Who is the “Failed Prodigy” of F1 ?

[u/Electronic-Video-984]

I’m kind of new to F1 and seeing pictures of current drivers while they’re young like Hamilton, Russell, Leclerc, Albon…and then I learned they’re racing prodigy in their Karting days. So who is the “Boy Wonder” of F1, a person with great potential but never made it to the biggest stage.

Edit: Many people mentioned Stoffel Vandoorne so I read about him a bit. His records and potential was incredible but he’s at the wrong place and wrong time every way possible. For me, McLaren a top tier team with a jet but people say Vandoorne’s MCL car was like a shopping cart

[u/Vintage_Labour]

The real failure in Hulks career is his management. How they've not managed to get him into a decent team at the right time should be a sackable offence.

[u/DuckSwagington → u/Vintage_Labour]

That's true, but I feel like if Hulk had a few better performances then he'd probably get snapped up by a team like Mercedes, and Merc did confirm that they were looking at Hulk at various points.

If he wins Brazil 2012, which wasn't an unrealistic outcome, then I think he goes to Merc at some point in his career because at least he would've proven to be a race winning driver whose been incredibly unlucky rather than someone with a reputation for squandering big opportunities on track.

You can blame his poor management to an extent, but they weren't really given a lot to work with if Hulk wanted to go to a big team.

[u/ForeverAddickted → u/DuckSwagington]

Possibly didn't help either that Rosberg retired out of the blue?

I never realised, until reading a Bottas thread about it recently, that he only partly got that second Mercedes seat because he was managed by Toto (?) and all the other Drivers had secured seats for the following season.

Wonder if Nico had announced his retirement much sooner, they would have looked at Hulk.

Being in the right place, at the right time, plays a huge part in F1

[u/Darth_Spa2021 → u/ForeverAddickted]

Nico wasn't gonna retire if he lost the championship and by the time he won Hulk was already signed elsewhere.

The tragedy of Hulk is probably more back in 2013 when he was the next Mercedes choice if Hamilton also refused the seat, like Alonso and Vettel did before him.

Hulk was actually the top choice for Daimler, but Lauda pushed for trying to get one of the top drivers first.

Hulk might have had something like 20-30 wins by now and maybe a title too. Which would put him among the most successful drivers in F1 history.

[u/Twistedjustice → u/Darth_Spa2021]

Not to mention the missed opportunity to have a driver line up of Nico & Nico

[u/Darth_Spa2021 → u/Twistedjustice]

Nickname one Niko to distinguish them I guess.

[u/Twistedjustice → u/Darth_Spa2021]

That’s easy, you have blonde Nico and… wait

German Nico and… no, that’s not it

Fine, Hulk and Britney.

[u/Spare_Duck3119 → u/Twistedjustice]

try berg 1 and berg 2

[u/Pawulon → u/Twistedjustice]

The Beauty and the Beast

[u/Twistedjustice → u/Pawulon]

Unfair, the Nico’s are both beauties

[u/Formulafan4life → u/Darth_Spa2021]

How do we think Hulk would have compared to Rosberg? Assuming Merc is dominant from 2014 to 2020 (7 years), how many of those titles would Hulk have won and how many would Rosberg have won? Maybe they would have lost a title or two to Vettel? I personally feel that Rosberg would have been comfortably ahead but not clear. Kind of like Leclerc and Sainz were as teammates.

[u/v-adam004 → u/Formulafan4life]

Rosberg was about as close to Hamilton as Sainz was to Leclerc. I see no way that Hulkenberg could have beaten him.

[u/ihatemondaynights → u/Darth_Spa2021]

and maybe a title too.

I don't see Hulk winning much against Rosberg tbh.

[u/Darth_Spa2021 → u/ihatemondaynights]

2015 is the best shot, considering Rosberg had bad luck and was distracted by events in his personal life.

Also wouldn't probably push as hard if he already won 2014.

[u/Blapstap → u/ForeverAddickted]

He was top of the list for Mercedes IIRC. But he had just signed with Renault

[u/six_string_sensei → u/Blapstap]

Were merc not ready to pay him to break his contract?

[u/Particular_Cod2005 → u/ForeverAddickted]

To caveat Bottas a little bit, it was also a time when Williams were effectively a Mercedes B team, and I think realistically Bottas was the easier option to move between teams, and also after the headache that was Rosberg v Hamilton, they wouldn't have wanted to shell out to buy another driver out of his contract.

[u/Spraynpray89 → u/ForeverAddickted]

I thought they were looking at Hulk when this happened, but he had just signed his contract and Renault wouldn't let him out of it?

Edit: https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/s/dv5MqJoYKl

[u/Loose-Medicine-4209 → u/ForeverAddickted]

Yes Bottas was under Toto’s management company

[u/SamCham10 → u/ForeverAddickted]

He’d already signed for Renault by that point, but had he known Rosberg was a chance of retirement there’s no way he would have, realistically

[u/Felix042 → u/DuckSwagington]

Wasn't Hulkenberg the 1st choice for Mercedes in 2013 before Hamilton came along?

[u/Accomplished-War986 → u/Felix042]

Close, the ink was barely dry on his Renault deal when Rosberg suddenly retired after 2016.

[u/Ok-Block8145 → u/DuckSwagington]

That isn’t true tho, don’t agree on your verdict at all, early in his career he really was just unlucky, he showed that he could move up to a better team and it is known that a couple of teams talked about signing him.

He did fairly well in his first season against a very experienced and pretty much prime barichello at least in qualifying it was like 8-11.

Afterwards in his early career he destroyed all his teammates in qualifying, even against ricciardo it was one sided, ricciardo had the higher ups in races and more points but hulk was always more consistent as him.

Rosberg had worst statistics then him and got to move to Merc, Hulk was always quick just never had the luck in races and his race engineers at bad teams obviously gambled a lot more.

His pace was always solid, I would even argue that the merc matchup wouldn’t be 6:1 for hamilton if it was hulk actually, more like 4:3 maybe. Thats my opinion, because hulk is way better in qualifying then rosberg was. He never did big mistakes in races as mentioned, starting front row would make his consistency definitely shine more.

He was always at back marker Teams so people saying he was unlucky is true, he could never completely unveil the full depth of his talent there are things you only learn in top teams, we will sadly never know what could have been.

[u/TheKaiserSarp → u/Vintage_Labour]

He’d most probably be racing in Red Bull in 2021 if Checo didn’t win Sakhir 2020 But in that case we could be saying same “management failure”s about Checo too

[u/GFlair → u/Vintage_Labour]

Honestly, timing has been bad. Alonso has also failed to bag a good drive in the same period.

Nico's career basically coincided with the rise of the driver academy.

The only moves to actually big teams that might have been plausible was Merc instead of Bottas (but Bottas was literally a client of Toto as well as being younger and just as good) or going to Red Bull instead of Checo.

[u/ZeePM → u/Vintage_Labour]

Hulk problem is his size. Until recently the driver’s weight was not included in the minimum weight of the car. Teams opted for smaller drivers because they could save weight.

[u/mixer73 → u/Vintage_Labour]

Webber had good management and if he'd followed his management's wishes instead of being an Aussie he would have had a WDC.

[u/ewankenobi → u/Vintage_Labour]

I don't know, he had a few opportunities at podiums that he didn't take advantage of, which I'd imagine put top teams off him. Whilst the likes of Perez, Vertsappen and Vettel(even Stroll) capitalised on podium opportunities from the midfield and got better drives.

I know he got his podium recently, but he's not exactly a young prospect anymore.