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Kevin Magnussen’s Demotion Highlights Failings of McLaren Young Driver Programme
Published: December 12, 2014
After months of delays and uncertainty, McLaren have announced Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button as their race drivers for the 2015 Formula One season.
Kevin Magnussen, having just completed his debut year in the sport, has been demoted to test and reserve driver. He'll work alongside McLaren's highly promising test and development driver, Stoffel Vandoorne, who will also race in GP2 after finishing second in the 2014 series.
This setup means that in addition to having one of the best driver lineups on the grid, McLaren will also have under contract two of the best, most highly rated young drivers in the world.
Both are ready for F1 and more than good enough to be on next season's grid. But neither will be on it, and this—along with the sorry tale of Magnussen's demotion—highlights a massive failing of the team's young driver programme.
All the top teams have driver development programmes of one sort or another. In the current era, they are the only way, apart from the pay driver route, of getting into F1.
The most well-known is Red Bull's Junior Team, which has sent far more drivers to F1 in the last decade than any other programme.
It can do this because Red Bull has a massive pile of money and four seats to play with. Their Toro Rosso team exists for two reasons; one is to give the company a little bit more political power, holding two seats at the table instead of just one.
The second and primary reason is to try out young drivers in the hope of finding the next big thing. The standard system is to give each youngster two seasons in which to prove he has what it takes.
Since it came into being in 2006, Toro Rosso has hosted nine drivers—Scott Speed, Vitantonio Liuzzi, Sebastian Vettel, Sebastien Bourdais, Jaime Alguersuari, Sebastien Buemi, Daniel Ricciardo, Jean-Eric Vergne and Daniil Kvyat.
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Formula 1
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