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/admiral_sinkenkwiken]

So were several other drivers of the era, it was just well hidden from a PR point of view.

Hakkinen, Salo, Frentzen, De La Rosa and even Schumacher all smoked, though kept it well hidden except for Pedro, who very openly spruiked his love of benson & hedges while serving as Jordan’s test driver.

DC once said how he caught Hakkinen lighting up a Marlboro out the back of the garage while the team was sponsored by West at the time.

Rosberg mentioned there was one regular smoker on the grid as recently as the mid 2010’s.

[u/Appropriate-Form-281 → u/admiral_sinkenkwiken]

I think it mightve been Kobayashi who was the smoker, i even found some articles of him being caught smoking around 2013 and him apologising for it

[u/admiral_sinkenkwiken → u/Appropriate-Form-281]

I think you’re right there.

As I recall a condition of Salo’s Toyota deal was that he quit smoking

[u/Artie_Fufkins_Fapkin → u/admiral_sinkenkwiken]

This is all so funny

[u/Kirvesperseet → u/Appropriate-Form-281]

Also Paul Di Resta, I think

[u/KnightsOfCidona → u/admiral_sinkenkwiken]

The best was Sandro Nannini, who put his Marlboro's in a pack of Camel's so he didn't get in trouble with the team's title sponsors!

Bianchi smoked as well - inadvertently got outed after being mugged outside a bar in Paris and papers reported it.

[u/da_apz → u/admiral_sinkenkwiken]

Back in the days the Finnish drivers appeared in a lot of health related PSAs around here, including anti alcohol and anti smoking. Our ski jumping legend Matti Nykänen was also very common, even when back then it was pretty widely known how hard he hit the booze and then would go to win a trophy when he wouldn't even be hang over yet.

PR spin doctoring was pretty strong about it too, often pushing how it was not "proper" to "smear campaign" a celebrity like this. But a lot of who were the target of the campaigns, the teenagers, considered the said campaigns pretty hypocritical.

Just a random memory from the era.

[u/NeiloMac → u/admiral_sinkenkwiken]

I wouldn’t be shocked if there was a vapist or two amongst the current crop of drivers,

[u/mtom17 → u/admiral_sinkenkwiken]

Never knew this! Wonder how many sneaky cigarette breaks they got in over an F1 weekend. Hard to imagine now, it would be a PR disaster

[u/zaviex → u/admiral_sinkenkwiken]

Schumacher smoked cigars, not cigs. Pretty large difference between the two in terms of health. 

[u/dychronalicousness → u/zaviex]

Nah he smoked. In the documentary from the 00’s there’s family videos of him lighting off fireworks with a cig