Alexander Rossi to make F1 debut in practice in Spain

2012 F1 season

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Alexander Rossi will drive in an F1 race weekend for the first time in the Spanish Grand Prix next week.

The American driver will take Heikki Kovalainen’s place in the first practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya.

Rossi said: “I am looking forward to getting back into the F1 car in Spain and I want to thank the team for the chance to run in FP1 in Barcelona.

“I have a clear goal for the session – make sure I run to the plan set by the engineers, not make any mistakes and learn as much as I can over the whole weekend.”

Rossi previously drove for the team last year – when they were Lotus – in the Young Drivers Test at Abu Dhabi.

He is racing for the Arden Caterham team in Formula Renault 3.5 this year, the first race of which is this weekend at Motorland Aragon in Spain.

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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17 comments on “Alexander Rossi to make F1 debut in practice in Spain”

  1. As a long-time F1 can in the US, this is great news. Rossi seems like the real deal. I hope he can manage some more track time during FP1 in Austin. I’ll be there watching him.

    1. xeroxpt (@)
      4th May 2012, 15:12

      He should replace Vitaly in the US.

      1. @ukfanatic – Why? Petrov is in front of Kovalainen in the WDC standings at the moment. If it stays that way, why on earth should Caterham take their better-performing driver out of the car for the sake of an untried and untested rookie driving in his home Grand Prix?

        Caterham didn’t drop one of their regular drivers so that Karun Chandhok could race in India last year. I see no reason why they’d do it for Rossi.

        1. xeroxpt (@)
          5th May 2012, 20:05

          I was just teasing Lateralus, unfortunately my statement got misunderstood, you know replace now Kovalainen and repay with replacing the Russian in the US, you know USSR vs USA.

          1. @ukfanatic – If you want Caterham to re-enact the Cold War, have Rossi replace Kovalainen in Austin so that Petrov and Rossi race one another. Although if that is Rossi’s first start, it’s probably going to be a decisive victory for the reds since Petrov has far more experience.

            But it means replacing Kovalainen, which isn’t a good idea.

        2. xeroxpt (@)
          7th May 2012, 2:05

          Money talks, with Kovalainens form he should be eyeing a better spot for the next season anyway so no harm done.

  2. Heikki’s car. Very interesting indeed.

    1. To be fair, Petrov could do with the practice. He missed a lot of testing

      1. @olliej He missed two days, but he still had a lot more than the drivers in the cars behind him!

      2. @olliej – Petrov has already given up his car once. Giedo van der Garde drove it in FP1 in China. Caterham are obviously alternating the cars between their third drivers, just as Toro Rosso did last year.

  3. A lot of reserve drivers for Caterham, all of which are getting seat time. Will they be the first team to run two reserve drivers in FP1?

    On a related topic, I’m interested in this year’s Formula Renault F3.5 (with the series seeming to get stronger by the year), but it’s not easy to follow. Even the site I sometimes illegally stream F1 practice sessions from show nothing :-). Can you watch it in the UK on Sky Sports?

    1. I think Formula Renault 3.5 is on Eurosport (HD or Sports packs not needed)?

      1. I just checked, yes WSbR is broadcast on Eurosport but isn’t available in HD. It’s live on Saturday but not Sunday, probably due to their live coverage of WTCC, Auto GP, British Superbikes and World Superbikes.

  4. Hope he does well, and doesn’t pull a Chandhok.

  5. Oops, I hope it lasts longer than his first Renault race. Bit of a messy first corner!

  6. Best of luck to the kid. It would be great to have a US national in the sport with two races coming up in the future.

    1. Yes, and having an Italian American in the sport for the GP in New Jersey would be especially good! People around here take their Italian American-ness very seriously. ;-)

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