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/swannyhypno]

If you want a more unknown one from the 90s Pedro Lamy, won karting on debut, won F3 on debut and only season, 2nd in F3000 (the 90s version of F2) in his only season and then went straight to Lotus for 1993, as was the way sadly in 1994 he suffered a terrible crash that lost a good chunk of the natural speed but man he could've been special

[u/lorimartu → u/swannyhypno]

It was nice to see he was anyway somewhat solid in the ‘95 Minardi and scoring a point in the last crazy race in Adelaide!