Six Season 8 dark horses who could upset our division picks

Season 8's licence changes have given several unfancied drivers a better opportunity, while others arrive with one strong result they have yet to repeat.

Our division constructors' picks backed cloud and Raptorr, Ussh and Poly, jhazztan and pwjones, Contex and Aban, and Tullo and Ceetee. None of those ten drivers appears here. This is the next group: drivers with a credible way to interrupt those teams' weekends, even if a full championship challenge still asks more of them.

They need different things. A few have speed that their results have stopped rewarding. Others have already produced the result, but too infrequently to become an obvious pre-season choice. Two are coming down into more favourable company. The licence reshuffle has made last season's points a particularly poor place to stop looking.

Techubi has a winning past and a D0 problem to solve

Eight wins in Season 6 E1 should make Techubi difficult to overlook. Three non-finishes in six Season 7 D0 starts explain why he is not among the obvious favourites now.

VCARB's D0 car contains both versions of that driver. The earlier campaign establishes that he can keep winning once he finds an advantage; the latest one says the advantage has not travelled into the fastest field. He scored 39 points without a podium, while cloud was building a championship around five victories.

There is still enough qualifying speed to take the comeback seriously. Techubi's typical gap in the earlier preview was 0.51 per cent across six laps. That leaves him behind the leading D0 benchmarks, but gives Forestal more to work with than the recent podium column suggests.

The first target is to complete a run of races. A driver cannot turn old winning pedigree into a threat from the retirement list. If Techubi fixes that part, VCARB have a much more interesting upper-grid season than their fifth-place team forecast implied.

Erion can challenge Cadillac without joining the qualifying fight

Erion's route to the front was unusually consistent: second from 11th at Baku, second from 15th in Japan, then a Monza win from 14th. McLaren have a driver who can lose the opening comparison and still change the result.

Those three podiums came in seven D1 starts, all completed. His 42 gained places explain why the recovery story has kept following him. They also expose the room still available: he keeps giving himself a long way to go.

Ussh and Poly remain the stronger season-long pairing. Erion has already shown he can beat a D1 field on an individual weekend, though, and he stays at the same licence level while several familiar rivals move into harder company. McLaren do not need a complete BOTT rebuild before that car becomes dangerous.

One clean front-running qualifying session would test the question his recoveries have left hanging. How much more could he score if he started where he keeps finishing?

Swith's old points disguise a new opportunity

Swith scored 23 points in six D1 appearances last season. That is an unremarkable return until the next line of his contract puts him in Cadillac's D2 car.

His typical qualifying gap in the preview was 1.18 per cent, close to the D2 reference points supplied by rbn and Martim. Moving down from L1 to L2 gives that pace a different job. He no longer needs to turn it into points against the same drivers who restricted his D1 return.

Two non-finishes from those six races remain the complication. A more favourable grid cannot repair a lost race by itself. Swith is a dark horse because his new division offers a route to a stronger score, rather than because his old one proves he will take it.

Cadillac would benefit disproportionately. Ussh and Poly already make D1 their strongest division; a better-than-expected D2 campaign would attack one of the gaps that kept them behind Williams in our BOTT forecast.

Zloober's three podiums have bought him a much harder test

Zloober finished all three of his D4 appearances on the podium. The encouraging part was how quickly he closed on Higosh: 8.246 seconds behind the winner at Monza, 3.961 at Abu Dhabi and 3.659 in Brazil.

Abu Dhabi gave that progression a race to remember. He fought Higosh throughout, then spun on the last lap and lost his chance to pursue a first win. Brazil left him close again, with no fourth D4 attempt to come.

Red Bull have put him in D2 after the two-level promotion to L2. The narrower gaps make him worth watching; they do not erase the jump in opposition. Three races against the old D4 field cannot establish where he belongs against jhazztan, pwjones and the experienced L2 runners.

That is what makes him the more adventurous pick here. The last three races showed improvement without a failure to finish. If he adapts quickly, Red Bull gain a D2 contribution considerably more convincing than the cautious 45 points in the original forecast.

Jan has been good at this level before

Jan's latest campaign offers little encouragement on its own: nine points and two non-finishes in five D2 starts. His older E3 seasons offer a much better reason for Cadillac to have signed him for D3.

Five Season 5 E3 podiums were followed by four more and a win in Season 6. Returning to the L3 pool therefore takes him towards opposition against which he has already produced repeated front-running results. This is a stronger basis for a comeback pick than a quick lap with no racing behind it.

The retirements keep the argument honest. Four of his 13 Season 6 E3 starts ended without a finish, before the two lost D2 races last season. Jan has shown the podium ceiling. He still needs a season that reaches it more regularly.

Contex and Aban gave Ferrari our D3 constructors' pick, with Williams close behind. Jan alongside Jacko supplies a credible third pairing capable of taking points from both. Cadillac's title bid gets much stronger if their D3 weekends begin resembling their D1 ones.

L3on is close enough to turn our tightest call

Our E3 constructors' prediction put Red Bull only about five points ahead of Ferrari. L3on does not need a miraculous season to overturn that choice.

His eight D4 appearances last season brought one podium, but the more revealing result came in D3 at Spa: a win from 19th. All three of his D3 outings ended with a finish. E3 draws from the same L3 pool this season, giving that performance a more useful connection to his new assignment than the D4 label alone.

Three starts still leave plenty to establish, and the wider Season 7 record contains two non-finishes. Ferrari are buying a demonstrated winning weekend rather than an established winning season.

Tullo has the quicker qualifying case. L3on has already turned a very poor starting position into victory in an L3 race. In a division forecast separated by roughly half a point per round, a few more weekends like that would be enough to change the winner.

L3on has the smallest gap to overturn; Erion has the clearest recent evidence of beating his new rivals without changing division. They are the two we would watch first. Singapore will tell us whether the reshuffle has brought the others closer as well.