They could use Star Mazda or Formula Mazda as a feeder if they want... I'm sure theres quite a bit of skill in there (and some nabs )

I reckon they should see me in F1 next year :P rofl wouldn't that be a sight

while were at it... i am going to win 40m w/ the lotery... and create my own f1 team just for the sake of spending money and humiliating bad drivers like scott speed... and yuji ide.... and s14.... i will maybe hire tristan cliffe ! so he then gets famous for being better in the rain than mr hamilton.. ( no offence tristan... )

Imo when it Comes to looking For F1 drivers these are the series you should be looking at(open wheelers):

Champcar/indy car(there the same now right)
A1GP
Formula Nippon
World Series by renault
GP2
Basically all Formula 3 series in Europe and Japan

There are a few more, but seriously The Premier feeder classes like GP2, Formula Nippon, Champcar etc haven't pulled much good drivers as even British Formula 3. The teams have to go deep down into the core of opel wheel racing to find the best talent, because once the drivers get past that stage its usally money that dictates their Potential.

Don't forget GP2 brought us Lewis Hamilton. F3000 was a bit of a dud, that is true. But there is a consistent pattern that the most solid drivers tend to have had notable success in F3000 (eg. Heidfeld, Alonso). I think F3000 and GP2 are series where the money factor has over-riding influence on driver performance, in contrast to F3 where drivers in mid-field cars can still score good points.

British F3 is past its use-by date. Its level of competition has dropped lot in the past decade. It hasn't brought forward any particularly shining talent into F1 in recent years. F3 Euroseries has done much better with Hamilton, Kubica, Vettel, to name a few.

Really, the only ones worth seriously considering are F3 Euroseries, GP2, and WSBR. A1GP tends to attract promising drivers, but the level of competition is so erratic, it's hard to judge them. IRL is predominantly oval racing, so that's another hard one (although very respectable).

Did anyone else see what Valentino Rossi managed to do in a rally car last season in the Wales Rally GB? Sure, it was for charity, but he managed an 11th place or something, and seeing as he's obviously most talented at riding fast bikes, it just goes to show that if you have a talent, it can translate to many things.

Speculating that because x or y hasn't proven themselves in open wheelers and therefore isn't capable of doing well in F1 is mighty blinkered. I don't doubt that there are some awesome WTCC / BTCC / Superbikes / Moto GP / WRC drivers / riders out there that could post respectable times in an F1 car, given the opportunity.

Quote from dawguk :

Did anyone else see what Valentino Rossi managed to do in a rally car last season in the Wales Rally GB? Sure, it was for charity, but he managed an 11th place or something, and seeing as he's obviously most talented at riding fast bikes, it just goes to show that if you have a talent, it can translate to many things.

Speculating that because x or y hasn't proven themselves in open wheelers and therefore isn't capable of doing well in F1 is mighty blinkered. I don't doubt that there are some awesome WTCC / BTCC / Superbikes / Moto GP / WRC drivers / riders out there that could post respectable times in an F1 car, given the opportunity.

But is the so called 'pinnacle of motorsport' really a place for 'respectable' times. Mind you to be quite honest the WCC is the real championship. The WDC is somewhat of a sideshow to keep everyone happy.

Quote from dawguk :

Did anyone else see what Valentino Rossi managed to do in a rally car last season in the Wales Rally GB? Sure, it was for charity, but he managed an 11th place or something, and seeing as he's obviously most talented at riding fast bikes, it just goes to show that if you have a talent, it can translate to many things.

Speculating that because x or y hasn't proven themselves in open wheelers and therefore isn't capable of doing well in F1 is mighty blinkered. I don't doubt that there are some awesome WTCC / BTCC / Superbikes / Moto GP / WRC drivers / riders out there that could post respectable times in an F1 car, given the opportunity.

While this argument is certainly valid. The question is whether or not NASCAR drivers actually have talent. Something like talent has to be nurtured in order to actually materialize and mean something. It's been common belief that NASCAR's "driving in circles" nurtures no talent what so ever and thus should be kept separate from "real racing".

Until of course ex F1 drivers and road course racers started to fail in NASCAR recently. Then there was Jeff Gordon's Indy stunt where he was 1.3 seconds of Montoya's time. This wasn't anything special for an F1 driver but Gordon had never driven an F1 car before and he's never driven the Indy GP circuit before. (you can argue for or against it he certainly atleast shown that he has the potential to be among the F1 field. Certainly more than Yuji Ide, Sakon Yamamoto, and other pay drivers)

So...all jokes aside...is this signs that NASCAR does indeed fosters talent (albeit in a different way than road course or Grand Prix racing)? Is Jeff Gordon just an exception? A freak accident? Then there's Terry Labonte who took two of America endurance racing's most pretegious events: 24 Hours of Daytona and the 12 Hours of Sebring. Is Terry Labonte a freak accident as well?

I've always believed that critics were too hard on NASCAR just because they superficially judge it just on the "simplistic concept" of the oval when they ignore, either through ignorance or simply because of ego, the difficulties of maneuvering your car in such a tight pack that is almost constant. Is it just going in circles? Of course! But is the sheer technicality of the track and only way to judge the difficulty of it? I think not.

So...it comes back to NASCAR. Are NASCAR drivers inherently talentless? There's events that suggest otherwise but it's really up to individual judgments. In all honestly, something like this can't really be proven. And I feel that NASCAR will remain to have this controversy unless a NASCAR driver does well in F1 or Michael Schumacher comes over and fails at NASCAR. But even then it's circumstantial and logic can argue either way.