Three-times former world champion Sir Jackie Stewart says China is 10 years away from producing its own Formula One driver even though the country has one of the best tracks in the world.
The 66-year-old Scot (pictured), who received his knighthood in 2001 and won Formula One titles in 1969, 1971 and 1973, believes China doesn't yet have the infrastructure to make the grade despite its enormous population and size.
'I should think it's 10 years away simply because the infrastructure is not in place for motorsport at this time,' said Stewart, who is an ambassador for the Royal Bank of Scotland group, sponsors of Williams-BMW.
'Even with the magnificent facilities at Shanghai, as well as Zhuhai, there has be a population built within motorsport in order to develop the skills of the young drivers, the engineers and the technologists. All the young drivers need to be educated so he or she can come along. It's a bit of a law of averages. For example a lot of attention has been given to Danica Patrick, the young American driver at the moment in the IRL [Indy Racing League]. She's a lone wolf because you have many more men driving racing cars and the batting average is such that there are thousands of young boys when they are only 20 girls. The chance of a girl coming up to the top is very remote.
'It's nothing to do with the size of the population [in order to be successful]. There are only five million people in Finland and five million people in Scotland and five million people in Austria. But their infrastructure is very good in the formula classes in the sport from karting up to the formulas [racing].
'If you're Latin American, there is good motorsports there, particularly for people in Brazil. But you then have to transfer over to Europe to get to the top as Mark [Webber] did, like Jack Brabham did for Australia and Alan Jones did for Australia.
