2015 promises to be a stellar season for motorsport, with plenty of talking points throughout the various championships. These will be five drivers to watch out for next year.
No.1—He divided opinions throughout the sport, with Jacques Villeneuve calling it “the worst thing ever for Formula 1”. Yes, we are talking about 17 year old Max Verstappen. When it was announced that Max would be taking a seat in a Toro Rosso for 2015, many eyebrows were raised to say the least. He will be the youngest driver to ever race an F1 car. While this will have its benefits it will undoubtedly have negatives. For instance, he is young and inexperienced; how will he react when he is faced with making a split second decision? The differences between making a risky overtake work and taking not only yourself out of the race but also your opponent are minute. What is unquestionable however, is that Verstappen has talent by the bucket load. Whether or not he is able to mature quickly enough into a fully-fledged F1 driver remains to be seen. Whatever happens though watching his progress throughout 2015 will be one of my highlights of the season.
No.2—At the tender age of 18 Chase Elliott not only became the first rookie driver to win a national NASCAR title, he also became the youngest. If that isn’t a statement of intent from the son of 1988 Winston Cup Champion Bill Elliott then I don’t know what is. He has even earned plaudits from his peers, with both Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon calling him “super smooth and super-fast”. Chase will head into the 2015 NASCAR Xfinity Series as defending Champion. How he can improve on what was undoubtedly a stellar season is yet to be seen. His biggest test of 2015 will how he fairs when he makes his Sprint debut. Whenever that may be, he will be in a Hendrick Motorsport car, with newly promoted Kenny Francis likely to take the roll as crew chief for the teenager.
No.3—After Tom Kristensen decided to retire from the racing after the 2015 World Endurance Championship, we were left wondering who would fill the role of the nine-time Le Mans winner. It came as little surprise when Oliver Jarvis landed the prized contract of a full-time WEC drive with Audi. The Brit is an accomplished driver, having competed in F3, A1GP, DTM and Super GT, as well as competing in the third car for Audi at Le-Mans for the last three years. This season will be his first full season in endurance racing and while he has big boots to fill, the confidence he must have obtained from Audi selecting him to replace the Great Dane will be immeasurable.
No.4—Jack Hawksworth was arguably the best rookie to participate in the 2014 Verizon IndyCar Series. While his results may not have been at the same level of competing rookies, he showed he has the potential and class to move up to the higher echelons of the sport. It was in 2012 that the Brit decided to move to the United States in that year’s Star Mazda Championship, part of the Mazda Road to Indy; a series he not only won in his rookie year, but broke the records for wins, poles and fastest laps. He then moved up to Indy Lights, where he finished fourth while racing for the Schmidt Peterson Motorsport Team. It was in 2014 that he got his biggest break with the Brian Herta Motorsport, where he competed admirably when compared to his rivals in bigger teams. 2015 will be the biggest season for Hawksworth after it was revealed he will be joining AJ Foyt Enterprises and Takuma Sato in the second ABC Supply sponsored car. It will be his first true test against an established and race winning team-mate.
No.5—Finally, my last driver to watch is Dungannon’s finest rally driver, Kris Meeke. Having completed his first full season in the WRC in 2014, the British driver will be aiming to turn his relative consistency, intermingled with retirements, into rally wins. His WRC career up until 2014 could be best described as stop-start—through no fault of his own, as MINI pulled out half way through—but away from the WRC, Meeke was the Intercontinental Rally Championship Champion for Peugeot in 2009 and followed that up with third in 2010. Now that he is fully up to speed with car he is driving—Citroen DS3 WRC—and familiar with all the surfaces he will face in 2015, I fully expect Meeke to offer a more consistent challenge to the Volkswagen drivers. And with rallying megastar Sebastien Loeb coming out of rallying retirement for the Monte Carlo season opener, Meek couldn’t have asked for a better driver to be benchmarked against so early in the season.
Thank you for reading. Please take a moment to follow me on Twitter – @RobbieDeakin. Support LWOS by following us on Twitter – @LastWordOnSport and @LWOSworld– and “liking” our Facebook page.
Interested in writing for LWOS? We are looking for enthusiastic, talented writers to join our motorsports writing team. Visit our “Write for Us” page for very easy details in how you can get started today!
Have you tuned into Last Word On Sports Radio? LWOS is pleased to bring you 24/7 sports radio to your PC, laptop, tablet or smartphone. What are you waiting for? GO!
Main Image:
