Lots of Drivers this year.

[Ingsy]

There seems to have been a lot of teams this year racing more than their two drivers. Either through injury (McLaren & Williams) or through choice (Red Bull) or financial reasons (Minardi).

There are currently 24 drivers on the score board, and Robert Doornbos and Davidson who haven't scored. That's 26 drivers. When there are only 20 racing seats. That figure could be even higher by the end of the season if Nico Rosburg gets a race or two at Williams.

No real point to make here, except that it just seems a little high I guess.

[flexible-flyer]

a result of modern f1 in my view. simple 'injuries' that in the old days might not have counted. commercial reasons....and also the fact that for every seat in f1, there are a dozen drivers qualified enough to have it. in other words, with only 20 race seats, f1 is spoilt for choice!

or maybe im talking crap.

[BootsOntheSide]

27 in fact - Zonta was on the dummy grid at Indy, so technically he started that race. That means only Ferrari, Renault, Jordan and Sauber have entered the same 2 drivers for every race, which does make for a fairly high amount of driver changes, although the situations are all fairly unrelated - at the risk of sounding like a Libertarian, there's no overall problem, just a number of individual problems. And flyer is exactly right, there are probably 100 guys who could do the job in Formula 1.

[Ryo28]

Its not quite as bad as in the early and mid nineties, when a higher number of teams competed, many of which were impoverished and resorted to pay drivers by the mid point of the season. Lotus and Larrouse used 6 drivers each in 1994, and Johnny Herbert drove for 3 different teams during that same season (Lotus, Ligier, Benetton).

[CamF1]

1994 was crazy, I think all but only a couple of teams kept the same drivers for every race.

[BootsOntheSide]

Tyrrell and Pacific were the only teams to use the same 2 drivers for every race, as I recall. There were 28 cars entered for each race, but only about half of those had the same driver for every race.

[Adam43]

Including Johnny Herbert driving for three different teams.

[No clue]

Originally Posted by AdamAshmore

Including Johnny Herbert driving for three different teams.

What ever happened to Johnny, is he still racing somewhere?

[Adam43]

He works for Jordan as the Sporting Director.

Driving wise he has raced the Audi sportscars and a D-Type in historics amongst other things.

[Hein]

Still racing and is Sporting Manager for Jordan.

[Jordi]

Originally Posted by CamF1

1994 was crazy, I think all but only a couple of teams kept the same drivers for every race.

About 40 drivers drove in F1 that year...

Imagine if 40 of today's drivers got a chance to drive nowadays...

[BootsOntheSide]

In 1994, other than the 28 who started the season, we also saw Coulthard, Mansell, Lehto, Alliot, Montermini (briefly), Gounon, Larini, Salo, Adams, Schiaterella, Deletraz, Zanardi, Noda, Inoue, de Cesaris and Lagorce. I make that 44 drivers in total. Most of those midseason replacemenets made either their first or last F1 appearances that year.

[TheNewBob]

I had the BBC '94 review mag - I seem to remember 45 drivers taking part overall. I think Simtek had 6 drivers in all that year, too. Crazy, not to mention tragic, season of racing.

[N I Tram]

Boots missed out Yannick Dalmas - curiously both the drivers Larrousse ran in the first season (1987) also appeared for them in their last (1994).

[Ryo28]

Also missed Aguri Suzuki, who drove in the Pacific Grand Prix for Jordan after Eddie Irvine was banned for 3 races following his part in a crash in Brazil. As well as Herbert driving for 3 teams, Lehto (Benetton, Sauber), De Cesaris (Jordan, Sauber), Alliot (McLaren, Larrouse), and Bernard (Ligier, Lotus) drove for 2 different teams each!

[N I Tram]

Seems like it was 46 then. 1994 provides more drivers for the F1 Rejects website than any other year - Deletraz and Inoue get particularly negative write-ups on there.