Written by Owen Bradley, Edited by Ishani Aziz
Dan Ticktum, never got to taste the F1 champagne - just pagne.
Dropped from Red Bull, Banned for 2 years, Dropped by Williams. Ticktum has been all but banished by the F1 community for a number of reasons; this is the story of how he ruined his F1 dreams.
It started in 2015 during the MSA Formula Championship where Ticktum would get into a first lap incident at Silverstone, with Ricky Collard (son of the BTCC driver Rob Collard). A safety car was brought out where they were using the National Track Layout.
Ticktum was obviously displeased, and overtook multiple cars despite being under the safety car, crashing deliberately into Collard. Ticktum was deservedly banned from Motorsport for two years. This put the first black mark against his name amongst the Motorsport community, and was not easily forgotten.
In 2018, it was announced that Ticktum would join Team Motopark to fight for the FIA F3 Euro Championship. In that season, it looked as though Ticktum had returned, he secured 5 poles and 8 Podiums that season. It appeared as though he might be making a recovery, especially since he joined the Red Bull driver programme.
Ticktum reversed his fate quite quickly, and was dropped in 2019 from the Red Bull Programme due to a series of bad performances, and perhaps in part because of his previous reputation. Following that, in 2020 and 2021 he turned to the Formula 2 Grid with DAMS and Carlin where he had a mixed season with 3 race wins across those two years.
Aside from his performances, Ticktum has made comments that have done little to help his reputation. After his F2 win at Russia in 2021 he said; “The win doesn’t mean much to me, because I’m not going to be in Formula 1 next year anyways”. Ticktum had managed to secure a role as a reserve driver for Williams, but after his disparaging comments towards the Williams driver Nicholas Latifi during a Twitch livestream, he was quickly dropped.
Ticktum currently races in Formula E, where he seems to have little chance of making any ground. He has only scored one point in the series so far. Taken together, Ticktum would not have made it to Formula 1 given his poor attitude and history of questionable driving. Of course there is a possibility he could bounce back, but not without changing his approach to racing.
But what do you think? Will Dan Ticktum ever make it to F1 and bounce back? Let us know in the comments below!
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