Formula One’s hard-fought battleground is facing a Russian Revolution.
It is building up in the fast-developing form and impressive challenging attitude of Daniil Kvyat, the 21-year-old Red Bull rookie in only second season in the top flight..
Daniil Vyacheslavovich Kvyat to give him his full unpronounceable name - but Dan for short and ease of communication - is an upcoming talent promising to give F1 a fulsome future.
Against all the odds, and cast widely as a no-hoper so far as the podium is concerned, he responded to all the demands and gave Russia its first-ever F1 top three placing with the look of a talent with much more to offer if only Red Bull, troubled all season, can give him a car to match his burgeoning ability.
While all around him world champions, past and present,and drivers in better cars and with vastly more experience struggled in a madcap melee, Kyvat, who had started from seventh place on the grid, was majestic and pace personified.
Since his £250,000 (Dh1.43 million)-a-year surprise recruitment from the Toro Rosso feeder team as replacement for £25m-a-year and four-times champion Sebastian Vettel, now departed to Ferrari, Kvyat, the new kid on the cylinder block, has made steady advances.
His mantra is :”I never give up.” And he underpinned that Kvyat caveat in Budapest last time out.
Afterwards the naturally bashful youngster revealed: ”My team told me to keep going, keep pushing, and I learned what it means never to give up when there is the slightest chance of doing better.
“It has been a tough year and as a team we deserved the podium in Hungary. We worked hard for it. It is difficult for me to describe just what a fantastic feeling it is to have achieved what I did and to put Russia into the F1 record books.”
His far-sighted team boss Christian Horner, the motivator behind all of Vettel’s titles and initiator of Kvyat’s promotion to F1’s front line, is an unashamed fan.
He says with genuine admiration: “Dan is a bit of a rough diamond. The pace, talent and car control are all there and he is still very young and inexperienced. But he will get better and better.
“It is a year earlier than we had envisaged him to be graduating to Red Bull in such a vital role.
“There are still a few edges that need to be polished but he has the right approach, he is intelligent, and I can see him improving all the time.
“His second place in Hungary was a fitting tribute to his determination and ability.”
Kvyat, the son of a ski instructor, born in Ufa, 1000km from Moscow, now lives with his parents in Rome. He speaks four languages fluently, Russian, English, Spanish and Italian.
In faultless English he told me: ”To be where I am and doing what I am doing is one of my dreams come true. The next one is to be a winner. And the one after that is to be world champion.”
That is not so much a dream as a very realistic possibility.
— The author is an expert on motorsport
