Surely you don’t think Kobayashi’s as good as Hamilton?

If you look at the charts above (comparing Trulli and Kobayashi) then you see Kobayashi’s laptimes fluctuate slightly more than Trulli’s, but otherwise his times pretty closely follow the “fuel adjustment” table.

Much better than that “1%” figure indicates.

I think we’re all getting a little ahead of ourselves touting him a future World Champion. He still has a long way to go. Like Martin Brundle said during the race,its quite different when you’re rookie driving 2 races at the back end of the season, the expectations are much higher once that novelty wears off.

I’ll support Koba for next season,will pass judgement once the season is well underway.

Which brings me to Grosjean. It’s indeed a bit difficult to say how good he really is. It’s not surprising that he’s slower than Alonso of course. He didn’t have any testing and he got the opportunity to step in a car that’s not that good at all earlier than he expected. He didn’t do better than Piquet Jr. but he didn’t do worse either. So, considering his perfomances in GP2, I think he deserves a second chance.

Kamui Kobayashi was very very impressive. It’s not just that he drove to the 6th place in a decent car, it’s that he drove consistently and pretty much flawless throughout the races without being a “boring” driver like Trulli is IMO. He really delivered some spectacular fights withouth the recklessness of Takuma Sato (who I’d love to see back as well, just for the fun!). This is what F1 needs, guys that show some good fighting on the court. He doesn’t care who he’s racing. As soon as those red lights go out, he’s pushing 100% and he’s willing to battle it out to the end with anyone, wether it’s Button or Raikkonen. I don’t know how his technical know-how is (Is his imput so valuable that he can really improve a car like Alonso, Vettel or Hamilton?) and wether he can do this kind of stuff for an entire year. I also don’t know how good his team in the GP 2 was (like it or not, it does make a difference, it’s always car + driver) but I liked what I saw in the past 2 races! Also, he did perform well in GP 2 Asia series. Just the main series were dissappointing. So if Toyota want to make a wise choice, I’d go with the “Williams-formula”. They just hired the talented Hülkenberg and the experienced Barrichello. Considering Kobayashi’s fighting spirit, speed and consistency I’d definetly hire him and an experienced driver. The wisest choice by far IMO would be mr. Nick Heidfeld. Toyota said they wanted an A-driver, Heidfeld outperformed Raikkonen in Sauber and Kubica this year and he’s the most consistent driver ever. (I do like to see Quick Nick in a McClaren but I could live with him in a Toyota as wel)

The problem is that his DAMS team in GP2 didn’t do that well in the second half of the season.
It’s a one make series, but some teams are just that much better.

I’m sure we will see some monday tests coming next year!

Koba-san desreves to be in F1. Toyota must sign him.

It’s the strangest thing – he was never one of the most obvious lads to make the jump up from GP2 in my opinion (and I’d have definitely picked Grosjean over him, myself), but in just two races he’s made more of an impression on me than any of the debutantes of the last two years. It’s so…weird. It makes you wonder how many of the front-running GP2 guys are potential busts and how many of those running in the midfield are potential diamonds.

If you have rival team strategists factoring in the fact that one of your drivers often has a wayward race-pace to help calculate thier pit strategy I think you really need to take the hint…