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Thursday Thoughts - Which young driver should step up to F1? - Evaluating who could be the next big name in Formula One

Published by Christine

RG has posed this week's question, and it's a good one - out of all the young drivers working their way through the junior formulae, which one would I like to see make the step up to Formula 1?

Daniel Ricciardo during the December Jerez test in 2009.
Daniel Ricciardo during the December Jerez test in 2009.Credit: Mark Thompson/Getty Images

Now, my first thought is whether I can bend the age restriction (RG has suggested an upper limit of 23) to make Franck fit the criteria. He's not quite that young, though, so I'm not sure it's going to work. This may or may not be quite predictable but if I had to pick a youngster, it's going to have to come from those who participated in the young driver test late last year. I'm not well up on feeder series' but we looked at those drivers in detail so I know more about them.

It will probably not come as a surprise that of the entire bunch of them, I would like to see (Disco) Daniel Ricciardo appear in the F1 paddock at some point in the future. My main reason, which is not a particularly good one, is that he was always smiling and he seemed quite joyous. He reminds me of Sebastian Vettel, and as a Red Bull driver, I imagine that is something he won't lose just yet. He's also Australian, so he could give Mark Webber a run for his money. It would be good to have more than one Australian racing.

He was pretty fast when it came to the on track action, and he was their only choice of driver which means they either had a lot of faith in him, or they were training him up for the future. Or maybe both. He's doing the World Series by Renault this year, but I think he might turn up in the paddock sooner rather than later.

I'm not the only one, as Dank, who knows more about such things than I do, wrote about Disco Dan months ago, and has good things to say about him. I have less to go on, simply testing views and nickname prowess. The term Disco Dan was spotted via the Red Bull F1 Spy on Twitter, whereas we came up with plenty of others of our own. However, Disco Dan wins for now, and I hope he wins a lot more in the future.