RACER.COM - An IndyCar driver in F1. How hard could it be?
"An American driver [In F1] would be great, but he needs to be successful," Haas F1's Guenther Steiner told the press at last month's United States Grand Prix.
"I'm not saying that Josef [Newgarden] would not be successful, but you cannot just jump in. It's different when you jump into Le Mans from Formula 1. When you come from another series to jump into Formula 1, it is difficult.
Steiner's never been one to mince words: in the past few weeks alone, he's told Romain Grosjean to "shut up" over the radio when the Frenchman was complaining about the state of his tires in Mexico, and suggested that Nico Hulkenberg was "childish" and "a bully" for trying to convince the stewards in Hungary to increase the penalty given to Kevin Magnussen after the pair clashed during the race.
But does he have a point? How hard would it really be for a regular IndyCar frontrunner to establish a place for themselves on the Formula 1 grid? (We're talking purely in terms of skill – for our purposes, budget isn't part of the equation). In the quest for an answer, a driver with recent experience of both disciplines seemed as good a place to start as any. And while Alexander Rossi agrees that there would be some adjustments required, he's not convinced that the fundamental complexity of Formula 1 would be as big a barrier as some might expect.
"In terms of the essence of Formula 1, when everyone talks about all of the systems, and all of the different things that you have going on in terms of... CLICK TO READ ARTICLE
