(whimsical music)
- To put it lightly, Formula 1 rookie
Nikita Mazepin is tough to watch.
MAZ-A-PIN, or MAZ-A-SPIN, as he's come to be known,
has been ruffling feathers and rubbing bumpers
on racetracks for years, but his arrival in Formula 1
in 2021 only accelerated the conversation around
whether or not he actually deserves his spot in the most
legendary racing series in the world,
and while Mazepin's embarrassing and sometimes
dangerous performance alone would justify the outcry
that's resulted in a hashtag and a website
that counts up the last time he spun,
everything has been exacerbated by the fact
that he essentially bought his way behind the wheel,
or rather, Mazepin's daddy buying his way in.
(gloomy music)
You see, this is Dmitry Mazepin, Nikita's dad.
He's a Russian oligarch, billionaire,
and founder of Uralchem, a company with a yearly revenue
of more than $100 billion.
The elder Mazepin is currently spending $20 million a year
for his son to be able to drive
alongside Mick Schumacher on the Haas F1 team.
So that begs the question, can you buy yourself into F1?
Big thanks to insurance comparison site The Zebra
for sponsoring today's episode.
For the next 60-ish seconds, you're not going
to see anything fancy, just all of us looking all melancholy
wasting the money we were paid for this ad.
So hopefully we're boring enough that you use
the next now 48 seconds to compare insurance policies
with The Zebra.
It's really that easy.
Go to thezebra.com/wheelhouse to start your search today.
Don't worry.
We'll wait to start the episode.
You got like 30 more seconds.
(engine revving) (tires skidding)
(paper ruffling)
Oh, did you open a new tab and go to The Zebra and think
I wouldn't say anything else?
Well, for those still watching and who don't know
about The Zebra, they're the nation's leading
car insurance comparison site that has no stake
in what policy you get.
They really just want you to get the best policy for you.
The Zebra is super convenient.
You enter some basic info and you can sort through
all sorts of options picked by the experts at The Zebra.
Bing, bang, boom, you got yourself a new policy.
Well, our time is almost up.
So click the link in the description
or head to thezebra.com/wheelhouse
and learn everything you ever wanted to know
about car insurance.
(bell dinging)
(video beeps)
The fact is, racing costs money.
No matter how talented you are, unless you have the money
to show up, you're not going to be taking any podiums.
You want to be the best basketball player in the world?
You can grab a ball for $20 and practice dribbling
and crossovers 'til your fingers fall off,
hop on down to the local court and start challenging people.
The only thing it'll cost is your afternoon
and perhaps your pride, but if you want to race,
you're gonna need some cash.
Hell, even a good sim setup is going to cost you a few grand
and that's not an option for a lot of kids.
So how does a driver even make it into Formula 1?
Well, let's map it out.
First, you're going to want to go karting
and I don't mean the go-karts you absolutely dominated
at your cousin's birthday that one year.
I'm talking about shifter karts,
FIA regulated, 100 mile per hour open-wheel buzz bombs,
sporting engines that rev up to 16,000 RPM in races
that last up to 24 hours.
This isn't kid stuff and it comes
with adult price tags to match.
Think $40 to $50,000 a year or more
just to show up at the beginner levels.
All the Formula 1 drivers get started in karting
and they begin earlier than you might think.
Current champ Lewis Hamilton started at eight.
Max Verstappen was five.
Some start as young as three, yeah, three years old.
When I was three, I was still struggling to use the toilet
and these guys are starting their racing careers.
Let's say you start at five and spent four years
making waves in the karting world.
That's conceivably 200k out the window already.
By now, you're around 10 years old and looking to move up.
Every next rung on the ladder is going to cost you
more than the last, though it's not unheard of
to skip a step or two, but either way now is the time
to start looking for sponsors because by the time
you make your way up to the senior karting level,
you can expect to drop around 80 to 100 grand a year,
and you'd better plan to compete for a couple of years
at least before moving up to the next rung
on the ladder, Formula 4.
These junior open wheelers are capped at 160 horsepower
but at least the cars in Formula 4 finally look
like Formula 1 cars and not little karts.
The bad news is though, there's another price jump.
The rules are intended to cap the price of entry
at around $125,000 a year, but that's not the total price
as it doesn't factor in incidentals like travel
and you know, accommodations.
Most likely scenario is that even if
you're insanely talented, you're going to spend
the next five years moving up through
Formula 4, Formula 3, and Formula 2
with huge price bumps at every level.
For instance, a single year of Formula 2 could cost you
several million dollars, all for the hope that you'll do
well enough to get noticed, because even if you're
the best of the best, the sad fact is,
you still can't drive Formula 1.
In order for that to happen, there are still some hurdles
to overcome and money won't solve them all.
First, to drive F1, you have to be at least 18 years old.
That's easy enough, but you also have to score a minimum
of 40 points in races over a three-year period
in the lower tiers.
If you absolutely dominate out there,
you could get this done in a single weekend,
but that's easier said than done
in Formula 2 versus Formula 1.
Just, the standings are way more unpredictable.
In Formula 2, the races are much closer, and the winner
of the previous race might not even place
in the subsequent race.
Still, 40 points in three years
is a perfectly attainable goal.
The real barrier to entry is completing
300 laps in an F1 car because you're not gonna be able
to do that on your own.
Like, you need a team to invite you out and put you
in their car with their permission or you can fulfill
all those requirements and then pay your way into a drive.
Got $20 million or so?
That can only get you a spot on a lower level team,
but you will be behind the wheel in F1.
Lots of drivers over the years have taken this line.
You ever heard of Sergio Perez,
Lance Stroll, Pastor Maldonado?
How about Michael Schumacher or Niki Lauda?
All of them were pay drivers and all of them made a name
for themselves one way or another.
Lots of teams have used pay drivers
as a reliable source of revenue.
In fact, this practice got so bad in the '70s
that teams would have six to 10 drivers in a season,
some of them only doing one race, all so the team
could raise enough money to live for another season.
They eventually changed the rules so you couldn't do this.
Dang, there goes my shot.
I was gonna borrow James' Up To Speed wages.
I could drive on those things,
as long as it's not at Monaco.
Even if you did go the traditional route and didn't buy
your way in, you'll still have invested millions
and millions just to get to this point, just to earn
the opportunity to compete at this level.
This means you had to be pretty damn close to rich
before you even sat behind the wheel
and you wouldn't be alone.
Senna, Clark, Hill, all rich,
all the way back to the first F1 champion, Nino Farina,
who was heir to the Farina coach-building fortune,
a company that built custom bodies
for Lancias, Fiats, Alphas, and Ferrari's
before the latter's partnership with Pininfarina.
From its very inception, F1 has been a playground
for the rich for the same reasons that you don't see a lot
of poor people getting into competitive sailing.
Rich guys have always played with expensive toys,
but while you can buy your way into F1 to a degree,
you can't just buy your way into a championship,
as Mazepin has proven.
You still need talent.
All the money in the world isn't gonna buy you
the 40 points you need to qualify, and for that,
you're going to have to win some races.
Not everyone can do that, and that's ignoring
the overall fitness you need to compete
at the Formula 1 level.
Driving in Formula 1 is like doing P90X
while driving in Formula 1.
Over the two hour, 300 kilometer race,
drivers are gonna battle extreme dehydration,
lose about three quarts of bodily fluids,
experience extended exposure to temperatures
well in excess of 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
I would not do well, I sweat a lot,
and they drop half a dozen pounds of overall body weight.
They also pee in their suits.
Maybe I'm not so envious of them after all.
Also, they're racing against the other 19
best drivers in the world, and the concentration needed
to maintain that focus throughout a race is something
I just don't have.
I tried reading a book the other day and I almost died.
Race conditions like that can send regular people
into shock or worse.
So it's no surprise that drivers
like Jensen Button compete in triathlons,
while Alex Zanardi, who tragically lost his legs
in a race in 2001, went on to become a world champion
hand cyclist, winning two golds and a silver medal
at the 2012 London Paralympics.
These guys are athletes, no asterisk needed.
Hey, if you're liking this video so far,
hit that like button.
it really helps us out, and that's the only time I'll ask.
So is it fair that your average sim superstar is never
gonna have the resources to show their stuff in Formula 1?
No, but that doesn't mean you can just
buy your way into a championship, either.
Into Formula 1, sort of, but a championship?
That's going to take a bit more than money.
It takes discipline, focus, and most of all, talent
to get to spray the champagne, but yes, also money,
but that doesn't mean you need tons of money to go racing.
Find your local Sports Car Club of America chapter,
and you can try out Autocross
for literally dozens of dollars.
I do Autocross a lot and it's a lot of fun.
Graham is nodding his head behind the camera.
He's done it too.
Here you can just race your daily driver,
and it's not unheard of to see a bone stock Yaris
beat Mustangs, Camaros, and even Corvettes
around the tight Autocross tracks.
It's all about the driver, not the car.
There's also spec Miata racing, the most popular
club racing in the world.
You can get started there for as little as $5,000.
You probably won't win because top cars spend upwards
of $100k on their rides but there's nothing stopping you
from showing up and giving it a go,
or you can do the 24 Hours of Lemons, the series
of endurance races up to, you know, 24 hours long,
where participants are forbidden to spend
more than $500 on the cars, and that's a situation
where you can buy yourself in
and actually stand a chance of winning.
If you're like me, you spent your youth drooling
over fast cars, idolizing professional drivers,
and playing every racing video game that came along,
secretly harboring thoughts of spraying
the champagne yourself one day.
if you're like me, that never happened.
Sure, there are Cinderella stories where the underdog
was given the chance to run with the pack and leapfrog that
to a successful career, but the big obstacle here
is the same as it is in most places, and that is money.
Even if some drivers pay their way behind the wheel,
in the end, they're paying to embarrass themselves.
- Are you a fan of the Type R or just cool cars in general?
Have you ever felt like something was missing,
something big, but also small?
Well, I have something for you.
Introducing Stocky.
That was (bleep) sick.
(upbeat music)
♪ I want that new thing new thing new thing ♪
♪ I want that new thing new thing ♪
♪ Give me some of that ♪
♪ Yeah yeah ♪
(tires skidding)
Introducing Stocky, the brand new, high quality
car collectible for us, car nerds.
We wanted to make something the perfect size to display
on your desk, next to your TV, in your dorm room,
in the shop, wherever.
We explored a ton of different deformations
before finally landing on this, something that we think
is the perfect mix of fun and stylized while still
staying true to the original car.
Speaking of the car, we want to make a ton
of different Stocky's, but for Stocky 001,
we knew that we had to go with one of the most iconic
and legendary tuner cars of all time,
the DC2 Integra Type R, and I am so stoked to announce
that we have partnered with Acura,
making this an officially licensed Acura product.
We're launching this in a bunch of sick different colorways,
everything from OEM finishes like Phoenix yellow,
authentic Honda championship white,
and Nighthawk black pearl, to crazy versions
like glow in the dark, primer gray, translucent.
We're even going to make a gold one, like actual gold.
We're really stoked with how it turned out,
and we hope that you guys are too.
Now's your chance.
Get one early.
The Kickstarter is only up for 30 days.
Get yourself a rad, new collectible.
You deserve it.
(video beeps)
- Thank you very much for watching Wheelhouse this week.
If you're a Donut super freak and you want to chat
with other fans like yourself and get exclusive content,
check out the Donut Underground.
Click that join button right down there.
It's for the super freaks only.
Check out our podcast, Pass Gas.
We talk a lot about Formula 1 and it's a really great time.
Check us out on other social media @donutmedia.
Follow me @nolanjsykes if you want.
Don't let these rich guys get you down.
You could still go racing.
Be kind.
I'll see you next time.