andrea Kimi Antonelli, while Ferrari protege Oliver Bearman debuts for Haas and Jack Doohan gets the nod at Alpine. Isack Hadjar is the next Red Bull junior to enter the world championship at Racing Bulls, with the driver who beat him to the Formula 2 title Gabriel Bortoleto getting a chance at Sauber.
What does F1’s class of 2025 have in common? Other than bags of talent, the quintet has been carefully brought through the single-seater ladder with the support of a junior programme or young driver academy. The importance of these has not only grown for F1 hopefuls, but also for the teams that end up benefitting from them.
It goes without saying that a hyper-expensive sport like motor racing and its huge barrier to entry presents a major stumbling block for kids without wealthy backgrounds or sponsors willing to jump on board early on in their careers. Appearing on the radar of an F1 team can make or break a career at an early age.
For the teams themselves, junior programmes have also shown to yield enormous benefits. Just look at how the likes of Lando Norris, George Russell and Charles Leclerc were prepared for the big time by their respective backers and soon started delivering the goods.
Each team has its own methods, targets and philosophy, although in recent years most outfits have been converging on a bottom-heavy approach, preferring to back more kids lower on the ladder rather than having an overload of drivers in F3 and F2, a problem which Red Bull used to have.
Hadjar emerged at the front of Red Bull’s queue once it dispensed with Perez and promoted Lawson from Racing Bulls
Photo by: James Sutton / Motorsport Images
That has evolved into somewhat of an arms race down to the intermediate levels of go-karting. In recent months alone, McLaren signed Belgium’s 14-year-old world junior karting champion Dries van Langendonck, while Williams added even younger karting prodigies like Will Green (the 11-year-old son of DTM race winner Jamie) and Lucas Palacio (10) to its academy roster.
The attributes teams are looking for
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