The forgotten member of F1's greatest rookie crop

The 2001 Formula 1 season unveiled three shining lights who would take the challenge to Michael Schumacher – but also delivered a harsh lesson in F1’s cut-throat nature to the fourth member, Arrows driver Enrique Bernoldi

James Newbold Mar 18, 2021, 5:31 PM

Upd: Sep 16, 2021, 6:47 AM

Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen will mark the 20th anniversaries of their Formula 1 debuts when they line up on the grid for next week's 2021 season opener in Bahrain. If the cards had fallen differently, they might have expected to rack up many more than their combined total of three world titles, given the potential they showed in their rookie seasons with the backmarker Minardi and upper-midfield Sauber squads respectively.

Together with Colombian Juan Pablo Montoya, whose flame in F1 burned brightly but briefly with the Williams and McLaren teams before his departure for NASCAR, the trio's 2001 emergence represented a changing of the guard in F1. But their 'F1 debut' club had a fourth, often-forgotten member.

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Author James Newbold

James Newbold is Autosport's Plus Editor, responsible for coordinating website feature content.

In a sign of things to come, having completed his Politics and International Relations degree at the University of East Anglia in 2015, he left his graduation ceremony early to catch the last train to Brussels for the following day's Spa 24 Hours.

After a period as a freelancer, he joined the Autosport staff in 2018 and won the Motorsport UK young journalist of the year award.

He initially edited Autosport magazine's Performance and Engineering supplements before joining the website team in his current role in 2020.

A keen enthusiast of anything that can be categorised unusual, niche or random, he enjoys unearthing little-known stories across all branches of motorsport, but has spent most of his career covering sportscars as Autosport's British GT correspondent and is a regular part of the Le Mans 24 Hours reporting team.

An expert in catching 40 winks on media centre floors, he lives with his wife and son in Plymouth, England.