Renault
The good news is that Renault has two official reserve drivers backing up Daniel Ricciardo and Esteban Ocon. The bad news is that neither currently have the 40 FIA superlicence points required to make them eligible to take part in an F1 Grand Prix race weekend. While the FIA may decide to waive the requirements given this year's extraordinary circumstances, so far there's been no such indication. Renault boss Cyril Abiteboul might have to look elsewhere, possibly by going back to the future with a couple of drivers formerly associated with the team in 2019:
Nico Hulkenberg
Since his first F1 outing in Bahrain at the start of 2010, Nico Hulkenberg has competed in 177 Grands Prix but inexplicably without ever finishing on the podium. He started out with Williams and later had stints at Force India and Sauber before ending up at Renault from 2017 until 2019, at which point the team decided younger blood was needed and let the 32-year-old German go in favour of Esteban Ocon. The departure was on surprisingly good terms - certainly far more so than the vitriol surrounding Ricciardo's forthcoming exit to McLaren - making a reconciliation within the realms of possibility. Renault is yet to decide on a replacement for Riccardo in 2021, and just maybe they're thinking they made the wrong call when they released Hulkenberg in the first place. Time to revisit that decision?
©Renault
Sergey Sirotkin
Sergey Sirotkin arrived in GP2 in 2015 and earned himself a test driver role at with Renault the following year, although his maiden F1 outing actually ended up being with the Williams team. He scored his first championship point with them at the 2018 Italian GP, but sponsors SMP Racing pulled their financial backing from the team at the end of the year. It dumped the 24-year-old Russian back on the reserve bench for 2019 working with Renault and McLaren. Although there's no longer a formal agreement, it would make perfect sense for Renault to look up Sirotkin's number again if they needed a hand.
Guanyu Zhou
Renault clearly have high hopes for Guanyu Zhou, who is the team's official test driver and a member of the Renault Sport Academy. Last year he clinched the top rookie honours following his first season in Formula 2, and this season he has been a mainstay of Renault's Esports team in the official FIA F1 Virtual Grand Prix and won the first round in Bahrain. The 21-year-old from Shanghai certainly looks like a star of the future, but that lack of a superlicence is a definite red light to making it onto the F1 grid in 2020.
© Renault
Christian Lundgaard
Like Zhou, 18-year-old Renault Sport Academy driver Christian Lundgaard has also been proving his virtual racing talent in the official Virtual Grand Prix series, finishing on the podium for Renault in the Hanoi round. The young Dane had spent the previous year in the real-world Formula 3 championship with Trident, claiming his first win in the series in Hungary. However he's still very new to the world of motorsport: he's learning all the time, but it's hard to see the FIA being happy to grant him a waiver when it comes to superlicence points.
Racing Point
Racing Point doesn't have any official reservists listed for the 2020 season, but they do have a deal with engine providers Mercedes to be able to tap into the Silver Arrows' pool of development drivers should the need arise. That means Stoffel Vandoorne and Esteban Gutierrez could end up looking pretty in pink at some point in 2020, in the event that either Sergio Perez or Lance Stroll were to fall ill.
That's always assuming Mercedes don't need to raid their collection of back-up drivers before that. If Racing Point did go a man down only to find the Brackley cupboard bare, the obvious alternative would be to reach out to a former driver for the team in the form of the aforementioned Nico Hulkenberg - provided that they haven't been beaten to it there as well, this time by Renault.
©RacingPoint
