The 10 best drivers never to race in F1 – Part 1

Scott Dixon

Born in Brisbane, raised in Auckland and a superstar in the States, IndyCar’s most successful driver of the modern era – his five titles are bettered only by Foyt’s seven – bypassed Europe bar a couple of F1 tests with Williams in early 2004: he failed to impress with 900PS on the tricky grooved slicks of the day. After winning the 2000 Indy Lights title, he led his first CART race – and won his third. His 45 Indy Racing League victories since have been split pretty much equally between ovals – he won the 2008 Indianapolis 500 from pole – and road courses/street circuits.

Dario Franchitti

The engaging Scot Dario Franchitti’s single-seater career on this side of The Pond never really recovered from an F3 shoeing from his Paul Stewart Racing team-mate of 1994. (That Jan Magnussen subsequently stumbled in F1 didn’t help either.) He turned down a testing role with McLaren – he’d already committed to CART – batted back an offer from BAR and was relieved to be rejected by Jaguar in 2000 – and has won four IRL titles and three Indy 500s thereafter. Might he have foregone one of the latter for, say, a Monaco GP victory? It’s a big might.

Jeff Gordon

This NASCAR legend – a four-time champion and third in its list of all-time winners – cut his teeth in Midget and Sprint cars. Often linked to a switch to F1 – usually with Williams – he impressed on his only test by pulling up less than a second shy of Juan Pablo Montoya after a dozen or so laps of Indy’s GP layout in a year-old (2002) FW24-BMW; the first rear-engined racing car he had driven. The Californian based in Indiana since admitted that the F1 T&Cs were never right for him to give up on the good thing he had going with the ‘Good Ol’ Boys’.

Jamie Green

The lad from Leicester had barely put a wheel wrong. A karting ace, Jamie Green finished runner-up in British Formula Renault (ahead of Lewis Hamilton but behind Danny Watts) and Formula 3 (ahead of Nelson Piquet Jr. but behind Alain van der Merwe) before romping to the 2004 European F3 crown (well ahead of Hamilton and Nico Rosberg). He should have graduated to the new GP2 with the ASM team – rebranded ART – but his handlers pecked: Rosberg got the drive and took the title. Green, a consistent winner for Mercedes-Benz and Audi in the DTM, hasn’t raced a single-seater since.

Gary Hocking

Welsh-born bike racer ‘Sox’ arrived in the UK from Rhodesia in 1958 with an empty suitcase and a heart full of hope. By 1961 he had replaced the irreplaceable John Surtees at MV Agusta by winning the 350cc and 500cc world titles. (Surtees had been happier leaving the team in Hocking’s more mechanically minded hands than in Mike Hailwood’s.) Keen to follow his mentor into the safer realm of four wheels, Hocking pulled the two-wheeled plug – after winning the 1962 Senior TT – and impressed in a handful of non-championship races in privateer Lotuses. Sadly he was killed practicing for that December’s Natal GP. He was 25.

Tom Kristensen

It seemed inevitable that the ‘Great Dane’ Tom Kristensen would go F1; he had won F3 titles in Germany and Japan and F3000 races in Europe and Asia. His victory on debut at Le Mans in 1997, as late replacement for injured Davy Jones at Joest Racing, was, well, a bonus. But insiders were warning he might miss the boat due to a lack of financial clout. He impressed Michelin with his consistency and feedback prior to its return in 2001, and was linked with Prost and Williams. Instead he stayed with sportscars, signing for Audi in 2000 and beginning perhaps the greatest sequence in motor racing’s history: six consecutive wins at Le Mans.

Sébastien Loeb

He had rewritten the rallying rulebook with his almost faultless speed and precision – and starred in the second-placed Pescarolo at Le Mans in 2006. The suggestion that Sébastien Loeb might switch to F1 in 2010 gathered momentum in his own mind as well as the public’s – he had tested impressively for Red Bull at Silverstone and Barcelona in 2008, and was attempting to get F1 fit, at 34 – but smallmindedness prevailed when he was denied an FIA Superlicence, scuppering plans to contest the 2009 Abu Dhabi GP with Toro Rosso. An immediate consolation was his sixth of nine consecutive WRC titles.

Bobby Marshman

Quickest throughout the month of May, this native of Pottstown, Pennsylvania, slid underneath the newer Lotus-Ford of Jim Clark and began to pull away, rapidly. His crew chief signall26ed ‘Easy’ – and it felt easy as traffic was dispatched and the gap grew. Then suddenly he was forced too low by a backmarker in Turn One and the engine’s oil plug was ripped out. Clearly he had things to learn still – but those 33 laps of the 1964 Indy 500 were sufficient for the mechanics at Team Lotus to label him the ‘American Jimmy’. Sadly he would suffer unsurviveable burns in a testing accident that December. He was 28.

Frank Matich

This engineer/driver from Sydney was the ‘Jack Brabham’ who stayed at home. He was invited to join the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association though he had never contested a world championship Grand Prix. Jim Clark waited for him – so that they might continue what the Scot reckoned the best dice of his career – when his Brabham conked out briefly at Lakeside in 1965. And twice he upstaged the overseas stars and returning heroes by starting Warwick Farm’s round of the Tasman Series from pole. Colin Chapman made him an open offer – but family and business, plus the lure of the beach, won the day.

Rick Mears

Four wins, six poles and 11 front rows from 16 starts at Indianapolis mark this Wichita-born Californian as arguably the greatest exponent of superspeedways. His smoothness was legendary – and it held him in good stead during a brief F1 foray. When Champ Cars visited Silverstone and Brands Hatch in 1978, he finished second and first – and caught Bernie Ecclestone’s eye. His testing of a ground-effect Brabham BT49 at Paul Ricard and Riverside – where he was quicker than Nelson Piquet – in 1980 remains one of the great might-have-beens. For in the end he preferred the USAC/CART battle he knew – plus a cast-iron relationship with Roger Penske – to the FISA/FOCA war that was alien.

Kristensen image by Dean Grossmith, other images courtesy of Motorsport Images.