Kamui Kobayashi will make his F1 debut for Toyota on Sunday after Timo Glock was ruled unfit to race following his Suzuka crash. Will it be the first step on the road to glory or a stumbling fall from grace? Only time will tell, but here are a half-dozen other F1 stars who profited from others’ mishaps.
Pedro de la Rosa
Pedro expected to spend the 2005 Bahrain GP fulfilling his usual role as McLaren test driver: eating sandwiches, watching telly and generally being a nice chap. But a week before the race, McLaren announced Juan Pablo Montoya had sustained a hairline fracture to his shoulder while “playing tennis in Madrid”. Given JPM’s apparent aversion to doing anything more strenuous than hefting a quarter pounder, rumours abounded that he’d actually fallen off a motocross bike – but officially it was a tennis injury.
Not that it mattered to de la Rosa. This was another chance to prove his pace. After qualifying eighth, Pedro pushed hard to sixth and then got involved in the mother of all tussles with Mark Webber in the Williams. It was an epic battle and conducted with skill, daring and mutual respect. Webber defended like a titan but with his front tyres running out of grip, de la Rosa seized fifth with two laps to go. De la Rosa again deputised for Montoya in 2007 when the Colombian left for NASCAR, taking a second place in Hungary to further reinvigorate his career. He’s remains so respected that he’s likely to be on the grid next year, racing for the Campos F1 team.
GEPA pictures/ Franz Pammer
Sebastian Vettel
The RBR wünderkind got his lucky break when Robert Kubica inadvertently attempted the world’s fastest strip-down of a BMW-Sauber at the 2007 Canadian Grand Prix. Thankfully the Pole escaped major injury, but arrived in Indianapolis for the following week’s US Grand Prix with his head still ringing and probably thinking he was the reincarnation of Louis XIV.
Vettel took the hot seat, qualified seventh, but lost places at the start in the typical Indy first-corner confusion. By the end of proceedings, he’d clawed his way back up to eighth to become F1’s youngest ever points scorer. The point wasn’t lost on anyone watching, and a few races later at the Hungarian Grand Prix, Vettel, a product of Red Bull’s young driver programme, replaced Scott Speed at Scuderia Toro Rosso. The rest is history.
Timo Glock
This weekend, Timo gives Kamui Kobayashi his big break, but then again, Glock got his chance in similar fashion; stepping into a Jordan at the Canadian GP in 2004 when contracted driver Giorgio Pantano did the one thing guaranteed to annoy team owner Eddie Jordan – he failed to give EJ the money agreed upon for his drive. Glock took his chance with both hands. He qualified a fairly dismal 16th (it was an ’04 Jordan, remember) but avoided trouble in a second-corner tangle and climbed to 10th. He eventually finished 11th, but when both Williams cars and both Toyotas were ruled out with brake duct irregularities, Glock was boosted to seventh to take two points on his debut.
Ricardo Zonta
Zonta found himself in the wilderness when his BAR seat went to Olivier Panis in 2001. He took a third-driver role with Jordan, which paid off at that year’s Canadian GP. Heinz-Harald Frentzen had crashed heavily in Monaco and again in practice in Montreal. Zonta was drafted in – and finished seventh to claim two points and end the afternoon four places higher than team-mate Jarno Trulli. In 2004, he was Toyota’s third driver and again lucked in to a race seat when the team sacked Cristiano Da Matta, letting Zonta compete in four more GPs. His final F1 race was again as a sub, this time for the injured Ralf Schumacher in the 2005 US GP. But did it really count? He took his place on the grid, but never raced, as all the cars wearing Michelin’s tyres withdrew on safety grounds after the formation lap.
Denny Hulme
To prove this is nothing new, we go all the way back to the Monaco GP of 1965 where New Zealand’s Denny Hulme was finally given his F1 break by Jack Brabham. He stood in for Brabham’s team-mate Dan Gurney and, while he failed to score a point, finishing in a then-non-scoring eighth place, it signalled the arrival of a bold new talent. Later that season he raced a Brabham BT11 to fourth in France and fifth in Holland. The following year, he inherited Gurney’s seat when the American left to start his own team. Hulme took four podiums on his way to fourth in the championship standings. The following year, he wrapped up the title with five points to spare over team-mate Brabham to become New Zealand’s only F1 champion.
Michael Schumacher
The seven-time world champion also got his big break in F1 as an unfancied stand-in. When Bertrand Gachot ended up in prison after attacking a London cabbie with a can of pepper spray, Eddie Jordan needed someone to drive his (truly) lovely Jordan 191 at the Belgian Grand Prix. The solution came from an unlikely source.
Michael Schumacher had come from the relative backwater of sportscars, and had never raced at Spa. Not that it bothered him. He qualified seventh, outpacing his massively experienced team-mate Andrea de Cesaris. It was his only chance to shine on his debut, though, as he retired on the first lap with clutch problems. But he’d done enough to trigger a stampede for his signature on an F1 contract. Flavio Briatore was quickest off the mark and Schumacher appeared at the next race in Benetton colours. Those world championships weren’t far behind.
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