The frenetic pace of modern Formula 1 takes some getting used to, according to rookies Kimi Antonelli and Franco Colapinto.

Antonelli is in his maiden season of F1 with Mercedes, while Colapinto races for Alpine off the back of a handful of outings with Williams last season.

Still much to learn after F2

Both Antonelli and Colapinto graduated to the world championship from Formula 2.

The preferred feeder series, F2 is the final step on the widely accepted pathway to F1. That begins with Formula 4 before typically taking in Formula Regional, Formula 3, and F2.

The latter two competitions race alongside Formula 1 at selected events, though their campaigns are far shorter.

This year’s F2 championship contains just 14 rounds, most of which are centred in Europe with a handful in the Middle East. The season-opening Australian event stands as an anomaly.

“I think the rhythm of this first half of the season has been quite high,” observed Antonelli, who arrived in F1 amid a hailstorm of headlines proclaiming him the sport’s next superstar.

“The intensity definitely has been quite high as well.

“It also requires some… especially after the first triple header, I had to adjust the way I was managing energy during those three weeks.”

While he’s demonstrated strong promise, and recorded a podium finish in Canada, it’s been an up-and-down season for the young Italian. Part of that is down to a tricky Mercedes, but an element is also the simple fact that he’s a rookie.

Antonelli’s plight comes despite a healthy testing programme during 2024, where he was able to bank miles in F1 machinery and perform Friday practice sessions for Mercedes.

Colapinto’s experience ahead of his F1 debut was more restricted.

Catapulted into the Williams drive in place of Logan Sargeant mid-season, the Argentine driver impressed initially before finding the going rather more difficult.

Thrust into the thick of competition again this season in place of Jack Doohan at Alpine, he’s again struggled to recapture the form of his early races and now faces a continued barrage of questions regarding his future.

“Formula 1 is, we all know, a tough sport,” he said.

“We all want to be here. There are only 20 places and it’s always going to be very tricky. It’s a lot of effort, sacrifices in the past for all the drivers to get to Formula 1, and only 20 drivers get to be here. And there’s 1000s that want to be here.”

The challenge, as two-time world champion Fernando Alonso sees it, is that young drivers enter F1 having grown accustomed to winning. Alonso arrived in F1 as a teenager, with his more than 20-year career making him the most experienced driver in world championship history.

He reasoned that through the junior categories, a young driver earns a reputation based on their results. But once in Formula 1, those are far more difficult to come by. And that can take some adjustment.

“If you get to Formula 1, it’s because in your past, you had opportunities to win in karting or in the junior formulas,” Alonso explained. “Then you get to Formula 1 and there is only one guy winning, normally for a period of five or six years, because they are dominating.

“This is the only thing that you have to manage, and have to control that frustration; you need to still deliver 100 per cent knowing that you will not win.”

The incessant pace of the F1 schedule, coupled with media and sponsorship obligations, can prove draining – even on experienced drivers.

While there are some media commitments at F2 level, it is significantly reduced and far less ravenous than it becomes in F1.

“I’ve definitely got better over the years at conserving my energy in pre-season – at knowing what to focus on and what to let go,” Daniel Ricciardo wrote in a column for The Telegraph in early 2018.

“When you’re young the temptation is maybe to think ‘more is more’. But a lot of the time ‘less is more’.

“You have to become more efficient with your feedback, your physical conditioning, your media and sponsorship commitments, and so on.”

Those are lessons that can’t be learned in the junior categories, leaving young drivers underdone to an extent ahead of their F1 debuts.

There is an engineering gap, too. A spec category, Formula 2 offers less freedom for drivers and engineers to fettle their cars. Such are the restrictions that Liam Lawson, who spent a season racing in Japan’s Super Formula in 2023 following two years in F2, suggested the Japanese competition offered a more comparable experience.

More on F1 rookies

👉 F1 records: Who are the youngest drivers ever to race in Formula 1?

👉 Sauber boss offers honest Gabriel Bortoleto assessment

“Formula 1 is constantly, nearly every weekend, you’ve got new parts on the car, you’re developing the car and it’s the most sort of open championship to that extent, where the teams are investing so much money and time into just developing the car. And you don’t experience that in any other championship leading up to F1,” he told this writer in late 2024.

“The only real experience I had of a tiny version of that was in Super Formula, because the regulations are a little bit more open and there’s a bit more room there to develop.

“For me, it was what really prepared me. It gave me that last little edge coming into F1 that helped prepare me for it, because being a fast driver is just nowhere near enough to be in Formula 1.”

It’s for those reasons that experience can be so valuable in F1, especially for a new team, which is why Cadillac is poised to confirm veterans Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as its inaugural pairing.

At a time when so much about the operation is new, having a baseline driver pairing that has been through those growing pains and understands the sport more broadly makes a great deal of sense.

More established drivers can afford to roll the dice more, given they’ve more data to fall back on with which to support a young driver. Mercedes, Alpine, Haas, and Racing Bulls have done just that this year in the hope that the potential of their young charger is able to overcome their lack of experience.

Being part of an F1 team’s junior programme can go some way to bridging that; affording the opportunity to sample F1 machinery, sit in on technical debriefs, and begin to learn some of the nuances of competing at the highest level of motorsport.

Youth will always have a place on the F1 grid, even if its value is not always assured. As the gap between teams closes, marginal gains play an increasingly important role, and the differences between the junior formulae and F1 become increasingly noteworthy as a result, and anything that can reduce that is invaluable.

Read next: Why might Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas have chosen Cadillac over Alpine?