Hailed as the surprise package of a 2020 campaign that contained quite a few shocks, Felipe Drugovich’s underdog tag was really little more than a misnomer.
The Brazilian certainly wasn’t shocked and neither were those around him. After all, he was arriving with as many single-seater titles as Mick Schumacher, Callum Ilott, Robert Shwartzman and Guanyu Zhou combined – all of whom were labelled as title favourites.
What they really meant, to some extent at least, is that he wasn’t linked to a Formula 1 team – a fact highlighted by Ferrari-backed Ilott after Drugovich’s Round 11 Feature Race win in Sakhir when he said that F1 teams “should look at” the Brazilian.