In a Championship where the emphasis is upon breeding professional racing drivers and earning them promotion into the pinnacle of motorsport, finding fresh recruits is a yearly task. So, how do the teams get it right?

For MP Motorsport boss Sander Dorsman, it’s all about chemistry. Chemistry within the garage and the factory, chemistry with the personnel and the teammates, and chemistry with the car.

Get that right, and you’re onto a winner.

“In F2 and F3, you get limited practice time, so the more the drivers work together, the more the team work together, the more you can move on and learn from each other.”

Finding this formula takes months of preparation and will start as early as August the season before on average, but preparation can begin even earlier in some circumstances. MP Motorsport are one of several teams in the paddock to run sides in younger junior categories, with one in Formula Renault and one in Formula 4.

That ensures that high potential drivers can be signed from an early age and brought through the ranks, while Dorsman and his team keep a keen eye on their development and gauge their character. The best ones will make it all the way up to F2 with them.

Dorsman is very hands-on in this sense and makes sure that he is across all of the Championships, attending as many as half of the Formula Renault and F4 races this year, on top of all the F2 and F3 rounds. He also relies on the expertise of his staff in these categories to coach the drivers and feed back to him on a regular basis.

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He explained: “It is interesting to watch them in the younger Championships and you try and make this year-on-year programme for them. It is important for me to follow them closely, for their development and for our driver plans.

“It’s really important that the driver feels at home and feels comfortable. The chemistry that they have with the team is important. You need those foundations to build on. That is why it is obviously good to bring up a driver from one of our other junior teams, if they're good enough.

“You saw in our 2019 F3 team for example, we had Liam Lawson who was super-fast in F4, but it is a steep curve to make that move up to F3. I think that he has done an amazing job this year and he adapted really quickly, which is obviously what we hope for.”

One such driver who made his way through the MP ranks is Jordan King, who raced for the Dutch side in F2 in 2019. The benefits of this for the team have been huge. King has a vast knowledge and understanding of the various Championships and has been able to assist them not only on the track, but also behind the scenes.

“Jordan is super, super experienced,” Dorsman asserted. “He has raced with us since Formula Renault and we know him really well - he is truly part of our family. He is a great coach as well: he does driver coaching in our junior teams and is really good at that.”

Jordan King
Jordan King

That scenario isn’t always the case though. As promising as a driver can be performing in one Championship, it is imperative not to promote them too early. The effect of which could result in an implosion of confidence and crush the momentum that they’d been building. Other times, the talent just may not be there one year to promote: poor form could play a part, as could a slower than expected development rate.

This is when recruitment becomes much more difficult, and the line between getting it very right, or very wrong, can become increasingly fine. Whether in F2 or F3, in this situation, you are ultimately bringing in a driver who you don’t know.

Teams may know their history of performance and results, but there is no sense of their personality or how the “chemistry” between driver and team will work. Other issues can arise too: some racers can perform phenomenally in one car, but then struggle to adapt quickly to another.

Dorsman continued: “When you are looking outside of your own teams, you will always try and do some testing with them, and you will try to get to know one another. Ideally, they will visit our workshop and we can have a chat with them, we can also get them on the simulator as well to assess them more in that area.

“It all depends on the balance of the team as well. We don't just go out and chose two drivers separately, we will look at them as a pairing. For me, it is nice to have a second-year driver who can immediately go for a result, and combine that with a rookie driver, who has good potential to improve during the season and then go for results the year afterwards. You always want to find a bit of balance in your team.

“If it is a rookie driver you go for, then you need to be convinced that he can do the job and improve himself and deliver a result. That is imperative.”

Liam Lawson and Richard Verschoor
Liam Lawson and Richard Verschoor

It is not always as easy as bringing them in for a test and then a tour of the garage though. Depending on where the driver is based, getting to the garage may be difficult. Drivers will also enjoy sponsorships commitments, which are crucial to their careers, and will need to keep up their attendance at school or college, if they are younger.

The teams and drivers will always work diligently to get around this, because if they are unknown to one another, there’s always an element of risk for both parties. For this reason, simulators become hugely beneficial pieces of machinery, although for Dorsman, nothing compares to the real thing.

“The best situation is for them to test for us, because both sides learn a lot from that,” Dorsman continued. “I think this year you’ll see a season where a lot of drivers are signed early, but I think it is super important to use testing, especially the post-season sessions, to prepare yourself.

“First of all, to evaluate drivers. Secondly, for the drivers to have a taste of what to expect next year. Physically, they may not be 100% prepared in the post-season tests, but they then have the winter period to get ready and to work on things.”

Sat in a common area at the Yas Marina circuit in Abu Dhabi, Dorsman is surrounded by his countrymen, a sea of jubilant Dutch fans decked from head-to-toe in the traditional orange colours of the nation. As a Netherlands-based outfit, are MP Motorsport chiefly looking to recruit Dutch drivers?

Richard Verschoor wins 2019 Macau GP
Richard Verschoor wins 2019 Macau GP

“If there is a good Dutch driver around, then yes, I would rather have him myself, that is obvious, but we don't necessarily look for Dutch drivers.

“In Holland the sport is booming, we are sat here now and it’s like being at home, it’s incredible. That has in turn boosted a lot of younger kids to make their first steps in the sport and of course, we are quite happy to push for that. We had Richard Verschoor this year in F3 and he’s part of the Dutch Federation's Team NL programme, which helps young drivers. He was one who was with us in F4 and moved up to F3, so we knew what he was capable of.

“For various reasons, we didn’t have the best season in F3, but I think that we worked really hard. If you look back through the year, just before the round at Spa, we had a bit of a turning point and I think that in Macau he was just super. He won the race and he done an amazing job there and that shows what he is capable of.

“But to answer the question, no, we are not looking specifically to have Dutch drivers or any specific nationality, we are looking for the right driver - wherever they come from.”

MP Motorsport are currently in the process of signing up their drivers for the 2020 campaign, with Felipe Drugovich already announced in F2. Getting the right combination will once again prove pivotal for Dorsman and his experienced team.