Kyalami 1993. The first race of the season saw Michael Andretti on the grid for his long awaited Formula One debut. The race finally starts and Michael doesn't. Andretti's clutch failure was just a harbinger of things to come in his F1 career. Perhaps he chose a bad time to join a McLaren team that was heading for a performance dip, or maybe he didn't spend enough time in Europe. It's also possible that he was set up to make IndyCar look bad. Here he is the famous IndyCar driver every year a championship contender, and he can't get past the first corner without running into Karl Wendlinger. Whatever the reason, his stint in F1 was a dismal failure, that ended before the '93 season did.

Meanwhile in Australia, Nigel Mansell starts his first IndyCar race from pole, is penalized for a rookie mistake, yet still wins in his IndyCar debut. All this being done in the seat vacated by the afore mentioned Andretti. Granted Mansell stepped into the best package rolling in IndyCar that year, the Lola/Ford Cosworth, but others had similar equipment, and couldn't string together the wins like Mansell did. On the face of it, not exactly a ringing endorsement for the quality of the competitors in the IndyCar series.

Now before you simply write this off as IndyCar bashing, I have to say that I am a fan of the IndyCar circuit. It's not the pinnacle of motorsport, but it's not American club racing as some suggest. It is the pinnacle of the American motorsport scene, especially since Formula One hasn't made the journey for a few years. I feel that as a series IndyCar should be slotted in between F3000, and F1 in terms of the quality of the top drivers.

Enter Jacques Villeneuve, a brash young Canadian raised in Europe with a familiar name, and a racing pedigree that includes Italian F3 and Japanese F3000. Perhaps he choose to return to his homeland out of patriotism, or for family reasons, it doesn't matter. He began racing Formula Atlantic, the third tier of the North American race driver development. He hooked up with Player's, a cigarette manufacturer looking for a way to spend an advertising budget severely curtailed by new tobacco advertising laws in Canada. The idea was simple, form Player's Ltd racing, and support young Canadian talent, all the while attracting Canadian fans to watch their drivers in the Player's cars. With a last name like Villeneuve, Jacques couldn't miss, as long as he could keep his car on the track.

Jacques finished 3rd in the Atlantic championship in his first year, and skipping Indylites, moved directly up to IndyCar. He made a few mistakes in his first season, most notably a spectacular crash in Phoenix, but improved with every race. In his second year he won the Indy 500, and the IndyCar championship. F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone brokered his entry into F1, and we all have seen the results.

IndyCar has long been considered a "retirement league" for older F1 drivers. Emerson Fittipaldi, Stephan Johannsen, and even Nigel Mansell come to mind immediately when you think of veteran F1 pilots who have crossed the pond. But, IndyCar is increasingly being used as another step in the development of F1 drivers. To use Christian Fittipaldi as an example, he raced very well in F3000, becoming Champion, and then hooked up with Arrows in F1, but rather than continue in F1 with little chance of success, he jumped to the more competitive IndyCar series.

Since the beginning of the 1994 F1 season, only 9 drivers have won races representing 4 different teams. You can easily discount Panis' win in Monaco as a fluke, and perhaps Mansell's Australia Grand Prix victory as little more than a one off publicity stunt. In fact, one could argue that attrition weighed heavily in Berger's, Alesi's, and Herbert's wins as well as Mansell's and Panis'. Consequently there are realistically only three or perhaps four drivers that have a realistic chance of winning most Grands Prix.

In IndyCar there have been at least 12 different winners in the same amount of time, and there are drivers like Bryan Herta, and Greg Moore, who are very close to their first victory. When the flag drops for an IndyCar race half the grid have a realistic chance of winning. Of course yellow flags, and tightly controlled equipment rules don't hurt either. But when you consider that names like de Ferran, and Zanardi are being bandied about by F1 team managers, you know that in a relatively short time IndyCar is starting to be taken seriously as another step in a drivers development.

Regardless of whether Jacques wins the title next month in Japan or not, his success this season has paved the way for other driver both in IndyCar looking for an F1 seat (eg. Zanardi, De Ferran, C Fittipaldi), and F3000 or F3 drivers (eg. Gualther Salles, Jan Magnussen) looking for another proving ground on their way to F1.