The TBA at HRT is likely to be Karun Chandhok, whose pot of sponsorship money we’d previously placed at Stefan GP. Before we even consider the likely impact of having Virgin and HRT on the same grid, it should be pointed out that yes, HRT is the official name of the team formerly known as Campos Meta. It stands for Hispania Racing Team, and one imagines that those with a working grasp of the English language and associated medical matters want you to remember that.
Autosport are carrying an exclusive interview with USF1 team principal Ken Anderson. Those currently without a working bullshit detector might want to hold their fire on that piece of link-clicking. Try these choice cuts for starters:
“If they don’t allow us to come in 2011 and they shut us down, then I assume they will open the selection process again. And I don’t know who else out there has what we have already done.”
Petrolheadblog GP has no car, drivers or sponsors either. You’ve got us well and truly beaten on the workshop and the equipment, but we’ve played Grand Prix Manager 2 extensively and are confident of being able to overcome that.
“I guess Plan C if they say no, and we have to go to the back of the queue and resubmit a proposal like everybody else… I think the proof is in the pudding. If we have a car sitting here… it would be pretty compelling evidence that we can do it.”
The counterpoint, which is worth giving some consideration to, is that as you read this, USF1 don’t have a car sitting there at all. Perhaps they’ll have one sitting there by May or June, though the object of the exercise was to have one siting there in January just past. You could, were you so inclined, argue that what we currently have is pretty compelling evidence that they can’t do it at all.
Over in Belgrade, the thoughts of Zoran Stefanovic remain unknown. The FIA have come to the conclusion that there isn’t enough time for Stefan GP to put together a serious attempt at entering the Bahrain Grand Prix, since any freight left to ship really needs to be on its way by close of business on Friday, the team don’t really have any contracted drivers and it’s thought that they were only going to pay for the Toyota chassis upon being granted an entry. No drivers, no car and a week to go before scrutineering starts. It does sound like an effort, but the team have Mr E firmly on their side.
Yes, Bernie Ecclestone believes Stefan might still make it. According to Bernie, the FIA are still carrying out a review of their business and might yet grant the Serbian outfit an entry should they see a sound business plan. What constitutes a sound business plan, particularly in the wake of the USF1 and Campos fiascos, remains unclear. Stay tuned.
Saturday 27th February 2010, Stefan GP headquarters, Belgrade:
“Stefan GP would like to inform the public that the containers we sent on the beginning of February arrived in Bahrain. During next week we will show our Stefan Formula One car to the press as the final evidence that should put us on the grid in Bahrain.
“In case we don’t receive the chance to compete in Bahrain, and also when some of the teams fail to show up, somebody should have trouble explaining what has happened to all of us.
“And the dreamers from the USA will have to explain their actions, because they are deliberately weakening F1, dreaming about a perfect world and fairytales of success. And success doesn’t come by talking but with hard work and a lot of guts.”
Sunday 28th February 2010, Stefan GP headquarters, Belgrade:
“SGP would like to re-confirm its desire and, importantly, its ability to compete in the whole of the FIA 2010 Formula One World Championship.
“It recognises that this can only happen with the consent of the FIA and the FOM, but has faith that the Formula One ‘family’ will make the correct decision in the end.
“There will be no more press releases on this subject and we look forward to being allowed to show everyone our team in Bahrain.”
Notice how Sunday’s statement is friendly and concilliatory in tone. Notice too that Zoran Stefanovic’s grasp of English improved markedly overnight, almost as if he spoke on Sunday at someone else’s suggestion, someone who wants to get Stefan onto the grid and has English as his native language. Whoever could it B.E?
17 days before official scrutineering takes place in Bahrain, the exact composition of the entry list for the 2010 Formula One world championship remains unknown.
After a long silence, USF1 team principal Ken Anderson announced this weekend that the team are currently in discussions with the FIA over missing the first four races of the season and entering the championship on May 9th in Barcelona. “We have a timeline in place that if we get a decision quickly, it triggers funding and we’re good to go,” Anderson told the New York Times. “If it takes another week or two to make a decision, it keeps backing up.”
The issue, it appears, is one of money. USF1 don’t have any. Sporting director Peter Windsor revealed last month that a sponsor had been late on payment, but described the episode as “a bump in the road” and said a replacement had been found. “We will be in Bahrain. We may not be pretty, but we will be there.” Now it’s apparent that they won’t be, and that they’ve no apparent hope of making it to Australia, Malaysia or China, there can surely be no guarantee of the USF1 Type 1 being ready to turn laps in Spain either.
It would appear somewhat naïve to suggest that funding will be triggered as soon as someone gives the team permission to start the season four races later than everyone else, unless USF1 are sitting on a more complete car than has so far been revealed. There is, though, no compelling reason for them to keep their car-building progress hidden, unless there hasn’t been any. Everything currently known about the project suggests that potential sponsors are currently faced with saying, “Ken, we’d be delighted to have our name displayed on your car. Where is it?” Under those circumstances, it’s difficult to imagine that any company would be willing to commit a significant sum of money.
It is less difficult to imagine the FIA granting USF1’s request, though to do so would require the rules governing an F1 entry to be stretched to their limits. While there remains some debate over the exact wording of the Concorde Agreement, the contract between the FIA and the teams that states the terms of entry, it is understood that any team who misses a world championship event is in breach of the agreement and will be penalised as a result. That’s a rule that would need to be bent severely to give USF1 a chance to race, but perhaps there’s some motivation for doing so.
This motivation, to be precise:
“We have requested documentary evidence to support all the new teams’ assertions, in particular with regards to funding. Thus we have been provided with accounts, contracts, multi-year business plans and other supporting material…we have asked to see contracts and letters of intent. This extends to the sponsorship side, where plans and descriptions of any existing relationships are required. In all these aspects we have requested evidence that substantiates any claim in the teams’ plans.”
Extracts there from an FIA statement released last June, detailing the due diligence that had been carried out on each of the applicants for one of the free places on the F1 grid. It’s embarrassing enough for all involved in the process that one of the teams granted an entry upon completion of due diligence, Campos Meta, would have been unable to compete had a takeover not been agreed late last week and still face a race against time to have two cars in Bahrain. It would be still worse if it turned out that of the three new teams originally given entries (Lotus obtained their entry in September after BMW’s withdrawal), only one, Virgin, was ever in a position to make the 2010 grid under its own steam.
Then again, perhaps having a team not make it at all is preferable to seeing that team arrive 4 races late, horribly off the pace and without having had a chance to iron out the bugs and reliability issues every new car suffers from. There are those for whom Formula One does not exist between the beginning of November and the middle of March, those who do not know what USF1 is and how much of a mess they’re in. Is it better to have the floating, casual audience left largely ignorant of their existence than to let them watch whatever USF1 are able to serve up once the European season starts? Is it better for FIA president Jean Todt to distance himself completely from the selection process overseen by his predecessor Max Mosley, using the situation to highlight the need for change within the FIA?
All things considered, it seems likely that we’re witnessing the death throes of Anderson and Windsor’s American F1 dream, and that the men at the top of the team would sooner force the FIA to rule them out of racing than to admit defeat. Easier to spin a team closure in your favour if you can say you did everything you could to go racing eventually, and that you’d have made it had someone been willing to make concessions on your behalf. That would leave two empty spaces on the grid, with a team waiting in the wings to fill them: Stefan GP.
Not so fast. While Stefan GP have bought Toyota’s 2010 chassis, engine and gearbox, have Kazuki Nakajima under contract and now claim to have agreed a deal with 1997 world champion Jacques Villeneuve – a deal that Villeneuve says has not been finalised – little is known of their long term plans and ability to survive. Team principal Zoran Stefanovic has made a lot of noise about their ability to race in Bahrain, the equipment he’s already sent there on the off chance that an entry is granted to them and the car having undergone an initial fire-up in Cologne, but nothing has been heard of how the team intend to take on 2011. Buying the designs of an existing team upon their withdrawal is a fantastic way to go racing for a single year but doesn’t seem to represent much of a long-term business plan. In addition, Stefanovic appears to believe that he has an automatic entitlement to go racing should an entry become available, based upon nothing but his having cars to enter. He has support from Bernie Ecclestone but, having started legal proceedings against the FIA over missing out on a place in F1 through what he believed to be an unfair selection process last time around, is not flavour of the month within the corridors of power.
It would seem that avoiding a repeat of the present situation should be high atop the list of priorities when allocating future entries, and that granting Stefan GP immediate entry wouldn’t necessarily fit in with that. Until it can be established that an outfit, be it Stefan or another team altogether, is capable not just of racing now but of sustaining itself over a number of seasons, there should be no great hurry to fill grid slots 25 and 26.
A pity, isn’t it, that this should be the hot topic on the eve of the most highly anticipated season in years. Schumacher’s back and right on the pace, Alonso expects great things from his Ferrari and the established teams can barely be separated with only one week of testing left before the season starts. As seems usual, though, the sport we love has found a way of drowning out the good news behind the noise of a shot being fired squarely into its own foot.
Several Argentinian media outlets are reporting that contracted driver Jose Maria Lopez is actively seeking another F1 drive, with support from Bernie Ecclestone, having been told yesterday by USF1 sporting director Peter Windsor that the team would not be able to give him machinery with which to make his F1 debut.
Head of business development Brian Bonner has taken up a position with Akron-based firm B4 Marketing. There remains no sign of a car, or of the component parts necessary to construct one. It is believed that the USF1 Type 1 was booked in for official FIA crash testing but that the team did not turn up. As far as the shakedown the team had publicly stated would take place at Barber Motorsports Park this month, Petrolheadblog understands that the track received an enquiry about available dates for a shakedown run which was not subsequently followed up.
Consider this. Williams, a team entering its 33rd season in its current guise, launched their 2010 car at the beginning of this month. The car shown at launch, a launch which took place on the date planned by the team some weeks in advance, was the only FW32 in existence at that time. At the end of the second pre-season test in Jerez last week, the team’s second chassis was still at the Williams factory in Grove, still not ready to go.
Official scrutineering prior to the Bahrain Grand Prix takes place in 21 days time. Even if USF1 have the finances and the staff to carry on, that’s 21 days in which to complete a car, launch it, go through some kind of initial shakedown and systems check, complete a second car and ship the equipment from North Carolina to Bahrain. While that’s going on, a second driver is needed, as is traditional when a team is required to enter two cars. Adrian Valles, hailing from an area in the extreme east of the USA known previously as Spain, was reported to be that driver and to be bringing 8 million Euros of sponsorship money with him. It can be assumed with some degree of safety that were Valles and his backers set for USF1, official confirmation would by now have been issued.
YouTube CEO Chad Hurley seems to have realised that the game is up, with associates of Hurley having ran the rule over the Dallara project due to supply Campos Meta’s cars for 2010. The Dallara is almost complete and has passed FIA crash testing, but as Campos are known to still want the car once they have the funds to pay for it, whether Hurley will follow up his initial enquiries is unclear.
Waiting in the wings, making enough noise to disrupt the headline act, are Stefan GP, who are still aiming to test at the end of this month but don’t have a tyre contract. Bridgestone, F1’s official tyre supplier, is unwilling to provide any tyres to a team without an official entry, so the demothballed Toyotas – now in Serbian red – may yet remain idle. Recent speculation places Indian driver Karun Chandhok at Stefan, in a move that would suit Bernie just fine. F1’s commercial supremo is working hard to secure support and backing for a Grand Prix just outside Delhi, support that would come more easily if he had an Indian driver to market alongside the existing Force India team. Said Indian driver has an influential father and brings around $6 million in sponsorship too, but none of that means a lick unless the car has rubber on each corner.
It seems certain that USF1 can be struck from the 2010 entry list. It seems equally certain that should Campos or Stefan GP appear in Bahrain, they’ll be in something of a mess. Today in Jerez, the Lotus T127 completed 76 laps in largely damp conditions, running reliably all day on its first test appearance. As previously reported here, Lotus did not have an entry until last September. If USF1 have been unable to show any sign of a completed car despite having been granted an entry in June and begun preparations some time earlier, what kind of questions should be raised about the management of the whole operation?
It’s time to confess to a little personal bias. We all have favourites, and those presenting their opinions on motorsport don’t necessarily claim to do so without giving those favourites the best possible write-up. Regular readers may have noticed a fondness for Rubens Barrichello which this reporter hasn’t done all that much to hide (see here for a prime example, paying particular attention to what happens if you hover your cursor over the final picture). What you may not know, since the race hasn’t yet taken place that would give cause to discuss the team at length, is that the same fondness is felt for a constructor, and that the constructor in question is Williams. If Rubens wins a race in the Williams this season and the race report is late, it’s because the man writing it has exploded with joy.
The last two on the list of links, Virgin and Lotus, are new entries noteworthy for different reasons. Virgin’s car has been designed entirely using computational fluid dynamics. All of the aerodynamic work, every calculation needed to figure out how the car moves through the air and how that air acts upon the car, has been carried out on a computer rather than using traditional wind tunnel testing. The man behind the car is Nick Wirth, who employed similar design techniques when developing the LMP2 Acura sports prototype that has enjoyed considerable success in the American Le Mans Series.
The car is now running but there remains an amount of scepticism in the F1 community, and the initial performance of the car hasn’t done much to shift it. In two days of testing the car has managed just 19 laps, delayed yesterday by its front wing falling off and today by the late arrival of parts designed to keep front wing and car together. It’s not fair to really analyse lap times at this stage, but it’s still worth mentioning that when in one piece, the car has so far been around 7 seconds a lap off the pace. The gap to the front will surely come down with more mileage, the team’s ultimate target for 2010 being to avoid embarrassment.
The new Lotus is yet to turn a wheel in anger, having undergone a gentle initial shakedown in the hands of Fairuz Fauzy before being officially unveiled today. Lotus aim to be close to the slower established teams in 2010, and while that might not sound like a particularly lofty aim, it’ll be a remarkable achievement for a team that was only granted its entry on September 12th last year. The team has a number of ex-Toyota personnel, including technical director Mike Gascoyne and driver Jarno Trulli, and the backing of Malaysian businessman Tony Fernandes, the AirAsia owner worth a reported $230 million.
The car carries the classic pre-sponsorship Lotus colours and a proper Lotus type number, links to the name’s glorious past. A quick visual inspection reveals a car that looks sensible. T127 appears basic, with no obvious innovations or fine details not seen elsewhere, but this is to be expected of a car built to a tight deadline and suggests that a season of learning from an easily understandable base is in prospect. It sounds like a smart way to go motor racing, and one hopes that Fernandes will give the team the time and support needed to see their approach bear fruit.
That still leaves us two teams short of a grid. Those two teams are Campos Meta and USF1, this year’s other start-up outfits.
Campos Meta are in financial trouble, with team principal and ex-F1 racer Adrian Campos openly seeking new investors and considering the possibility of selling the team. Campos had claimed that his 2010 plans would be confirmed last Monday, but as yet no news has been released.
Tony Teixeira, the South African businessman who was CEO of the A1GP series until its demise last year, has confirmed his interest in acquiring the team. Petrolheadblog understands that Irish driver Adam Carroll is in line to partner Bruno Senna at Campos should the deal go ahead, but that Teixeira’s proposed involvement has met with resistance from within the sport. It should be noted that Teixeira’s company Energem is believed to carry debts of over $50 million related to A1GP, the self-styled World Cup of Motorsport. Dallara, the Italian carmaker responsible for the design and construction of the Campos car, are believed to be in negotiations with two other teams over the use of their design after Campos Meta failed to meet a scheduled payment.
One of those teams is USF1. Peter Windsor, the team’s sporting director, claims that the team had a funding issue caused by a sponsor missing a payment, but that the sponsor has now been replaced and business continues as normal. Windsor has been involved in F1 as a journalist and a team manager for over 35 years, more than long enough to understand the value of good PR and positive spin.
There are, however, as yet unsubstantiated claims that the team is several months behind on its chassis development programme, owes Cosworth around $2.5 million for engines and stands less than a snowball in Hell’s chance of making it to Bahrain in 4 weeks time. They have, of course, still got support and backing from their highest-profile supporter Chad Hurley, CEO of YouTube. How are things going, Chad?
“Good question! It’s crunch time for Ken and company.”
Not exactly a glowing endorsement, and this subsequent Tweet would seem to cast doubt upon the level of Hurley and YouTube’s involvement. It has, though, been reported that talks with Dallara have begun at Hurley’s behest.
Dallara are also believed to be talking to Stefan Grand Prix. Stefan GP is the baby of Zoran Stefanovic, the Serbian having his third try at running an F1 team. Stefan GP was one of the teams rejected by the FIA during the team selection process last June, but has pressed on with plans to race in 2011 and claims to be able to race this year if an opportunity presents itself. To that end, the team have purchased the chassis, gearbox and engine designed by Toyota prior to their withdrawal from F1, confirmed technical support from Toyota and plan to test their 2010 car at Portimao on February 28th. Kazuki Nakajima will drive, Ralf Schumacher and Jacques Villeneuve have been linked with the second seat, equpiment has been sent to Bahrain and Malaysia, and all of this in spite of the FIA confirming that should Campos or USF1 fail to make it to Bahrain, their entry won’t necessarily be reallocated to Stefan or anyone else.
It remains to be seen whether any of the remaining teams will be ready in time for March 14th. All we can do at the moment is pose questions; the answers will come in time, and you’ll be able to read about them here in due course.
I wonder where Ralf got the idea from? Rumours that the idea came from letters delivered to his home address are thought to be wide of the mark, as is the idea that said letters were advertising the soon to be vacant position of ‘friend of petrolheadblog.com’.
In order to keep this little article halfway sensible in length and appearance, you’re about to be linked to within an inch of your lives. Be ready. The links are for comparative purposes, so if all you’re interested in is pictures of new cars, you’re quite safe to ignore them all. Speaking of pictures, a little reminder that wherever you see a picture on this site, you’ll find some more words if you hover your cursor over the image.
The F1 launch season began in earnest earlier this week with the unveiling of the new Ferrari F10, the car scheduled to carry Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso through the coming year. Hopes have been high for the F10 since the Maranello team’s designers, led by Aldo Costa and Nikolas Tombazis, abandoned work on last year’s F60 in order to concentrate their efforts on the 2010 machine.
The designers might have been hard at work, but one wonders whether the Original Thought department have been on an extended break. It’s difficult to look at the F10 and escape the conclusion that Ferrari’s efforts were concentrated on borrowing design concepts from everyone else. The most obvious visual differences from last year’s F60 are a new nose design heavily influenced by the Red Bull RB5, and sculpted sidepods oddly reminiscent of those seen on the BMW F1.09, a car which did nothing to mark itself out as ripe for plagiarising.
Also noticeable is the increased length of the car and resultant longer wheelbase, brought about by the need to accommodate a larger fuel tank than the one carried in 2009.
Rumours from Italy, reported in Britain by The Times but so far unsubstantiated, have it that there is some concern about the F10’s projected performance figures, and that a B-spec car is being hurriedly designed and put together to improve matters. Any alarm would be caused by wind tunnel performance and simulation data, since the car has yet to run for the first time – cold, icy conditions at their Fiorano test base have prevented the team from giving the car a shakedown.
How much of a worry that is for fans of the Italian team isn’t clear; every single team will start the Bahrain Grand Prix with a car substantially modified from the one appearing at their launch. Cars evolve, whatever their purpose, and a racing car evolving before the start of a season isn’t a story. A fundamental redesign, though, would be an altogether different thing. One to watch, perhaps.
Meanwhile, in Newbury, a place that rivals northern Italy for cold, ice and absolutely nothing else, Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton unveiled the new McLaren MP4-25 earlier today. Compared to last year’s MP4-24, a beautiful machine that was also desperately slow for much of its life, the most obvious visual differences from the front are a Red Bulling of the front end, albeit a much more conservative effort than Ferrari’s design, and a reshaping of the sidepod air intakes.
Compare the 2009 car with the new model side-on, however, and things are markedly different.
For a side-by-side comparison of MP4-24 and MP4-25 that doesn’t require you to flick between two links, direct your browser here.
The fin on the engine cover, the only blemish on an otherwise very attractive face, is designed to improve airflow to the rear wing and also accommodates a cooling duct made necessary by a repackaging of the car’s internal cooling systems. The chassis and bodywork have been lowered, and the rear of the car has been modified to make better use of the double diffuser (banned for 2011, but very much a part of the 2010 regulations) that had to be hurriedly shoehorned into the back of most of last year’s grid. As Nigel Mansell once famously said, “If it goes as fast as it looks, everyone else had better watch out.”
With the knowledge gained during 2009’s rapid recovery fresh in their minds, it’s easy to assume that the MP4-25 will be as fast on the timesheets as it looks on camera. Next week, we’ll take the first steps towards finding out how safe that assumption is.
There are reasons why nothing has been posted for a little while, all of them rather too mundane to detain you with here. Time that might otherwise have been spent doing this had to be spent doing something else instead. There is, of course, a quick and easy fix: match my current salary.
Remember that Mercedes concept livery? Here’s the real deal, or as real as a deal can be when it’s painted on last year’s Brawn:
Elegant, classy, understated and yet still distinctive and recognisable. You may feel differently, of course, and while that’s fine, you may wish to consider this: what if you’re completely wrong?
USF1 have announced their first driver for 2010. You may recall that the stated aim was to promote US talent in all areas of the sport, including driving, and if so you won’t be at all surprised to learn the name of the good ol’ boy they’ve signed.
Jose Maria Lopez.
Lopez comes from Argentina, which as far as my atlas can tell is somewhere in the extreme south of the USA. His record in the junior classes is alright but not exceptional (winner of the now-defunct Formula Renault V6 Eurocup in 2003, solid in F3000 and GP2 thereafter but only a single race win to his credit), and while he’s gone on to great things in the competitive touring car series held in his home country, he ended up there because Renault didn’t see enough in him to employ him further after his stint on their Young Driver Programme. With no recent single-seater running and a start-up team supporting him, Lopez could find himself settling in for a rather long 2010.
Staying with USF1, they’re about to demonstrate that they’ve really been building a racing car all this time. Their first F1 machine, Type 1, is scheduled to turn a wheel in anger for the first time at Barber Motorsports Park at some point in February, before joining in the final European tests prior to the season opener in Bahrain on March 14th. The car is yet to break cover and the team have kept something of a low profile, leading to increasing doubts over their participation, but at least they have some kind of plan in place.
The same cannot be said for another of this season’s new teams, Campos Meta, who have been very clear in saying that their car isn’t finished yet and might not run at all prior to Bahrain. Their being in Bahrain is apparently certain, but the heat of a desert nation is not the ideal place to give a car its first shakedown. In fact, the first race isn’t the ideal place to do it regardless of location. Bruno Senna remains contracted and ready to drive, his teammate may not be known until the eve of the first race, and the team continue to actively seek investors.
Lotus will have their car ready for launch on February 12th and running at Jerez 5 days later, while Virgin aim to give their machine a shakedown in the first week of February prior to joining the established teams at Jerez on February 10th
Red Bull and Force India have taken the decision to skip the first test of the winter in Valencia next week, citing a desire to spend more time working on the design of their cars. Dark mutterings have inevitably followed, but it should be remembered that Red Bull did exactly the same thing in 2009.
With refuelling banned for 2010, the Sporting Working Group have voted to introduce a rule stating that the top 10 qualifiers must start the race using the same set of tyres they qualified on. This has yet to be ratified by the F1 Commission or World Motor Sport Council but looks certain to be added to the 2010 rulebook.
The objective is to maintain some kind of strategic element, giving teams the choice between qualifying well on a soft tyre that might not be ideal for the start of the race or sacrificing grid position for a good race tyre. Whether the idea has any bearing on the tyre choices made by the teams will depend largely upon the compounds that Bridgestone provide. If there’s little appreciable difference between the softer and harder options, there won’t be a decision to take.
Also awaiting ratification is an amendment to the existing points system. The SWG meeting resulted in a proposed scoring system of 25-18-15-12-10-8-6-4-2-1, with points being issued down to 10th place. The aim here is to encourage drivers to push for victory by increasing the points weighting for the winner, while also ensuring that drivers and teams finishing lower down the order still have something to race for by extending the points-scoring threshold down to 10th place.
There was a time, not at all long ago, when points were awarded to the top 6 drivers, 10-6-4-3-2-1. When that points system was introduced in 1991 there were 31 cars entered each weekend. Only 26 could start the race, 20 of those would end up with nothing to show for their efforts, and as a result a point was a precious and valuable thing. That system was weighted more heavily towards the winner than the proposed 2010 system too – assuming the same drivers finish 1-2, it’ll take 4 races this year for the leader to build up an advantage greater than the points available for a race win, a race more than under the 1991-2002 system.
There’s not necessarily anything wrong with the new system. It’s just that the old one was better. Am I wrong? Let me know.
Friend of petrolheadblog.com Nelson Piquet Jr is making his oval racing debut on an incredibly fast superspeedway near you this coming February 6th. I’d duck if I were you.
If it seems like only yesterday that Giancarlo Fisichella was being reported as favourite for the vacant Sauber drive, that’s because it really, genuinely was.
Sometimes these things make too much sense. Fisi spent much of 2009 showing well for Force India, before forging late-season links with Ferrari that saw him given a testing and development role with the Scuderia. He still has a desire to race, Sauber have Ferrari engines for 2010, Giancarlo used to drive for Sauber…the pieces came together like a pre-school jigsaw.
Somewhere between yesterday’s news reports and this morning’s driver announcement, Peter Sauber’s dog must have opened the box and ate the piece with Giancarlo’s face on it, for I’m sure that the Roman’s name isn’t spelt ‘Pedro de la Rosa’. The Swiss team have opted to sign the 38-year-old from Barcelona, whose last full season of Formula One came with Jaguar in 2002.
Pedro’s appointment might seem a strange one on the face of it. 8 seasons on from his last full-time drive, de la Rosa has been a fixture at McLaren since being cast aside by Jaguar. Contracted as test driver throughout, the Spaniard nevertheless had a couple of opportunities to race for the Woking outfit. His cameo in Bahrain 5 years ago, after Juan Pablo Montoya hurt himself falling off a tennis racket, was brilliantly entertaining and ended with Pedro claiming fastest lap. His half-season in 2006 when the Colombian quit for NASCAR in mid-season was less startling, Hungarian podium finish notwithstanding. His reputation is that of a solid, reliable pair of hands, lacking in ultimate pace but a very capable development driver. That, of course – well, that and a few Euros in sponsorship money – is why Sauber have signed him.
A month or so ago, Sauber confirmed Kamui Kobayashi as the first of their 2010 race drivers. Kobayashi’s pair of races for Toyota suggest that the Japanese driver has plenty of raw pace but the kind of rough edges that would occupy a sandpaper factory for a week. His racecraft is questionable, his defensive driving on the dangerous side of robust, and he has very little prior experience of setting up a Grand Prix car, though he can hardly be blamed for that. He will show well given a decent car, but can’t be relied on to bring the car home every time, or to lead a development programme through the course of a season.
For that, the team need an experienced old hand, and they don’t come much more experienced than de la Rosa. His technical knowledge, allied to his knowledge of McLaren’s successful working practices (in-depth knowledge, as you’d expect from a trusted member of the team – until today, PdlR was scheduled to give McLaren’s 2010 car its first run next month), will be invaluable. His temperament inside the car tends to be even, as does his performance, an excellent baseline for judging the performance of new parts. A well-respected and approachable man, Pedro is also the ideal mentor for a young, wild hotshoe like his 2010 teammate.
With the right tutelage, Kamui Kobayashi will be the long-term solution, the man charged with making Sauber’s future bright. Surprise choice or not, Pedro de la Rosa is the right man to provide it.
The filling of Sauber’s vacant seat must have brought great joy to the folks at Renault. Nick Heidfeld is out of a drive. Christian Klien wants one. So does Anthony Davidson, along with his F3 and Super Aguri sparring partner Takuma Sato. If an up-and-coming driver is what they want, and last year’s experience of Romain Grosjean ought be enough to show that it isn’t, Ho-Pin Tung and the delightfully-named Bertrand Baguette are available. If an old hand desperate for one last go fits the Renault profile, Jacques Villeneuve is their man.
The seats at Campos and USF1 will go to drivers bringing sponsorship, and it’s difficult to imagine any of the above-named fancying a drive with either team anyway. With every other competitive seat filled, Renault is their last sensible choice, and that’s a cracking bargaining position for the French squad.
For a side-by-side comparison of MP4-24 and MP4-25 that doesn’t require you to flick between two links, direct your browser 