Can Japan make Vips a Formula 1 VIP?
As Red Bull’s latest Man Most Likely To Make Formula 1, Juri Vips’s opening comment about his impending season in Japan is unsurprising. “If I realistically want to get to F1, I have a big, big job in hand this year,” he reflects. “The jump from Formula 3 to Super Formula is humungous. The car is so much faster.”
You only have to look at the fate that befell Dan Ticktum, his predecessor as Man Most Likely and at the Super Formula Team Mugen squad, to appreciate the task faced in 2020 by the 19-year-old Estonian. The Brit was dumped after three SF starts in 2019, and his replacement Pato O’Ward didn’t do much either. Two years before that, in 2017, Pierre Gasly lined up in the same seat and came close to winning the title, but he did that as reigning GP2 champion and had spent three seasons at GP2/Formula Renault 3.5 level. That’s a big difference in experience level to that of Vips, who since winning the 2017 German Formula 4 title has had one year in the Formula 3 European Championship, and one in FIA F3.
He finished fourth in the championship in both those years of F3, which puts him in a quandary as far as F1 superlicence points are
