Who are the 2018 F1 rookie drivers?

As always each season has his own rookies. All successful drivers of today were once a rookie. Even current world champion Lewis Hamilton was a rookie once.

Hamilton's rookie season was legendary. Did you know he was on the podium on his first race in Australia and almost won the 2007 F1 drivers title in his rookie season? He even outperformed his teammate back then. It was Fernando Alonso who now is considered as the best driver ever by a lot of people...

F1 Rookies of 2018

This 2018 F1 season also has rookie drivers. After the intense winter testing period of 8 days, these rookies will get their first taste of the Formula 1 circus this week in Melbourne. This season we only have two rookies; Sergey Sirotkin and Charles Leclerc.

Sergey Sirotkin

Sergey Sirotkin

Sergey Sirotkin replaces 2 times retired driver Felipe Massa at Williams. Felipe Massa retired last year already, but was called back after Valtteri Bottas was asked to fill up the gap that Nico Rosberg left behind at Mercedes. Rosberg surprisingly decided to quit F1 after becoming Formula 1 drivers champ in 2016.

Sirotkin is 22 years old and born in Moscow, Russia. In 2013 three Russian companies took over the Sauber F1 team. the father of Sirotkin was CEO of 1 of the companies. A part of the deal was that his son Sirotkin would get a ticket into Sauber's training's program. He got his first Formula 1 car experience during the free practice of the 2014 Russian Formula 1 Grand Prix that season. He drove the 17th quickest lap time and was only 0,4 sec. slower then official driver Adrian Sutil.

He didn't had a contract for the 2015 F1 season at Sauber anymore and was able to get a test driver contract at the Renault F1 team in April 2016. He then again was allowed to drive during 1st practice at the Russian F1 GP. This time he was 13th fastest and even was 0,773 sec. faster than official Renault driver Jolyon Palmer.

On the last day of 2018 winter testing in Barcelona Sirotkin was 0.765 sec. faster than his Williams team mate Lance Stroll on the same tyre compound. Whether or not this was because of a different testing mode is yet to be seen in Australia.

Charles Leclerc

Charles Leclerc

Charles Leclerc is replacing Pascal Wehrlein at Sauber. The now called Alfa Romeo Sauber team ousted former DTM champ Wehrlein just after 1 season in which he scored the only 5 points for Sauber in the slowest car of the grid. His teammate Marcus Ericsson didn't score a single point and will be Leclerc's teammate for the 2018 F1 season. Talking about strange choices...

Leclerc is only 20 years old and even 16 days younger than Dutch driver and already experienced  F1 driver Max Verstappen. Charles is born in Monaco, so the Monaco grand prix gets a real homeboy hero! Leclerc is also member of the Ferrari young drivers program, so big changes he will end up at Ferrari one day.

He won almost every championship he competed in before Formula 1 racing. Leclerc is a very talented and intelligent driver who won last years very competitive GP2 season at his first attempt!

During the 2016 season Leclerc already was working as development driver at the Ferrari F1 team and was test driver for the Haas F1 team. He made his debut in F1 at the first practice during the 2016 British Grand Prix weekend.

In 2017 he drove 4 of the last 6 first practice sessions of that season for the Sauber team and will start his first race this Sunday for Sauber.

What to expect of the 2018 F1 rookies

Both drivers can drive a Formula 1 car for sure. Our guess is that Sirotkin will give Lance Stroll a hard time, but Stroll will be able to be quicker in the end, because his father is a big shareholder of the Williams team.

If possible we would use our William Hill Promo code to put some money on Charles Leclerc. When Leclerc will get comfortable in the Sauber C37, he will outperform Ericsson with his eyes closed. If he can show off his unbelievable race talent, he won't be driving long for Sauber and will step up to a much better team in no-time.

What's your opinion?

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