Aston Martin confident in Drugovich: 'Delivers top work'

Felipe Drugovich must wait at least another year to realise his dream: to be a regular driver in Formula 1. The Brazilian does return as an Aston Martin test and reserve driver in 2024. Apparently, the former Formula 2 champion is so confident that he may eventually replace Fernando Alonso or Lance Stroll. He again preferred a spot on the sidelines rather than racing in, say, Formula E or IndyCar.

At least Aston Martin is happy that Drugovich has stayed on board. Although the Brazilian has mostly remained out of the public eye, he has been able to do a lot of useful work for the British team. Tom McCullough, Aston Martin's performance director, is therefore full of praise for Drugovich: "As a reserve driver, he's a great one for us to have."

The Briton's thoughts go back to about 12 months ago: "When he first drove for us at the back end of last year, we were really impressed with him. When he did the race simulation at the start of day three of Bahrain Test when Lance was injured, that was the first time I thought, wow, the car really is quite strong. Because there were other people doing race simulations at the same time."

Drugovich drove a lot of test miles for Aston Martin

It was a busy year for Drugovich, who was in action a lot outside the Grand Prix weekends in the team's older F1 cars. "He's done over 6,000 kilometres with us in our test programme, and every single time he's getting better and better. We're walking him through qualifying, race simulations, and all the skills that you need to go racing. He does a lot of simulator work for us. A really, really strong simulator driver. I wasn't at all surprised that he just sits in the car and does a top-line job," McCullough said to the media, including GPblog.